Yearly Archives: 2025

Phantasy Star Nova’s atmosphere is highly influenced by Phantasy Star Online

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If you guys remembered that SEGA announced Phantasy Star Nova for the Playstation Vita back in September of last year. During the announcement we found out that tri-Ace (Resonance of Fate and Star Ocean) would be developing the game.  Not much information about Phantasy Star Nova has been release, till now.

It is confirmed that Phantasy Star Nova will take place in the same world as Phantasy Star Online 2 and have its own story. Characters in the game include Lutina (Maaya Uchida), Seil (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka), Izuna (Ai Kayano), Fordia (Miyuki Sawashiro).

The developers state that the game will be closer to Phantasy Star Online when you compare it to the atmosphere. ‘Survival’ is one of the visual concepts the team want to show in the game and there will be features such as costume destruction, which hasn’t been applied to a Phantasy Star game before.

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Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Soundtrack Available on iTunes and AmazonMP3

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SEGA and Sumo Digital have answered the demand for an official release of the soundtrack for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. While it has featured a physical release in Japan on two CDs, you can buy each CD digitally through your choice of Apple’s iTunes store or on AmazonMP3. Each CD is available for $9.99 USD, (Or $9.49 on Amazon at the time of this writing,) and£7.99 GBP, or you can purchase tracks individually.

  • iTunes (Disc 1) [US] [UK] (Disc 2) [US] [UK]
  • Amazon Mp3 (Disc 1) [US] [UK] (Disc 2) [US] [UK]

For someone like me that’s been listening to this soundtrack in the most cumbersome way possible, (Try hooking up your phone to your car stereo and hoping all four G’s of your data connection can play songs off of YouTube and not stop to buffer every so often,) this could not have come at a better time for me.

Thanks to Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett and Sonic Retro Staff Member GerbilSoft for providing links to the soundtrack. If you’d like a complete listing of the songs, head over to VGMDB.

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SEGA confirms Sonic Boom for E3, reveals new details

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UPDATE: Some new game play footage has been released with an interview with Stephen Frost. I’ve included the video above.

SEGA has just confirmed via their blog that both versions of Sonic Boom will be available to play at E3 this year. Both games will effectively be their own individual titles, with their own completely unique game play style and mechanics.

The Wii U version has been subtitled Rise of Lyric. It’s a 3D action title that will focus on battle and exploration as Sonic and his friends work to stop a new villain, an ancient robotic snake creature called Lyric from awakening his robotic army and destroying the world. According to the press release, “an extremely tech-savvy mastermind who uses a sophisticated robotic body of armor to carry out his own nefarious deeds, he is a formidable enemy and a force to be reckoned with.” Rise of Lyric will feature new moves for Sonic and his friends, including something called an “enerbeam”, which some may remember from the Sonic Boom TV show teaser released back in February. Using the enerbeam, players can zip-line around levels, move heavy objects, disarm enemies, and throw them around.

The 3DS version has been called Shattered Crystal. We’ve got details of that game, as well as images of Lyric and both games below the fold!

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Convention Report: SEGAbits visits MomoCon 2014 – Hatsune Miku, Sonic the Hedgehog, & SEGA’s history

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Hello SEGAbits readers and followers! Kori-Maru here back from Atlanta, Georgia to bring you SEGA coverage from MomoCon, one of the fastest growing all ages conventions in Georgia where anime and gaming collide. This also marks the very first time SEGA attended MomoCon to promote Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd. Just to be prepared for the convention, I decided to cosplay as Akira Yuki from the Virtua Fighter series in his VF2 attire. Be sure to hit the jump for videos from the SEGA panels, pictures, and a video interview with Aaron Webber and Sam Mullen as we discuss about SEGA and Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd.

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Retro Review: Sky Target (SEGA Saturn)

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In the mid-nineties the rise of 3D gaming left many of SEGA’s older franchises behind. While most were either abandoned or received largely forgotten two dimensional entries, some were completely reinvented for the third dimension. Though it doesn’t bear the After Burner name, Sky Target was in fact the first 3D entry in SEGA’s After Burner franchise. Released in 1995, the arcade version of Sky Target never achieved its predecessor’s success, failing to even leave Japan. Western gamers wouldn’t get to play Sky Target until SEGA ported the game to the Saturn in 1997, where it would be quickly forgotten.

