Station Square, Pennsylvania?!

Have you ever wanted to enter the world of Sonic? Seeing and experiencing it firsthand? Well yesterday, I did. No, I didn't take some mushrooms and play a game of Sonic Shuffle. I visited the real Station Square! Que the theme song: Doo-doo-doo-doooo dee-doo-dee-doo-doo-doo-doo-doooo!

Station Square at night, the perfect time to enter Speed Highway

I discovered Station Square while on a road trip to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Me and two buddies were heading to the Full Moon Horror Roadshow to meet the guy who created Puppet Master, Ghoulies and the Troll films. The show was being held at a place called Station Square, and being the Dreamcast fan that I am my ears perked up. Blog fodder! Things got even better when we drove in. It really was similar to Sonic Adventure's Station Square.

Like the video game Station Square, the real Station Square was on the edge of a large city next to a body of water. One could easily board boats, just like in the game, although I don't know if they took you to the Egg Carrier.

The real Station Square also featured trains! Although unlike the game they did not take you the mountainous region of the Mystic Ruins...

Oh wait! Holy crap! You COULD take the trains from Station Square into a mountainous region! I didn't have time to check out if there was a real Mystic Ruins over the hills, so I'll just assume there was.

Real Station Square even featured shops, including a burger shop! I swear I even saw Amy Rose shopping for groceries...

There was no announcer welcoming me to Station Square, however there were these signs about. I'm assuming East Warehouse is a Shenmue reference. They failed to point out where the Chao Garden was. I assume it was in the hotel. Oh yeah, they had a hotel too.

Just. Like. In. The. Game.

Okay. So Pittsburgh's Station Square contained just about everything the video game version had, but it was missing something...


Ah yes! The SEGA logo. Station Square is complete.
Visit Station Square today!

11 comments:

thomcastles said...

aaah this bring back memories of yore when it was 1999 and no one seemed to be able to stop that orange shine or glow and laser music
but in a serious note if this were the inspiration for station square in sonic adventure what made them choose this place out of all places lol

Scott said...

So, being from the surrounding area of Pittsburgh, for some reason I never gave this a second thought. The similarities seemed like a bit of a stretch, but I found them entertaining, so thanks Barry.

And what's wrong with choosing "this place of all places," Cazre? Haha.

Anonymous said...

I tried playing Sonic Shuffle on shrooms and I couldnt focus. I probably took too much..

thomcastles said...

Nothing wrong its just you would think they would pick a more popular place Scott? Haha.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Annoyed! said...

Okay, spam like the comment above has happened before (the last one, which you can still read, was by some "lla" person advertising clothes) and just like before, it's another obnoxiously long one! :(

Aren't you guys able to delete junk-posts and if so, why don't you? Why just leave them there? Don't you know that there'll be more of these stupid messages to ruin future blogs if you don't do anything about it?

PS. while you're at it you can delete this post too, as it will have served its purpose.

Barry the Nomad said...

We can totally delete the junk posts, but we can't spend all our time looking for them. Usually they appear in older comment threads where nobody is looking.

Barry the Nomad said...

Plus, filtering is all up to blogger. We could restrict comments to members only, but then we'd lose the lovely anonymous commentators like yourself.

Tom Charnock said...

Just to reiterate what Barry said, my inbox gets filled with dozens of these spam comments everyday. If I went through every post's comment box deleting them, I be here all day! I'd love to do something about it and I thought the 'word verification' would help - but what's the point?! We all know they're bollocks, so just ignore them!

By the way - gold watches, cheap electronics, gold jeans, electronic jeans...all at top prices!

fatherkrishna said...

Excellent post dear Barry, the tenuous ones are my favourites...

Next week: How the setting for Sword Of The Beserk-Gut's Rage was actually inspired by a small cul-de-sac in Longsight, Manchester.

The Rabid Child said...

You didn't mention that both the game and real Station Squares have a book store!

(The real Station Square, the mall part at least, has been whittled down to ONLY a book store. The inside of that place is just empty and creepy now.)