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Total War series sells 11 million within the last 6 years

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SEGA has announced their critical acclaimed series Total War has managed to sell 11 million units between the previous 5 installments (Empire, Napoleon, Shogun 2, Rome II and Attila) and a further 18 million units of DLC sold. What’s interesting to note is due to the fact that Attila is so new, it is almost assuredly that the majority of the 11 million sales is actually made up of 4 titles, showcasing just how popular the series is. Furthermore SEGA revealed that the first week sales in the UK for the latest Total War title, Attila, were 21,680 units with 81% of the sales coming from digital.

Speaking to MVC, Total War brand director Rob Bartholomew said;

“Since the release of Total War: Napoleon in 2010, we’ve built a great tradition of standalone follow-ups to our major titles, and it’s great to see Attila so well-received by fans and critics.

Globally we’re seeing this title reach double the sales of Napoleon in its first week and, as Creative Assembly’s home market, it’s heartening to see the UK taking its fair share of that success. With over a million people playing Total War each month now, it turns out there’s plenty of gamers who just want to watch the world burn. Who knew?”

Total War‘s impressive 1 million active users a month is surely another indication why SEGA, along with it’s life consuming Football Manager series, has been focusing so much on PC. As they continue to curve up a strong position in the PC market and with both Total War: Warhammer and Total War: Arena on the horizon, this series will prove to be a key pillar for the SEGA’s growth and prosperity.

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Swingin’ Report Show #77: Interview with Greg Johnson, co-creator of Toejam and Earl

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Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove is a Kickstarter campaign from Greg Johnson, video game designer and co-founder of ToeJam & Earl Productions. On this week’s Swingin’ Report Show podcast, Greg joins us to talk about how he plans to bring the funky aliens back in a new game, and how he and Mark Voorsanger pitched and developed the original three games of the series for SEGA.

Learn how Toejam and Earl made the transition from Greg’s subconscious to video games, what it was like working with SEGA throughout the 90s, his thoughts on the sequels Panic on Funkotron and Mission to Earth, and how Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove is set to reimagine and build upon the famous first game. If you’re a game developer, or simply want to know more about how games are made, this episode is a must listen!

Show your support for Greg and his team, check out the Toejam and Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter today!

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Today’s Persona 4: Dancing All Night trailer shows off new character Kanami Mashita

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After showing Rise Kujikawa and Yu Narukami, Atlus shows off the new character Kanami Mashita from Persona 4: Dancing All Night in this week’s character trailer which was once again translated by bobrossfreak. She wears puffy pants and introduces herself as a cow, which is probably all you’ll ever need to know about her. The trailer follows a similar format as previous trailers with dialogue, animated cutscenes and gameplay being shown off, with an added quick and weird fanservice shot.

Atlus also revealed some DLC that will be included in the Japanese “Crazy Value Pack”. It’ll include costume DLC including Gekkoukan school outfits from Persona 3 and the outfits the characters wore in the epilogue of Persona 4 Golden. Also included is the credits song from Persona 4 called “Never More”.

In other Persona news, Gematsu translated a recent lengthy interview about both upcoming Persona games: Dancing All Night and Persona 5, which can be read here.

 

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Valkyria Chronicles sold over 200,000 copies on Steam

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Ars Technica put together a list of the most popular games of 2014 (meaning 2015 sales don’t count), ranking games that had the most owners and how many hours the games got played. As you know, SEGA released Valkyria Chronicles, a 6 year old Playstation 3 game on Steam last year. How did it perform?

According to the post Valkyria Chronicles ranked just above Telltales Games’ Game of Thrones series with 210,299 owners and almost 2 million hours played by fans. That is pretty incredible if you ask me and further proves that Japanese games do have a place on PC services like Steam.

Even though Valkyria Chronicles was an older port, it sold comparable to SEGA’s new Alien: Isolation game which had 329,649 owners on steam and over 3 million hours played.

I think the biggest success for SEGA digitally in 2014 was (by no surprise) Football Manager 2015 which had over 850,000 owners on the service and fans have logged in over 130 million hours into it (in little under two months!).

