In the tradition of Sonic Amateur Games Expo comes a fan fiction reading of the greatest Sonic story ever told by the greatest Sonic fan in existence, SonicFan. This year InstantSonic, Katzu Niku, GeneHF, Bartman3010, Overlord, OverlyEquipped, Neo Hazard and of course DavidTL bring you a live (Now pre-recorded on YouTube!) read of chapter 7 of Sonic Fights Robotnik!
SEGA Japan has revealed that Thunder Blade is the next SEGA arcade title to receive the 3D remastering treatment. 3D Thunder Blade is set to release on August 20th, 2014, priced at 926 yen (excluding tax), and like other second series 3D Classics releases, there is no Western release planned as of yet. Hey SEGA, we want more 3D Classics! Features include a reproduction of the arcade cabinet experience, gyro sensor gameplay, and a special mode featuring the game’s final stage.
After the break, check out a gallery of screenshots, and while you’re at it let SEGA know (nicely, not rudely) that we want more 3D Classics in the West!
IGN has conducted an interview with Al Hope, creative lead developer for the upcoming Alien: Isolation.
In it, he specifies a number of different things, many of which should make Alien fans quite happy. His team, he says, from the start set out to create a different Alien game than Colonial Marines was: a true horror experience, something completely unlike the shooter-focused direction its predecessor took on.
Isolation, which according to Hope has been in development for the past four years, has always aimed to take the series back to its roots; the first movie, in particular, where the horror, not the action, took center stage.
“It would be awesome to show Ridley Scott what we’re doing,” Hope said. “I’d like to think he’d really appreciate the care and attention and level of detail we’ve put into re-creating his original vision and original universe and I think he’d appreciate it.”
Alien: Isolation hits stores this November.
Free-to-play games can be hard to get right. They can either block customers from playing until they pay up or give them too much, making the grinding easy and fun which kills any reason to buy anything. The free to play approach on Sonic Jump Fever and Crazy Taxi: City Rush couldn’t be more different. Sonic Jump Fever is all about the high score by having you follow your Facebook friends and compete with them on the leaderboards. Sadly, the only way to get the best scores is to have that one rare chao that kills all of your enemies, Use your hard-earned in-game currency on items like power ups and more powerful characters, and have an energy bar that depletes super fast.
All of this forces you to pay-to-win, requiring you to pony out dough just to compete with your friends. This may be a free to play game, but I’ve spent $14 on Sonic Jump Fever. Curse you Sonic Stadium’s Adam Tuff and your super-high scores! In Crazy Taxi: City Rush, the “fare” is much more fair and just a better game all around. Read on for why this is one of the better ways to make a free to play game.
SEGA has just announced that they will be localizing both Phantasy Star Nova and Shining Resonance in Traditional Chinese. Isn’t that something? I know a few continents that would really enjoy English releases of those two games. Shoot, I think Phantasy Star Nova would do great on the Playstation Vita right now considering they don’t have much original games to play.
I guess the only two options to play these two games is either to learn either Japanese or Chinese.
Sega Sammy has released their financial results for what was a fairly quiet Q1 for the company. Japanese tax increases and advertising costs took a toll on their bottom line, while their games divisions, including arcade, console, and mobile, all struggled due mainly due to a lack of new content. In short, Sega Sammy has certainly seen better days, though some big titles coming up should help them regain at least some of their traction.
Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode 3 is coming out on August 27 in Japan. It will feature a new planet to explore, a casino for the lobby, new skills for old classes and an entirely new class in the Bouncer. It will also feature new characters and enemies, and the one featured above should be interesting to fans familiar with the classic Phantasy Star games.
Meet Nyau! Nyau is an enemy to be introduced in Episode 3, clearly inspired by the party character Myau from the first Phantasy Star game. According to Siliconera, Nyaus have high defense, so to battle them more efficiently you’ll need to make them vulnerable by destroying their weapon when they drop it. This will prompt Nyau to mourn the loss and be open for attacks. Nyaus are reportedly still strong on offense by themselves and can summon bosses, so speed will be of the essence. Also, if you manage to break a Nyau’s weapon you may have a chance for an item drop!
Credit to this PSUBlog entry for the image capture.
The team behind the indie RPG Elysian Shadows returns to the Swingin’ Report Show following the launch of their Kickstarter. As discussed in early June, the game is heading to the SEGA Dreamcast, but this time the team has many more details and ideas for the beloved SEGA console. Check out our interview to hear the team’s plans for the game, what SEGA titles influenced them, and how far they’re potentially willing to go to support the many Dreamcast features and accessories. You can find their Kickstarter here, or search “Elysian Shadows” on Kickstarter.
