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Yakuza Fans: The Day of the Dragon is August 8!

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A couple of weeks ago SEGA forum member king_ruckus came up with the idea of the “Day of the Dragon” – a fan initiative that asks people to send letters to SEGA offices (to be received on the 8th) expressing their desire to see the franchise brought back to life in the West. It’s been a year and a half since Yakuza 5 was released in Japan, and there is no word on localization for Yakuza: Ishin, either. With the next Yakuza title already in development, fans are understandably worried. Keeping this in mind, king_ruckus looked up the mailing addresses for the London, Tokyo, and San Francisco offices so fans can send the letters to the offices of their choosing.

Keep in mind that while the Day of the Dragon is technically set to be August 8 (next Friday,) the spirit of king_ruckus’s idea is such that the letters arrive during the week of August 8. This allows not only for the variation in personal schedules, but for the sending of letters from different parts of the world to the desired SEGA offices. Please consider sending mail to SEGA! Also, get #DayOftheDragon or #BringYakuzaWest trending if you’ve got Twitter, and check out this Facebook page if you’ve got Facebook! To check out the addresses for the three above-specified SEGA offices, hit the break!

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Elysian Shadows Kickstarter launches – bringing a new RPG to the SEGA Dreamcast

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The Elysian Shadows Kickstarter has officially launched. Dubbed a “next-gen” 2D RPG, the game is slated to hit a number of platforms including our beloved SEGA Dreamcast. We spoke with the team back in June, and they definitely sound committed to the project – which will only happen if they hit their $150,000 goal. The Dreamcast release starts at the $49 level in the Standard Edition which comes in two flavors, signed and unsigned. The signed edition is limited to 100 copies. The $125 level features a Collector’s Edition of the game with several physical goodies that are only digital in the lower tiers. As far as stretch goals, should the project hit $400,000, the team plans to create a monster training VMU mini-game, while $500,000 will open to game up to the modding community (Dreamcast included).

Make sure to check out the project, and if it appeals to you, show your support!

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SEGA is Finally Improving the Dreamcast Collection on Steam

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While it’s been possible for a while to get Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5: Part 2 and SEGA Bass Fishing on Steam, they’re not necessarily the best versions of the game to get. Sonic Adventure DX especially has problems like there being borders around the game and it having a low screen resolution. Which might have something to do with it being a port of the XBLA version, which was a port of the previous PC version, which was a port of the Gamecube version, which was a port of the Dreamcast version. So yeah, it could do with some improvements.

And it might finally get them, as SEGA announced today in a Steam forum post that they’re working on improving these versions over the next few months three years after they’ve been released. Among these improvements are added achievements, which can already be seen on the store pages of the games. Hopes up that this also means that they’ll finally add the Bad Religion back into Crazy Taxi.

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Atlus CEO hints at future SEGA collaborations

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If you have been living under a rock and didn’t know that SEGA bought out Atlus’ parent company Index Holding last year, now you know! In a recent interview with Famitsu, Atlus CEO Naoto Hiraoka and representative director and president Yukio Sugino talked about all things Atlus including their relationship with SEGA.

One of the topics was next generation consoles and Yukio Sugino went on to say:

“Compared to Atlus, Sega are on a much bigger scale [as developers], and our respective know-how is completely different. They’re much more advanced than us when it comes to tools and middleware.”

The exciting part is that later, the CEO of Atlus, Naoto Hiraoka stated that they had a meeting with SEGA CCO Toshiro Nagoshi about the future games Atlus plans to release. I would have love to be a fly on the wall during that meeting.

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Sonic the Comic Artist Ferran Rodriguez is attending Weston Super Sonic 2015

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Upcoming UK Sonic convention Weston Super Sonic has announced that Spanish artist Ferran Rodriguez will be in attendance at the event.

Ferran’s art style was recurring throughout the UK Sonic the Comic’s run, and covered a wide variety of material throughout the series, such as covers, comic strips, and pin-ups. Ferran is flying in from his home in Barcelona just to be at the convention – now that’s dedication!

