SEGA News

Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax joins Animevo 2015 line-up

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animeevo
A bunch of side tournaments involving anime based fighting games have been announced and they are going under the moniker of ‘AnimEvo’ which will include all the fighting games in the photograph above, One of those games in particular is Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax from SEGA (that comes out this fall in the West).

The tournament will be held in Las Vegas. As for the entry fees, prizes and rules for the tournament are still to be determined. Seems that its still to early for all those little details.

For more information as it emerges, head over to AnimeEvo’s official twitter.

[Via Shoryuken]

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Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX delayed to September a week before release

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Hatsune Miku Project Mirai DX

I hope you weren’t looking forward to playing Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX, because SEGA has announced that they’ve delayed the game just a little over a week before it was originally supposed to be released. Instead of being in stores next week, the game will now release on September 8th in North America and September 11th in Europe. SEGA hasn’t announced a delay for the Japanese version of the game that was announced later on, so it will seemingly still be released there on May 28th.

SEGA also announced a special Launch Edition for North America, which includes “premium outer box packaging” and a wallet chain that’s based on Hatsune Miku’s belt. All physical copies will also include 19 double sided AR cards that let you see various dance moves and costumes. As for European stores getting this special edition: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

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Here are the 17 mobile games SEGA have pulled for a lack of quality

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MobilePurge
We talked about it before that SEGA planned to drop older titles that they either weren’t going to update or didn’t fit their quality of standards.
The following titles are no longer available on Google Play or iTunes:

  • After Burner Climax
  • Jet Set Radio
  • Super Monkey Ball 1 & 2 
  • Super Monkey Ball Tip’n’Tilt 1&2 (older phones)
  • Altered Beast
  • Ecco the Dolphin 
  • Golden Axe 1, 2 & 3 
  • Phantasy Star 2 
  • Streets of Rage 1& 3
  • Space Harrier 2
  • Virtua Fighter 2 
  • Zaxxon Escape

After Burner Climax has also been taken down from XBLA and PSN, so it makes sense that the mobile version would also be dropped. As for those Genesis/Mega Drive games, SEGA has been trying to have higher quality versions of them starting with Sonic CD, Sonic 1 & 2. SEGA did say; “Given the right situation, these titles may return in an updated form,” so you never know if we will see some of these return.

If you paid for any of the games, you can still download them at anytime on iTunes or the Play Store.

[Via: Eurogamer]

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SEGA Humble Bundle sale slashes 75% off some great games

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SonicSaleHumble

Open up your E-Wallets folks! There’s a big sale going on at Humble Bundle and SEGA is one of the main publishers, so get in on the big clearance ‘cuz everything must go! Although, technically it’s digital so it really doesn’t go anywhere. Just…data gets copied from a server and onto your computer but that data also stays at the server so it’s not like…..NEVERMIND! Anyway,here are some of the great SEGA deals going on:

And many many more! The sale ends soon, so come on down and take a gander.

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SEGA 3D Classics Space Harrier and Fantasy Zone themes now on North American Nintendo eShop

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While SEGA has released several awesome Nintendo 3DS themes over in Japan, here in the West all we have are Sonic the Hedgehog themes. Don’t get me wrong, I like Sonic, but what about SEGA’s non-blue hedgehog stuff? Well today things change, at least for North American fans at the time of this article. Via SEGA Localization Producer Sam Mullen comes news that 3D Space Harrier and 3D Fantasy Zone themes release today! Available now for $1.99 each, these two themes feature graphics and sounds from both games and are an excellent way to scrub every hint of Nintendo off of your 3DS. Fill the home screen with SEGA games, pick a SEGA 3D Classics theme, slap on a SEGA branded skin and you’re all set!

No word on Europe yet, but when we hear something we’ll update the story.

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Cook & Becker releases official licensed art prints for Phantasy Star, Shinobi, Streets of Rage, and more

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If you have ever wanted to put some cute retro SEGA art on your wall and show people that you too are a retro gaming art snob, you can now pick up prints over at Cook & Becker. These prints are officially licensed by SEGA and being sold by the Dutch art dealer for $99 dollars unframed.

Check out the pieces here:

More should be coming out this summer, if you wallet wasn’t empty already. My favorite prints are Phantasy Star, Golden Axe and Shinobi (yes, in that order). Which are your favorites?

