House of the Dead isn’t exactly the most beautiful game series, but it still required a substantial amount of concept art in order to determine the design of the protagonists, enemies, and game play scenarios. Below is a load of concept art, provided by our sister site Website of the Dead. As usual, we won’t be posting everything they have, so be sure to check out their database here!
Also, remember to submit something to our art contest!
Halloween is upon us. Now, on My Life with SEGA, I’ll show you something really scary….
Need I say more?
Twenty-five years ago today, SEGA released what was arguably their most beloved and popular console: the SEGA Mega Drive.
Since April 1st of this year, SEGAbits has been teamed with Sonic Retro, the internet’s best resource for all things Sonic the Hedgehog. But the folks at Sonic Retro didn’t want to limit themselves to just Sonic, and so the SEGA Retro wiki was born. SEGA Retro covers anything and everything SEGA, from hardware to games to arcade titles. Despite being less than four years old, the wiki has amassed nearly seven thousand articles and continues to grow. The SEGA Retro wiki has been just a click away from SEGAbits, by selecting “Info” from our navigation bar, but we wanted to go one step further and highlight the many excellent wiki entries in a new SEGAbits feature entitled “SEGA Retro Spotlight”.
Given the significance today has for SEGA history, we’re going to highlight SEGA Retro’s entry on the SEGA Mega Drive.
Its almost that time of season where most kids are waiting to tell their parents what modern day war shooter they want under their Christmas tree. Its also the time where older folks, like ourselves on the site, think about our previous holidays and how we used to make our parents waste hoards of cash to buy our affection. Wasn’t that great? Well this week on Monday Memories we will look at the 1996 holiday Toy ‘R’ Us video game catalog. I remember these where awesome as a kid, it was like window shopping for games in my underwear.
Join us in our next gaming community night for multiplayer mayhem featuring the SEGA Saturn’s hit title, Guardian Heroes on XBLA. The event will began this Sunday, October 27th at 6pm EST. If you want to join, send invites to KoriSX15 on Xbox Live. See you all online!
In order to inspire prospective participants in our re-launched art contest, we’ll be running a featured centered around SEGA art throughout the contest! We’ll be starting off with one of SEGA’s most artistically amazing games of all time, NiGHTS into Dreams. We’ll be featuring a sampling of the concept art you can currently find on NiGHTS into Dreams.com. If the art below interests you, I recommend checking them out, as they are a great repository of all things NiGHTS!
How would you like to win some fabulous SEGA merchandise, much of which will never be released to the public? I am happy to announce that now you can, and all you have to do is participate in a little art contest to express your SEGA love. If you think you can draw, shoot a good video, or even if you just fancy yourself a good writer, all you have to do is create a piece of SEGA art and send it into segabitscontest at gmail dot com. From there we will pick our favorite piece of art! Of course, since art is subjective, we will also have five runner up prizes.
The grand prize will consist of:
A set of Valkyria Chronicles 2 pins, a set of Jet Set Radio pins, 2 different Castle of Illusion pins, the original Valkyria Chronicles art book, the Eyes of Bayonetta art book and DVD, the original Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack, the Jet Set Radio soundtrack, a commission from Sonic comic artist Tracy Yardley.
We will also be offering five runner up prizes consisting of all the pins listed above. The contest will be ending November 26th. Unlike Summer of Art, don’t count on any extensions.
You can find some more information about this contest (as well as what happened to the Summer of Art contest) below.
Those who follow us on our social networks have likely seen our seasonal spooky posts and know full well that the Sonic the Hedgehog series and Halloween-inspired creatures and settings have crossed paths numerous times. Thanks to the common platforming trope of a scary setting, we’ve seen ghosts in Sonic & Knuckles Sandopolis Zone, referred to as Hyudoro. We’ve also seen ghosts in Sonic Adventure 2, though this time the ghosts were called Boo and they had a leader named King Boom Boo. These Boo ghosts were Knuckles’ worst nightmare as he ventured into Pumpkin Hill, a stage which featured fantastic music accompanied by some pretty funny lyrics including “I’m walkin’ through valleys cryin’ pumpkin in the alley”. Most recently, Sonic Lost World saw the return of Sonic Adventure 2‘s Boo ghosts.
