On this episode, David the Lurker of Sonic Retro joins Barry to talk about the long running Archie Sonic comics letters page Sonic Grams! We discuss the long history of the feature, the bonus comic Off Panel, and debut scans of a long lost Sonic Grams Extra released by Ken Penders!
Audio PlayerOn this radical episode of SEGA Talk the dynamic duo take a trip into Dimension X and cover Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist! Cowabunga!
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2024 is upon us, but we can’t officially start the new year until Barry and George look back on their favorite and most disappointing SEGA games of 2023! We also share the games that almost received the Golden Opa as well as what to look forward to in 2024.
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Twitter/X user @suddendesu stumbled upon a Japanese porn video titled 超ハード変態娘 変態羞恥感じる露出女！！(roughly translated, it’s “A super hard perverted girl. An exposed woman who feels perverted and embarrassed! !”). How he stumbled upon it? I won’t judge, I’ve found my fare share of video game related gems in weird old Japanese porn videos (Google “Cosplay International” for some real weird Space Channel 5 content).
On this Christmas day SEGA News Bits Live, Barry looks back on SEGA Christmas past, present and future! What was the worst video game gift you received? What was under the SEGAbits tree this year? Who is behind the upcoming SEGA revivals? Click play and find out!
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SEGA Talk goes desperately dashin’ through this Data East centric Dashin’ Desperadoes episode! Let’s take a look at the little talked about game that plays like Sonic 2‘s competition mode. Is it a hidden gem? Let’s find out!
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You’re probably thinking: “I’ve seen this already on YouTube, why is this news?”. Well, aside from Sonic Unleashed articles being an easy way to increase traffic, it is notable that Marza Animation Planet has posted their short film Sonic The Night of the Werehog on YouTube officially for the first time as the video has always only existed thanks to fan rips or low resolution uploads from SEGA PR. It’s nice to see SEGA and Marza showing Sonic and his ghostly friends some love again, as we had a Halloween sequel posted just a few months ago. Check the short out for yourself straight from the studio that made it!
The new SEGA game news keeps coming today as we have a fresh look at the upcoming 3D action adventure Golden Axe! Unlike Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi, Golden Axe has a brand new logo and potentially could be using simply the name Golden Axe as the final title. This would made sense, as the series has not seen a new game in a number of years and only the arcade original and Genesis/Mega Drive port have used the name. Also revealed is key art of the main cast and enemies including the dreaded Death Adder. While the characters look a little too “World of Warcraft” for my tastes, they do retain the look of the classic trio with new twists. It is likely this is either a reboot or a sequel set years later starring a new cast, as aside from the dwarf looking like Gilius Thunderhead, the male and female look a bit different from the Ax Battler and Tyris Flare fans remember.
While we can only speculate that developer Lizardcube (Streets of Rage 4 and The Dragon’s Trap remake) is behind the upcoming 2D Shinobi game, new key art utilized in a SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc. report screams Lizardcube aesthetics. Little else is revealed, aside from the player taking up the Oborozuki sword to slay evil. It also appears that the game will stick with the title Shinobi, unless they tack on some more words or some numbers. Personally, I think it has been long enough since the last Shinobi game to use the same title again. The artwork also looks great, and we can’t wait to learn more about the upcoming title!
A recent SEGA Sammy Holdings Inc. report has revealed new details for the upcoming Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi games. First up, Jet Set Radio will see an open world setting and will allow players to make friends, increase their fans and “create a movement”. Fans speculate that this is a nod to the recently revealed news that Jet Set Radio is likely to be an online “games as a service” title. It is likely the friends you make will be real, and the fans you make are either other online players or the amount of graffiti you leave around town will increase your popularity and in turn your street cred. The in-game graphics show Beat in addition to returning characters Cube and Gum, who were also in leaked artwork earlier this year.
A recent report from SEGA parent company Sega Sammy Holdings Inc. has revealed a new look at the upcoming Streets of Rage game, including the games potential title! Streets of Rage Revolution promises a return to the side-scrolling beat ’em up action series in a whole new (well, new as of the mid 90s) dimension: 3D! While Streets of Rage 4 gave fans a throwback title with modern 2D animated graphics, the upcoming Streets of Rage Revolution will evoke later 3D beat ’em up titles like SpikeOut and Zombie Revenge. While the developer has not been announced, fans speculate Mighty Fight Federation developer Komi Games Inc. is behind the title based on shared visual styles and recent job postings.
While the fourth title was licensed out and published by Dotemu, Streets of Rage Revolution will likely be published by SEGA so as to bring their legacy franchises back under the SEGA umbrella. The game will still be developed externally, like Sonic Mania. It’s nice to see SEGA finally showing some pride for their past franchises outside of Sonic!
Based on revised recruitment pages, posted on ResetEra by SEGAbits community members Dooble and Suzuki Yu, it appears that the upcoming Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi games revealed at the Game Awards will fall under SEGA’s Super Game initiative. SEGA’s division 3 is the online division, which through interviews has been said to focus on the Super Game releases. Jet Set Radio’s staff was moved from division 4, the mobile division, to division 3. Division 3 has been confirmed through interviews to be focused on GaaS (Games as a Service) and currently handles Phantasy Star Online 2. This would mean that both titles are likely to be online and potentially online only, much like PSO2. They would also be high budget triple-A releases.
This would align with SEGA’s decision to send announcement postcards to Twitch streamers, who are more likely to give GaaS titles attention, rather than fan sites like SEGAbits who are more aligned with traditional games and account for a majority of the Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio fanbase.
On this rival edition of SEGA Talk, we take a trip back to 2000s High School rivalry for the ages! The sequel to Capcom’s Rival Schools known as Project Justice? How did this sequel to a niche anime fighter come to be three years after the original? Why did they change the name? Let’s dive deep into Project Justice aka Rival Schools 2!
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SEGA revealed five games currently in production from classic franchises, and on this SEGA News Bits Live your boy Barry “Yo yo!” the Nomad breaks down the trailer and details new information from SEGA on this initiative!
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After having ceased production on Hyenas in September, SEGA says developer The Creative Assembly will shift focus back to doing what they do best: real-time strategy games. SEGA CFO and Koichi Fukazawa stated:
To put it simply, Creative Assembly was good at offline games in the RTS genre, but they took on the challenge of developing Hyenas, an online game in the FPS genre. However, although the game itself was good, we decided to cancel the development of Hyenas because we did not think it would reach a quality that would satisfy our users when we considered whether we could really operate this as a competitive online game for a long period of time.