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Stella Glow developer Imageepoch files for bankruptcy

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stella glow

After suffering millions in losses, employees heading to other companies, and last month’s disappearance of their CEO, Imageepoch will be filing for bankruptcy.

Founded in 2005, Imageepoch enjoyed moderate success as a JRPG developer. Some hardcore SEGA fans may know them through their work on the DS’s Sands of Destruction. They also developed the 7th Dragon series, which was produced by Skies of Arcadia and Phantasy Star creator Reiko Kodama and published by SEGA. The company was set to celebrate their 10th anniversary next month with the release of the SEGA-published 3DS JRPG Stella Glow.

The company was doing well through September 2011, when they reported 1.7 billion yen in profit. Unfortunately, not long after the company announced they would start self-publishing some of their games, they began to run into problems. Just two years later, the company reported a mere 400 million yen in profits. Many of their self-published games were met with mediocre reviews and sold poorly. Now, the company has 1.1 billion yen in debt owed to 43 creditors, with an additional 3 million owed to five creditors through affiliate company Smile Online.

According to Siliconera, this bankruptcy won’t affect the release of Stella Glow, which has been completed for some time. Stella Glow was originally announced as a self-published title, before SEGA picked up publishing duties in mid-March.

If you want an in-depth look at the fall of Imageepoch, you might want to take a look at this article. I’m not familiar with the website, but a lot of the information inside it seems to check out with what I’ve read elsewhere.

Stella Glow will be released by SEGA on June 4. It’s set to be localized by Atlus later this year.

[Via: Siliconera]

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Review: 3D Thunder Blade (Nintendo 3DS)

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3dthunderbladereview

The final arcade title in wave two of SEGA’s 3D Classics line of games releases this Thursday, and boy is it a special one! While Thunder Blade is not SEGA’s most famous 80s arcade title, eclipsed by greats like OutRun, Space Harrier, and Hang-On, it certainly deserves a spot with the big boys. Perhaps the general public’s neglect of Thunder Blade stems from the game’s home console releases. While other SEGA arcade classics have seen near perfect home ports, Thunder Blade never truly saw a worthy release that stacked up with the arcade original. But now, nearly 30 years later, SEGA and M2 just may have done the original justice with their latest SEGA 3D Classic release. How did they do in porting this 1987 classic? Read on!

Continue Reading ➜

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Axel Stone from Streets of Rage, Sakura Shinguji of Sakura Wars and more confirmed for Project X Zone 2

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pxz2fam

Courtesy of the new issue of Famitsu (and the scans above, provided by @TACK0520 on Twitter), we now know three more characters showing up on the SEGA side of things in the upcoming Project X Zone 2: Brave New World.

Axel Stone of Streets of Rage fame has been confirmed to show up in the game, as have Sakura Shinguji and Gemini Sunrise from the Sakura Taisen series. Whilst both Sakura Taisen characters return from the first game, this is Axel’s first appearance in a seriously long time, and it’s great to see him added to the roster. In addition to these SEGA additions, Capcom’s Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey of their Ace Attorney series are also confirmed to be appearing, as well as characters from God Eater 2 and Summon Night 3. From the looks of things, Axel will be an assist unit, whereas the Taisen characters return in their role from Project X Zone. 

Overall, it’s awesome to see more SEGA love from this game; Axel was definitely near the top of my wanted list, and I’m ecstatic to see him return.

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Mobile games that no longer meet SEGA’s standards to be removed from app stores in the coming weeks

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Via the SEGA Blog comes news that a number of games from their back catalog will be removed from the App Store, the Google Play Store, the Samsung App Store and the Amazon App Store in the coming weeks. The reasoning for this is to remove titles that no longer meet their revised standards. While games you have already purchased will be available to download and play again, these select titles will soon no longer be for sale. What are these titles that SEGA plans to purge? We don’t know at this point, but I’d wager a guess that many of the older titles including those that have had issues on the newest devices are on the chopping block. SEGA did state, however, that some titles may return in an updated form.

