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5 SEGA Games Only on XBOX

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Before I kick off  “The Weekly Five”, I want to say that my thoughts and support go out to our friends in Japan and other countries who were affected by the recent natural disasters. While they might be half a world away, there are still ways to help. Seek out charities or check out relief organizations like the Red Cross to donate. Every little bit helps.

When it came time for me to transition from the sixth to the seventh and current generation of consoles, I made up a list of pluses and minuses. PS3 offered blu-ray, 360 offered a strong achievement and avatar system. PS3 lacked PS2 backwards compatibility (with one exception), 360 lacked Yakuza. In the end, the 360 won out, mainly due to price but also due to the fact that the console could play a number of original XBOX games. I gained shelf space AND could still play JSRF and Panzer Dragoon Orta. Despite this, some XBOX exclusives were left in the dust when it came to 360 backwards compatibility, either due to technical reasons or lack of interest on Microsoft’s part. Today we’re looking at five of the SEGA games only found and only playable on the original XBOX. These cannot be played on a 360, thus excluding Panzer Dragoon Orta and JSRF. You dig?

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SEGA Tunes Vol.2 “Unlikely Melodies by Jamie Maxwell”

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Alright ladies and gentlemen we are back, welcome to Tuesday Tunes Vol 2. We apologise for missing last Tuesday but to quote Kazuo Hirai, ” we could’ve given you Tuesday Tunes Vol 1.5 but we took the necessary time to give you Vol.2″ (yes, the quote isn’t exactly accurate).

Last week we introduced you to the melodic tunes of “Unlikely Melody by Jamie Maxwell”, this week we venture deep in to the world of his favorite SEGA games while playing his harmonious renditions of 16-Bit classics.

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SEGA Sequels: My top 5 SEGA Sequels

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Maybe it’s because I view video games each as “experiences” as opposed to just looking at them as “games,” but I’m definitely judgemental of sequels when they’re announced.

Let me try to put this into perspective. If I’m enjoying a game, I dig everything about journeying from its intro all the way to the final save screen after the end credits. Gameplay is definitely an important aspect of what makes me consider a great game *great* but it’s not the only aspect. For me the sense of discovery that a new experience brings is another major reason I love playing video games, and it’s the reason I often don’t care about sequels. I just find it a rarity that a sequel that’s not at least five years away from the original (or on new hardware) has the capability to replicate that same sense of discovery for me.

Then there are times when I’m surprised.

There have been many SEGA sequels over the years that have been able to break through the barriers that usually prevent me from enjoying sequels as much as the originals. I’m looking at my top 5 in this week’s SEGA Sequel Saturdays, Episode 7.

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5 Ingredients for a Great Crazy Taxi Movie

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Believe it or not, a Crazy Taxi movie had been in the works as early as 2001! Initially, director Richard Donner (of the first Superman film) had been attached to direct an adaptation of the hit SEGA video game. Said Donner in an interview with About.com, “Everybody in my company loves it. Everybody loved Crazy Taxi from the beginning. I used to love to play it and the opportunity of turning it into a film came up so now we’ve got to [adapt] a game that has no characters that come to life. So, now we’ve got to create the characters so that you care about it and you care about them, you get emotionally charged by them and committed”. Donner further stated that he wasn’t certain that the game characters would be in the film, unless they work and can be embellished upon. As for location, Donner had decided on New York City.

Of course, these plans never came to fruition and due to difficulties in finding a plot for the film, Donner dropped the project and the rights were picked up by Mindfire Entertainment, the idiots behind those awful House of the Dead movies. Thankfully, Mindfire has yet to bring the proposed Crazy Taxi film to screens (or direct to DVD) and perhaps they have since lost the rights. Despite any hopes for a Crazy Taxi movie being dead in the water, as fans we can still dream. So join me as I reveal the five ingredients for a grrrrrreat Crazy Taxi movie!

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Hands On Impressions: Yakuza Of The End

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I’ve recently played through the Japanese demo of Sega’s upcoming Yakuza of the End. A spinoff sequel to Sega’s popular Yakuza franchise where zombies help take a bite out of (organized) crime. (With all due respects to Mcgruff the crime dog.) Is there enough meat in this demo to sink your teeth into? (Okay, that was lame.)

