Just at the end of the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th Anniversary Party, SEGA had one last surprise. This is Project Sonic 2017, a modern Sonic game being worked on by Sonic Team. It is coming to PS4, XBOX One, PC and NX Holiday 2017! Enjoy the trailer. Holiday 2017 is pretty far away, SEGA is all about quality now though. So the wait will be worth it most likely.
Just a while ago at the Sonic 25th Anniversary event, Sonic Dash, one of SEGA’s popular games for Android and iOS was featured on stage for a bit. Sonic Dash, developed by Hardlight, has hit 200 million downloads, and that isn’t the only news. Green Hill Zone and Classic Sonic were also announced as new content for the game. The new Sonic Dash content will be available to play tonight.
At Sonic the Hedgehog’s 25th anniversary party a new Sonic game was finally unveiled! This game is called Sonic Mania and it seems to be a remix of past Sonic games and entirely new levels, made by Christian Whitehead aka Taxman, and Stealth.
Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles are all playable and the game comes out in early 2017. It was playable at the Sonic the Hedgehog 25th anniversary event, and will be playable at the upcoming Summer of Sonic. We will update this post when we have more info, in the meantime, enjoy the trailer!
Larry Hryb aka Major Nelson of Microsoft announced via Twitter that Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode I & Sonic the Hedgehog 4 Episode II would be hitting Xbox One Backward Compatibility today, meaning you can play the Xbox 360 games on your Xbox One. The recent additions means that Xbox One owners can now play the original Sonic SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive games as well as Sonic CD and the Sonic 4 duology on their Xbox One… as they truly imagined it! For as much flack as the Sonic 4 games get, they’re worth checking out – especially Episode II and Episode Metal.
Then again, with Sonic’s anniversary party tomorrow, we just may see a game announcement that is so amazing it wipes Sonic 4 from our memories (let’s hope!).
The Sonic 25th Anniversary Party is a mere days away and Aaron Webber along with Matt from Tails Channel have showed what you can expect to get in your very own Sonic 25th Anniversary Party swag bag. If you attend the Sonic 25th Anniversary Party don’t forget to grab your swag bag, you won’t want to miss the collectibles inside. Can’t attend? You can watch the party via the Sonic the Hedgehog twitch channel
Can’t play the video at work? Don’t worry, hit the jump for a detailed breakdown on what you get.
In one of the oddest requests for fan input in a while, the SEGA Facebook page is asking for fans to submit ideas for Easter Eggs for a “new mobile game that will include many of your favorite SEGA characters.” Responses seem to vary from character cameos to sly references, but at the least everyone has done one thing; share some love for their favorite franchises.
The “new mobile game” referred to here is possibly SEGA Blast Heroes, the recently leaked SRPG crossover game dug up by Segalization. The fact that they’re asking for franchises in general and the header image above features Sonic alongside Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and Crazy Taxi not only points to the game being a crossover, but also likely teases their inclusion in whatever game SEGA has planned. It is possible SEGA Blast Heroes was nothing more than a testing the waters from SEGA Networks, with only mock-up screens created, and other concepts are also being developed internally. It is also possible that SEGA Blast Heroes was not even created by SEGA Networks. If any more direct or indirect info on SEGA Blast Heroes – or whatever the mobile game is – should surface, we’ll let you know.
Earlier today, American based anime and asian films DVD and blu-ray company Discotek Media announced on Facebook details on their upcoming “Sonic X” DVD. First revealed back in April of 2015, Discotek Media plans to release the first two seasons of the “Sonic X” English dub to DVD in a 52 episode collection with a release date of September 27th, 2016. Season 3, containing the remaining 26 episodes, will be released in another collection at a later date. I really love the SEGA Mega Drive inspired cover art, which has been confirmed to carry over to the menus.
It should be noted that there are no plans at this time for the original Japanese version of the show. Discotek Media also has plans to release the complete English subbed “Sega Hard Girls” to DVD, and once we learn more about that release we will be sure to news it.
Blade Arcus from Shining EX, a fighting game featuring characters from SEGA’s Shining series, has been announced to be coming west to the PC through Steam thanks to the developer Studio Saisenzen, who is also acting as publisher. The game originally released in Japan in late November of 2015 for the PS3 and PS4 and was published by SEGA. Fans of the original Genesis/Mega Drive era games should put a damper on their excitement as the Shining characters appearing in this game are from the recent titles in the series. Still, it is very cool to see titles that typically would never release west receiving localizations. The game will be re-titled Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena and is set to release on July 28th.
You can learn all about the game on the Steam page, and stay tuned to SEGAbits for a potential review once the game releases.
Have you been counting the long days for the release of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X and need something to tide you over the long wait? If you have a Japanese PSN account, you can try Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X on your PlayStation 4 right now! SEGA’s Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X demo is out now and weighs in at 525mb!
Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X demo features:
Not a bad set of songs for a free demo. Hatsune Miku: Project Diva X hits the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita in North America on August 30th. As for Japan, the PlayStation 4 version hits them a few days early on August 25th, they already got the PlayStation Vita version back in March. Who is giving this demo a try?
[Via Gematsu]
Don’t throw away your lose change because SEGA has just released a trailer for their Mario & Sonic At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition, try saying that ten times fast. Mario & Sonic At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition was mean’t to launch back in February but has now been pushed back to June. The game is now out in limited locations and we have gotten the trailer above to promote the arcade unit.
Mario & Sonic At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition features a pretty massive cabinet, something that most arcade manufactures have scaled back on. Due to its twin stick and foot control support Mario & Sonic At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition plays differently than its home release counterparts. Let us know what you think of Mario & Sonic At the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Arcade Edition‘s cabinet in the comments below.
[Source: Arcade Heroes]
Earlier in July, a mobile game called SEGA Blast Heroes was seemingly leaked via Facebook ads. In this SEGA News Bits, George and Barry discuss this rumored new game that sets out to assemble an all-star cast of SEGA characters in a SRPG setting. Could SEGA Blast Heroes be the real deal, or is SEGA simply testing the waters and the game is nothing more than some mocked up screenshots?
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In this SEGA News Bits, George and Barry discuss the recent announcement that publisher Deep Silver has teamed with SEGA of America and Atlus USA to release Atlus and select SEGA titles to Europe. That’s right! While SEGA Europe lets great games slip through the cracks, these two American companies are picking up the slack (“Chip ‘n Dale Rescue Rangers” anyone?) .
Europeans can expect Atlus’ Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse as well as SEGA’s 7th Dragon III Code: VFD in both physical and packaged releases thanks to a deal made with Deep Silver, and that is just the beginning. More games are to come! Listen to our thoughts on what this means for SEGA Europe and why SEGA of America and Atlus USA had to do what they did in our latest News Bits.
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The SEGA Saturn has long been that one SEGA console that was near impossible to crack, and console owners could forget trying to easily play copied games (which currently relies on a mod chip and burning CDs). But now, thanks to electronics fellow and coder James Laird-Wah aka “Dr Abrasive”, the Saturn’s copy protection has finally been cracked.
Detailed in the extended video above is the process which Dr Abrasive took to achieve this. Essentially, games are loaded from USB via the expansion card port. The Saturn was so difficult to crack due to DRM requiring discs to have a physical mark on them (called a wobble) which was etched into the CD. Dr Abrasive got past this by figuring out how the disc drive worked and emulating it via USB. The project is still in the testing phase, but there are plans to make boards available for sale. The work will eventually open up doors to homebrew communities and preserve the console’s functionality years beyond the eventual death of the CD drive.
You can follow the project at Dr Abrasive’s Twitter account and at the official Assembler Games topic, and you can join the discussion at the SEGAbits forums.
Via Deadline comes news that Stories International, a joint media venture between SEGA and Hakuhodo DY Group launched in 2011, plans to release a movie based on the 1991 Mega Drive game Rent A Hero. The movie will be spearheaded by filmmakers Steve Pink and Jeff Morris, with Pink’s credits including Hot Tub Time Machine, High Fidelity and Grosse Pointe Blank and Morris’ most recent credit being the upcoming Netflix project The True Memoirs of an International Assassin starring Kevin James. The original Rent A Hero starred the character Taro Yamada as the “Rent A Hero”, a hero for hire that needs to complete various tasks to save the day and pay for his suit. The game never saw release in the West, though a fan made english hack exists and an Xbox remake almost released to the West but was cancelled – though the finished translated version exists and is playable.
Stories International’s president and CEO Tomoya Suzuki and Hakuhodo DY Group are slated to produce. Meanwhile, Evan J. Cholfin of Stories International will oversee the film as executive producer.
So… first Shinobi and now Rent A Hero! What do you think of SEGA’s upcoming films? Sound off in the comments below!
Moments ago it was tweeted out by Deep Silver, the video game publishing division of German multinational corporation Koch Media, that they will be bringing Atlus USA and select SEGA titles to Europe. This will include Atlus titles Persona 5 and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse. No further details are known as of now, but we are hoping a press release hits soon. This is both great news and bad news for European SEGA fans. It’s great that more games from SEGA and Atlus will be releasing to Europe, but it is bad news as it is a major sign that SEGA Europe – a publisher in their own right – are so disinterested in their own titles that they must rely on an external publisher to bring them over.
No word on what these select SEGA titles would include, but I would wager they’d be the more niche and/or Japanese titles like Hatsune Miku and 7th Dragon III: Code VFD. This is just my guess however, as we do not an any confirmation of what SEGA titles to expect as of yet.
Updates as the story unfolds after the break.