While it is always a shame to see older titles removed, one of the major downsides to digital titles, it is nice of SEGA to give advanced warning. Also, this could be a sign of SEGA of America stepping things up in the quality department. I’d guess that the axed titles will likely be the old badly emulated Genesis/Mega Drive games and SEGA Columns Deluxe.

Check out SEGA’s full statement after the break and stay tuned to SEGAbits for what these soon to be removed titles are.

Continue Reading ➜

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SEGA confirms they won’t have a booth at E3 this year

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E3
So you guys already know the speculation, SEGA hasn’t signed up for a exhibition booth for this year’s E3. Of course, we thought that it would have meant that they were just going to sign up late, sadly that is not the case as SEGA has now confirmed to Game Informer via email:

“Over the next months, SEGA of America will be focusing on the restructure and relocation to Southern California, and we have decided to not attend E3 with our own booth this year. With the majority of our bigger titles launching later in 2015/2016, particularly those from our AAA studios Relic Entertainment, Sports Interactive and Creative Assembly, we are concentrating our efforts for some of these major announcements after our relocation. Instead, we will be collaborating with our various business partners for this year’s E3 show.”

It seems that them restructuring and moving to Southern California is to blame for their lack of E3 showing this year. Not only that, they will also be showing titles at other ‘business partner’ booths. I assume you can find stuff like Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax and Yakuza 5 at Sony’s booth for example. What are your thoughts on SEGA skipping E3 for this year?

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SEGA’s Okunari says they are open to do more 3D Classics

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3DClassicsPhysical
SEGA has just announced they added additional titles to their ‘Wave 2’ of 3D Classics headed to the 3DS. Those titles where 3D Streets of Rage 2, 3D Gunstar Heroes and of course 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2. So is SEGA planning a ‘Third Wave’ of 3D Classics after these release?

SEGA’s Yosuke Okunari spoke to Famitsu about that and here is his response:

These three titles were put out for download overseas simply as an extension [to the existing series]. This really is the end for the second wave [of Sega 3D Classics]. Of course we want to consider the development of a third wave based on the response to this second wave, but we have no plans at this point in time. We’ll look at the big picture, that is, we’ll look at the sales trends of the physical release of the Sega 3D Classics line that went on sale last year [in Japan] as well as how the upcoming three titles perform in the global market. We’re happy to do this indefinitely if sales are good.

It pretty much seems that these latest three Genesis/Mega Drive added to Wave 2 is to test, see how they do globally and if they do well they could continue the series. I’m personally loving these re-releases, what about you guys?

[Via: NintendoEverything]

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Support for HTC’s Virtual Reality kit could be coming to Alien: Isolation & Company of Heroes 2

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Alien-Isolation

If you didn’t already need new pants after playing Alien Isolation, you might want to order a new pair in advance.

Reddit user “linknewtab” has discovered various titlecards for games coming to Valve and HTC’s collaborative virtual reality project within the Steam installation directory. There’s a pretty vast array of titles there, none more relevant to this article than the SEGA published Alien Isolation and Company of Heroes 2. This is pretty exciting stuff; it’ll be especially entertaining to see more of the reactions to Isolation in VR. The game was demoed with Oculus Rift back at E3 last year, but as of now it has no official VR support. Considering how long the Oculus Rift’s consumer release is taking, it’s likely it’ll be on the Vive before the Rift.

What do you think of CoH2 and Alien Isolation being realised in virtual reality? Let us know in the comments!

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SEGA announce donation drives for Nepal earthquake victims

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In wake of the devastating 7.9 magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal last Saturday, SEGA has announced several of its games will begin donating money earned from in-app purchases to the Japanese Red Cross.

In Phantasy Star Online 2 all profits made from the Cosmo Atomizer item will be donated until May 30th. Profits from Chain Chronicle’s Spirit Stone item will be donated, as will all profits from the Saintly King Stone item in Hortensia Saga. Finally, all profits of the Magic Guiding Stone item from Puyo Puyo Quest will also be donated. The donation drives in these latter three games will only run until May 3rd, however.

In addition to any funds raised by these games, SEGA will be donating an additional 2 million yen (about $17,000) to the Red Cross. Overall, it’s great to see SEGA engaging with the relief effort, as the world comes together to support Nepal through such a tragic event that has claimed thousands of innocent lives.

You can donate to the Nepal Earthquake Appeal here.

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