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Swingin’ Report Show #83: Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom Developer Interview

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Refresh your podcast playlists, because the SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show podcast is BACK! On this episode George and Barry are joined by Fabien Demeulenaere, Director of Game Atelier, the French game studio working on the upcoming Monster Boy And The Cursed Kingdom. If that title sounds familiar, it is because Monster Boy is both a revival and sequel in the Wonder Boy/Monster World franchise, due out later this year to Playstation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms.

In this exclusive first podcast interview for Fabien, he walks us though how the game transformed from a fan project to an official title in the franchise and talks about how the game both celebrates the franchise’s past and moves it into modern gaming. If you ever played a Wonder Boy or Monster World game on the Master System, Genesis, Mega Drive – or any other platform for that matter – this interview is a must listen.

Follow Monster Boy’s development by checking out their official site.

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Review: Yakuza 5 (PS3)

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Yakuza5ReviewIf you have been on this blog and read my writing over the years you would know that I’m a huge fan of SEGA’s Yakuza franchise and was really pleased to hear that they decided to bring over Yakuza 5 even though it’s been out since 2012 in Japan. After years of contemplating whether or not to just import the game and play with an online guide, I decided it was best to wait. Now that Yakuza 5 has an official English release, was the wait worth it?

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SEGA News Bits: What to expect from SEGA in 2016

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SEGA is getting ready for a whole new year, while 2015 saw a limited release of titles and had the company going through ANOTHER restructure; this year we will see some of the bigger budget SEGA games finally hitting the retail market. On this episode of SEGA News Bits, we talk about what YOU can expect from SEGA in 2016!

During the episode I talk about our article we wrote about why SEGA refusing to localize Phantasy Star Online 2 is a bad sign, you can read that here. If you like what you just saw please don’t forget to like, share and like always subscribe. We appreciate your support.

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SEGA News Bits: Sonic Fan Event 2015 Recap

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SEGA has held another Sonic Fan Event this year announcing a few surprises for Sonic fans, especially those that are huge fans of Sonic music. On this episode of the SEGA News Bits we recap the event, give you our thoughts on the announcements.

Like always if you like our recap make sure to like, share and subscribe to us on YouTube if you haven’t already. Thanks for the support!

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Opinion: So about Project Dream and their Dreamcast 2 plans – calm down, it’s not official or sane

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Update: So after a bit of internet sleuthing and comments from those who have dealt with SEGA home console conspiracy artists in the past, all of this very well may be the work of the infamous Zach Morris. Mr. Morris, or whatever his name is, has been up to this sort of nonsense since 2003.

Because people often just read headlines and run to their local GameStop to have a in-depth chat with the guy at the desk to talk about how SEGA is totally making a new console and it is going to be dubbed the Dreamcast 2, I thought I’d present a short opinion piece on the Project Dream team and their plans to get SEGA to develop a Dreamcast 2. To be quite honest, after having read the Project Dream team’s plans and having heard about the project with one of their members for the past month I was ready to just ignore the whole thing. But given a few news sites are enthusiastically running the story and no doubt more will pick it up and run with it, I thought it best that SEGAbits said something about it. I should make note that this is not a news piece, it is an opinion piece.

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SEGA News Bits: Most Disappointing SEGA Games of 2015

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Not all games can be winners, we know that. But even though this year was light on SEGA releases, none of the games released were terrible. Now the SEGAbits staff sits and nitpicks what title was the most disappointing for them this year. Trust us, it was harder to pick a disappointing game then it was to pick a favorite!

If you like the SEGA News Bits segments make sure to like, share and subscribe to our YouTube channel. We appreciate the support!

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SEGA Tunes: Star Wars Arcade 32X feels like it could take on the whole Empire

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While the heyday of the original Star Wars trilogy video games in the 70s and 80s belonged to Atari, during the 90s and early 2000s our favorite arcade game maker (that’s SEGA, if you’re wondering) internally developed a three games that blew the Atari arcade experiences out of the water. The arcade games I am referring to are Star Wars Arcade (by SEGA AM3 and LucasArts), Star Wars Trilogy Arcade (by SEGA AM8 and LucasArts), and Star Wars Racer Arcade (by Sega Rosso). These games were exciting for a number of reasons. For starters, you had some of the best SEGA arcade talent behind the titles working with some of the best arcade technology of the time. [Learn more about SEGA’s arcade development in the 90s]

I know old Atari arcade games have their charm, but when you’re dealing with a franchise like Star Wars that leans so much on visuals, sound and music I’d much prefer to know what I’m looking at rather than trying to figure out what tiny wireframes are trying to convey. Personally I found Star Wars Racer Arcade to be the pinnacle of Star Wars arcade experiences, as it felt 1:1 to the film in every aspect. But today, for the latest entry in our SEGA Tunes series, I wanted to look back at the Star Wars arcade experience that kicked off the SEGA trilogy of arcade games, the aptly named Star Wars Arcade.

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SEGA News Bits: Our Favorite SEGA Games of 2015

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Back for our end of the year discussion on what SEGA game was our favorite this year. Over all, it was a weak year for the diversity of games coming from SEGA, as they are rebuilding, but they did have some gems that we shall be talking about. Let us know what your favorite SEGA (or even Atlus) game of the has been for 2015 in the comments below.

If you enjoyed the video make sure to like it, share it and subscribe to our channel. We appreciate your support!

