Sonic Themes Collection Version 1.0

Compiled by GameMusic / Vector of Sonic HQ (http://www.sonichq.org/)

1. CREDITS

This collection of Sonic themes includes files that I have collected from all over the net.  Credits for the files are listed below:

The Sonic & Tails background, some of the sounds, and some of the Sonic cursors were made by Andy Watts (http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/watts/andy/).  Andy made the original Sonic Theme.  I have included Andy's readme files in the "Cursors" and "Themes" directories.  Andy's site deserves a lot of the credit for getting me interested in Sonic sites in the first place.

Some of the sounds and Sonic cursors, and an alternate version of the Sonic theme, were made by FreeWater (http://www.hypersven.com/svenspage/).

The Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles animated cursors were made by Paul Hempshall (http://www.paul.tierranet.com/sonic/).

The Knuckles, Vector, and Mighty backgrounds were made by Lien / Chainspike (http://www.sonichq.org/).

The Vector & Tails cursors came from a large animated cursor pack.

The icons were made by Sonic Team (http://www.sega.co.jp/sonicteam/)

I made the Knuckles and Mighty cursors and compiled the Sonic Theme Collection itself, adding themes for additional characters and games.

2. USING THE THEMES

The themes are designed to work with the "Themes" and "Cursors" folders each in the same directory.  Depending on your tastes, you could put these 2 directories in any folder on your Hard Drive(s), and it might be easiest for many of you to just put the contents of each into the corresponding "Cursors" and "Themes" folders in the Windows directory.

You do NOT need to have Windows Plus! installed to use these themes, contrary to popular belief.  I have Windows 95 without Plus! and they work great.  If you don't have Plus!, there are a number of utilities out there that can install themes for you.  I recommend Microsoft's Themes.exe, which is available at ftp.mslfiles.com.

Also note that, if you have the Sonc Screen Saver from Sega, it will be set as your screensaver by default in each theme.

3. BACKGROUNDS

In order to save the space required to hold different versions of each background, I have built the themes with an 800x600 resolution in mind, and included some of the larger images in JPEG format, which you can convert to BMP if you want.  You can get 640x480 or 1024x768 versions of the Knuckles, Vector, and Mighty backgrounds at Sonic HQ.  I have also included the 640x480 version of Andy Watt's Sonic & Tails background as the default background of the Sonic & Tails themes because I think it looks better than the stretched 800x600 version (which is included too).  You can get a 1024x768 version from his site.

In order to use the JPEG backgrounds with the Themes, you'll probably have to convert them to BMP format.  So, to use the Vector background, make a BMP version of Vector.jpg and name it Vector.bmp, then put it in the Wallpapers folder.