Yearly Archives: 2025
Movie Review: Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie
Although Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie is not a SEGA related movie, there is no doubt that James Rolfe’s creation has made an impact on retro SEGA gaming, bringing obscure video game classics and atrocities to the forefront of people’s minds by highlighting the aggravations and rewards of classic games and hardware. While I sit firmly in the pro-Nerd camp, I’ll admit that as a SEGA fan I’m a little annoyed by how James’s over-the-top Nerd persona has affected how modern gamers view some of SEGA’s more controversial add-ons like the SEGA CD and 32X. I don’t blame James however, as I think viewers of his videos simply need to realize that his videos are part parody and the ideal way to form an opinion is to try the games and hardware out for yourself.
Angry Video Game Nerd: The Movie, which is releasing in theaters throughout the US and Canada as I write this, had its East Coast premiere last night in Phoenixville, PA. I was able to snag tickets before the show sold out, and after standing in line outside the historic Colonial Theater (home of The Blob), I and over six hundred other fans packed the house and James kicked off the movie that he described as eight years of his life in two hours. So did James’s efforts pay off?
Classic SEGA Ads: SEGA 32X – “Just stick it in your Genesis!”
Throughout the 90s, SEGA were the kings of video game slogans. “Welcome to the Next Level”, “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t”, “A little bit too real”, “It’s Thinking”. These are slogans us fans still use proudly to this day. Unfortunately for the 32X, “Just stick it in your Genesis!” did more harm than good. Today’s ad features the return of our edgy friend from SEGA’s SEGA CD commercial in which he famously interrupted a teenager watching television to aggressively ask him why he didn’t own a SEGA CD. The SEGA CD ad was loud, in your face, and incredibly memorable for all the right reasons. The 32X follow-up? Not so much.
Yakuza Fans: The Day of the Dragon is August 8!
A couple of weeks ago SEGA forum member king_ruckus came up with the idea of the “Day of the Dragon” – a fan initiative that asks people to send letters to SEGA offices (to be received on the 8th) expressing their desire to see the franchise brought back to life in the West. It’s been a year and a half since Yakuza 5 was released in Japan, and there is no word on localization for Yakuza: Ishin, either. With the next Yakuza title already in development, fans are understandably worried. Keeping this in mind, king_ruckus looked up the mailing addresses for the London, Tokyo, and San Francisco offices so fans can send the letters to the offices of their choosing.
Keep in mind that while the Day of the Dragon is technically set to be August 8 (next Friday,) the spirit of king_ruckus’s idea is such that the letters arrive during the week of August 8. This allows not only for the variation in personal schedules, but for the sending of letters from different parts of the world to the desired SEGA offices. Please consider sending mail to SEGA! Also, get #DayOftheDragon or #BringYakuzaWest trending if you’ve got Twitter, and check out this Facebook page if you’ve got Facebook! To check out the addresses for the three above-specified SEGA offices, hit the break!
Elysian Shadows Kickstarter launches – bringing a new RPG to the SEGA Dreamcast
The Elysian Shadows Kickstarter has officially launched. Dubbed a “next-gen” 2D RPG, the game is slated to hit a number of platforms including our beloved SEGA Dreamcast. We spoke with the team back in June, and they definitely sound committed to the project – which will only happen if they hit their $150,000 goal. The Dreamcast release starts at the $49 level in the Standard Edition which comes in two flavors, signed and unsigned. The signed edition is limited to 100 copies. The $125 level features a Collector’s Edition of the game with several physical goodies that are only digital in the lower tiers. As far as stretch goals, should the project hit $400,000, the team plans to create a monster training VMU mini-game, while $500,000 will open to game up to the modding community (Dreamcast included).
Make sure to check out the project, and if it appeals to you, show your support!