Despite all of these spooky stages and enemies, no Sonic stage came closer to Halloween than 2004’s Sonic Heroes which featured a full haunted house stage called Hang Castle. Featuring invisible walkways, levitating platforms, pumpkin-headed ghosts, and changing gravity, Hang Castle was truly bizarre. To this day, it is the only Sonic stage that scared me thanks to a creepy skeleton that peeked around a corner. Run towards where the skeleton should be and… he’s gone! Silent Hill has nothing on Hang Castle. Accompanying Hang Castle is a great soundtrack that fuses hip-hop samples and instruments that wouldn’t be out of place in a 1930’s cartoon featuring a haunted house and dancing skeletons. Give the track above a listen, and after the break… Pumpkin Hill. Because we can’t do a Halloween themed Tuesday Tunes without it!
Written by My Life with SEGA’s A.J. Rosa
Much has been said about SEGA’s last console add-on. Jaremy Parish of 1UP.com stated in his article ’20 Years Ago, SEGA Gave Us the SEGA CD’ that the 32X “tainted just about everything it touched.” GamesRadar was far more damning with their Top-10 List of Worst Consoles, where the “product of boneheaded short-sightedness” placed ninth. Oh, that wasn’t harsh enough. They went on to call it “an embarrassing footnote in console history, as well as an object lesson in why console makers shouldn’t split their user base with pricey add-ons.”
Obviously, the 32X has left quite an impression. That’s nothing new though. Prior to it’s release, the 32X was met with some enthusiasm; most notably, I feel, in EGM2’s July ’94 issue. In their special feature “32X Brings the Arcade Home!”, they were impressed with its technical specifications and ever widening list of third-party support, such as Activision, Atlus, Capcom, Core Design, Crystal Dynamics, GameTek, Interplay, Konami, Time Warner Interactive, Vic Tokai, Virgin Interactive, Acclaim and Sunsoft….just to name a few. Kenji Hiraoka, former president of Konami of America, is quoted “We have seen the specs on 32X, and are thoroughly impressed by how powerful it is. We can make amazing games on this platform.”
Shame they didn’t, which brings us to…. My personal Top 5 List of Cancelled 32X Titles!
Obviously SEGAbits isn’t the first and won’t be the last website dedicated to the big blue. Throughout the life of the internet, there have been thousands upon thousands of SEGA related websites and out of all those websites there are few webpages that we would visit regularly. Dave’s Sega Saturn Page was one of those sites I always kept bookmarked along with others that we will most likely cover here on Monday Memories.
The screaming continues on My Life with SEGA with Aliens vs. Predator for PlayStation 3. For the first time ever, I’m reviewing a current generation title on a non-SEGA console, based on the long-standing franchises from 20th Century Fox.
Both franchises have experienced their fair share of hardships. The Alien series was effectively derailed after the ill-conceived Alien 3 in 1992, while the Predator went dormant after the been-there-done-that reception of 1990’s Predator 2. In spite of this, the comic series published by Dark Horse comics has fairly well received since its conception. It has lived on in comics, novels, films and, of course, video games.
The first game based on the series appeared on Atari’s swan song, the Jaguar, and grew from there. Now, it has found its way to PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, published by our beloved SEGA….
So, how does it stack up now that it has been cast into several bargain bins across the country with little reverence? Let’s find out! Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!
Hello and welcome to our new feature called ‘SEGA Cinema‘ where we provide commentary tracks for SEGA related films. For our first film we’re checking out Shenmue The Movie, which was released in Japanese cinema’s back in 2001. Go grab some popcorn and join George, Barry the Nomad and Bartman while we watch some of the best acting that early 2000’s gaming had to offer.
[MP3]
The ground breaking drama Breaking Bad aired its last episode last week, so we decided to do a round up of all the SEGA references in the show. We did an article about Jesse Pinkman, one of the main characters from the show playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2006 (the poor unfortunate soul) and now we will do a round up of all the stuff we missed!
My Life with SEGA: Season 2 opens with a three-part episode detailing the Alien franchise, from Alien Trilogy on SEGA Saturn to Aliens vs. Predator on PS3, even Aliens: Colonial Marines. Ugh! I think I just vomited a little. In my pants.
Anyway, in this week’s episode, I’m revisiting Alien Trilogy. You may be thinking, “Jesus, what more does he have to say about it? Move on already!” Well, I wasn’t entirely happy with that video to begin with, and my feeling’s towards it have changed a bit since….2011? Good lord.
Without further ado, I give you Alien Trilogy: Revisited. Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!
Continuing our The Cave coverage, which we will hereby refer to as “The SEGAbits 2013 Cave In” (or not) we have an interview with Ron Gilbert provided to us by SEGA. Double Fine’s The Cave, available on several digital platforms and releasing to iOS on October 3rd with enhanced touchscreen controls, is an adventure game in the vein of the LucasArts classic Maniac Mansion. Ron Gilbert is the man behind many LucasArts classics as well as the The Cave.