E3: Company of Heroes 2 Q & A

Sorry about not doing a transcript, but my time has been very limited as of late. So I either put this up as a YouTube video, or delay it a few more days. I felt it was getting too close to release date and needed to go up right away. Here I talk with Company of Heroes 2 lead animator Brett Pascal, talking everything about the game, the move to Sega and what has happened to some of their other IP’s. Enjoy!

Company of Heroes 2 will be out this Tuesday, June 25.

“Not Enough Rings” Sonic parody comic attempting a book release on Kickstarter

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The hilarious Sonic the Hedgehog parody comic “Not Enough Rings” has turned up on Kickstarter to fund a physical book release of the series. We’ve backed it! Why don’t you do the same? Creator Veronica Vera describes the series best: “We know video game webcomics are a dime a dozen. Especially Sonic ones! But in all our years on the internet, we never came across the comic we wanted. No sprite recolors, no tribal Echidna warriors, definitely no werehogs — just a real comic retelling of the remarkable games we grew up playing.”

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For just $25, fans get a slick looking copy of the book, featuring comics covering every stage from Sonic 1 through to Sonic 3 & Knuckles. As a special perk to buyers, many of the Sonic 3 & Knuckles comics will release in the book long before appearing on their website. Other goodies include a barrel of death t-shirt, signed copies of the book, original art, and more! So what are you waiting for? Spin dash over to their Kickstarter page and help them out.

SEGAbits Event: Project X Zone Launch Party in Savannah, GA!

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Attention to our SEGABits readers of Georgia!

My friends and I, along with my local GameStop, are teaming up to throw a launch party for the upcoming crossover RPG game of the century: Project X Zone. The game features numerous SEGA, Capcom, and Namco Bandai franchises! To celebrate this crossover, I want to invite you the launch party for the Western release of the game! Come and play games developed by Namco Bandai Games, Capcom, and SEGA that are represented in Project X Zone such as Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Street Fighter, Sakura Wars, Megaman X and more. If you would like to come in cosplay as your favorite character from Namco, Capcom, or SEGA, we will gladly take pictures and send them to the companies community pages. It’s $5 dollars to get in and receive a random raffle ticket to win a free copy of Project X Zone. The party will be held at the Applebees Restaurant near 1120 Abercorn St Savannah, GA 31419 on June 26th at 5:30pm-11:30pm. Combining your attacks is the key to victory! Hit the jump for more details.

Heavy Rain director and Yu Suzuki talk storytelling


David Cage was working on his game Indigo Prophecy around the same time Shenmue was releasing. If you played Indigo Prophecy or any of Quantum Dreams games, you will notice they used Quick Time Events (QTE) quite a lot. This technic in video games was popularized by SEGA’s Shenmue.

In this interview with both David Cage (Heavy Rain director) and Yu Suzuki talk to Game Informer about storytelling. Its awesome watching Yu Suzuki explain what he tried to capture with Shenmue and what David Cage tries to capture with his games.

Also really like the part where Yu Suzuki took pictures of David Cage’s new game Beyond: Two Souls, because he found it interesting and wanted to look up more information on the game when he got home.

Sonic Boom and Summer of Sonic event locations and dates revealed!

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Hey Sonic fans, tired of the internet and want to mingle with fellow Sonic fans in the real world? Well, thanks to SEGA and The Sonic Stadium’s Svend Joscelyne, Summer of Sonic is back! The event takes place Saturday, August 3rd at the Westminster Central Hall in London, UK. Details can be found on the official website, including the mention of a theme for this year: Metal Sonic and Badniks. Live in America and can’t make it to London? Sonic Boom is also back, this year at The Pageant in St. Louis, MO on August 10th, 2013 at 5pm. Why St. Louis? SEGA figured the East and West coasts get a lot of love, and it was about time that we saw a midwest event.

More details can be found in the SEGA Blog post. Are you attending one of the events? Let us know in the comments section!

E3: Hands-on Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics

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The Mario and Sonic Olympic titles have been VERY successful for Sega and Nintendo. I mean who doesn’t love to see Mario and Sonic, once the most bitter rivals of the 90’s console wars compete together? While the dream events have always been fun, the main problem with this series has been the regular Olympic events themselves. They’re bland. Vanilla. Just plain…..”Meh”. What this series needs is some good, solid game mechanics. Does Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics finally solve this problem? Eeeeh….maybe. Read on.