At first glance, After Burner looks like the perfect candidate for a transition to the third dimension. After all, the game is already trying to simulate 3D play. In reality, Sky Target’s design decisions actually perfectly illustrate why so many SEGA franchises struggled (or failed) to make the 3D jump to begin with. Sky Target would introduce many drastic changes to the After Burner formula, many of which would find their way into 2006’s After Burner Climax. Do these design decisions work, though? Does Sky Target live up to the reputation built by its predecessor?

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Sonic Boom Toys available for pre-order on Toy Wiz Website

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With Sonic Boom coming this fall on Cartoon Network, Sonic Boom merchandise seem to be available for pre-order. The Sonic Boom Launcher features our dashing hero, Sonic the Hedgehog, inside a blue wheel that can be triggered with a push of a button sending Sonic dashing in the air along with Dr. Eggman of course.

Another playset features Sonic in a blue wheel with Dr. Eggman’s Burn Bot as seen in the preview trailer of the show on the site. Both toy sets are manufactured by Tomy and are available for pre-order on Toy Wiz’s website for only $27.99 and $16.99. Release date for both products are set for August 2014.

Does this remind you of the Sonic the Hedgehog 3 toys from McDonalds by any chance? If so, tell us your thoughts on the comments below.

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Classic SEGA Ads: Let your imagination run wild with Tiger’s After Burner!

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In an era where most home gaming consoles were couldn’t produce anything more than simple 8-bit sprites, video game companies did have to occasionally get a little…creative with their marketing. This goes double for Tiger, whose LCD games were about as immersive as…well I don’t think there is anything less immersive then a Tiger LCD game. So naturally, Tiger encouraged the kids of the eighties to imagine their own arcade experience! After all, who needs stereo surround sound, fluid super scaling graphics and a full motion cabinet when you have the power of you mind?! This kid certainly doesn’t. He even brought his own flight helmet!

To be fair though, throwing a kid into a jet fighter was a pretty common way to market the game. SEGA took it a step further with their Master System commercial. This kid didn’t just imagine flying through some hazy clouds, he imagined a whole damn plane! The kid from Suburban Commando, which we highlighted earlier this week, even took it a step further by completely changing the setting of the game, complete with some new enemies.

If there’s anything I miss about games from the 8 and 16 bit era, it’s how vague their stories and characters were. Sure, I love having deep, interesting characters and engaging stories in my games, but an unfortunate side effect of this is that we can’t let our imaginations run wild about the nature of the game’s world and characters anymore. Oh well, I guess we’ll always have the imaginary jets of our childhoods at least, right?

 

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Relic Entertainment plans long term support for Company of Heroes 2

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It is no secret that PC gamers loved the first Company of Heroes, the game had a loyal fanbase a decade after release. Since Relic Entertainment got bought by SEGA and they helped them released Company of Heroes 2, they have had 20 updates to the base game (compared to 8 updates in COH1 at the same time frame.)

SEGA and Relic already launched the first expansion pack for Company of Heroes 2, the multiplayer only ‘The Western Front Armies“.  It doesn’t mean that single player fans are going to be ignored.

“We’ve got a great tool set now to build campaign content more effectively than we have in the past, and give the campaign players some really cool stuff. So it’s definitely part of our plans.

I love the vibe at the studio right now and the feeling. We’re pushing boundaries in how we do things. It’s really exciting. Marrying that enthusiasm with the long-term plan with Sega’s backing… it’s been great” –  Quinn Duffy, Relic Entertainment Director. 

One of the biggest criticisms about SEGA was their bad support for online games and supporting titles long term. I hope that other non-PC focused studios can learn that long term support isn’t a bad thing!

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Weekly Five: Five After Burner Cameos

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Like any beloved SEGA franchise, After Burner has had its share of cameos. Unfortunately, unlike Fantasy Zone and Sonic the Hedgehog, these cameos have been few, so we did have to stretch things just a little bit to fill out this weekly five. As they say though, quality matters over quantity, so even though After Burner’s cameos have been few, they’ve often been quite great. So grab a snack, sit down and enjoy as we look through After Burner’s five best only cameos.

