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The Weekly Five: Celebrating 18 Years of Sonic 3

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February 2nd, dubbed Hedgehog Day, marked the 18th anniversary of the American release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Damn, does that make me feel old. Sonic 3 marked a very important point in the Sonic franchise. At the time of release, Sonic mania was in full force. The franchise had multiple TV shows airing, comic books, fast food promotions and even had a float in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. In early 1994 it was near impossible to avoid Sonic, and the release of Sonic 3 only made the franchise even more of a hot commodity. It’s no question that SEGA had a lot riding on the success of the game. Of course, 18 years later we’re still talking about it, so clearly SEGA was successful. In this week’s weekly five, we’ll take a walk down memory lane and look back on just why we love Sonic 3 so much.

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SEGA Tunes: Panzer Dragoon “Flight”

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Panzer Dragoon is my favorite video game series of all time, thanks in no small part to the consistently awesome musical score. For the first game, I had some major difficulties deciding between the full version of the main menu theme, or Flight. They are both superb pieces, and an interesting look at Panzer Dragoon’s musical style before it settled on a specific style in Zwei. The theme here is a bit more typical kind of orchestration, with horns, violins, and flutes, with some tambourines keeping a nice beat in the background. Not quite what the rest of the series sounds like.

Below the fold you’ll find the full version of the menu theme.

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The Weekly Five: The Most Disappointing SEGA Games of 2011

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2011 was an unbelievably great year for SEGA…for the most part. Even the best game company will always have its strings of hits and misses. However, last year I could only really think of one bad stinker. One starring a certain Norse god you will read about later on. With that in mind, I decided to comprise a list of SEGA games that disappointed me in some way. Games that while not outright bad (except one), did not live up to their expectations. If you find a certain favorite of yours on the list, do not take it personally, as this is mainly coming from my own personal view. Read on to find what SEGA games left me a little flat.

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SEGA in the Media: Breaking Bad plays a Broken, Bad Sonic Game

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The AMC series Breaking Bad has depicted some pretty detestable things, including producing and selling meth, but perhaps the show’s biggest offense was the depiction of characters enjoying Sonic ’06. In the eleventh episode of season four, titled “Crawl Space”, the character Jesse plays a two player match of Sonic vs. Shadow in Wave Ocean with his girlfriend’s son. Warning: the following clip features some very bad pretend video game playing.

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SEGA Tunes: Sonic Heroes “What I’m Made Of”

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This week was a contest between Shenmue and a Sonic song. Since I’ve already shown a load of orchestral pieces over the last month, I decided I needed to go in a different direction….and expose my weakness to Crush40’s brand of rock n’ roll.

Yes, I love Crush40, and I won’t apologize for it. Yes, their lyrics make no god damned sense and can be cheesy as hell, but the beats. I love the rhythm and sheer auditory awesomeness of their songs, and What I’m Made Of is easily my absolute favorite song out of them. It never misses a beat, it never slows down, and it just sounds like something huge is going down, which was very fitting considering this was the final boss theme. The song even has a proper ending, with all the instruments stopping just before the final verse is uttered. Sure, he’s daring someone to reach inside of him….and gain his energy…but if you stop trying to actual give the lyrics context they aren’t so bad!

Perhaps most importantly, this theme makes up for the absolutely atrocious main theme of Sonic Heroes. It’s as if Crush40 knew how horrible it was and made something new just for the boss battle so it wouldn’t be so lame!

Next month is Panzer Dragoon month, so be ready for something completely different!

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The Weekly Five: SEGA CD Games that Deserve the Christian Whitehead Treatment

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Given the success of the Sonic CD rerelease, both critically and in sales, I think it’s about time SEGA gave Retro Engine creator Christian Whitehead his own studio tasked with rereleasing more classic SEGA games from the Genesis/Mega Drive era. While the Retro Engine can cover more than just SEGA CD titles, I think the SEGA CD library is long overdue for some ports. While the SEGA CD console gets a fair share of shit from the gaming community, there is no denying that the add-on had a number of awesome games. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll highlight five great SEGA CD games that deserve a rerelease utilizing the Retro Engine. I’ve tried to keep the list tied to games that SEGA could conceivably rerelease, so there is no Snatcher due to that title being owned by Konami.

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SEGA Tunes: NiGHTS into Dream’s Orchestrated Main Theme

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Say what you will about Dreams Dreams (I personally love it) NiGHTS has one of the most surprisingly epic orchestrated themes I’ve heard. Unlike the last two themes I’ve posted up, this one is a four minute long musical adventure. Also unlike the last two games, this song was never included in the game in its entirety, but instead used in the much shorter CGI opening. It was included in full on original soundtrack however. Go take a listen!