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SEGA News Bits: First impressions of the indie SEGA Dreamcast game Pier Solar

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2015 sure has been a great year for indie SEGA Dreamcast games! We’ve seen shmups, odd puzzlers, vikings, and now we’re seeing an RPG by the name of Pier Solar and the Great Architects. While Pier Solar released way back in 2010 to the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, the recent Dreamcast port features improved graphics, new scenarios, and special extras that take advantage of the Dreamcast’s unique capabilities (VMU mini-games!). As seen in my recent unboxing, the game’s packaging is beautiful. Now, in this latest episode of SEGA News Bits, I talk with George about my first impressions of the game.

If you like what you see, make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube and never miss a video.

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Unboxing: Pier Solar Japanese packaging for the SEGA Dreamcast

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The long awaited Dreamcast release of Pier Solar has started to arrive in mailboxes, and I was so impressed with the packaging that I knew it had to get the unboxing video treatment. This isn’t the first SEGA console the game has released to, back in 2010 the game hit the Mega Drive/Genesis and I shared an unboxing of the reprint edition. The Dreamcast version I present to you today is a first edition in the Japanese style packaging, other versions include US and PAL, but seeing as how most indie Dreamcast releases emulate the Japanese packaging, I went with this style and don’t regret it in the slightest. A lot of effort went into this release, and it really makes modern game unboxings look like crap by comparison. Seriously, who wants to see somebody opening a Wii U game where all you get is a disc and a slip of paper telling you to read the digital manual.

You can buy Pier Solar on several platforms. The Dreamcast and Mega Drive/Genesis versions are sold out at the moment, but more may be available in the future. Check out the official site for more details. Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel.

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The History of Sega Japan R&D, Part 4: The Current Sega

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A NEW STRUCTURE, A NEW SEGA

The executive team, Hideki Okamura (Left), Hisao Oguchi (Middle) and Takayuki Kawagoe (Right). These men have been responsible for risque games such as Segagaga, Jet Set Radio and also Sega Saturn and Dreamcast marketing in Japan. With these man, the unique corporate culuture of Sega would continue.

The executive team, Hideki Okamura (Left), Hisao Oguchi (Middle) and Takayuki Kawagoe (Right).

In 2005, Sega was back in the black in all areas for the first time in a long time. The Sega Sammy structure was completed, and the next generation home consoles were ahead. Like in the formation of twelve new R&D studios in 1998, executive management had a reset. Long time executives Hideki Sato and Hisashi Suzuki retired from Sega, after their thirty – or even in Suzuki’s case – forty years of service.

Masano Maeda & Naoya Tsurumi
Masano Maeda & Naoya Tsurumi

As mentioned in Part 3, Hisao Oguchi would atain the highest executive position which he held until 2008 where he received even wider responsibilities as Chief Creative Officer of Sega Sammy.

Then there is Masano Maeda, who joined in 1991. Madea was responsible for building a new Western management team that made crucial partnerships and buyouts of Western companies, like Creative Assembly, Sports Interactive and Secret Level On a side note: the amount of games developed for Xbox 360 amount to roughly forty games, and on PC to about sixty games. On the Dreamcast, the amount comes to fourteen, and old PC releases amount to sixteen.

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SEGA News Bits: SEGA re-releasing legacy games like Shenmue?

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SEGA Europe’s marketing director Jon Rooke said in a recent interview that SEGA was looking at opportunities to re-release Legacy titles like Shenmue. On this episode we sit and discuss the possibility of this being just PR talk, we discuss what is a SEGA legacy title and discuss SEGA legacy games we want to see re-released. Let us know what you consider a legacy title and what games you want to see re-released in the comments below!

If you like what you see make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube so you never miss an episode.

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SEGA posts sales profits despite having fewer sales

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SEGA-Sammy has posted their detailed financial report for the last six months, spanning from April to September 2015. If you guys didn’t know, April 1st is when SEGA’s massive restructure happen and around June is when SEGA of America did their big move. Not only that but the company hasn’t been releasing as much software as they used to, but they still manage to make profit even with a decrease in sales.

SEGA-Sammy reports 1.2 billion in net sales, which happens to be a decrease of 2.5% over the same six month period in 2014, where they reported over 1.3 billion. Yet SEGA-Sammy posted a profit of $7.9 million, compared to losing $23 million in 2014.

SEGA-Sammy said that digital games just happen to be one of the big money makers for the company which happen to them get out of the red. What games did good? Lets look.

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SEGA News Bits: Sonic 25th Anniversary game to play like classic games?

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SEGA is getting ready to celebrate Sonic the Hedgehog’s 25th Anniversary next year and their new marketing director in Europe has dropped a hint on what to expect that new game to play like. According to him the new Sonic the Hedgehog games will be more inspired by how they “played in its heyday.” What is Sonic’s heyday? What does this all mean? Let’s talk about that. Read the original story here.

If you like what you see, make sure to subscribe to us on YouTube and never miss a video.

 

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Review: The Legend of Legacy (3DS)

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The Legend of Legacy piqued my interest when I heard that the team behind the game (Furyu) was billing the title as a spiritual sequel to the SaGa series of games, a series of RPGs that I played many moons ago. Did I enjoy them? Hard to tell since I was quite young when I played them but the name always stuck with me over the years. I  was excited to start this long RPG trip and ready to see if the game will live up to its ‘Legacy’ namesake. Well, does it? One way to find out…

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