Matt from Tails’ Channel got to sit down with Sonic’s social media manager and Sonic PR Aaron Webber (or how Phantasy Star people know him as Ruby Eclipse). The topic of the interview was the upcoming Sonic 25th Anniversary party including questions about what to expect, if Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice will be playable and what sort of merch will be sold at the event.
If you guys decide to go to the Sonic 25th Anniversary party, make sure you stop by and say hi to me and Barry since we will be attending the event. So are you going to Sonic 25th Anniversary party?
Get ready, as our Strike Harbinger coverage continues! In this SEGA News Bits, Barry talks George through what it was like playing an early arcade build of Strike Harbinger during its debut at Galloping Ghost Arcade‘s SEGA Week. Created by the game development and design studio HitSparks Games, which is co-owned by Lead Game Designer Chris Tang and Senior Artist Kiyoshi Okuma, Strike Harbinger takes inspiration from classic SEGA titles including Space Harrier and Phantasy Star. The game is not due out until 2017, but this early first look at the game shows a lot of promise! Featuring unique controls and RPG-style elements, there is a lot more to Strike Harbinger than you’d think. So click play above and hear what Barry thought of the game and see some lovely 1080p 60fps gameplay footage courtesy of the developers.
More SEGA Week coverage is to come, including even more Strike Harbinger details and footage, so stay tuned! If you enjoy the SEGA News Bits video formats make sure to like, share and subscribe to our YouTube for more.
The Kickstarter campaign for Xenocider, a new indie SEGA Dreamcast game, has launched. The game is unique as it is one of the first fully 3D indie Dreamcast games, and the gameplay itself takes inspiration from classic SEGA arcade games including Space Harrier and Nintendo’s Sin & Punishment. The game’s development team Retro Sumus describes themselves as “a small, independent game development team who got together to revisit genres and concepts we felt were underused, or not explored in depth back in their time.”
The small team is a mix of individuals who are both new and old to the indie Dreamcast development scene, including Lead Programmer Daniel Lancha who reprogrammed Pier Solar for modern platforms and developed Hucast’s Ghost Blade. Also involved is Carlos Oliveros who heads up the team’s Communications and who in the past handled Pier Solar‘s Spanish translation. So it should be no surprise that Tulio Goncalves, former president and founder of Watermelon games and creator of Pier Solar, is on the team serving as the Producer. All-in-all, it looks like Xenocider has a solid team with Dreamcast development experience, but if that still doesn’t sway you they have put together a real working demo of the game for the Dreamcast that you can play right now! Just click on over to their campaign page for Windows, Mac, Linux and Dreamcast download links.
Dreamcast isn’t the only planned platform, as the game will also be playable on PC, Mac, Linux and Nintendo 3DS. The team hopes to raise $92,000 to realize their vision. After the break, a full list of what the team plans for the game to make it extra special. Check out the campaign today, and if you like what you see give them your support!
On this episode of the Swingin’ Report Show podcast, Barry sits down with game designer and gaming tournament champion Chris Tang at the Galloping Ghost Arcade’s SEGA Week. SEGA fans may know Chris best as the winner of SEGA’s Sonic & Knuckles Rock the Rock competition in 1994, and before that Chris was a finalist in 1990’s Nintendo World Championships. Since then, Chris has worked on games at Atari and Capcom, including Gauntlet IV, Primal Rage, Street Fighter III, Rival Schools and Power Stone. Now, Chris is hard at work on a new game inspired by classic SEGA titles like Space Harrier and Phantasy Star. The game, titled Strike Harbinger, combines the fast paced forward flying gameplay of Space Harrier with the RPG and combat elements of Phantasy Star while utilizing a unique control structure that evokes Virtual On.
Strike Harbinger – developed by Chris’s company HitSparks Games – was revealed Saturday, April 30th at Galloping Ghost Arcade where I had the pleasure to meet Chris and the game’s Senior Artist Kiyoshi Okuma, whose past work includes Gauntlet: Legends, World Series Baseball 2K2, The Sims 2 and Darkspore. I also had the honor to be the first member of the public to play the game, and following that experience I chatted with Chris about his life as a tournament gamer, his career, and his plans for Strike Harbinger.
