Welcome

Hello, and welcome to In the Shade of a Wave, my Blog. I'm Utane Shibusawa, a.k.a. "Mercury". I'm an amateur musician, songwriter, programmer and game designer. My current project is Sonic Freedom, a Sonic the Hedgehog fan game that retells the story of the original Mega Drive titles in unprecedented detail and depth. But I have many other interests, as well. My posts in this Blog will cover a wide range of subjects, only occasionally providing updates about Sonic Freedom.

I plan on having several disparate running threads in this Blog, each one tagged so that it may be followed independently of the others. I'm not ready to reveal them all now, but they will include:

"Code of the Ninja" - Programming tutorials, primarily for, but not restricted to, Sonic and other game engines.

"The Meme Cloud" - A spotlight on a piece of my culture, selected at random. These will range from the obvious, like Sonic the Hedgehog itself, to the not-so-obvious, like the film Young Einstein, or the music of Roger Miller.

"Developer Spotlight" - Whereas film directors and rock stars garner infinite attention, some of the talented people behind classic Japanese video games remain almost completely overlooked. These posts will attempt to bring their contributions more notice.

"Pernicious Fallacies" - Posts dedicated to clearing up some of the misinformation that abounds in our lives. Mostly, they will deal with Sonic the Hedgehog rumours and theories, but will not be confined to this subject.

"Game Seeds" - My full and undivided attention is given to the completion of my most important projects, such as Sonic Freedom. However, many ideas spring from my fertile mind. These posts will set them free, to fire the imaginations of other would-be game developers. Anyone who finds them interesting enough to run with has full blessing to do so, although credit would be appreciated.