SEGA is Finally Improving the Dreamcast Collection on Steam
While it’s been possible for a while to get Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2 and SEGA Bass Fishing on Steam, they’re not necessarily the best versions of the game to get. Sonic Adventure DX especially has problems like there being borders around the game and it having a low screen resolution. Which might have something to do with it being a port of the XBLA version, which was a port of the previous PC version, which was a port of the Gamecube version, which was a port of the Dreamcast version. So yeah, it could do with some improvements.
And it might finally get them, as SEGA announced today in a Steam forum post that they’re working on improving these versions over the next few months three years after they’ve been released. Among these improvements are added achievements, which can already be seen on the store pages of the games. Hopes up that this also means that they’ll finally add the Bad Religion back into Crazy Taxi.
The Year of the SEGA Console – Welcome to SEGA Genesis 32X month!
In mid-January we made the announcement that all year long we’d be celebrating five famous (and infamous) pieces of SEGA hardware hitting milestone anniversaries in what we dubbed 2014: The Year of the SEGA Console. Throughout March, we celebrated the SEGA Genesis, and later this year we plan to devote months to the Saturn and Dreamcast, both very popular SEGA consoles. But this month will be a bit different, as we focus on the black sheep of the SEGA hardware family: The SEGA 32X.
Released late in the life of the SEGA Genesis on November 21st in the United States (December 3rd, 1994 in Japan and January 1995 in the UK) to serve as a bridge for Westerners awaiting the SEGA Saturn, the 32X was plagued by several negative issues. The design itself isn’t all that appealing, often compared to a mushroom growing out of the top of the SEGA Genesis or a plastic tumor. The 32X was rushed to market, so as to give enough time between the 32X launch and the eventual SEGA Saturn release, which caused a number of headaches for SEGA and consumers. Third-party support was lacking, and the library was a paltry forty titles with many games not fully utilizing the 32X’s power. In the end, the 32X sold only a little over half a million units and was officially killed off by SEGA in 1996. So… hooray, it’s 32X Month…
Atlus CEO hints at future SEGA collaborations
If you have been living under a rock and didn’t know that SEGA bought out Atlus’ parent company Index Holding last year, now you know! In a recent interview with Famitsu, Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka and representative director and president Yukio Sugino talked about all things Atlus including their relationship with SEGA.
One of the topics was next generation consoles and Yukio Sugino went on to say:
“Compared to Atlus, Sega are on a much bigger scale [as developers], and our respective know-how is completely different. They’re much more advanced than us when it comes to tools and middleware.”
The exciting part is that later, the CEO of Atlus, Naoto Hiraoka stated that they had a meeting with SEGA CCO Toshiro Nagoshi about the future games Atlus plans to release. I would have love to be a fly on the wall during that meeting.
Sonic the Comic Artist Ferran Rodriguez is attending Weston Super Sonic 2015
Upcoming UK Sonic convention Weston Super Sonic has announced that Spanish artist Ferran Rodriguez will be in attendance at the event.
Ferran’s art style was recurring throughout the UK Sonic the Comic’s run, and covered a wide variety of material throughout the series, such as covers, comic strips, and pin-ups. Ferran is flying in from his home in Barcelona just to be at the convention – now that’s dedication!
In addition to Sonic, Ferran has also done work for Disney, Nickelodeon the Angry Birds license, and other properties and brands – quite the resume.
This guest announcement is just one of quite a few that Weston Super Sonic has made; they previously announced that fellow Sonic the Comic legends Richard Elson and Nigel Kitching will also be in attendance, and that Mike Pollock, voice of the nefarious Doctor Eggman will be conducting a live Skype Q&A at the event. Exciting stuff for UK Sonic fans!
Also planned are speedrun tournaments for SA2, art contests, cosplay contests, and other events to keep fans entertained throughout the day. The convention takes place Saturday 17th January 2015 at The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare, England, and SEGABits will be there to provide coverage!
The official site for the convention can be found here. Currently donations are being accepted until September, and a mere £5 is all it takes to guarantee entry.
Will you be attending? Let us know in the comments!
Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode 3 set to launch in August
Phantasy Star Online 2 has been out for a few years and SEGA is now promoting their next major update titled ‘Episode 3‘ and will launch it this August. The Japanese site 4Gamer recently attended the announcement event and gave us a sneak peek at what to expect in the new update.
One of the coolest changes in the upcoming Episode 3 update is the lobbies will now have different themes. We saw this happen with the Attack on Titan and Sonic the Hedgehog collaborations.
Check out TrackerTD’s SEGA collection in his game room tour
SEGAbits’ resident SEGA Saturn guy Liam ‘Tracker_TD’ Ashcroft gives a game room tour, showing off his games, consoles, collectibles, and other cool stuff that’s he’s accumulated over the past 16 years. Check out the video above for the full tour, and don’t forget to check out our previous Game Room Tour video featuring Barry the Nomad’s collection. We also have more game room videos to come from other SEGAbits contributors!
Enjoyed the video? Why not support Liam’s main show, ‘This is Saturn,’ by buying a shirt?
Dreamcast gets HDD support thanks to modders
This up coming September will mark the 15 year anniversary of the Dreamcast and fans are still supporting the console with homebrew, independent games and now added modifications like a hard drive!
The hard drive support will allow users to boot GDI rips from the hard drive on actual Dreamcast hardware. The only issue is that booting some games as images won’t work (Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur) and other times it has glitches. Honestly, I’m more interested in getting a working HDD for my Dreamcast so I can store save data, DLC and Jet Set Radio tags.
After the break, check out the images to learn how it was done. It’s still thinking…
Atlus Review: Abyss Odyssey (Xbox 360)
If you’re familiar with ACE Team, they’re responsible for some of the most off the wall games including Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages and before they became a commercial developer, they were a pretty interesting mod developer. Their continued partnership with Atlus has brought another release that is less absurd thematically, but brings us a rogue-like title that wraps mechanics similar to the Super Smash Bros. series with Abyss Odyssey. It’s not a carbon copy of the Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, nor is it a cumbersome slog akin to Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The game centers itself around its fighting game mechanic and drives you to advance onto closed off fighting arenas, hunting for loot and building your character to become stronger as you find better weapons and techniques.
Crazy Taxi: City Rush releasing this Thursday to iOS
Want to play Crazy Taxi: City Rush on your iPhone and/or iPad? No problem, SEGA has announced that the game will be releasing globally tomorrow to the App Store. Soon fans can experience their new mobile, free-to-play revised take on the Crazy Taxi franchise.
Even though the new game borrows heavily from popular mobile games like Temple Run, don’t think that this entry has disregarded the Japanese team that created the originals. Kenji Kanno, creator of Crazy Taxi, has been overseeing development and lately been doing quite a bit of interviews on the web speaking about the game. The game is developed by Hardlight Studios who developed Sonic Dash, another title that was highly influenced by Temple Run (and Sonic Jump that takes notes from the popular mobile game Doodle Jump, though it should be noted that an earlier version of Sonic Jump released that pre-dates Doodle Jump).
This game is also supposed to be released on Android, but like always Android users must wait.
Unreleased SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive game ‘It Came from the Desert’ getting official release by Watermelon Games
It Came from the Desert is a 1989 computer game by Cinemaware and later got ports, of them being on the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive that was sadly cancelled before its release date in 1990. The SEGA 16-bit version was set to be different than the original by having custom power ups that where created by collecting machinery pieces, changing main protagonist who in the original was a scientist, now you are a teenage pest control worker named Buzz, and more.
Watermelon Games have announced that they will be working with the original developers Cineaware to bring an official limited release of ‘It Came From the Desert’. One of the main issues with the main game was that it was way too hard, Watermelon games said they will be tweaking the game to make it more enjoyable and will also be fixing a game crashing bug (reason it wasn’t officially released by EA).
You guys can check their product page here for more information.