Want more information on Strike Harbinger? Stay tuned for an upcoming SEGA News Bits as well as a SEGA Week writeup!
Did you love the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog was a silent character during the 16-bits days? If so, don’t click play on the Sonic the Hedgehog Boom video above. A Sonic the Hedgehog fan has went in and added Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric‘s useless chatter for all of us to enjoy
Alien: Colonial Marines was a big fat mistake, a game that should have never been released and earned SEGA (and developer Gearbox) lots of ill will from gamers due to the disaster that it was. From false promises in advertising to the game being rushed to store shelves to make a quick buck out of the license, Alien fans felt betrayed.
Well, if you still have the game on your Steam list, you might want to give TemplarGFX’s new Alien: Colonial Marines Overhaul mod a shot! The team went into the game to heavily re-balance it and make it fun to play. Want to see all the stuff they changed? Hit the jump or check out the moddb page to download.
Having taken a break since the last event in 2013, the Summer of Sonic organizers are feeling revitalized and ready to bring the event back for 2016 – and they need your help! Dubbed the largest fan run officially recognized Sonic the Hedgehog event in Europe, Summer of Sonic is relying on a Kickstarter campaign to fund their 2016 convention. With a goal of $28,675, and $20,842 already raised with 28 days to go, it should be no difficult task to fund the event. The planned location is the ILEC Conference Centre in Earls Court, London, and the proposed date is August, 6th, 2016. Activities at the event are said to include meet and greets with the special guests, competitions in art, gaming and cosplay, Q&A sessions with guests, and fan showcases.
Remember Flappy Bird, the mobile game that apparently destroyed people’s lives because of its simplicity? A SEGA fan going by the name of guacasaurus_mex has recreated Flappy Bird for SEGA’s Visual Memory Unit, so if you want to play it make sure you have some spare CR-2032 lithium batteries and lots of patience. Hit the play above and listen to me and Barry talk about Flappy Bird, VMUs and even Rappy Bird?
It has been teased for the past few months, but now we can confirm it is real. That’s right, Big’s Big Fishing Adventure 3is a real fan made game that you can play right now! What more, while it is fan made it does have the support of SEGA’s Aaron Webber and the Sonic the Hedgehog social media accounts. This is The Trial edition of the game, meaning it is only a tease of the full game. However, despite being released on April Fool’s day, we can confirm that The Trail is not a joke and that there will indeed be a full game in the near future. The game can be found at www.bigthec.at and features static cutscenes, branching paths, and a variety of mini games which we won’t spoil here.
For those wondering why this game is the third in the series, aside from being an obvious Sonic Adventure 3 joke, this is actually Big’s third fishing game. Big first dropped his line in Sonic Adventure, and his second game entitled Big’s Fishing released in 2004 as a part of a McDonald’s Happy Meal LCD games collection. Sonic Heroes, Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing and Sonic Runners don’t count because there was no fishing, an omission that clearly hurt sales.
I am proud to confirm that I played a very very small part, as the Big the Cat action figure you see upon completing the game is from my collection. Which means my Big the Cat toy visited SEGA’s Burbank offices before I did. 🙁
Thanks to Instagram user guacasaurus_mex, the world’s most frustrating iPhone game can now be played on your Dreamcast VMU! guacasaurus_mex is not new to the world of VMU game creation, having also created Deadpool and Star Wars: The Force Awakens VMU games, but Flappy Bird pushes things to a whole other level of absurdity. guacasaurus_mex had this to say regarding how to get the game working on your own VMU:
“If anyone is interested I just finished making a Flappy Bird clone for the VMU. Just put the file on an SD card, load with Dreamshell and once Speud’s VMU Tool has loaded navigate to ‘Open CD’ and copy FLPPYBRD.vmi to the VMU.
Like most VMU games this doesn’t work properly in the emulator so please use on an actual VMU!
Also, for anyone giving this a go, you hold A rather than tap like in the iOS and Android versions. Tap functionality didn’t work so well with only 32 vertical pixels!”
