Hardlight Studio‘s Chris Southall and James Booth both took the time out to give us a short interview about their newly released mobile game, Sonic Dash. The addictive score based game has been draining the battery on our phones here at SEGAbits, so naturally we had burning questions that needed answering!
Recently, SEGA of America announced big changes in the way they publish their games. From now on, they will only publish what they feel are AAA titles. Sega then, must be really happy with Gearbox’s upcoming release of Aliens: Colonial Marines as it has been given a big push as of late. Despite several delays, the game seems to be coming together nicely. Yesterday, we got to talk with design director John Mulkey about the upcoming game based on the blockbuster franchise.
While waiting in the ridiculously long line for Metal Gear Rising, I let Nuckles87 hold my place in line while I went to speak with Aurelien Regard and Dimitri Pean of Arkedo Studio to talk all things involving Hell Yeah! This is the developer’s first time working with a big publisher and Hell Yeah! looks to be the studio’s most successful game to date. Read on to see what they had to say.
I sit down with Joe Neate, Producer for Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed, to have a talk with him about the game. Will All Stars be usable online? Will there be more online modes? Will there be a larger number of franchises represented? Find that out and more in the video interview above.
This isn’t the entire story, though. For a more Sonic centric interview, check out Nuckles87’s interview over at Sonic Stadium!
With Binary Domain set to be released next week, SEGAbits was given an exclusive interview with one of SEGA’s finest developers, Toshihiro Nagoshi. Having joined SEGA in the late 1980s with a degree in media, Nagoshi has been involved in several high profile games for SEGA early in his career, from working on Virtua Racing to having worked on the biggest arcade game in the industry, Daytona USA. Moving up the ranks, Nagoshi soon found himself leaving his job at AM2 to head up Amusement Vision in the late 90s during the Dreamcast era. There his teams made two of SEGA’s most well loved series in the modern era, Super Monkey Ball and Yakuza.
Now heading the newly formed Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, we get a chance to talk to Nagoshi after the release of his new studio’s first title, Binary Domain.
Yu Suzuki attended the Toulouse Game Show 2011 and here is an absolutely fantastic interview with Yu Suzuki from the event, possibly the best I’ve ever seen! Yu Suzuki is maybe the most iconic person to have ever worked at Sega, Suzuki is the man behind some of Segas most beloved classics such as OutRun, After Burner, Space Harrier, Hang-On, Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter and of course the ill-fated Shenmue saga.
In this interview by videoxoc.com Yu Suzuki answers some of the most important questions any Sega or Shenmue fan cold pose and they are met with some great replies from Suzuki.
Hit the jump for highlights:
As much as love new IP’s like Bayonetta, it’s nice to see some if the more classic IP’s make a return. Sega president Mike Hayes talked with VG24/7 about some of their popular IP’s and how they go about deciding which one’s to go back to.
We carefully look at each IP and every month, we review the locker of IP and think, ‘how could we release those and if so, what are we going to? Will it be a big game, digital, free-to-play?’ We constantly look at it. What I can say is that you will continue to see a reinvention of classic Sega IP coming to various platforms over the next three-five years.
All I can say to Mike is, JETSETRADIOJETSETRADIOJETSETRADIOJETSETRADIOJETSETRADIO!!
Full article can be found here.
UPDATE: Extra comment at the end of the interview.
Sega had a very strong presence at the San Diego Comic Con this year. Not only did they have a Sega Arcade down in the Gaslamp Quarter, but on the floor they had Captain America at the Marvel booth and two demo stations of Sonic Generations at the Archie Comics booth. Surprisingly (or maybe not), there was no 3DS Generations demo anywhere to be found.
At one of the demo stations, I found Sonic brand manager Aaron Webber. Trust me when I say there’s no more likable fella working at Sega. Look at him. He’s just so gosh darn huggable ya wanna stuff him in your Warner Bros Comic Con bag and take him home with “AHEM!” Anyway, as he manned the station, many people were checking out the demo. Mostly the modern version. In fact, one fan kept coming back every day and managed to beat Aaron’s record on modern by one second! When he had some time, we went to the back of the Archie booth and set up an interview. (I wanted to snuggle, but he refused. XD Kidding, kidding.)
(NOTE: Because this is a Q&A with questions taken from staff from both Sonic Stadium and Segabits, this article will be posted on both sites simultaneously.)
On the Tuesday afternoon of E3, Alex (nuckles87) and I got the privilege of seeing the first new footage of City Escape from Sonic Generations played by Takashi Iizuka himself. Seeing little classic Sonic going through the famous SA2 level was a thrill. We saw as the large GUN truck made every attempt possible to run down the roly-poly hedgehog as two new remixes of “Escape from the City” played through both levels. As he played through he told some interesting tidbits, including the fact that outside of Green Hill zone, all stages on the 3DS will be different from the HD versions and will have levels based on the portable versions of Sonic’s games. Also, voice overs will be done for all nationalities. Not just Japanese and English. He quit the last level as the GUN truck with it’s giant sawblades ran over modern Sonic as he ran out of boost. Here, our Q&A commenced.
Spiral Knights is Three Rings and SEGA’s upcoming free-to-play game. You probably heard us gushing about how much we like it. Right now it’s still in beta, but you will be able to play on April 4th.
We had the chance to get some of our questions answered by the lead designer of the game, Nick Popovich.
Courtesy of our awesome community member Supa comes a great interview with the English voice actor of Ryo Hazuki, Corey Marshall! Fittingly, this interview comes the day after Ryo’s fictional birthday. Ryo would have been forty-two years old. Check out the interview to see what Corey has been up to, hear some great stories from the days of Shenmue 1 and 2 and his thoughts on Shenmue City!
Senile Team started off in 2003 with the creation of the freeware game Beats of Rage, a popular tribute to Streets of Rage. In addition to being an excellent game itself, its game engine has been used to recreate classic arcade games for Dreamcast such as Golden Axe and the Final Fight trilogy.
In 2009, the team made their commercial debut with Rush Rush Rally Racing. Today Roel Van Mastbergen sits down and talks with us about GamesCom and their upcoming game Age of the Beast.
[For the Interview we partnered with DC Emulation and Dreamcast-Scene]
NG:Dev.Team ported the NEO-GEO game Last Hope back in 2007, game sold out. In 2009 they reprinted it with the subtitle Pink Bullets, where they listen to fan feedback and made the game easier.
Now that its the 11th anniversary of the Dreamcast, we have teamed up with DC Emulation and Dreamcast-Scene for this interview. NG:Dev.Team talks about their upcoming game for the console, Fast Striker.
Nuckles87 had a one on one interview with weapons programmer Jeremiah Cauthorn on The Conduit 2.
What can you tell us about the changes in multiplayer?
We’ve added all new levels. We’ve also added six new weapons with an alt-fire mode on each weapon such as the TCP launcher. You can also lay out proxy mines so when people walk by them, they explode. You can also tag people with them. We support 12 player online multiplayer and local splitscreen with 2-4 player multiplayer. We’ve been working closely with Nintendo so we have this new rival system. So if you meet someone in a match you can click their name and add them to your rivals list.
