MadWorld poster spotted in new Weeds episode


Something I like to do is look for SEGA related things in shows. Its like my fetish, my sick pathetic fetish.

In the newest episode of Weeds (Season 6, Episode 2), the Botwins are on the run and need to get new identities. So what do they do? Get fake IDs from a nerd. No seriously, look at him, he is a real mouth breather.

Oh, he also goes by the “Chinaman” in the show. I guess its some weird nerdy kung fu white kid stereotype thing?

(Seen SEGA related items or references in a recent show or movie? Send us a tip)

Sega Series – Hurt and Healed.

Disclaimer; What follows is the humble opinions of a Sega fan! You may not agree with these opinions, but that would just make you WRONG! 😉

I would usually argue that anyone still toting the ‘Sega makes crap games’ line needs a swift kick to the nuts. Not only because this all to common phrase is simply not true, but also because this must mean the person suggesting such a thing would have missed a lot of frankly brilliant Sega games released recently such as Yakuza 3, Valkyria Chronicles, Bayonetta, Phantasy Star Portable 2, Napoleon: Total War and After Burner Climax to name but a few released this year.

Not to mention, we often tend to forget forget Sega has a strong Arcade presents to uphold. Games like Border Break, Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown and Lets go Island are all quality games that have yet to see the light of day outside of a Japanese arcade.

I’m not here to talk about all of the things SEGA’s done right, though. Anyone who’s actually interested in good SEGA games can find that out for themselves. What I intend to talk about is how this misconception started and where it does have some grounds in truth. We’ll be looking at the games Sega really did mess up, how they were fixed and if they weren’t how I personally feel they could be.
So let’s start this ruckus!

Hit the jump for more of my ramblings.

Is that a SEGA arcade in your pocket?

A little over a month ago I went to my family cabin in northern Minnesota. It had been nearly seven years since I had last been there, and yet when I went back to the same bargain warehouse that I had been to back in 2003 I found the exact same SEGA Tiger LCD handhelds that I had seen hanging on the pegs all those years ago. Guess nobody wanted them.

The Tiger SEGA Pocket Arcade line hit stores during the Saturn years at a time when the clunky old Tiger handhelds were on their way out. Tiger, it seemed, was struggling in a world of Game Boy Colors and was attempting to use the names of big name SEGA Saturn console titles to sell cheap little flip open handhelds. I’m going to assume Tiger failed as a good number of these were found at an overstock warehouse, marked down from $15 to $8 to a final $4.79.

Click here to read more!

Aliens vs Predator sells over 300,000 in the UK

 

The success of the new Aliens vs Predator game has no doubt taken everyone, including SEGA, by surprise and recently released figures from January – June 2010 just shows how much of a big impact the title has had for SEGA’s fortune in the United Kingdom. Not only did the title manage to get into a top ten position at eighth, but it even managed to outsell Final Fantasy XIII (Though to be fair to the latter, it was released a month later)

Top 10 selling games in UK (Jan-Jun):
Position / Title / Publisher / Sales
1. Just Dance (Ubisoft) – 940358
2. Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar/Take2) – 819161
3. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 (Electronic Arts) – 590580
4. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Activision Blizzard) – 540761
5. Wii Fit Plus (Nintendo) – 499998
6. Wii Sports Resort (Nintendo) – 439920
7. 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa (Electronic Arts) – 396858
8. Aliens vs Predator (SEGA) – 359968
9. Final Fantasy 13 (Square Enix Europe) – 339996
10. FIFA 10 (Electronic Arts) – 318719

It rounds off an excellent achievement for both publisher and developer and no doubt spells good news for Aliens fans eagerly awaiting either a sequel to Aliens vs Predator or the up and coming Aliens: Colonail Marines. It’ll be interesting to see what final sales figures for the title will be, as in console specfic charts for the UK, the title still retains a high title position but no doubt that Aliens vs Predator has been a massive success for SEGA.

[Source: Chart-track]

SEGA Sammy group post profits of 7 billion yen

 

There was plenty of good news in SEGA Sammy’s recently disclosed financial report for the first period for the fiscal year ending March 2011, although note all of it was a rossy picture. Despite that, the group posted strong profits of 7 billion yen this quarter, an exceptionally sound result considering recent reports from other major publishers. Read on to follow the general breakdown. 

Classic SEGA Magazine Corner: UK’s Dreamcast Magazine – September 2001

Welcome back, true believers, to another trip down memory lane. This time it’s back to September 2001 by way of Dreamcast Magazine!

Dreamcast Magazine was an unofficial UK based mag, and as you can see, it stuck with SEGA’s white box of wonder until the bitter end. Unlike last week’s look at SEGA Megazone during the lead up to the Saturn, this magazine is from the darker days, when the Dreamcast console had been discontinued and releases were beginning to slow down to a trickle. You can tell a console is struggling when the magazine cover article is a game that was never intended for it. As you will all know though, the Dreamcast went out with a hell of a bang, and was still giving us a number of great titles to play.

