Regular Show was a pleasant little surprise in Cartoon Network’s slate of new shows last year. Featuring the kind of off the wall storylines and strange character designs not often seen in animation today, it is something I tune into every now and again. Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, was an easter egg even some SEGA fans would miss.
Note: This preview was actually written after PAX 2010, not the recent Conduit 2 community event. As a result, the build I played would now be considered outdated. The only part of the preview this really effects is my opinion on the frame rate, but nevertheless keep this mind. I actually have a few articles from PAX that never went up. You’ll be seeing the other article soon.
The original Conduit garnered a lot of press for being the first serious attempt at a Wii first person shooter. At the end of the day, despite all the hype surrounding it, The Conduit garnered only a good review score average. The game was criticized for being a very generic corridor shooter, with not much beyond typical running and gunning. With Conduit 2, High Voltage Software has set its sights on correcting all of the flaws of the original.
More after the break.
High Voltage Software confirmed they were doing 3DS work during an interview SEGAbits conducted on behalf of Conduit Portal during PAX. Apparently it’s a Conduit project!
This is what High Voltage chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger had to say to EuroGamer:
“We are very much pulling over this engine and this technology on this new hardware. We’re still early. The resolution is definitely lower, but the screen real estate is smaller so it balances out. We’ve not had a lot of severe optimisation yet, but we’re going to be able to have something very close to this [Conduit 2] on the 3DS probably by GDC. We’ve got environments from this already up and running around. You can shoot, you can select different weapons and you can see enemies. It runs pretty darn well with full 3D and everything. I would guess that SEGA will be interested. I had a nice conversation just yesterday with their head of artist and repertoire. At DICE, the conference in Vegas that’s coming up, we’ll probably have some more chats. We’re very excited about that system and what we’re going to be be able to do on it. The work we’ve done with the Wii, we’re going to have a serious leg up. It’s quite different than developing for the DS and the DSi. Developers like us that have more of a console experience on GameCube and on Wii are going to be able to take advantage of the 3D better and they’re going to be able to do a little bit more with the hardware than people who are coming at it from the straight DS angle and used to doing more 2D, or very limited 3D, kinds of things. There’s nothing like it at all (on 3DS). We can be a shining star on this.” – High Voltage’s Eric Nofsinger
It is currently unknown whether this is a port or an all new game. Here’s hoping HVS is able to take the lessons learned from Conduit and it’s upcoming sequel and apply it to this.
A former SEGA employee is selling a load of awesome things he acquired during the Saturn/Dreamcast era. It’s mostly T-Shirts, but it’s all stuff only a SEGA employee could get, so don’t blow it off! Among things currently on sale is a promotional Jet Grind Radio shirt, a “Bernie’s Rangers” Burning Rangers shirt referring to SEGA of America president Bernie Stolar, and a Rent a Hero shirt with logos for every single piece of SEGA hardware ever made, and a Jet Grind Radio Music Sampler promo disc.
You can check it out here.
Sony’s NGP has been revealed tonight, and among the developers talking about the device was none other then SEGA’s Toshiro Nagoshi, famed – and tanned – creator of Yakuza and Monkey Ball. Yes, the video above is Yakuza of the End running on PSP2. Yes, this device is friggin awesome.
This was shown at the “Playstation Conference” to demonstrate how easy it is to port existing PS3 games to PSp2 and still keep the same quality. Nagoshi says its just a tech demo for now, not an announcement of a port.
I haven’t known what to think of Yuji Naka’s new game…until now. I have to say, the game play in this looks really intense. As a big fan of NiGHTS and rail shooters, this looks like something any SEGA fan should be excited about. What do you think of the trailer?
I will admit, the CGI does look rather low budget. But it’s the game play that counts, right?
Further details, courtesy of GoNintendo:
– When Ion reactivates Rodea, she asks, “Can you hear my voice?”
– the text following that scene says “The 1000 year promise that’s told now on this continent in the skies.”
– theme song credited to Dino
– Naka as game designer, Takayuki Nakamura on sound and Takumi Miyajima on scenari
– text at the end of the trailer says “I will protect you. That is why I fly.”
– Rodea is a flying robotic soldier who was created as part of the R Project
– “to protect the promise with that person,” Rodea takes on the Naga Empire
– Ion lives on the floating continent of Garuḍa and loves to tinker with robots.
– Ion takes on the task of protecting Rodea and Garuda
– Ion looks like Princess Cecilia, who was responsible for saving Garuda 1000 years ago
– Cecilia is princess of the Naga Empire
– A wish from Cecelia marks the start of the story
Maybe, I don’t know. It’s what Go Nintendo seems to be implying at least. Sumo Digital has put out a job listing for a senior artist, and “SSR 3DS” appears to be listed as one of the projects. I am personally crossing my fingers on this one. ASR is one of those games I am hoping we’ll get a 3DS port of. Here’s the job listing in full.
Senior Artist
Location: INDIA – Pune, IND – Sumo Digital
Job Code: 785
# of openings: 5
Description* Senior Artist (SA L1 to L3) with 4+ years of experience in Game art creations for AAA titles.
