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SEGA Retrospective: Turn the page, it’s Comix Zone Week!

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ComixZoneWeek
Welcome to Comix Zone week, where we will be giving you a whole week’s worth of Sketch Turner love. If you have a copy of this SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive classic, give it ago for nostalgia’s sake and stay tuned all week long for new content. This fabulous game was first made available in 1995 for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive. It was later ported to Windows PC, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, and PSN. Its also been featured in both Sonic Mega Collection Plus and Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection.

Check out our full overview of Comix Zone after after the break!

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This is Saturn looks back on the SEGA Saturn Action Replay 4M Auto

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In this episode of This is Saturn, I look at something that’s not a video game! Shock, horror!

Rather, we look at the Saturn’s most well-known and most common Action Replay device, the 4M Auto. I was first introduced to this through My Life With SEGA, and made it my goal to get one – and after some delivery shenanigans that involved it being sent to the wrong person, I finally got one! It can do a whole lot beyond the typical cheat device setup of most Action Replays, but is it actually a worthy investment? Watch, as I try and answer that question for you!

This is Saturn is a video series created by British teenager Liam ‘TrackerTD’ Ashcroft, aiming to give an alternative and in-depth look at the good, the bad, and the ugly of SEGA Saturn gaming, all whilst maintaining a somewhat strong accent.

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Swingin’ Report Show #66: Interview with Roger Craig Smith, voice of Batman, Sonic the Hedgehog, and many more!

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This week on the Swingin’ Report Show, hosts Barry and George welcome a guest who has helped shape the sound of SEGA’s speedy mascot – Roger Craig Smith, voice actor of Sonic the Hedgehog! Roger is also well known for voicing Batman, Captain America, Chris Redfield, Ezio Auditore, and more. Recent projects include Batman: Arkham Origins which features the recently released “Cold, Cold Heart” DLC pack and SEGA’s Sonic Boom which spans video games and a television show which release later this year.

Join us as we talk with Roger about voicing Gotham’s Dark Knight and Green Hill’s Blue Blur. Roger also provides details on how he got into the business, and has some great advice for aspiring voice actors. Yes, we even asked him about his work on Valkyria Chronicles and his earliest work as Sonic at Alton Towers.

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SEGA Channel Retro: Independence Day Stream Archive

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Originally broadcast the day before today, I check out a couple of fan favorite SEGA games on the original Xbox console in favor of America’s 4th of July celebration. Watch me play the first hour of Jet Set Radio Future and take notes on how I try to woo the ladies of OutRun 2. Finally I stretch my freedom as far as possible by playing Mario Kart Arcade GP 2 which released on the Triforce Arcade Hardware, which was a cross production between Nintendo, Namco and SEGA.

You can check out our live streams on our Twitch channel or catch the archives on our YouTube channel. You can also expand this article to check each listing for each video, with our Twitch videos reaching 60 frames per second. Also be sure to check out highlights of our previous streams in the related posts!

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SEGAbits at Too Many Games 2014 – “Surviving the Dreamcast Apocalypse” panel and more!

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SEGAbits made its very first convention appearance this year at TooManyGames in Oaks, PA. In addition to walking the convention floor, Barry the Nomad, Patrick aka Kori-Maru (Website of the Dead), David the Lurker (Sonic Retro) and A.J. Rosa (My Life with SEGA) held a panel discussing the life and death of SEGA’s swan song, the Dreamcast. The same panel also included a presentation from Sonic Retro, covering the history of Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s Hidden Palace Zone – with rarely seen footage of Sonic 2‘s release and early efforts to remake the lost zone. We also met with several fellow SEGA fans, gave away a pile of rare SEGA swag, and did we mention the panel was standing room only? SEGAbits Does.

Also featured in this video is a convention walkthrough with the crew, and a one-on-one bout between Patrick and A.J.

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Swingin’ Report Show #65: TooManyGames 2014 Gaming Convention Wrap-Up

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Last week’s assault on TooManyGames in Oaks, PA was a big success! Our panel, “Surviving the Dreamcast Apocalypse: SEGA Fans in the 21st Century”, was packed to the point of standing room only. The panel itself went very well, with a great round table conversation about the Dreamcast’s demise and SEGA’s future, an exciting new episode of My Life with SEGA, a fascinating look at the behind-the-scenes of Sonic 2‘s Hidden Palace Zone, and tons of SEGA prizes. This week’s episode of the Swingin’ Report Show features Barry, A.J., and Kori-Maru’s thoughts on the convention, a bit of gloating about retro gaming purchases, and that awkward feeling of meeting people from the internet in person for the first time. Unfortunately for George, he wasn’t there, but he lives vicariously though us in our lively post convention wrap-up.

