SEGA and Game Freak Inc (Pokemon series, Pulseman) partner up once more to bring us a brand new platformer starring Tembo the Badass Elephant. I have been itching to get my hands on this game since SEGA first showed it earlier this year and now that I have beaten it was all my excitement worth it? Is Tembo the Badass Elephant a good enough game to earn the honor of having ‘badass’ in its title?
If you missed it, Haruki Satomi the newly elected CEO of SEGA Games Co. (he was hired on April 1st) did a Famitsu interview where he talked about how SEGA has released software in the last 10 years that he felt betrayed fan’s trust in the brand. Says he believes quality Japanese games can sell in the West and among other comments that lots of SEGA fans across the globe agreed with.
Haruki Satomi obviously has been getting e-mailed by media about those comments and he sent the following message to Siliconera.
“Seeing our fans across the world respond to our recent interview with Famitsu, lets us know we’ve made the right first step in acknowledging who we are and where we want to be. Sega is dedicated to bringing you quality gaming experiences and becoming a brand you love and trust again,”
During the Famitsu interview, he said that they had a game to announce at Tokyo Game Show later in September, this will be one of the first glimpse at where Satomi wants to take SEGA in the future. So what do you think about his comments? Let us know what you think about his comments by leaving a comment in the comment box below (yo dawg).
SEGA has finally released all the high-resolution shots of the limited edition of Blade Arcus from Shining EX, which is a 2D arcade fighting game that is coming to the Playstation 4 and Playstation 3 in Japan this November.
The game’s limited edition is known as the “Tony Taka’s Premium Fan Box“, who is Tony Taka? He is the artist for the newer Shining series of games, specially famous for making anime girls, that well… aren’t exactly fully clothed (see the art in the image header for examples of such work).
Limited edition comes with:
The game hits Japanese store shelves on Novemeber 26th, all first print copies come with Sonia from Shining Resonance as a playable character. No western release date has been announced, but if you want this edition of the game you can always pre-order it at Play-Asia for $110 USD. For more info, check out the game’s official website.
[Via: Gematsu]
M2 really likes having goofy credit sequences in their SEGA 3D Classics line of games, in this one we see each unique enemy type being shown off with a sequence of iterations with either Sonic or Tails. The Tails ones seem to involve him getting hit by said baddies and having Sonic come rescue him.
Sit and appreciate all the different unique baddies with their own animation that Sonic the Hedgehog 2 had to offer. Now I want to play 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2... I guess we will have to wait until September.
[Via: NintendoLife]
Two Shenmue fanatics (Shensun and Esppiral from Shenmue Dojo) have been working together for a greater part of a year on the fan creation of Shenmue Gaiden, a non-canon Shenmue visual novel. This is the sequel to a fan project that was released a year ago called ‘Shenmue X chapter 1‘, but the creator suggest this project will be better and by the looks of the promotional artwork he might be on to something.
It is expected for the visual novel to have a demo this year with a release sometime in 2016, the game will have two plot stories that deal with Ryo and Shenhua reaching their destination after their long walk in the forest and a young girl who asks them for help. To read more about the plot and see other in-game screenshots, hit the jump or click here.
Sonic and his two-tailed friend Tails hit the Nintendo 3DS on Thursday over in Japan with 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2. To celebrate the release SEGA has released the following trailer… in 3D. Yes, if you didn’t know Youtube supports 3D videos.
This 3D Sonic the Hedgehog trailer is stereoscopic 3D which means you can view with red and blue 3D glasses. We will keep you informed on the US and European release dates, but I’m hearing its coming out sometime in September.
SEGA has launched Transformers: Human Alliance in arcades and it seems that the license has earned enough attention that SEGA went and made a deluxe cabinet (Titled Transformers: Human Alliance Special) for the game. Just how SEGA-AM2’s biggest titles all had big mechanical moving cabinets, Transformers: Human Alliance gets the SEGA R-360 type cabinet from the early 90’s, which was used with G-LOC: Air Battles.
Some people will suggest that G-LOC: Air Battles came out 15 years ago, how can that be impressive? Those people never played G-LOC on the SEGA R-360 cabinet which spins the players a full 360 degrees. Hit the jump to see the SEGA R-360 from 1990 and the new Transformers one in action after the break.
[Source: NintendoLife]
SEGA Japan has announced that they are porting the 2D arcade fighting spin-off Blade Arcus from Shining to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 via Famitsu. SEGA will add ‘EX’ to the end of the game because the game will have loads of extras, including new playable characters.
In Japan the game will get two releases, a standard that will cost 6,990 yen ($56 USD) and a limited edition costing 9,990 yen ($80 USD). All first print copies come with the character Sonia from Shining Resonance. The “Blade Arcus from Shining EX Tony’s Premium Fan Box” limited edition comes with a Tony Taka-illustrated special box, “Shining Heroine Works” art book, Shining Ark character song CD, Shining Blade soundtrack CD, and “Shining Beach Heroines” swimsuit calendar.
