SEGA has announced ten more titles for its upcoming SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive Mini; if you haven’t been keeping up it seems most regions are slightly different and will have some exclusives.
SEGA has revealed over half of the SEGA Genesis Mini which includes (we put the newly announced games in bold):
If you never heard of the dungeon crawler by Compile, developers of Puyo Puyo, I don’t blame you. The games stars our good girl Arle Nadja, while the first game was about her graduating kindergarten (seems harder in Japan, right?) this one she is 16 years old as she goes to a distant Ancient Magic School to study. For some reason a man she meets along the way knocks her out and throws her in a dungeon, now you have to use your skills to escape. Yep, that got dark fast.
“The Madou Monogatari games are a series of dungeon crawlers by Compile, originally released for Japanese computers and later ported to many other platforms. They’re known for their distinct style of magic-oriented combat, with no HP or MP meters, individually-crafted attacks for every enemy, and prolific use of voice samples. They should also look very familiar to Puyo Puyo players – Puyo Puyo began as a spinoff of Madou Monogatari and imported most of its original cast from the series.” – Via Romhacking.net
You can patch the English translation patch via here. You can also check out the first game which got translated back in 2010.
If you’re a regular visitor to our little SEGA corner of the internet, you probably like to revisit some titles that you might have missed in the 90s and it seems that Game Freak’s Pulseman was pretty slept on in the 90s.
The video above has Pulseman director Ken Sugimori drawing Pulseman as he gives details into the character’s creation, what inspired him and why they made him as a direct opposition to Sonic the Hedgehog‘s design. Kind of funny that Ken Sugimori says that Sonic the Hedgehog had a ‘western look’ when I felt like Sonic the Hedgehog was a mix of classic Mickey/Felix the Cat mixed with a Japanese twist. But I guess Ken is right, its quite obvious that Sonic was inspired by early American mascot cartoons.
Love Ken Sugimori’s Mega Drive jacket. Very cool.
[Source: Siliconera]
SEGA-Sammy has announced that Two Point Studios will be joining the SEGA Europe family.
According to the press release, this buyout came out from SEGA Europe’s Searchlight program which is a internal initiative intend to find talent and intellectual property opportunities. Expect a lot of new ‘Two Point’ franchise games in the near future:
“It’s a landmark step for Two Point Studios and we’re thrilled to be joining the Sega family, We’re looking forward to executing the next phase of our plans as we continue to evolve Two Point County. It’s a hugely exciting time to be a part of Two Point and we are here today thanks to the hard work, passion and dedication of our small, but amazingly talented team here in Farnham and the incredible fans that have supported us throughout and guided our continued development of Two Point Hospital.” – Mark Webley, Two Point Studios co-founder
Two Point Studios is a brand new studio created by Mark Webley and Gary Carr who worked on titles like Theme Hospital (which Two Point Hospital is a spiritual successor), Black & White and the Fable series for Bullfrog Productions and Lionhead studios.
SEGA Games has just trademarked the name Tabegoro! Super Monkey Ball in Japan, if you didn’t know Tabegoro means ‘ripe, ‘in season and/or ‘good to eat’. Makes perfect sense for a brand new Super Monkey Ball game, considering how delicious those bananas look.
Its crazy that the last ‘non-mobile’ title was Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz on the Playstation Vita way back in 2012. I remember one of the first titles we reviewed for this site was Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll on the Wii, so its been a long, long time since we had a new Super Monkey Ball. Are you excited to go ape around in the Super Monkey Ball world?
[Via: Gematsu]
Just wanted to do a Sonic the Hedgehog movie breakdown of the latest trailers, giving you guys some commentary on what stood out to me. If you guys find anything else interesting in the trailer that I might have missed or any other constructive feedback; let me know in the comments below.
If you guys like the breakdown, I would appreciate if you guys gave my personal channel a sub! Thanks.
Sonic the Hedgehog director Jeff Fowler just tweeted out that he has heard the criticism and that you cant expect a change in Sonic’s character design.
Thank you for the support. And the criticism. The message is loud and clear… you aren’t happy with the design & you want changes. It’s going to happen. Everyone at Paramount & Sega are fully committed to making this character the BEST he can be… #sonicmovie #gottafixfast 🔧✌️
— Jeff Fowler (@fowltown) May 2, 2019
No idea how much of a change we will be seeing, considering that the movie is set to release this upcoming November. Also the fact that this terrible design made it this far into production shows you how clueless Hollywood is sometimes. I guess we will be keeping you posted on all things Sonic Movie news…
While Platinum Games started life with a huge publishing deal with SEGA where they published four games including Bayonetta, Mad World, Infinite Space, and Anarchy Reigns. This exclusive relationship sadly came to an end in 2012, since then Platinum Games has worked with publishers such as Nintendo, Square-Enix, Konami, and even Activision. It seems that Platinum Games has bigger visions for their future as they are dipping their feet into self-publishing with two new IPs they are working on:
“I know a lot of people say that, but the game we’re working on truly is unlike anything else. Even for our varied history of veteran game developers, this is something that has never been designed before. So from a game design perspective, we’re very excited right now.” – Atsushi Inaba (Platinum Games, Executive Director and Producer)
According to Inaba they want to move away from publisher funding and be even more independent. In the interview they talk about how Platinum Games doesn’t outright own its IPs like Bayonetta (which is partly owned by SEGA) and these two new unannounced IPs will be 100% owned by Platinum Games. Platinum Games also said they are not done working with other publishers and are even open to co-publishing options.
