Author Archives: Nathan

Thor: God Of Thunder only shares some story elements with movie

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Unlike the good looking Cap’n America game that SEGA is putting out, Thor has been in development for two years according to PlayStation Universe, and still looks like crap. I suggest overlooking this one. Maybe if you’re bored and up for a good laugh, check it out a few years from now when it’s cheaper than those Burger King 360 games that are everywhere at used game shops.

Anyway, I guess the story is good and somewhat original, and it has a score set by Inon Zur, who composed music for Dragon Age II. Looks like that’s it.

[Source: PlayStation Universe]

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Captain America: Super Soldier has been in development since 2008

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As if we needed another reason to compliment this game. It already looks miles better than the best parts of Iron Man, Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, and Thor: God Of Thunder. The combat and gameplay looks smooth and pretty polished. The story even looks pretty good.

And now, we find out that this title has been given a three year development cycle. Going off of SEGA’s track record with movie games, this is very rare.

Also of note is that the development company, Next Level Games (Super Mario Strikers, Transformers: Cybertron, Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon), convinced SEGA and Marvel to let them write their own original story for the game. They even brought in Christos Gage, a Marvel writer, to craft it.

Captain America is coming to the 360, Wii, 3DS, DS, PS3, and PSP on July 19th in North America, and July 15th in Europe.

[Source: PlayStation Universe]

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Mie Kumagai discusses VT4

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Australian Gamer recently sat down with famed SEGA developer Mie Kumagai, the first ever female president of an internal development team (Hitmaker). She has worked on titles in the Virtua Tennis and Virtual On franchises.

In a surprisingly short interview, she discusses a bit about Virtua Tennis 4, and tells us that SEGA is looking to continue Virtual On. Hmm….

Check out the rest below.

[Source: Australian Gamer]

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SEGA using open source 3D for VT4

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Apparently SEGA is using a free to download 3D program to aid in the development of Virtua Tennis 4 in Japan. SEGA Of Japan technical artist Katsuhiko Omori said this in an email to the creators of Blender:

Hello

My name is Katsuhiko Omori and I work as technical artist at SEGA Japan.
One of my main responsibilities is to research new technology and evaluating them for a possible application for SEGA’s game titles.

In 2010, I designed a shader rendering pipeline for Virtua Tennis 4 (SEGA) with the help of Blender 2.4. I utilized the material node-editor to generate and compose different surface materials and fine tune the finale results. In this aspect, the node-system was an extremely helpful tool in exploring the possibilities of this artist oriented experiment.

VT4 adopted the ueber shader and thus was it possible to re-implement my designed materials and user parameters on the game console. The attached image illustrates the face-skin material – the most complicated shader. As you can see it is a rather complex combination.

It’s all Greek to me, but maybe some of our more computer inclined readers can make sense of it.

In other news, the World Tour Virtua Tennis 4 demo is now live on PSN. Go check it out now if you are a PSN+ member. If you aren’t you can check it out this time next week.

[Source: Videogamewriters.com]
[Source: SEGA]

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Streets Of Rage 2 out now on iOS

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From out of seemingly nowhere, Streets Of Rage 2 appears for download on the Apple iPod Touch and iPhone. The game will cost you $2.99/€2.39/£1.79/AU$ 3.99 and includes Bluetooth multiplayer, and the Japanese version, Bare Knuckle 2.

The article also mentions that Golden Axe 2, Golden Axe 3, and Streets Of Rage 3 will be available this spring. Cool beans.

[Source: SEGA]

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Support SEGA’s Hope For Japan by playing SEGA Play! Baseball

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SEGA Of America is pouring their hearts (and a lot of money) to help out Japan after the huge earthquake/tsunami crisis last month. It’s a great thing, and they have sure helped out a lot of people with their huge auctioning off of rare swag, as well as donations from Football Manager, Sonic, and Kingdom Conquest. Now, you can help some more by buying two Japanese items to decorate your stadium or team in SEGA Play! Baseball, available here.

[Source: SEGA]

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First piece of Yakuza 4 DLC up for grabs today

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Well, this is an improvement over Yakuza 3’s DLC. You get this pack for free. It raises the limits of your character’s strength and stamina, and also picks up your relationship with Haruka to a higher point. Oh, and two new karaoke songs.

There are also four new themes (not so free, except to PS+ users), each highlighting a different character of the game. They include Kazuma, Akiyama, Tanimura and Saejima. For normal PSN members, these will run you $2.99 each (£1.99, €2.49).

Pictured below is Akiyama’s theme. The rest of them are pictured at the SEGA Europe’s Blog, linked below.

[Source: SEGA]

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Sonic & SEGA All – Stars Racing now on Games On Demand

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Ryo ASR

SEGA have just announced today that the all star title from Sumo Digital is now up for download on Xbox Live via Microsoft’s Games on Demand service. ASR joins the ranks with SEGA titles Bayonetta and Aliens Vs. Predator.

Sonic and SEGA All – Stars Racing will set you back $29.99. Well worth it.

Here’s to another way to play as Ryo!

[Source: Gameplay Today]

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Thor & Captain America games at WonderCon

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Behind the scenes with Thor

Thor: God Of Thunder

SEGA appeared at WonderCon in San Francisco last week, and showed off their two remaining Marvel games: Captain America: Super Soldier, and Thor: God Of Thunder. Above is a new behind the scenes look at Thor, and a very bad looking Thor trailer for the Wii. Over at the SEGA Blogs, they also included that awful looking Captain America Wii trailer that I previously reported on.

So, what do the SEGAbits readers think of these two games? I think Captain America is looking a lot better than Thor, and I hope SEGA will strive for this quality anytime they ever think about making another license game.

[Source: SEGA]

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