In addition to Sonic, Ferran has also done work for Disney, Nickelodeon the Angry Birds license, and other properties and brands – quite the resume.

This guest announcement is just one of quite a few that Weston Super Sonic has made; they previously announced that fellow Sonic the Comic legends Richard Elson and Nigel Kitching will also be in attendance, and that Mike Pollock, voice of the nefarious Doctor Eggman will be conducting a live Skype Q&A at the event. Exciting stuff for UK Sonic fans!

Also planned are speedrun tournaments for SA2, art contests, cosplay contests, and other events to keep fans entertained throughout the day. The convention takes place Saturday 17th January 2015 at The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare, England, and SEGABits will be there to provide coverage! 

The official site for the convention can be found here. Currently donations are being accepted until September, and a mere £5 is all it takes to guarantee entry.

Will you be attending? Let us know in the comments!

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Phantasy Star Online 2: Episode 3 set to launch in August

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Phantasy Star Online 2 has been out for a few years and SEGA is now promoting their next major update titled ‘Episode 3‘ and will launch it this August. The Japanese site 4Gamer recently attended the announcement event and gave us a sneak peek at what to expect in the new update.

One of the coolest changes in the upcoming Episode 3 update is the lobbies will now have different themes. We saw this happen with the  Attack on Titan and Sonic the Hedgehog collaborations.

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Dreamcast gets HDD support thanks to modders

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This up coming September will mark the 15 year anniversary of the Dreamcast and fans are still supporting the console with homebrew, independent games and now added modifications like a hard drive!

The hard drive support will allow users to boot GDI rips from the hard drive on actual Dreamcast hardware. The only issue is that booting some games as images won’t work (Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur) and other times it has glitches. Honestly, I’m more interested in getting a working HDD for my Dreamcast so I can store save data, DLC and Jet Set Radio tags.

After the break, check out the images to learn how it was done. It’s still thinking…

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Atlus Review: Abyss Odyssey (Xbox 360)

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If you’re familiar with ACE Team, they’re responsible for some of the most off the wall games including Zeno Clash, Rock of Ages and before they became a commercial developer, they were a pretty interesting mod developer. Their continued partnership with Atlus has brought another release that is less absurd thematically, but brings us a rogue-like title that wraps mechanics similar to the Super Smash Bros. series with Abyss Odyssey. It’s not a carbon copy of the Subspace Emissary from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, nor is it a cumbersome slog akin to Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. The game centers itself around its fighting game mechanic and drives you to advance onto closed off fighting arenas, hunting for loot and building your character to become stronger as you find better weapons and techniques.

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Crazy Taxi: City Rush releasing this Thursday to iOS

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Want to play Crazy Taxi: City Rush on your iPhone and/or iPad? No problem, SEGA has announced that the game will be releasing globally tomorrow to the App Store. Soon fans can experience their new mobile, free-to-play revised take on the Crazy Taxi franchise.

Even though the new game borrows heavily from popular mobile games like Temple Run, don’t think that this entry has disregarded the Japanese team that created the originals. Kenji Kanno, creator of Crazy Taxi, has been overseeing development and lately been doing quite a bit of interviews on the web speaking about the game. The game is developed by Hardlight Studios who developed Sonic Dash, another title that was highly influenced by Temple Run (and Sonic Jump that takes notes from the popular mobile game Doodle Jump, though it should be noted that an earlier version of Sonic Jump released that pre-dates Doodle Jump).

This game is also supposed to be released on Android, but like always Android users must wait.

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Watch the full ‘Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation’ San Diego Comic Con panel

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This past weekend, SEGAbits writers Ben, Shigs, and Nuckles hit San Diego Comic Con and SEGA’s game preview event located at the nearby Nerd HQ. While Comic Con isn’t as game centric as E3, there was quite a bit of SEGA goodness to be found. We were able to check out the latest preview builds of Alien: Isolation and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, as well as interview Archie Comics on the upcoming Sonic Boom comic book series. But the main event had to have been Sunday’s Console Wars panel. The panel, which centered around the SEGA and Nintendo rivalry of the 90’s, featured special guests Tom Kalinske (Sega of America), Al Nilsen (Sega of America), Bill White (Nintendo of America), and Perrin Kaplan (Nintendo of America), as well as Console Wars author Blake J. Harris and Julian Rosenberg, producer of the upcoming Console Wars documentary.

