Sonic Anniversary Concepts Actually Ad Agency’s College Challenge

Array of Works Only for “Bragging Rights,” Previous Story Retracted

Earlier today, we published a story that stemmed from an alleged NeoGAF discovery of an array of Sonic 20th anniversary related promotion initiatives and merchandise concepts.  It included, among other things, an interactive poster, multiple instances of apparel, and sketches for an Eggmobile model using the name “Dr. Robotnik,” Eggman’s original Westernized name.

Since the discovery, there have been some remarks made around the Internet that the elements looked more like college projects than serious Sega initiatives.  As we learned this morning, it turns out that’s because they are college projects.

This one is a bit tough to explain…so we’ll let iNAUDiBLE, who corrected us on the original story, do it instead:

Both NeoGAF and this site are wrong about the origins of these concept pieces. Most of these were created by college design students for a contest prompt given by SEGA (other companies gave out prompts for the contest as well, including 20th Century Fox and Boost) for the YCN Student Awards. <b>None of these students were commissioned for anything</b> and they give no indication of whether or not these ideas will actually be used for Sonic’s 20th Anniversary. I’d think that SEGA would’ve had their own marketing ideas lined up farther in advance rather than commission college students halfway towards June for concepts. (And indeed, they have!) Maybe we’ll see them in the future, maybe we won’t, but I would think they would give SOME indication on the site that “hey, we reserve all rights to use this” or whatever if they were intended to be used. The only thing these students might be getting for this is bragging rights and some shiny trophy or what have you.

The initial concept briefing

The YCN response from envy-the-hedgehog, where I found this out from.

It’s worth noting that they list “no formal mandatories”, so any concerns that SEGA is “serious about calling Eggman Robotnik” based on student concept art is utter balls. They list NOTHING of the sort, no restrictions on ideas.

That is more than enough information to consider our previous story flawed on the basis of a factual error.  For that reason, the original story has been retracted.  We regret the error.