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#Sonic23on23 Celebration Round-up

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Sonic23on23
A golden birthday only happens once and we at SEGAbits wanted to make sure there was some fanfare! That’s why we teamed up with Sonic Stadium and Sonic Retro for an entire week of articles, features and videos, with the intent of looking back at Sonic’s past, analyzing the present and looking forward to the future. For those of you who may have missed some of it, we thought we’d post a run-down of all the content the awesome staff of our three sites created.

Enjoy!

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Editorial: False Positive: Sonic, the Media, and Wrongly Diagnosing the Problem

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False Positive

The Sonic franchise has an image problem. It remains disrespected, discredited, and broadly misunderstood for years, not because his titles are consistently good, but rather because the good titles are often swept away and ignored in favor of snark towards past failures.  In this sense, games writers might as well joke about airline food or women drivers.  I’m not a marketing wizard, nor do I claim to have all the answers, but I do think it is important to highlight what the problems are and are not.  At the very least, the culture could stand to be snarky and dismissive about something that happened six months ago instead of six years.

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SEGA Retrospective: Sonic the Hedgehog’s Classic Trilogy

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SONIC22

The following is a guest article from Sonic Stadium writer Brad, written as part of our intersite #Sonic23on23 celebration. Enjoy it, and maybe check out our guest article over at Sonic Stadium written by our own Ben Burnham.

Ah, birthdays. The perfect times for parents to get out those old, embarrassing pictures of you when you were a baby. Our spikey blue hero is no exception to this, however his own classic outgoings were never something to be embarrassed about. In fact, many fans still refer to the original trilogy of games as some of the best games the series has made. I’m not far removed from this ideal, and as such I wanted to look back at these old gems of classic gaming, chronologically.

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SEGAbits Plays Episode #2: Sonic the Hedgehog, Tails, and Donald Duck SEGA Pico games

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SEGAbits Plays is back with another live stream of SEGA Pico games! While episode #0 played several licensed games, this time we’re focusing on Tails and the Music Maker, Sonic the Hedgehog’s Gameworld (the Japanese import and the American version) as well as a very special playthrough of Fishing Pico – Donald no Adventure. Yes, the SEGA Pico had a fishing controller. Joining Barry in this two hour Pico party is Sonic Retro’s Bartman. Keep your eyes peeled for Sonic recolors and an excessively gory drawing of Plucky Duck.

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SEGAbits at E3 Preview: Bayonetta 2

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Bayonetta-2
 
E3 is a great event filled to the brim with great games, but there can only be one game of the show. For me, that game is Bayonetta 2. I have been excited for Bayonetta 2 since that wonderful day in September when Nintendo had announced they had saved the game from its long-rumored cancellation. I’m happy to say that if the E3 demo is anything to go by, Bayonetta 2 is not only set to live up to the legacy of the original, it’s set to surpass it.

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Visual Memories: Digging through Sonic Adventure & Sonic Adventure 2’s DLC

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We’ve said it time and time again here at SEGAbits: the Dreamcast was an incredibly innovative console! Back in the late 90’s, Dreamcast owners could hop online via their console to surf the web and download various things to their VMU including free DLC. That’s right, not only did SEGA offer DLC in the late 90’s, it was free! Continuing our Sonic 23rd birthday celebrations, Liam aka TrackerTD of our This Is Saturn YouTube series put together this great showcase of most of the DLC offered in Sonic Adventure & Sonic Adventure 2. Celebrate New Years, the Dreamcast launch, Halloween, and more in the many fun additions made to these memorable Sonic titles.

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Retro Review: Shadow the Hedgehog

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segabits shadow the hedgehog

On January 4th 2006, I submitted to Gamefaqs a review for Shadow the Hedgehog , a game which at the time I boldly declared “the worst SEGA game I’ve ever played.” To date, the 2/10 score I gave it is the lowest I’ve scored a game in any context, on any site I’ve reviewed for, and nothing I’ve played either before or since has inspired a similar score. My outlook on SEGA at the time was incredibly bleak; it was a game that really tore down my confidence in the company and where it was headed, and for those reasons I’ve left this review, for the most part, as is, as a piece of history for how I viewed SEGA at the time, and where I feared the company was headed. Though I’ve edited it a little for form and trimmed it down, the message remains intact. Read on for my thoughts on Shadow the Hedgehog, directly from 2006, as I sat down to review what was (and still is) the worst game I had ever played.

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