SEGA’s recently announced Hero Bank turns out to be the latest project from Toshihiro Nagoshi

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It’s not much of a stretch to say that the announcement of Hero Bank, a 3DS exclusive RPG said to deal with real world currencies, hasn’t set the world on fire. Though I’m personally still trying to wrap my head around its general concept, details are beginning to trickle in for SEGA’s newest IP; one bit of info that may be of most interest to SEGA fans is that it comes from none other than Yakuza creator Toshihiro Nagoshi. For more, including quotes from the man himself, hit the jump.

Shadow the Hedgehog hits ‘PS2 Classics’ in Japan

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Sony calls their digital PSN re-releases ‘PS2 classics’ and the latest addition is the not so classic Shadow the Hedgehog. This game is just one of those titles that we here like to forget exists. What’s next? Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 port for the Playstation 4 and Xbox One?

Not to mention the Playstation 2 version of Shadow the Hedgehog is the worst version of the game. It ran better on both Gamecube and Xbox. If you live in Japan you can pick this up for 1,200 yen (About $12.60 USD).

My Life with SEGA ain’t afraid of Ghostbusters on the Master System

It’s been 29 years since Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters graced the silver screen on June 8th 1984. Furthermore, it’s been 24 years since I’ve played Ghostbusters for the SEGA Master System. Has this relic of cross-promotional tie-ins aged just as well as the movie, or should it be cast aside along with Extreme Ghostbusters?

Find out this week on My Life with SEGA! Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

HUGE Sega/Sonic sales on LIVE and PSN

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Time to transfer your titles to digital and save some money while doing it! Both PSN and X-Box LIVE have big savings on some of your favorite Sega titles. On PSN, you get the “Sonic Master Collection”. It’s 7 Sonic titles and their DLC for $29.99. This includes Sonic Adventures 1 & 2, Sonic CD, Sonic 1 & 2 and Sonic 4 Episodes 1 & 2.

But X-Box LIVE has even bigger sales! Get Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Generations, Sega Superstar Tennis or Condemned for only $9.99! Sonic 4 Episodes 1 & 2 are 400 points ($4.99) each while Space Channel 5 Part 2, Sega Bass fishing, Guardian Heroes, Sonic 1, 2, 3 and Knuckles plus Sonic CD are a mere 160 Points ($2) each. Sonic Adventure 1 also comes in at 160 points while Sonic Adventure 2 is 400 points. Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown, Crazy Taxi, NiGHTS, Daytona USA HD and Jet Set Radio Come in at 400 points. Also, check out The Cave and Renegade Ops coming in at 600 and 320 points respectively. There’s big savings on the DLC as well, so hurry up and don’t miss out!

SEGA Tunes: AJ takes a look at Flashback: Quest for Identity

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AJ Rosa decided to take a look at two of his favorite songs from Flashback’s CD soundtrack. Take a look!

It’s kind of funny looking back on all those advertisements for Flashback on Sega Genesis that graced several gaming magazines in 1993. “It’s a CD-ROM game on a cartridge.”

That was a bold statement for sure, but once my brother and I laid eyes on those fluid cinematic cut-scenes, rotoscoped animation and hand-drawn backgrounds, our minds were totally blown. The music was something else. Synth-based minimalism that brought to mind images of a future where space travel is effortless, civilization is prospering, all while something dark and sinister builds underneath its glossy exterior. It gave me that very same feeling as when I watched Escape from New York or Blade Runner. Those scores may be simplistic in instrumentation, but there’s no denying their power to engage and affect an audience….

Is Ecco the Dolphin getting a 3D makeover on 3DS?

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Looks like Sonic the Hedgehog won’t be the only Genesis game getting a 3D make over. If PEGI’s ratings website is anything to go by, Ecco the Dolphin will soon be coming to 3DS with a new 3D coat of paint. I hope this sells: its superior sequel Tides of Time would be a real sight to behold in 3D.

The game hasn’t officially been confirmed by SEGA, but given the track record of the ratings boards in predicting SEGA’s 3DS digital titles as of late, I am definitely willing to take this at face value. Is it too much to ask for this to use content from the SEGA CD version, SEGA?

The Cave is coming to iOS this summer

 
It’s sort of weird, SEGA listed the mobile version of The Cave to be shown at E3 and our guys didn’t see it there.  What we do know is that it is coming out this Summer.

Well, it seems that TouchGen was shown the game and said that they are changing the ‘console’ controls to ‘touch to move’, which isn’t that big of a deal considering that only the console versions had platformer like controls. I played it on PC and it’s basically a point and click game, so ‘touching’ instead of pointing and clicking will be the same basic thing.

The Cave was also announced awhile back for the Ouya, the  $99 dollar Android console. So I’m assuming SEGA is also working on an Android port for phones and tablets along with the Ouya release. We did a pretty nice review of the game over here, if you want to check it out.