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Arcade Love: Plus Pengo! coming to Nintendo Switch on August 22nd in Japan

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Mebius has announced that Arcade Love: Plus Pengo! will come to the Nintendo Switch on August 22nd in Japan. Previously this collection of games was released in 2012 for the arcades, then later ported to Steam and Xbox 360. Arcade Love: Plus Pengo! contains 4 games, including two minigame collections that tests your skills via Action-Game Skill Test and Shmup Skill Test respectively that were originally released in 2007, and a shmup called Combat Zeal that uniquely focuses on split screen multiplayer with the goal of trying to get the highest score.

However for hardcore SEGA fans, this collection notably includes a special version of the 1982 arcade game Pengo. This version of Pengo features a similar premise to the original arcade game, where you play as the titular Pengo and you have to either break or push ice blocks, with the goal of trying to kill all of the Sno-Bees. However, it was remade from the ground up with a multiplayer focus, where players are now tasked with trying to rack up the highest score within the time limit. It’s promised that Pengo will support 8 players on the Nintendo Switch and offers the option of both free-for-all or team matches, so maybe bring a friend to try this unique spin on a fairly obscure arcade game.

[Source: 4Gamer]

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SEGA AGES Wonder Boy in Monster Land releasing on May 30th in Japan

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After SEGA has officially revealed information regarding to the upcoming SEGA AGES Wonder Boy in Monster Land, we finally have an official release date. SEGA AGES Wonder Boy in Monster Land is scheduled for a Japanese release on May 30th, or next Thursday as of this writing. As usual with the SEGA AGES titles, it will be priced at ¥925 (roughly $8.50) on the Japanese Nintendo eShop, and it will contain bonus content such as three separate challenges and options with the wiggle joystick trick, such as the ability to map it to a button or to disable it and challenge leaderboards.

[Source: Official Website]

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Sonic the Hedgehog Movie delayed into February 14, 2020

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Are you surprised to hear that the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is being delayed? You shouldn’t, if you have been keeping up the studio announced it was redesigning the blue blur after the negative backlash the debut trailer received. Jeff Fowler posted the above image saying:

“Taking a little more time to make Sonic just right.#novfxartistswereharmedinthemakingofthismovie” – Jeff Fowler va Twitter

One of the biggest backlash from online personalities was the fact that the studio was going to make VFX artist and designers work overtime to fix a design issue that shouldn’t have been approved anyway. I guess his hashtag is telling people that no one was overworked or ‘harmed’ during the making of the movie. Do I believe it? Hard to say but wouldn’t be too shocked when negative stories pour out of the movie. Here is hoping that Paramount Pictures gets it right. I will say that seeing the new art that we posted above from the studio, it does seem that Sonic is now wearing gloves?

What are your thoughts on the the movie being delayed into February 14, 2020.

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SEGA Sammy unveils Virtua Fighter and House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn: Battle Genesis for Casinos

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SEGA Sammy had recently revealed two SEGA IPs at Global Gaming Expo Asia 2019 to be used as casino equipment under the Battle Genesis name which was trademarked last year by the company. The two SEGA IPs to be used under the Battle Genesis name are “Virtua Fighter” and “House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn” and will be released in Asia this summer. Besides the announcement, there are currently no news on how the casino games operates. What are your thoughts on the Battle Genesis announcements? Be sure to leave us a comment below!

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SEGA AGES Wonder Boy in Monster Land “coming soon”, new information revealed

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The Wonder Boy series has had a lot of love lately from multiple developers, such as the remake of Monster World III and the spiritual sequel Monster Boy and The Cursed Kingdom, and the SEGA AGES series will continue that with arguably the most pivotal game in the series, Wonder Boy in Monster Land.

Wonder Boy in Monster Land departs from it’s predecessor by adapting RPG elements, such as currency and item management, which would become the norm for future installments. You play as Bock Lee Temjin (aka “Tom-Tom”), as you are tasked with clearing through 12 levels with their own unique set of items, monsters, and secrets. SEGA AGES Monster Boy in Monster Land adds some additional features, including the ability to exploit the “rattle joystick” trick using a single button, Money Hungry Mode where the “rattle joystick” trick is sealed off and your score is recorded, and several “challenge” modes. These modes include Sphinx Challenge where you’re tasked with killing the Sphinx in the shortest time, Monster Castle Challenge where you have to clear the final dungeon as fast as possible, and Fireball Challenge where you have to play through the game using only the Fireball weapon and can die in a single hit.

