Despite Sega assuring us over and over again that they would be making it their mission to improve the quality of the Sonic series, I was pretty skeptical when Sonic Colors was first announced.
Targeting a younger audience? Alien Wisp power-ups? Trailers with bad techno rock? The same game designer as Sonic and the Black Knight?
Crazy Taxi has had lots of ports since it first debuted back in 1999. It has been 10+ years and we have had the franchise appear on Gamecube, Playstation 2, Xbox, PC, and even on the PSP. Now PSN/XBLA will get a port of the first game.
You might not know this, but this month, the Xbox 360 turns 5 years old. That is half a decade that the machine has invaded our homes. Sure, it was a rough start, but now Microsoft is a big player in the home console business, selling (so far) about 45 million units.
But what SEGA games are worth getting on the console? We, the SEGAbits staff, give you our favorites. You give us your favorites in the comment section!
Here are some screenshots for the upcoming Shenmue City, that we have been posting like crazy rabbits about the past couple of days. As you can see, it isn’t a MMO, but a social game like those you find on facebook that all your friends update about every 2 hours.
Regardless, I like some of the ‘ideas’ behind it, but is sure as hell isn’t Shenmue 3 (Yu Suzuki, you always say it best). The game seems very text heavy, sucks for us on here that don’t know Japanese to save our lives. Hit the jump to see more screens.
[Two mighty men walk on stage, only one leaves alive]
The press event for Shenmue City has come to a close. What did we learn? Well not too much, but more than we knew before. The event did have a lot of ‘looking back’ at the release of Shenmue, then Sunsoft saying “We will put our full power behind Shenmue Gai (City).” How nice.
Yu Suzuki (along with Takeuchi) took the stage, to explain what Shenmue City will have to offer. They show the game, you are a student in the Hazuki Dojo and play along side Ryo. They showed the users ‘My Page’ that gives you a list of events (missions), Kung Fu and ‘Search’ options. Search lets you find more events, Yu explains that after you do most events, you will fight a boss in the end to advance to the next stage. In the Kung Fu tab, there will be a move list that you can master.
He also explained that sometimes you will find a ‘Match’ icon in your My Page, this is when someone is challenging you in the game, but this can only happen when you ‘level up’ enough to have your own Dojo. Depending on your success, your Dojo will be ranked, the ranks actually follow the Virtua Fighter ranking system.
As the last of his games hit shelves, so ends a big year for Sonic. 2010 brought with it some hotly anticipated Sonic titles: The SEGA Superstars returned for All-Star Racing, 2D Sonic returned to consoles and 3D Sonic has cleaned up his act. Meanwhile, off in the corner sat Sonic Free Riders.
Free Riders, the third game in the Sonic Riders series, made ripples (not waves) in the SEGA community when it was announced to be a launch title for Microsoft’s Kinect. The series itself had earned little respect in the past, and coupled with a new piece of hardware, enthusiasm for the game was mixed. But now the Kinect is here, the game is out. No more speculating, it’s reviewin’ time!
[Even 10 years later, Shenmue’s still a fanbase favorite]
All throughout the life of the Dreamcast, we were teased with images and trailers for what promised to be the most amazing and cinematic game to ever grace a home console. There were certainly high expectations for Shenmue to deliver, and, well, it may not have been the game everyone was expecting. For those of us who “got” Shenmue, though, it ended up being one of the most incredible gaming experiences of our lives, and to date, surpassed only by its sequel. This is a series that every gamer should play and playing it when it was released in 2000, 10 years ago, was a journey that, like much on Sega’s awesome white console, forever changed the way I looked at video games.
Yes! It is 10 whole years to the day… Erm, yesterday. But close enough right?
Shenmue was one of the most ambitious games ever made, it cost a whopping 70 million dollars in total, is the best series I’ve ever played and… Still isn’t bloody finished.
If you have yet to play Shenmue, well you may be a ‘gamer’ but you’ve still got your training wheels on, that’s for sure. Get your act together, go buy a cheap Dreamcast and enjoy a true classic.
If you have, fantastic you are a real man. Here’s to more Shenmue, sometime in the next 10 years! Come on Sega…
Until then, Shenmue City anyone?
The official site for Shenmue City has opened up, more info is trickling down. Shenmue City was thought to be a sequel to Shenmue 2, it has been revealed that is not the case. The game will take place in a parallel universe and you will start off where Shenmue 1 started.
Seems that characters exclusive to Shenmue Online (cancelled game) will be used in this title, as well as CGI from the past titles. As far as pricing, the game will be free to play, but you will have to pay for some items.
As for who is making the game, it is not SEGA, they are not developing or publishing the game. The game is being developed by YS NET, an independent studio started in November 2008. The director of this project is Yu Suzuki. Sunsoft is helping with the project.
[Thanks: STORM!]
Vanquish is directed by Shinji Mikama and produced Atsushi Inaba, so it has a lot of hype behind it. Did Mikama deliver another masterpiece? Hit the jump and find out.
SEGA does a ton of genres in video games, so it is no surprise they have quite the catalog of horror games for you to feast on this upcoming Halloween. So turn off the lights, its time to spot light some must play games for this Halloween.
The long running Shining Force fansite known as Shining Force Central run by the biggest Shining Force fan there is ‘Moogie’ has sprung into action with a new campaign to convince Sega and/or Camelot to give us a new Shining FORCE game in the classic style for next years Shining Forces 20th anniversary.
Who better to introduce the idea then Moogie herself?
Hit the jump for what she had to say on the matter!
There has been a ton of debate as to whether Sonic the Hedgehog 4 should be considered a sequel to Sonic the Hedgehog 3. We give the latest console version of the downloadable title a spin. Hit the jump for the full review.
I’m not going too write a second, conventional review for Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode 1. We already have a good review by Barry covering the iPad version of the game. His review touches upon most what you need to know about all versions of the game and I feel I’d just be echoing most of what he has already written.
Instead I want to make a list of all of the things that, after finishing Sonic 4 (and getting almost all of the achievements) I feel could be fixed or improved for Sonic 4 Episode 2.
So, hit the jump for my Sonic 4 Episode 2 improvment rundown!
Picking out your favorite Sonic levels is like picking out your favorite child, sometimes its easy because someone failed math and other times its difficult to do, because you hate them all equally.
We have decided to take a crack at compiling a list of Sonic levels we would like to see in Sonic Anniversary (If the details turn out to be true and they seem like they will). I will only go through the main console series, way too many Sonic games to go through spin offs and handhelds.
This is our opinion, if you have some stages not mentioned, give us a comment letting us know how wrong our opinions are.