As for it coming west, SEGA probably wants to see how Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax does later next month. As for the characters, if you are a old school Shining Force fan, don’t get too excited since all in-game characters are from Shining Hearts/Blade (some original characters for the game too). Hit the job to see who made the cut.
While SEGA announced that it was bringing the English version of Phantasy Star Online 2 way back in 2012, it obviously didn’t come. Last year PlayPark, a South East Asian company announced it was releasing Phantasy Star Online 2 in that region and in English. The issue? Well, they where IP blocking any foreign players that tried to play the game.
This continued and it was just announced that they have dropped IP blocks. That means if you want to just download and play Phantasy Online 2 without doing all the English patching! You can just head here, register and download. Please be warned that the SEA server is behind one years worth of content compared to the Japanese servers.
[Update] It seems that they are starting to block users once again. If you want to play you can always use the PSO2 Tweaker and player on the Japanese servers, which is the best version of the game. [/update]
[Source: Nichegamer]
We posted earlier about Atlus and Vanillaware doing Odin Sphere Leifdrasir, a HD remake of the Playstation 2 game in HD and on PS3, PS4 and PS Vita. But that isn’t all they have in store for gamers, the companies have unleashed the teaser above. Atlus and Vanillaware gained a working relationship (working on a game together) when they co-developed Dragon’s Crown in 2013.
This could be Dragon’s Crown 2, but seeing the visuals in the trailer its leading me to believe it might be a brand new IP. What do you guys think? The game will get more details in September, catch it at TGS most likely.
Back in 2011 SEGA acquired Three Rings Studios, who would go on to release Spiral Knights, a free to play online RPG. It seems that SEGA has decided to bring back the franchise as a mobile game that is very similar to SEGA Japan’s Chain Chronicles. Not only in combat but the flow and structure of the game keeps making me think this is a Chain Chronicles reskin that was created to appeal to the players that play Spiral Knights.
The video above has like over 15 minutes of gameplay, basically giving you the whole idea of what the game is. Yes, Chain Chronicles x Spiral Knights. Its not a bad idea honestly, you can download it now if your on iDevices via iTunes. One last thing, doesn’t this game’s name sound like a Batman comic?
Despite many people considering the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter as being mishandled, it didn’t stop the game from reaching another legendary status milestone. It is now the most funded Kickstarter game of all time (at least until Hideo Kojima’s obvious turn to Kickstarter happens). The game has gathered over $5.5 million dollars in funding. At the moment of writing it has $5,733,751 pledged and over 63,477 backers.
That means that Shenmue 3 has beat the previous record held by Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night which got $5,545,991 in funding. As of this moment it is the third most-funded game on Kickstarter, being beaten by the top cat, Exploding Kittens card game that got $8,782,571 in funding. Sadly it doesn’t seem like Shenmue 3 will be getting anywhere near close to 8 million dollars since (as of writing) its still over 2 million shy of beating it with only 9 hours left.
So now the question is, do you thinking that whatever gets funded by the Kickstarter will be enough? While it gathered a bit more funding than Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, that game is a 2D Metroidvania style game, do you think that Shenmue 3 needed way more to complete its true vision? Let us know in the comment section.
While we are approaching the final day of the Kickstarter for Shenmue 3, fans are asking if the game will have retail copies after its release and it seems that it might not be the case. According to a e-mail sent to Eurogamer from YS.NET:
“Whether Shenmue 3 will be available for retail or not is currently unconfirmed,”
The only way to secure a hard copy of Shenmue 3 when it comes out is backing the project on Kickstarter. If you don’t care about physical releases, you will always be able to purchase the game digitally.
If you had a Dreamcast growing up, you probably had a copy of Phantasy Star Online somewhere. Even you, the guy that bought it because it had an exclusive demo of Sonic Adventure 2 in the case. If you spent hundreds of hours playing the game online, then you will be happy to know that Youtube/Reddit user Glader has been working on a remake project for the original Phantasy Star Online game.
You can click here to check out the demo he has launched, above video talks about the project. It seems that the project is very early in development, right now its just a proof of concept showing off the core features. According to the video, it is being developed on Unity 5. Very interesting project, what do you guys think?
[Via Nichegamer]
While we haven’t gotten a release date in the west on the 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 release, over in Japan the game is being release in less than a week! That means that 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has been getting quite the amount of information released, like the trailer above showing off the local wireless connectivity. It will be required for both 3DSs to own a copy of the game, but if you do you will be able to have a second player control Tails through your single player adventure or you can go head to head in the versus racing mode.
Like most M2 re-releases in their SEGA 3D Classics series, this game will not only have 3D, save states and the ability to save replays; but it will also have a new mode that they are calling ‘Ring Keep’ mode. In this mode you will start a stage with 10 rings, each time you get attacked the amount of rings you lose is halved. I guess we shall see how this will work when we get to play it and how it impacts the way you play the game.
If we had to predict the release date of 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in the west, I would say expect it sometime in August!