Thanks to Blake, Nuckles and Shigs were given the VIP treatment and secured some awesome seats – allowing us to film the panel and Q&A session and meet the SEGA and Nintendo legends! Check out the full panel above, and make sure to pick up your copy of Console Wars if you haven’t already!

Want more Console Wars discussion? Check out our three part interview series with Tom Kalinske, Al Nilsen, and Blake J. Harris.

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Atlus’ Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner novel coming West

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Bento Books has announced that the first of the Quantum Devil Saga novels by Shin Megami Tensei writer Yu Godai will be translated and released in America. The book series has five novels already and is set in the world of the game series. The first book are being titled ‘Quantum Devil Saga: Avatar Tuner‘ and will be shipping on July 31st.

“In the post-apocalyptic Junkyard warring tribes battle to unify all six territories, and thus gain access to Nirvana, the promised land. After one battle Serph, the leader of the upstart Embryon tribe, rescues a mysterious girl and discovers he and his fellow fighters have gained the ability to transform into mystical, demon warriors. But these new powers and the enigmatic Sera threaten to upend the balance of power in the Junkyard, and within the Embryon tribe itself.” – Bento Books

The books are set to retail for $24.99 as a hardcover edition, $14.99 for a paper back and $9.99 for a digital edition on Amazon Kindle. Check out the product page for more information.

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Tears to Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord from Atlus coming to North America and Europe this Fall

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Atlus has just announced that their PS3 game Tiara II: Heir of the Overlord will be heading West, releasing Oct. 14, 2014 in the US for $39.99 and on Nov. 11, 2014 in Europe with pricing information coming soon. The game’s official site will update as new release information rolls in, and we’ll be sure to keep you updated here at SEGAbits. After the break, check out the full press release.

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Box-art and Release Dates for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Shattered Crystal Revealed

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We already knew that both Sonic Boom games will be coming out in this November, but now we know when exactly we can expect them to be in stores. In the US Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric will be released on November 18th, while Shattered Crystal will be out a week earlier on November 11th. We don’t know yet when the games will be released in Europe, but this post will be updated when we do.

Along with these dates SEGA released the box covers as well, both of which feature Sonic looking at the customer and doing something potentially threatening. The Wii U box has a Nintendo Network logo on it, meaning the game does have some sort of online functionality.

 

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Take a SEGA game room collection tour with Barry the Nomad

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I’ve been a SEGA collector and fan since 1991, with the first SEGA thing I ever owned being a SEGA Genesis with Sonic the Hedgehog included. Since then, I’ve collected games and consoles as they released, and I’ve gone back and picked up games and hardware that I’ve missed out on. The result of the past 23 years is my game room, which packs in nearly all the gaming stuff I own plus an assortment of DVDs, blu-rays, books, and other things. I’ll admit, my collection doesn’t come close to some of the ones I’ve seen, but still it’s mine and I’m proud of it. I’ve been putting off making a collection video for a while now, mainly because there was always something on the horizon that I planned to add to the game room and I wanted to wait until I had the latest addition before making a video. But this week I figured I had the time and the room had enough to show off as is, so I made the above 43 minute walkthrough. Check it out and please don’t judge me based on some of the DVDs I own.

We plan to have more Game Room Tour videos in the future, featuring other SEGAbits contributors showing off their collections, so stay tuned for more sweaty hands and close up views of old SEGA merchandise!

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SEGA releases new Sonic Boom behind-the-scenes video and reveals non-player characters

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No doubt in anticipation of San Diego Comic Con, SEGA has released a new behind-the-scenes video for Sonic Boom the TV series as well as a SEGA Blog post revealing the characters that will populate the video game and TV show universe. The new characters, seen after the break, will serve as NPCs for the games and supporting cast members for the TV show, although not all characters will make the jump from video games to television.

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