SEGA AGES Wonder Boy in Monster Land is slated for a pricing of ¥925 (roughly $8.50), but with no official release date. Curiously, the copyright mentions LAT, a seemingly unknown company unrelated to other companies like the original developers Westone (aka Escape) or developers for the recent Wonder Boy titles like LizardCube or Game Atelier.

[Source: Official Website, Twitter]

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Cotton series to get a reboot by BEEP, Sharp X68000 version of Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams to see re-sale

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For those that like SEGA’s Japanese roster of titles, you might of heard of the Cotton games, a series of shmup titles by Success that have seen releases in arcades with SEGA’s hardware, and on SEGA’s consoles between the Mega Drive and the SEGA Dreamcast. The games typically follow the misadventures of a young witch named Cotton and her fairy companion Silk. Cotton’s most defining trait is her obsession with a special candy called Willows, to the point that she will fight tooth and nail to get as many Willows as possible, which Silk exploits to motivate Cotton to save the kingdom.

The series has been dormant for decades now, with only the odd cameo in doujin/indie titles such as Trouble Witches Origin and Umihara Kawase Fresh, but a new installment in the Cotton series has been announced by retro video game store BEEP. This new installment is tentatively called “Cotton Reboot”, and will be available on for sale at an unspecified date for Steam, Nintendo Switch, and Playstation 4. Not much information has been revealed about the game itself, but it has been described as being a remake of the Sharp X68000 version of Cotton: Fantastic Night Dreams, which was chosen over the original arcade version due to it having balance changes and extra polish. In addition, the original Sharp X68000 version will also get a re-sale, both the original and a special rearrange version that features new content. New features include the ability to play as Pril from the doujin Trouble Witches series, and a new “BEEP Edition” in the options that allows for turbo fire. This re-sale version will start orders in June, packed with in it’s original Sharp X68000 disk format and a separate disk for the “arranged” version.

[Source: Official Website, Famitsu, Famitsu Interview]

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Skies of Arcadia Limited Edition Soundtrack CD & Vinyl go up for pre-order

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It looks like Wayorecords will be publishing a very impressive looking limited edition vinyl and CD for Skies of Arcadia, the cult hit Dreamcast JRPG (with it getting a port later on GameCube).

The company is set to release three versions including the CD edition, Vinyl Edition and a music box! Some of these have limited runs including a vinyl in blue will only get 500 units printed and the first ‘music box’ will only have 250! If you are a SEGA collector, you should probably act quickly and swiftly. I will say that the vinyls are a bit pricey, coming in at about 55 USD but it does have a ton of cool extras. The music box on the other hand costs 280 USD!

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Classic Disney Mega Drive Platformer Cold Shadow Returns on Steam and GOG

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Disney threw a surprise today on PC digital download services by bringing back two of their classic platformers today. One being the PSOne/PC adaptation of Disney’s Hercules the other being the PC version of a classic Mega Drive game starring private investigator with a secret ninja alter ego, Maui Mallard played by Donald Duck. Or just Donald Duck. Whatever you call him in your region, Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow a.k.a. Donald in Maui Mallard returns on Steam and GOG.

The PC version, built off of the original Mega Drive/Genesis version, was enhanced with increased sound quality including Michael Giacchino’s soundtrack presented in CD redbook audio. Trying to run the PC version as-is today from an original copy will be impossible without the use of Virtual Machines as this version was made for Windows 95 before graphics libraries such as Direct X existed. Luckily this digital release has been reworked to run on modern Windows operating systems and plays exactly as it did back in 1995.

It joins Disney’s previous efforts to re-release it’s catalog from 3 years ago. This release is especially great for those in the US as the NTSC version of Cold Shadow never saw release on the Genesis due to a console exclusivity deal with Nintendo at the time.

Download it today on Steam or GOG.Com.

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SEGA News Bits: SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive Mini Announces 10 New Titles Including Mega Man: The Wily Wars

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SEGA has announced ten new titles for the upcoming SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive, which means we now know 30 of the 40 total titles that will come in the upcoming plug and play console. On this episode of the SEGA News Bits we look at the past titles, the ten new titles and a look at some regional exclusives!

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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.

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Madou Monogatari II (Sorcery Saga II) gets English fan patch for SEGA Game Gear

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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.

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Game Freak’s Pulseman illustration video now Western friendly with English subtitles

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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]

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SEGA acquires Two Point Studios, developer of Two Point Hospital

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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.

Continue Reading ➜

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Super Monkey Ball coming back? SEGA Japan trademarks Tabegoro! Super Monkey Ball

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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]

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Sonic Movie Trailer Breakdown – What You Might Have Missed

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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.

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