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Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN- coming to North America this Fall, courtesy of Aksys Games

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On May 29th IGN reported that Aksys Games will be bringing Guilty Gear Xrd to North America on Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 sometime this fall. Aksys Games is a Western localization company and has been the company localizing Arc System Works’ Blazblue and Guilty Gear titles for North America, but they have brought a variety of games outside of Japan. It’s worth noting that the confirmation promises 15 playable characters, while the current updated arcade version only accounts for 14. The release window being presented is far sooner than most fans anticipated

Curiously, there is neither word on console versions of the game for both Europe and Japan as of now! It’s likely that the announcement confirming a release window just hasn’t made its way out yet as far as Japan is concerned, but hopefully Europe’s release will keep pace with other regions.

The latest activity in Japan regarding Guilty Gear was a SEGA-sponsored tournament on May 25th, this past Sunday. It took place at Game Corner Eastern, which was also host to a separate tournament for Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax on the same day.

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Simon Jeffery, former SEGA of America CEO (2004-2009), moves to Myo Armband creator Thalmic Labs

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Many of you may be familiar with Simon Jeffery. For those unaware, Simon Jeffery was the CEO of SEGA of America from 2004 to 2009, who would be followed by Mike Hayes. Jeffery also worked at LucasArts prior to his arrival at SEGA and and more recently he worked at mobile game publisher ngmoco within the past couple of years. As far as SEGA is concerned, he is perhaps well-known for his public statement confirming SEGA not moving forward with a re-entry to the console market at E3 2008, alongside his philosophy on SEGA of America as an autonomous arm and with regards to the company’s direction during his tenure (which can be seen at this Gamasutra interview.)

MarketWatch is reporting that Canadian company Thalmic Labs has hired Simon Jeffery as its chief “gaming evangelist,” where his primary responsibilities will be to forge relationships with game developers, a sort of outreach work that should be familiar to him considering his career. Thalmic Labs is the producer of the Myo armband, a piece of hardware that allows for digital interaction through motion-sensing technology. It can be used for video games, computers, entertainment devices and probably as a means of interaction with smart home systems. Wearable tech is a market that consumers and tech companies alike will be watching closely, from smartwatches and Google Glass to the buzzed-about Oculus Rift. It will be interesting to see what sort of work Simon Jeffery does for Thalmic Labs

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Retro Review: After Burner Complete

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When After Burner blasted into arcades in 1987 it quickly became a smashing success, emerging as one of SEGA’s top franchises. Naturally, SEGA endeavored to port the game to every single piece of home gaming hardware under the sun. Famicom, Master System, Commodore 64, DOS, you name a gaming platform that was still relevant in the late 1980s, and chances are that platform got a port (or two) of After Burner.

Unfortunately, none of these systems were capable of doing After Burner’s explosive graphics and frenetic game play the justice they deserved, and so these ports fell short. It would take eight years for home consoles to catch up to SEGA’s arcade technology. Once they did SEGA wasted no time in finally bringing After Burner home in the form of After Burner Complete, an exclusive to SEGA’s brand new, ill-fated add-on, the 32X.

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New Sonic Boom character revealed – presenting Sticks the Badger

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For several months, concept art for Sonic Boom has been making the rounds on social networks, and one photo featured a character that looked very much like Sonic Rush Adventure‘s Marine. The importance of this unnamed character became apparent when what appeared to be leaked tradeshow signage featured this new character standing amongst the four main character. Today, SEGA has revealed that this new character is named Sticks the Badger. After the break, check out SEGA’s official announcement as well as a reveal video!

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SEGA in the Media: After Burner, Hulk Hogan, Aliens, and the Nostalgia Critic

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It may be hard to believe nowadays, but there was a time when After Burner was once a pretty big deal. It helped the Master System find success in Europe and Australia, it was advertised on television and it even received a cameo in one of the highest grossing films of the nineties, Terminator 2! We’re not going to talk about that though, because you’ve probably already seen it. Instead, we’re going to focus on another science fiction movie released the same year as T2 that practically nobody saw: Suburban Commando.  We’ll also mention a certain popular reviewer of nostalgia who took a look at it back in 2009, and later took a look at one of After Burner’s commercials in a separate video a few years later. The video above features both clips. Take a look, then join me for more after the break!

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