Seeing as Valkyria Chronicles‘ PC success has shocked even SEGA, what older console games do you think will do well on Steam? 

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The Chaotix are playable in Sonic Runners today

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For a limited time only, the Chaotix are available to play in Sonic Runners starting today. The Chaotix campaign will last from 3/5 to 3/15 They increase ring bonuses by 75%. Vector is a power type, Espio is the speed type and Charmy of course, is the flight type.

Only thing is, I haven’t figured out how to play as them. I finished my latest mission as Sonic and Tails, but the Chaotix don’t seem to be available anywhere (although, since it’s not technically 6 AM in the U.S. as of this posting, thy just might not be available yet). There’s still no set release date for the U.S. version yet, but we will inform you the moment it’s known so stay tuned!

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Alien: Isolation pre-release footage released, features unused third person view

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Games change during development, even change after media journalists have gotten a good look at the game. Creative Assembly’s Alien: Isolation is no different. The footage above shows what could have been Alien: Isolation before they changed it to first person prospective.

Personally think they did the right move making it first person due to the nature of using melee combat and I hate using melee combat in 3rd person shooters (see: Gears of War, Binary Domain and Uncharted series).

So what do you think?

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Official Nintendo listing reveals 3D OutRun release date

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Nintendo 3DS owners looking to add to their SEGA 3D Classics library needn’t wait long, as Nintendo’s official site lists 3D OutRun for a March 12th release! Priced at $5.99, the game includes all of the original’s content, two new songs and 60 fps gameplay. Check out the full description below:

3D Out Run™ is the critically acclaimed 1986 driving game designed by Yu Suzuki, re-mastered and enhanced for the Nintendo 3DS™ hand-held system. 3D Out Run includes all of Out Run’s original content, alongside two new songs and runs at 60 frames per second, which is twice the speed of the original version. The game features a built in Stage Select option that allows players to save and resume progress mid-game, has adjustable difficulty settings, and includes unlockable car customization options. Additionally, players are able to choose from a number of real-life arcade cabinets wherein everything from the appearance to the environmental sounds of the specific cabinet are recreated, providing a true and authentic arcade experience.

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A look at Yakuza Zero’s 80’s hits! Collection

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The 80’s where a great time for Japan and it just happens that Yakuza Zero will celebrate this time in history and that means it has to have all the popular tunes released during that time period. It has to be, as they say, authentic. After the jump we have the cover for the Yakuza Zero album called ‘Yakuza Zero: 80’s Hits! Collection‘, which has twelve tracks various 80’s artist (two in-house exclusive tracks).

Now you are sitting there and wondering what popular music in Japan sounded like in the 80’s, well don’t worry we got you covered! Hit the jump and each track has a link to their respective music video. Turn up the volume and enjoy.

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Game Freak and SEGA tease something for March 11th

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The Twitter account of RPG Site tweeted that they had received a postcard from SEGA and Game Freak teasing that they’ll seemingly reveal a new game on March 11th. Nothing is known about it aside from its cartoony look.

Game Freak is most well known for being the studio behind the Pokémon games, but you may also know them for making Pulseman for the Mega Drive. This is the first time SEGA has collaborated with the developer since the release of that game.

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Rodea The Sky Solider gets 16-minute gameplay video

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Recently some Japanese game programming decided to take a look at Rodea Sky Solider, since I don’t really understand Japanese and I assume you don’t either, I skipped the video above to the gameplay (and if I did it wrong it starts at the 8 minute mark). A few thing that I noticed was the long loading at the start and the low resolution textures (mostly because the game started as a Wii game).

It was recently announced that NIS America would bring the game to America and Europe this fall; so you’ll be able to play it in English soon enough. The game will be coming to Wii U and 3DS, the video mostly shows off the Wii U version but at the end they show off very little of the 3DS version too (off screen gameplay).

So who is picking up this title?

