As with everything you don’t want anyone else to know about, it will eventually end up on the internet whether you like it or not. From those few corny nude pictures you took for your beloved Sandy to the truth about your poor hedgehog mascot who just kept on truckin’ till he could truck no more.

Allow me to fill you in. Around 2006 a blogger came along with the name jpeg appeared, making wild claims about the inner workings of SEGA and the turblant relationship they had with Sonic Team. But as with anything on the internet, jpeg was largely ignored and passed off as a fraud who just wanted some attention.

In 2007 however, shit got real and he talked about NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams (You know, that piss awful sequel to the game we all loved.) stating he had little-to-no faith in the game although he knew Sonic Team were giving it their darndest. He even claimed to know and work with Sonic Team on a personal/professional level. He even said that NIGHTS 2 was planned to be released on the Xbox 360 and the PS3 as they were the only consoles that could realise Iizuka-san’s vision. A month later however, jpeg decided it was for the best to delete all of his blog posts and never return. Unfortunately for him, the internet has a memory larger than every elephant ever concieved. A forum user by the name of FlashTHD recovered an archived entry by jpeg, telling the harrowed journey Sonic Team have had to take, and how they became trapped within their own brand. It is a truly interesting tale that sheds a little bit more light on the real inner workings of the game industry, and shows us that things don’t actually run on fairy-dust and rainbows. (I at least thought they did.)

Fast forward to 2008 and everyone wondered what does this all mean? How can we really believe him? Maybe he was just lucky at guessing. That is, until Sonic Team crapped out their most recent Sonic game and everyone went back to looking at jpeg, or should I say looking for jpeg considering he left this interesting tidbit of information.

“Sonic Team are a relic from a past age who have overstayed their welcome. For the same marketing reasons that their name was initially kept (and has since backfired) they should be dissolved – it may already be too late for NiGHTS (and I really hope it isn’t and they manage to turn it around, which with Iizuka-san’s passion for the project is a possibility), but for the good of the company’s image; for the future of Sega’s other prestigious IPs and lastly for its iconic mascot it needs to be done… before they release another Sonic game with a transforming Evil ‘Night’ Sonic who looks like a werewolf and can stretch his arms out Dhalsim-style. It will happen, mark my words.“

Over a year before anyone even thought of a werehog, jpeg here handed us the future on a platter. And had he not deleted his blog posts, he would have been in violation of his NDA agreement which would have more likely than not resulted in him being fired and sued.

After confirming he was real, it was childs play to head back to the real BossRush blog and playing a game of internet detective with the name ‘Ben Andac’. This uncovered that he had been working in the past for SEGA Europe and even works as a Games Consultant (Strange title, but no reason to doubt.) for Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, and currently writes for a gaming blog titled Idle Thumbs.

‘So!’, I hear you cry. ‘What does any of this have to do with anything?’. Well, for those of you that have been wondering, and even for those of you that hadn’t, it shows and proves that the one thing that managed to kill Sonic Team, was Sonic.

Thanks to TSSZ.