* Hands on experience in modelling and texturing in areas like Environment Assets & Characters, except VFX & Animation
* Ability of making Concept Art would be an added advantage
* Communication skills in English.* Edit – 07 Oct 2010
* Artist will be assigned to Sumo Digital – ARS2, SSR 3DS, Crispins
Let’s face it, SEGA can’t knock them all out of the park. No company can. Games have budgets and deadlines, and more often than not it’s more profitable to release a bad game and make some of your money back then cancel it and make none. SEGA is regrettably no stranger to bad games, especially in its awkward early years as a third party.
Among these bad games was a game that ultimately marked the decline of the company’s mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog, into a pit of mediocrity. A pit the character wouldn’t even begin to climb out of until the release of Sonic Colors last year. This game was Shadow the Hedgehog.
Full article after the break.
SEGA’s online sales have finally hit Xbox Live, folks! Today the SEGA blogs have a announced a one day only sale of all SEGA software available on the service, including the excellent little gem I have pictured at the top of this post. If you haven’t bought these titles by now, now’s the time!
Posted after the break is the list of titles, as well as a Buy Now link.
The news from that Game Informer interview has been pouring in today. We posted the interview scan on the site days ago, but didn’t mention much about the actual news!
Earlier in the week, Alan Pritchard spilled loads of beans about SEGA’s future. Perhaps most surprisingly, he let slip that they where making a Dreamcast Collection, something we revealed was listed on GameStop’s website. It was only listed for the Xbox 360. Given it’s cheap price, it’s likely that this may just be a retail release of the XBLA Dreamcast titles. For more info on the listing, check the link.
Pritchard also revealed that another Platinum Games title was being produced in collaboration with SEGA. So we now know that the deal will expand to at least one more game.
To see the interview in full without looking at a scan, look here.
Yes, the title says it all: a new Shenmue game. However, it’s not for consoles, nor is it even being released on a disc: it’s going to be a premier title for Yahoo’s new “Mobage Service”, a Japanese PC Social Game Service. The new game, Shenmue City, will be debuting this winter on the service.
The new service, which has been in beta since September 21st, just launched today, and it currently has over 100 titles lined up for release, including games from Tecmo Koei and EA. You can visit the site here.
Source: andriasang
It’s been a long time in coming, but my interview with High Voltage Software from PAX is finally up. We obviously talk about Conduit 2, but we also talk about High Voltage’s history with licensed software, their opinion on the 3DS, and their time with SEGA.
We also get a minor update on what’s going on with Grinder. Seems they’ve sent builds off to several publishers, including SEGA, for evaluation. You can read the interview and get all the details here.
Things have been good for SEGA’s profits this last year. First, SEGA reported a profit on it’s third quarter statement back in February. Then, in August, SEGA reported 7 billion yen in profit for it’s first quarter of it’s 2010-2011 fiscal year. All of this great news has resulted in SEGA’s stock price hitting it’s highest price since 2007, where it’s stayed close to ever since.
The good times keep on coming. While video game giants like Nintendo continue to lower their own fiscal year forecast, SEGA has now raised it’s overall sales forecast for its entire fiscal year, ending March 31st 2011, from $400 billion yen ($4.7 billion) to $410 billion yen ($4.9 billion). The profit guidance forecast has gone up from 22 billion yen ($264 million), to 36.5 billion yen ($437 million). This rise in revenue and profits has been brought on by strong sales SEGA Sammy’s Pachinko/Pachislot division, which is now expected to sell 660,000 units, up from the originally anticipated sales of 620,000 units.
So, some of you may have noticed that the screenshots for Super Monkey Ball’s 3DS entry don’t look so hot. They look bad even, which is odd considering the brief snippet of the game seen in the 3DS’s software line up video looked rather nice. In response to the criticism of the screenshots on the SEGA Forum, SEGA Rep Julian Mehlfeld, under his forum name “Clumsyorchid”, had this to say:
Not sure why the screens went out at that resolution to be honest, the game doesn’t really look like that as evidenced in the video:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/nc…ndo-3ds/705394
(skip to 1:45)
Shame is all assets go out without the 3D component – but the game looks good, no worries there.
So it seems the screenshots look the way they do due to being blown up way past their intended resolution. Mehlfeld intends to look into issue to ensure it doesn’t happen again in the future.
It’s the 9th of September, and you know what that means: Dreamcast news! First out of the gate, some news from Dreamcast game publisher GOAT Store, with their new website design. Completely revamped, the website has been rebuilt to not only promote the games GOAT Store has already published – such as Irides, Cool Herders, and Feet of Fury – but also tell people how these games came to be in the first place. GOAT Store has also hinted at a new project, which will be revealed sometime this month.
Finally, GOAT Store is offering a special deal for anyone who signs up for their newsletter in the first 99 hours of the new website’s existence. No word on what that special deal is, but I guess we’ll just have to see.
You can visit the site here for more details, and sign up for the newsletter here.