[Source: Gematsu]
Before you get excited thinking that Rage 2, the upcoming Bethesda shooter, is coming to Dreamcast. Not exactly. The team is building a custom PC wedged inside a Dreamcas inspired shell. Inspired? Its actually just a Dreamcast (see above photo).
How do you win this custom made PC? You have to follow and RT the Rage 2 twitter.
We have been covering a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog movie news, including having the first reveal of Jim Carrey as Robotnik and revealing that the Sonic Movie trailer would hit the internet today (look above!). We also did a pretty popular SEGA News Bits video going over the leaked plot details (if you don’t mind spoilers!) and now we got the first official look at the movie! If you dislike spoilers, you might want to hold off watching the trailer, because towards the end they reveal Jim Carrey as Robotnik… but his final look that is supposed to be a surprise.
So what do you guys think of the debut trailer for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie? Is it as bad as a lot of people have been predicting? So far the YouTube like/dislike ratio is mixed, leaning towards disliked.
On this SEGA News Bits, things go full circle as we become the very SEGA news we cover! That’s right, a reader sent us a news tip that the Sonic movie trailer will release on April 30th and we got a look at Jim Carrey as Doctor Robotnik. So we did what any fan site with an ounce of sense would do and tweeted it out. We discuss the Robotnik’s look, the internet’s reaction and how our tweet blew up and appeared on tons of entertainment news sites.
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If you enjoy our SEGA News Bits segments and want to support us: Give us a sub and give this video a thumbs up so it shows up on more like-minded fans YouTube recommendations. You know, how that YouTube algorithm is.
Puyo Puyo eSports is getting a localization, renamed as Puyo Puyo Champions and will be available in western territories on May 7th, effectively confirming a previous rumor about SEGA trademarking “Puyo Puyo Champions” back in November. In addition to the Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions previously released in Japan, Puyo Puyo Champions will also get new versions for the Xbox One and Steam, with the console versions all getting digital releases.
For reference, Puyo Puyo Champions is a Puyo Puyo game that caters to a competitive crowd. It trims the fat, providing players with the bare necessities, focusing heavily on the recurring Tsu and Fever rules from past games only and small quality-of-life additions to streamline Puyo matches further. Both offline and online will provide several multiplayer options, such as a new tournament mode and the ranked mode from Puyo Puyo Tetris making a return.
Puyo Puyo eSports has been available on the digital stores for both the Nintendo Switch and the Playstation 4 since October 25th 2018. But for those that want physical copies instead, SEGA has been nice enough to announce that both the Playstation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions will receive a retail release on July 27th for ¥1,990.
The contents are the same as the original digital version. This includes the ability to play with Tsu and Fever rules, along with both offline and online options, such as a tournament mode for offline and the ranking system for online. However, in addition, Puyo Puyo eSports will receive a new update that brings back the Lesson Mode from past Puyo Puyo games. This mode will go into detail over various aspects of how to play Puyo Puyo, ranging from the basics such as rotating to more complex tactics like how to build specific chain types, overall useful for new players. Both the digital release and the upcoming physical release will receive this update in the future.
[Source: Game Watch]
SEGA has dropped the release date of SEGA AGES Virtua Racing. The game is slated for an April 25th release date in Japan, for the asking price of ¥925 (roughly $8.50).
SEGA AGES Virtua Racing is based on the arcade version, with additional enhancements. Players can play one-on-one against another player in online matches, while offline they can play up to 8 people at once with multiple Joy-Cons. Players also have the option to toy with a new replay feature, which allows the player to view recorded races at different angles and can rewind, fast forward, and pause. Overall SEGA AGES Virtua Racing preserves the original arcade experience, even going as far to introduce a “Grand Prix” mode, where players have to endure 20 laps in a single race, strategizing how to use the pit stops efficiently to prevent their tires from wearing out.
[Source: SEGA AGES website]
If you have been playing SEGA Heroes, a mobile cross-over game featuring SEGA IPs and have been loving it, you are in luck. SEGA seems like they will support the game going forward if a new survey asking fans what characters they want to see return.
The list of IPs is rather massive even featuring thins like Toejam & Earl, Wrestle War, Alien Solider, Flicky, Football Manager, and even Hatsune Miku. Of course there are alot of other hardcore SEGA franchises but those really stood out as strange for various reasons. There are also some Atlus franchises listed. So SEGA/Atlus Heroes update coming?