SEGA trademarks Shenmue III UPDATE: HOAX

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UPDATE: It has been brought to our attention that this copyright is almost certainly fake. Apparently, the dead giveaway is the lack of an application reference number. We’ve contacted the company listed on the trademark to confirm this, but in the mean time we’d advice you now take this news with a moon sized grain of salt. It should be noted that a fake copyright for Fallout 4 was registered with this same organization on November 14th. The registration has since been removed. We’ll be keeping an eye on this registration and we’ll bring you updates when we can, but now this trademark should be considered a hoax. To check out the original story, go below the fold. To get an overview of the rash of trademark hoaxes and how they’ve been happening, check out this CVG article.

EA admits defeat to SEGA’s Football Manager, no more FIFA Manager series

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Before SEGA owned Sports Interactive and the Football Manager series, SEGA fought against EA Sports with their brand called ‘SEGA Sports’. Seems that SEGA finally gets a small victory (especially after they took the NFL license and was forced to sell Visual Concepts and its 2K brand of sports titles to Take Two). EA Sports has announced that they will not longer publish their own FIFA Manager series.

FIFA Manager 14 will be the last entry in the franchise, here is lead designer Gerald Köhler explaining the reason for leaving the Football sim market.

“The football manager genre at this level of sophistication is highly specialised and primarily played in two countries (England and Germany), in which – on top of everything – one game has practically dominated the market in recent years. The niche market and general trend toward online and mobile games were also contributing factors. Moreover, FM had reached a crossroads at which a new engine and/or corresponding online technology would be the only way to give the series a boost. When all these factors were evaluated, it led us to the decision to blow the final whistle. We hope you’ll keep playing FM as long as possible, and that the fan sites will go all out to expand and improve the game wherever they can. For all your years of support and all your passion for our game, we thank you.”

I hope the FIFA Manager team finds jobs developing other games, I don’t like people losing their jobs. But hey, at least SEGA didn’t pull a grimy move and buy some sort of sports license to kill the competition, right?

Yu Suzuki to deliver a postmortem for Shenmue at GDC

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[SEGAbits at the GDC 14 event]

SEGA legendary developer Yu Suzuki is set to deliver a postmortem on Shenmue at this upcoming year’s GDC. GDC says that the creator will be talking about the classic game for the first times, starting from its origins as a Virtua Fighter based RPG for the SEGA Saturn all the way till its release in 1999. But that isn’t all, Playstation 4 lead system architect and game designer Mark Cerny will be translating the presentation! I guess that was what talked about last year?

Sadly for people like us that aren’t invited or can’t make it to the the event, good old GameSpot will be live streaming the event, so we don’t miss on any ‘surprise announcements’. So, who’s excited?

Sonic Dash is out now on Android

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For those Android users that waited forever, you can now download Sonic Dash from the Playstore! So what’s the skinny? Well, you will need to have at least Android 2.3.3 and over to play the game! The download size for this game is only 42mb.

It seems that the main complaint in the game are the ads, which are annoying. I guess that’s the small price you pay for having a free game. What are your thoughts?

Shining Force Online: a fan-made MMO enters beta testing this week

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Shining Force Online will be a ‘free to play’ MMO based on the Sega classic series and is set to enter beta on the 28th of November. The game is set to be released for free via Arcade County and will feature a ‘alternative universe’ with a brand new storyline and familiar characters.

Sadly the game isn’t 100% free, as the developers included micro-transactions called ‘Shining Force Platinum User Upgrade’, charging about $23 dollars for ’25 tickets’.  Even though the developers assure players that their game will never be ‘pay to win’, it seems that its already leaning that way since being a platinum user gives you two skill points per day instead of one and ‘full experience earned from combat’. Many big name Shining Force supporters have gotten angry at Arcade County for wanting to profit off of a fan game, including ‘friskydeath’ who wrote on their forum and has reported the game to SEGA’s legal team.

So what are your thoughts? Does the person have to cover costs of servers? Is this the wrong way to go around it? Let us know if you’ll be playing the MMO on the 28th!