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Developer Retrospective: We take flight with SEGA’s Team Andromeda

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The SEGA Saturn’s surprise early launch in America is considered one of the most disastrous mistakes in the history of the video game industry. It angered SEGA’s third party publishers and retail partners, it allowed Sony to get the drop on the Saturn with a lower price point and it ultimately destroyed SEGA’s dominance in the American market, financially crippling SEGA permanently. The launch did have a bright spot though: it introduced the games of SEGA’s Team Andromeda to the West.

This month is devoted to the games of Team Andromeda, and to kick things off we have a developer and Panzer Dragoon franchise retrospective. Ready to take flight?

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Swingin’ Report Show #76: Interview with Stealth, co-developer of Sonic the Hedgehog 1&2 Remastered

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On this week’s SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show podcast, we’re joined by Stealth, who worked on the official recent remasterings of Sonic The Hedgehog CD, Sonic The Hedgehog, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 alongside fellow developer The Taxman.

Stealth talks to us about how the remasters began development, the process of remaking classic Sonic titles, the much talked about the remastered Sonic The Hedgehog 3 proof of concept, and what fans can do to try and make Sonic 3 remastered a reality. Also featured is discussion of Sonic The Hedgehog 4 and the recent decisions SEGA has made with the franchise. If you love classic Sonic games and behind-the-scenes stories of game development, this is the show for you!

Also, Barry and George discuss the recently revealed ToeJam & Earl: Back in the Groove Kickstarter by Greg Johnson (who will be joining us next week) and Sonic Team’s mobile release Sonic Runners, which soft launched yesterday.

Support the Sonic 3 Remastered campaign: http://sonic3remastered.com/


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Sonic Runners assets uncovered, reveals new characters and upcoming events

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Sonic Retro forum member woun has been uncovering a plethora of data contained in the recently soft launched Sonic Runners. The new assets reveal upcoming characters and events that will take place in future episodes of the game. While several characters were shown off in the game’s latest trailer, new surprises include Metal Sonic and Big the Cat! Sorry, had to include an exclamation point, because c’mon… it’s Big the Cat!

Also revealed are upcoming events featuring characters and locations from Sonic and the Secret Rings, Shadow and Omega with creepy glowing purple eyes, and what appears to be Metal Espio and Metal Eggman. You can see woun’s findings as they come over at the Sonic Retro forums, and we have select images after the break.

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Yu Narukami shows that he’s got style in this new Persona 4: Dancing All Night trailer

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Turns out that the Persona 4: Dancing All Night character trailers aren’t being released weekly after all, with this new trailer popping up online only four days after a trailer that focused on Rise Kujikawa went up. This trailer focuses on the protagonist of the original Persona 4, Yu Narukami, as he seemingly really wants to show that he can be as stylish as the Persona 5 protagonist. Again, Youtube user bobrossfreak translated the trailer.

The trailer follows a similar format to the previous trailer, with parts of the story being shown, and Yu dancing in various outfits (including the outfit Dojima usually wears) to Maze of Life from Persona Q while seemingly being unaware of the huge headless body with big bouncing breasts that is standing behind him. Aside from the new trailer, Atlus also released a slew of new screenshots to Famitsu, which can be seen below.

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Developer Retrospective: A look back at the games of SEGA’s WOW Entertainment

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When SEGA WOW Month began, we took a look back at the games of SEGA’s Overworks. While Overworks existed for only a short span of time before merging with WOW Entertainment, this month has made it very clear that Skies of Arcadia made a major impact on SEGA fans. But what of WOW Entertainment? Unlike Overworks, WOW managed to release a large number of games spanning different genres on different pieces of hardware. From sequels to classic franchises like The House of the Dead and Columns, to new franchises like SEGA GT and arcade oddities like The Typing of the Dead, a collaboration with Namco, and a dog walking simulator. While WOW Entertainment can’t be pinned down to one iconic title, they more than made up for this with an amazing library of games!

Join us now for part two of our SEGA WOW retrospective, in which we take a look at the many games of WOW Entertainment.

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