Hit the jump to see tears of both joy and sorrow from the end days of Dreamcast Magazine.

Classic SEGA Magazine Corner: SEGA Megazone – July 1995

Ahh the Halcyon years of gaming before the internet. When gamers roamed the earth, waiting eagerly each month for a new issue of their favourite magazine to get the latest news and reviews for upcoming games. Let’s take a look back at a classic SEGA periodical with the July 1995 issue of SEGA Megazone Magazine. If you think this is nifty, wait until you hit the jump and see the rest of what the magazine had in stock. There will be boobs…

Cancelled Dreamcast games that looked awesome


When I was in middle school, all I did was read the Official Dreamcast magazine and look at the long list of upcoming games. There is always something about seeing new information about a game before it hits the store shelves, especially when those games you are looking forward to never make it to the shelves. You are stuck wondering what those games could have been, if they came out.

Here is my salute to the most awesome looking cancelled Dreamcast games.

UK Charts for the month of May

Sonic and SEGA Allstars Racing was one of SEGA's top sellers
Sonic and SEGA Allstars Racing could be quite the seller for SEGA

MCVUK have released the chart positions for the top 50 multiformat titles in the month of May for the United Kingdom. And SEGA was not short of having a significant presence in the charts. Compared to most other third party publishers, SEGA did relatively well but there might be some not too welcoming news on one particular new IP, hit the jump to read on and find out which titles did the best.

Used game sales in Japan 2009: Yakuza 3 charts high

It’s quite a dubious honour, but Yakuza 3 has become the fourth best selling used game in the whole of Japan for 2009, earning a staggering 230,000 sales used for Japanese retailers. SEGA will feel somewhat uncomfortable with such a high figure, such number is almost 50% of Yakuza 3’s first hand sales which came to around 500,000.  The full list is below

2009 Top 25 Used Game Sales (Famitsu/Enterbrain; 2008-12-28~2009-12-27):

01 [NDS] Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Sky – 378,000 / NEW
02 [PSP] Dissidia: Final Fantasy – 293,000 / 303,000
03 [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G – 267,000 / 650,000
04 [PS3] Yakuza 3 – 230,000 / NEW
05 [PS3] Resident Evil 5 – 229,000 / NEW
06 [NDS] Pokemon Diamond/Pearl – 222,000 / 1,086,000
07 [NDS] Pokemon Platinum – 189,000 / 274,000
08 [PS3] White Knight Chronicles – 186,000 / NEW
09 [NDS] Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride – 173,000 / 354,000
10 [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable – 166,000 / 322,000
11 [PSP] Monster Hunter Portable 2nd – 156,000 / 1,161,000
12 [NDS] New Super Mario Bros. – 154,000 / 917,000
13 [PSP] Dynasty Warriors: Strikeforce – 153,000 / NEW
14 [PS3] Dynasty Warriors: Gundam 2 – 143,000 / 147,000
15 [NDS] Animal Crossing: Wild World – 143,000 / 876,000
16 [PS3] Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots – 141,000 / 274,000
17 [PS2] Super Robot Wars Z – 140,000 / 204,000
18 [PS2] Final Fantasy XII – 133,000 / 1,016,000
19 [NDS] Dragon Quest IV: The Chapters of the Chosen – 125,000 / 639,000
20 [NDS] Chrono Trigger – 123,000 / 176,000
21 [PS2] Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King – 123,000 / 1,769,000
22 [PSP] Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 – 122,000 / NEW
23 [NDS] Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker – 120,000 / 739,000
24 [PSP] Mobile Suit Gundam: Gundam Vs. Gundam – 120,000 / 178,000
25 [PS3] Grand Theft Auto IV – 117,000 / 143,000

[Source: NeoGAF]

Swingin’ Report Show #6: Post E3 Special


Welcome to the 6th SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show. This is our Post E3 Special, where we talk about all things that happen at E3, including new SEGA news and rumors.

[audio:http://www.segabits.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/Segabits-Swingin-Report-Show-6.mp3]
[RSS] – [Direct Download]

I know I promised I would get the iTunes feed up again, I have decided to submit a new one. I will update this post when I get the OK e-mail from iTunes.

Conduit 2 interview with Jeremiah Cauthorn


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.

Who is your favorite SEGA Dad?


Father’s day usually has me picturing Football and beer, but today we will talk about SEGA dads, which is your favorite? My vote goes to Iwao Hazuki. First of all he was voiced in Japan by Hiroshi Fujioka, the man that played Segata Sanshiro. Already awesome.

In the game Shenmue, there is also flash backs to Ryo and his dad as kids, like where he convinces him to eat carrots, even though he dislikes them. If you know kids, you know you have to be pretty good to convince them do what they don’t want to. Especially me, I was a fucking brat.

Not to mention he gave the location of the Dragon Mirror to Lan Di so he wouldn’t hurt his son. Even though we know its very important object, so much so that he would fight and risk his own life to protect it.

Who is your favorite SEGA dad?