Back in the early to mid 90s SEGA and AM2 dominated the arcade racing market with their low polygon racing games including Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, SEGA Rally, and many more. Sadly SEGA has sorta abandoned the racing market in recent years, doesn’t mean that indie developers have forgotten especially the Racing Apex developers.
This isn’t the first ‘SEGA arcade racing’ inspired game we have seen in recent years, do you guys recall Drift Stage and Slipstream? According to the developers Racing Apex will take art styles from late 80s to early 90s arcade titles and add modern gameplay elements like multiplayer. Racing Apex will feature 8 playable racers, over 30 playable vehicles and over 16 tracks to race on. Racing Apex will feature items sort of like a kart racing game that includes stuff like Duel Gatling Guns and Smoke. The game will also have a ton of game modes including Arcade, Cat and Mouse, Bomb Tag, and much more. Check their site for more information.
At this year’s Global Game Jam a group of indie developers had a special treat for SEGA retro fans, a new scrolling shooter called ‘Fatal Smarties‘ made its debut for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive.
The game was developed by four students that represent the University of Southampton. The students tried to think out of the box for this co-op game, having an interesting mechanic where one player shoots and the other navigates the on screen characters.
The game was developed on a deadline during the Global Game Jam and seems very promising. Want to try it out on an emulator or flash cart? Get the rom here.
The latest issue of the UK classic gaming magazine Retro Gamer is celebrating its 150th issue in a big way by counting down the 150 Greatest Games Ever as selected by readers. What’s so cool about the issue is that for many of the entries, they turned to those in the fan community to wax nostalgic on the greatest games. Seeing as Retro Gamer‘s readers have taste and didn’t completely avoid SEGA like another publication out there, several classics from the developer have made the cut. Just some include 1986’s OutRun with a piece written by Sumo Digital’s Steve Lycett, Shenmue with thoughts from the Shenmue Dojo webmaster, and (as stated in our headline) a write-up on Sonic the Hedgehog 2 by Sonic Retro’s very own webmaster Scarred Sun.
Seeing as the magazine is out there for sale right now both physically and digitally, I’m not going to spoil the surprise of the game’s placement or what was said, so you’ll just have to find out for yourself.
I have always been a huge fan of the SEGA fansite SEGA-16, the site really went beyond the call in their efforts to secure some of the best interviews I have ever read. Now website founder Ken Horowitz has announced via his SEGA-16 facebook page that he is working on a history book about SEGA of America:
“Last month, I submitted to my publisher the manuscript for a book chronicling the game development history of Sega of America. Tentatively titled: “Achieving the Next Level: The History of American Sega Games,” the book is an exhaustive retrospective of SOA as a game-maker, from its founding in 1986 and the first steps taken on the Master System to its final efforts on the Dreamcast. Nearly 100 former SOA alumni (including each of its presidents from 1986-2001) and independent game developers were interviewed, and the creation processes of almost 40 Sega-published titles are documented. Every one of SOA’s internal studios is included, many of which have never before been examined.”
The book will look at games created by SEGA of America’s development division and I hope gathers new information about games we loved as kids. He estimates that the book will be around 500 pages long and as of right now there isn’t a release date. Of course, we will keep you posted as more news hits.
The indie publisher Super Fighter Team isn’t new to the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive scene, they are known as the people that brought over Beggar Prince and Legend of Wukong to SEGA’s 16-bit machine. Now they release not one, but two new SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive games on cartridge.
The first game is Magic Girl, a Taiwanese scrolling shooter that was released back in 1993. The game stayed in Taiwan and became a obscure relic of the 90s. But now Super Street Fighter Team have picked it up and given it a proper translation!
Cascade is a intergalactic dice puzzler with its own unique style. This game was developed by Epyx and was set to hit the land of the rising sun back in the 90s. Now that Super Street Fighter team picked up the rights, everyone gets to enjoy it the way it was mean’t to be played.
The games come complete with manual, box and the game on cartridge. Each game costs $58 dollars including shipping if you live in America, $65 including shipping worldwide.
I have always been a huge fan of the 