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SEGA Sequel Saturdays: Sonic Adventure 3

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Welcome to SEGA Sequel Saturdays, Episode 6. This week I’m going to take on the challenge of creating another Sonic Adventure, the series in which Sonic broke free from his 2D universe and into full, uncompromised 3D gameplay. We have had many Sonic games since Sonic Adventure 2, but each has been a fairly radical departure from where Sonic’s 3D escapades began back on the Dreamcast. In this episode I’ll look at how a Sonic Adventure 3 could be great, assuming SEGA wouldn’t just be using the “Adventure” name for sales purposes, but actually making another game fully in the Sonic Adventure template. As always, we welcome and appreciate your craaaaaaaazy responses in the Comments section below.

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The 5 Best SEGA Network Scrap Heap Photos

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Late last year I created a Flickr group entitled The SEGA Network Scrap Heap. The purpose of the Scrap Heap is to collect photos of SEGA collections and SEGA things. Since its creation, the group has grown to 17 active members and over one hundred and sixty photos. Not too shabby!

As the group has so many photos to sift through, I thought I’d share five of my favorites. After the break, check out my five favorites and don’t forget to check out the SGNW Scrap Heap yourself and please add to it. The more photos the better!

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Poll results: Majority of readers excited about Anarchy Reigns

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For our first SEGAbits poll,  we asked you if you guys where excited about Anarchy Reigns. Almost half of you (42%) said you guys where excited over the game, 38% stated that they needed more information and 20% didn’t care about the game.

I’m quite surprised at the number that didn’t care about the title. But what can you expect, web is full of haters. Now we have a new poll:
How would you improve the Dreamcast Collection? Choices up on the side bar.

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SEGA Tunes Vol.1 “Unlikely Melody’s by Jamie Maxwell”

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This feature has been in the works for a long time at SEGA BITS and finally today we are ready to launch our latest weekly feature “Tuesday Tunes”, a feature that really doesn’t need any introduction but we’ll give you one anyways. SEGA has been making awesome games for over 30 decades often the instrumental variable in making awesome games into cherished classics is often the music. Would the original Sonic the Hedgehog really be as memorable today had it not featured the awesome tunes composed by legends such as Yuzo Koshiro?

In addition to the tunes we will focus on the games they stem from, the musicians who composed them & the fans that really took them to the next level. To kick things off, we interviewed one such fan; Jamie Maxwell of Unlikely Melody’s (YouTube Artist).

Maxwell regularly reinterprets retro tracks for Classical Guitar (Acoustic Covers), he first blipped on our radar back at SEGA NERDS when he captured our undivided attention with an amazing cover of Ice Cap Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Since then we have been regularly keeping tabs on him and recently I had the privillage of conducting an interview with him.

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Updated 22/Feb: Fast-Striker Dreamcast Promo Spotted in Tokyo

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Updated 22/Feb: NG:Dev.Team has confirmed this promo is made, but they found it cool as well.Feast your eyes on the first post GD-Rom Dreamcast Promo

Reported by Dreamcast-Scene yesterday. Certainly something you don’t see everyday. This is a photograph taken by Shumps.Com forum member ‘Rancor‘ in a retail videogame store featuring a large poster with info on the game, and an lcd monitor displaying what we can guess to be the trailer. This is probably the first post gd-rom era Dreamcast game to be promoted in a retail store, and I doubt it will be the last.

What I find intresting is the Dreamcast logo’s featured prominently on the promo; NG:Dev.Team or any other indie publisher all have been careful enough to never use any SEGA copyrighted material. Either NG:Dev.Team has earned approval from SEGA, or this promo is made by a die hard Dreamcast fanatic who wants to promote the game and SEGA’s last system. We have contacted NGDT for more information, for now this is filed under fan made.

Source: Shumps.Com

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SEGA Sequel Saturdays: Comix Zone

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This is my first time taking on the ‘SEGA Sequel Saturdays’ feature, I hope I do it justice. My pick is Comix Zone, it might have been a very hard and short game, but it still remains as one of my favorite SEGA Genesis titles of all time.

I think with PSN & XBLA games doing so well, it might be time for SEGA to do a proper sequel for this title. Move over Sonic 4, this is the Genesis game that deserved a sequel!

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5 Things SEGA Fans Need to Stop Doing

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I love SEGA fans, they’re my favorite type of video game fan. However there are things that some of them do that make me want to smack my skull against a wall. Consider these to be the five things that grind my gears, five things that SEGA fans could easily stop doing and should stop doing. Just what are those five things? Read on.

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