NiGHTS is not really a game I typically associate this sort of music with. I remember it more for “Message from Nightopia” and Twin Seed’s “Growing Wings” which sounded nothing like the orchestral theme we’ve got here. The most surprising part to me was when the music suddenly became a lot darker in the middle of the piece. You get a real sense that SOMETHING bad is happening. This song is almost like several different songs in one as it moves through several different themes before ending on the epic notes all of us NiGHTS fans remember from the opening!

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The Weekly Five: A Salute to Miles “Tails” Prower

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The secondary playable characters of the Sonic series get a lot of flack. Some, like those who veer the series into bizarre directions, deserve criticism. I like Big the cat as a character, I think his design is great, but the fishing gameplay? Ugh. But I believe there are some who wrongfully receive such hate. I have never been a fan of the term “Sonic’s shitty friends” because it gives an undeserving label to a number of good characters. Some cite the center of this week’s weekly five as the one who kicked off the “shitty friends”, but those folks couldn’t be more wrong. Not only did Tails prove that characters other than Sonic could offer similarly fun Sonic-style gameplay, but he also introduced a new way to traverse zones. To honor Sonic’s sidekick, who has his own 20th anniversary this November, we’ll take a look at five of the fox’s best moments from over the years.

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SEGA Tunes: Skies of Arcadia’s Opening Theme

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When I was taking Appreciation for Music a few years ago, and was asked to send in a modern day example of an orchestration, Skies of Arcadia’s opening theme was the first thing to come to mind. There’s a reason for that. It’s a sweeping, epic track that moves quickly and perfectly exemplifies everything Skies of Arcadia is in a single track. Epic one moment, adventurous the next and a little romantic after that, this song covers a lot of ground in less than two minutes. The use of horns, flutes, and percussion make for a very flavorful song that not only perfectly shows off a beautiful RPG, but also stands on its own as one of SEGA’s best pieces of orchestration ever. I only wish it were a little longer so I could enjoy it a little more, but for the time it does take up, it is an absolute joy to listen to, and the perfect way to introduce one of best JRPGs ever made.

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The Weekly Five: The Games of 2012

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Last week we shared our favorite games of 2011, and while we didn’t officially announce winners or give out some award for SEGA to stick on their box art (I’d imagine we’d award a gold Opa Opa statue nicknamed “the bitty”), the “winners” deserve another mention. Sonic Generations and Yakuza 4 were the top picks, while Guardian Heroes was picked as an excellent download release. Shinobi for the 3DS also earned a spot on the list. Other notable games included Shogun 2, Sonic CD, Daytona USA, Virtua Tennis 4 and Football Manager 2012. Overall, 2011 was a great year! Being only a week into it, 2012 is still young. However, SEGA has a number of great looking releases on the horizon. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll look at five of those hotly anticipated titles. Could any of these become our favorites of 2012? Probably.

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SEGA in the Media: Space Ghost Emerald Coast to Coast

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My favorite tv show of the 90’s featuring my favorite game of the 90’s, it’s a match made… in space! On the November 11th, 1994 episode of Cartoon Network’s Space Ghost Coast to Coast, upon returning from commercials Space Ghost is caught up in a game of Sonic and Knuckles. It must have been a long commercial break, as Space Ghost has reached Hidden Palace Zone. Before cutting to Space Ghost, Zorak dances to the Sonic and Knuckles title screen theme. Just as Space Ghost is about to defeat Knuckles, he is interrupted by the guest and continues with the show.

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SEGA Tunes: Phantasy Star Online’s “Whole New World”

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Welcome to the return of Tuesday Tunes, everyone! Changing focus away from remixes and original music, we’ll be focusing more on SEGA’s own music. Boy does SEGA have some great stuff! We’ll be starting this feature back up with a song that inspired me to write up a few of these and restart the feature: PSO’s “Whole New World”, a song that recently saw a remix in the latest PSO2 video. Now, I love SEGA’s orchestrations, especially from the Dreamcast and early third party period. To me, this music represents some of the most beautiful original orchestrations ever done in gaming. One of the first SEGA songs to ever land on my mix CD was this beauty of a track. Very different from the cheesy rock I was used to hearing from the Sonic Adventure games.

This is one of those songs that I think would be really neat to hear in a real live orchestra. SEGA really needs to do something equivolent to the Zelda tour for their series. Come on SEGA, just have Crush 40 pop in at the end to play Live and Learn after the orchestra plays all your other masterpieces. People will go!

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Round Table: Our Favorite SEGA Games of 2011

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2011 is just about over, and looking back, it has been a great year for SEGA games. Back in 2010, it was hard to imagine what could top titles like Bayonetta, Sonic Colors, Vanquish and the English version of Yakuza 3. Then came 2011 and a slew of awesome titles arrived. SEGA upped their game in digital distribution, popular franchises saw excellent sequels and spin-offs and SEGA’s mascot truly shined. In this extra special round table, SEGAbits writers will share their favorite SEGA games of the year. What did we like? Read on!

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