The wait is now over as SEGA has announced that their new fighting title, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax, is set for release on November 13th for PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita. The video showcases characters special moves and impact skills including the newly additional characters with a new theme song,（I’ve）の新曲「belief」, sung by Kawada Mami.
Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax is a 2D arcade fighting game published by SEGA which brings together selected characters from light novel series published under ASCII Media Works‘ Dengeki Bunko imprint. The project is a collaboration between SEGA and Dengeki Bunko as part of the 20th year anniversary of the light novel imprint.
The game also features various SEGA cameos with Akira Yuki and Pai Chan of the Virtua Fighter series as bosses and SEGA themed levels based on SEGA’s iconic franchises.
Be sure to tune in on SEGAbits for more Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax related news and events this fall.
That’s right, gang! My Life with SEGA has decided to celebrate the ill-fated 32X on its 20th anniversary by rehashing its not-so-exciting adventures in a galaxy far, far away.
Star Wars Arcade! Yeah, baby! This time, AJ is not alone. AJ and his faithful sidekick Mickey Mac, are going up against the Galactic Empire in a desperate attempt to see the fuckin’ ending!
If you wish to see the original solo – pardon the pun – review of Star Wars Arcade, you can find it after the break!
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Knuckles Chaotix was the black sheep Sonic game of its era. Standing as one of the few major releases for an infamous peripheral, Chaotix had strange team based game play that played with Sonic physics in a way no game has done before or since, it featured an eclectic cast of characters that stand out even by modern Sonic standards, and it didn’t even feature Sonic or Tails among them. Even so, Knuckles Chaotix does contain one element that would be very familiar to any classic Sonic fan: a spectacular soundtrack.
Speed Slider is quintessential Sonic sound, chaotic and fast. It perfectly captures the speedy nature of its stage and the colorful, cheerful atmosphere of the game itself. Despite how infamous the 32X’s sound capabilities are, Knuckles Chaotix proves what the hardware was capable of in the right hands. In the hands of the Chaotix development team, the 32X sang.
Stick with us throughout the month as we examine some other great soundtracks from the 32X!
We teased you in July about Phantasy Star Nova getting a demo on the Japanese PSN Store and now we get news that the game will allow 4-player co-op via local wireless connection.
Sadly though SEGA says this demo release will not showcase its character creation aspect or even story progression. I guess they want us to wait till the full game.
For those waiting on the full version of this title it will be coming out in Japan this November. The demo hits the Japanese PSN story on August 12th. We will most likely post some hands on impressions when it does hit. No release date announced outside of Japan (sorry 🙁 ).
If you remember the teaser site Atlus launched a few months ago with the giant tree? It was actually for a Etrian Odyssey game, specifically the remake of the second in the series. The 3DS remake will be titled, ‘Etrian Odyssey II Untold: The Knight of the Fafnir‘. Hit the jump to look at the characters and first trailer on the old-new game.
Last weekend saw an extravaganza of rarely seen footage of more multiplayer madness with SEGA featuring me and some of my friends. Last time we went through several Sonic games from the Game Boy Advance line-up rummaging for chao, racing to the finish, exchanging fists and more. This time we’ve not only gone back to Sonic Advance 3 with a full house of four players, we also got to check out the multiplayer mode of the Game Boy Advance conversion of Jet Set Radio from the developers behind the GBA version of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2. Finally our last surprise was us racing in the future with San Francisco Rush 2049 on SEGA Dreamcast.
Also appearing only on Twitch is a silent longplay of Knuckles’ Chaotix running at 60 frames per second as part of SEGAbits’ 32X month. If you missed out on these liveshowings, be sure to subscribe to us on Twitch or YouTube for updates when we go live again or to catch up on our previous showings.
The teaser website for the next Yakuza title has just launched. It features text that steadily appears and fills up the screen, culminating with the image shown above. Gematsu reports that we can expect a formal reveal via niconico on the 24th of August at 9 P.M. Japan time. Details are scant on the game itself, but we do know that the game is in development for both the PS3 and PS4, and that it will not be a spinoff title.
The Yakuza franchise keeps moving forward in Japan, but outside of Japan the rest of the world still lags with Ishin and 5 not being localized. Please consider learning about and supporting the Day of the Dragon (August 8th) to show your support for bringing Yakuza games outside of Japan!
Credit to Gematsu for the teaser website image capture.