 Hello everyone,
Summer is here, almost all the borders are open again, and it's time to go out and explore! Or rather, take some time to read this news (or write it, depending on your point of view...).
Let's start by finishing our series on the Altaya magazines. For those who are new to this (as was mentioned on the hermitagefindings Instagram account while we were covering the Canadian DVDs), before the DVD box sets came out in France, the first episodes of Code Lyoko were released on DVD and VHS (yes, VHS) in groups of 4 episodes. Unfortunately, due to low sales, publishing stopped after 2 volumes.
After that, in 2007 Altaya did a limited test run of a DVD collection with 3 episodes per disc, starting with season 1 and including a magazine full of all sorts of articles to do with the series (interviews, storyboards, bonus material, etc.). The client (Moonscoop) came to the publishing house (Altaya) and ordered 4 test issues. If they sold well and the client was satisfied, they would extend the contract to more seasons.
Unfortunately (again), the collection couldn't find its audience and these magazines were only ever released in a select few cities rather than nationwide, so after the 4th issue was published, the (rare) people buying them realised it would be the last.
And it's this 4th issue we present to you today: a high quality PDF that contains (in French):
- A summary of each episode, storyboards from the episodes "End of Take," "Satellite" and "The Girl of the Dreams"
- Articles on Aelita, Kankrelats and communication between the heroes
- An article on mobile phones
- An article on new animation studios
- Three new "Rumours" articles: "Humour or bad faith?," "Mobile phones are essential..." and "A starlet at all costs"
- A new games page (spot the difference, a riddle and a pattern puzzle)
And there you have it, that's all for the magazine collection that had remained a mystery for so long (because it was impossible to find) for most fans. But before we finish, here's a bonus. At the end of each issue, these sorts of magazines usually give a preview of the next issue (to incentivise the buyer). Except, as we've already said...only 4 issues were ordered. So, how are we going to create a fifth cover with a summary of content that will probably never exist...? Well it's simple, we fake it! Yeah! We take a DVD cover, we cleverly place it over the summary on the magazine cover, and we work the magic...
Yes it's true, do you doubt us? Well look what happens when we extract the preview of issue 5 from the PDF!
Oh! Isn't that a copy-paste of the summary from issue 1? :o
New article! On a new video game! Yeah yeah, I can already hear you saying, "As if, that's not possible. You've already redesigned the pages for the 2 DS games, and the Wii game...there were no other video games produced for the licence!" You'd think that, wouldn't you? Today we're talking about a little-known game released in Spain in 2011. Well it's more like a handheld console. And we're simply going to call it the "Code Lyoko sprite game console" ...a pretty clickbaity name perhaps...and you'd be right.
This console is rarely mentioned when the brand makes a list of official merchandise. (Although, considering how rare it is today...) To put it simply, it's a pretty..."bottom of the range" console, with very basic games that have nothing to do with Code Lyoko (racing, tennis, puzzles...). Plus, there are a bunch of extra games that have nothing to do with Code Lyoko BUT had Lyoko Warrior sprites added in, and that's where the magic is...it goes from being a basic console to a basic Code Lyoko console.
With a massive amount of help from KaruzoHikari who already did a recap of this on Reddit a few years ago, here's a brand new file taking an in-depth look at this console inside and out.
Now you lucky ducks, there's a huge update to the 2D backgrounds section now waiting for you. And there's something for everyone with 50 new background images (with more than 30 new ones!). Something to note is that all the backgrounds on the site (old and new) are in their natural, organic form! They haven't been upscaled or altered using a filter. We need to mention this because now that upscaling software has been greatly optimised and made easily accessible to the public, you may be led to doubt that what you're seeing is the real deal.
We begin with a little tour of Kadic - after waking up in the dorm rooms for Jeremy, Odd, Ulrich or even William, it'll be time for class. Be careful not to spend too much time in the boiler room, quad or park, otherwise you'll need to take a walk to the administration building.
After that, what could be better than wandering over to the Hermitage for a nice movie night with friends, and a nice walk in the city?
Ah, it seems an artificial intelligence would disagree with that idea, so it's time to head to the factory, come wind, rain or snow! (Special mention to the snow-covered backgrounds and the ruined scanners that only appeared once in the series.)
Virtualisation, teleportation. Let's finish this tour on the four corners of the world.
With that update, there are 180 unique backgrounds available on our site (at least...for now)!
As well as the magazines mentioned above, another section has been finished today: the series comics published in Code Lyoko 2.0 magazine. We've already updated our site with the comics from the first two issues, along with a behind-the-scenes look at all the necessary steps for creating these comics. Today, we continue with the publication of the last two comics: "The Best of Both Worlds" and "Yumi, Subdigital Fangirl" as well as some bonus material. (Small aside to also thank A_QueenOfFairys who did the English translation for these comics, as well as many other pages on the site.)
And we'll finish this long news post with the addition of a new album - not stickers this time but trading cards. E-Max, the company that published a few sticker albums in Spain, didn't stop there and continued to take advantage of the profitability of the Code Lyoko brand. After much brainstorming, they took 100 renders, made up a set of very...simple game rules, and...what more is there to say? Aside from how this collection has been added to the " Trading Card Game" page. This ought to jog the memory of the most avid collectors of Spanish merch!
Also, we spotted a few times the little alchemists fused two or more renders together...
Look at this William card for example! I'll leave you to find the 2 original renders!
And there you have it, that's all for this year. As a reminder, the HermitageFindings Instagram account is still regularly publishing information on merchandise from the series. Feel free to take a look to find a few goodies not yet published on the site (they'll come eventually! Just as soon as we...create and update the appropriate pages...).
And that's all for this news, we hope you have a good summer and we'll see you soon for more!
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