SEGA’s facebook teases Sonic Dash for Android

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SEGA shared the following image that is obviously a Sonic Dash related image and if you look closely at Sonic he is shaped like the Android robot. What could this mean? Well, if it wasn’t apparent, Sonic Dash will soon be headed to your Android powered phone.

Yep, so now non-ios users will be able to experience the Sonic skinned Temple Run clone for themselves. How soon is soon?

 

The Making of 3D Space Harrier and New 3D SEGA Classic Series Interview With M2 and SEGA Developers

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Naoki Horii, President, M2 (left), Yosuke Okunari, Producer, SEGA CS3 (right)

Impress Watch sat down with Naoki Horii, President of M2, and Yosuke Okunari, producer at SEGA CS3, for an interview on how the 3D Space Harrier was developed in the making and games they’ve ported in the past years. M2 is very well known for porting numerous SEGA titles to consoles like Sakura Wars 1 & 2 for Dreamcast, the SEGA Vintage Collection, and many more. The interview is quite interesting and I recommend our to read this awesome interview here.

To Type or Not to Type: The Typing of the Dead OVERKILL Shakespeare DLC with Multiplayer Update now available for $2.99

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SEGA has just recently released the promised DLC for The Typing of the Dead: OVERKILL on STEAM for only $2.99 which players can download here. The DLC features a new experience by killing mutants with the words of Shakespeare. Also included within the DLC update is the multiplayer feature with online co-op for Typing and Overkill mode. For more info and images, hit the jump.

Persona 5 announced for Playstation 3

After pissing off fans by announcing a bunch of Persona 4 spin-off games instead of Persona 5, Atlus finally announced that Persona 5 will be coming to Playstation 3 at the end of 2014. Like all of the other Persona games announced today, this release date is only for Japan. We don’t know when (or if) this game will be coming out in the US and Europe.

And yes, this is the last Persona game that was announced today.

Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth announced for 3DS

Yup, it’s another Persona 3/4 spin-off game! Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth will be coming to 3DS on June 5th 2014 in Japan. This game will be similar in gameplay and style to the Etrian Odyssey games and is also being directed by Daisuke Kaneda, who previously worked on Etrian Odyssey 4.

Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold coming to PS3 in 2014

Previously only announced for arcades, Persona 4: The Ultimax Ultra Suplex Hold has officially been announced for PS3 today. While arcades will be getting the game on November 28th, the PS3 version will be released in the summer of 2014 in Japan.

Along with this announcement a new trailer showing new gameplay and cutscenes was also released, with a tease for a new character at the end. Due to the character being a spoiler for the endgame of Persona 4, you’ll have to see the trailer for yourself to see who he is. (Of course, this does mean you’ll probably see the spoiler in the comments section below)

Persona 4: Dancing All Night announced for Playstation Vita

Atlus announced a bunch of new Persona games today, one of which is a game funky student would be proud of called Persona 4: Dancing All Night. This game is developed by Dingo, a developer known for the Hatsune Miku: Project Diva games for PSP.

This game will be coming out exclusively for Playtation Vita sometime in 2014 in Japan.

Atlus’ latest teaser for their upcoming Persona announcement


Atlus has been teasing a big announcement this weekend, since a few months ago. Now we are getting closer to the reveal, so Atlus wants to keep fan’s attention with teasers.  This latest brief teaser was on their livestream on Nico Nico Douga, check it out above.

Atlus will be fully revealing the title on Novemeber 24, that’s this Sunday. Are we going to post what the game is here on SEGAbits? You betcha! See you then, as for now, what do you think it is?

Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse released today to iOS


 
The rollout of SEGA iOS titles continues with Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse! I don’t recall this title ever being announced for iOS, so this is quite the surprise. The game itself is fantastic, which you can read all about in our review. The game can be played on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for $9.99 USD. What game can we expect next from SEGA? Well, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 was promised a November release, so stay tuned for that one. Also, the Nintendo 3DS SEGA 3D Classics begin releasing next week with 3D Space Harrier and 3D Super Hang-On on Thanksgiving day.