The SEGA Five

Five Great Santas in SEGA History

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Consider this a SEGAbits exclusive: Santa is real! Yes, as it turns out the annual gift giver is the real deal. All those Santas we see at malls? They’re just the middle men. They’re the guys that report to the real Santa. How about all those variations we see of Santa in the media? This is a marketing effort on the real Santa’s part to keep his image alive. Proof of this exists everywhere, but today I thought I’d highlight five notable Santas in SEGA history. After the break, we reveal our Claus.

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The Weekly Five: SEGAbits Holiday Gift Guide

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‘Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through the site, SEGA fans deserved presents, whether naughty or nice.

Okay, “site” and “nice” don’t rhyme. But you get where I’m going with this. The holidays (Christmas specifically, let’s not beat around the bush) are approaching, and you need ideas for what to give the SEGA fan in your life. If you don’t have a SEGA fan in your life, chances are YOU’RE the SEGA fan in your life. So what follows are five unique gift ideas for the holiday Christmas season.

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Five of the Weirdest and/or Worst SEGA Accessories

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SEGA is awesome, there is no doubt about that, but they’re not infallible. Back in the hardware days, SEGA made their fair share of mistakes. I won’t name off the 32X and SEGA CD like a lot of gaming sites do, because to be honest, as an owner of both systems I have to say they have some really great titles. I’ll even defend accessories that only exist for the sake of a few games. Just because the Dreamcast fishing controller is rarely used, due to the limited library of fishing games, does not make it a bad accessory. It’s just highly specialized, and when put to use it is very effective. Same goes for the Samba de Amigo maracas and Virtual-On’s twin sticks. But there are SEGA accessories and add-ons out there that were failures, or were simply too weird to take seriously. This week we’ll take a look at five of these hiccups in SEGA’s history.

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SEGA Five: Why I’m Glad to be a SEGA Fan

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Here in America, we just finished celebrating Thanksgiving and went through hell with Black Friday. Now I’m sitting here putting together a list of why I’m glad to be a SEGA fan this year. It seems that SEGA hardly gets the credit they deserve for some of the things they do, but when they do something wrong everyone notices. So why am I a SEGA fan?

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The Weekly Five: Sonic’s Next Adventure

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While Sonic Generations is just over a week old, fans from all corners of the interwebs have started to discuss what’s next for the hedgehog. I would say it’s a bit too soon to start speculation on the next game, but even series producer Iizuka has started hinting towards the future. So with Generations considered completed and released, let’s look towards 2012 and beyond, and just what we might expect from the next Sonic game!

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SEGAbits Halloween Playlist

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Believe it or not, the day before Sonic Generations releases there’s a little holiday going on called Halloween. Everybody has their own Halloween traditions, mine focus on pumpkin carving and scary movies. This year I thought I’d mix things up by throwing video games into the mix, specifically five games with a Halloween slant, each played on a different SEGA console. What follows are the five games I’ll be playing over the Halloweekend, and I hope if you have any of them you’ll revisit them as well.

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The Weekly Five: I’m Lovin’ Modern Sonic

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The second Sonic Generations demo is out, and with it comes the first public demo of modern Sonic! Of course, we’ve had hours of footage and pages and pages of modern Sonic impressions. But none of that compares to actually playing the game. Having finally played the demo, I can happily say that modern Sonic is the best the 3D ‘hog has played in the HD era. Perhaps only being rivaled by the 3D Sonic of the Adventure titles. To celebrate Sonic’s return to form, let’s look at five reasons I’m lovin’ modern Sonic!

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The Weekly Five: SEGA locations I’d want to visit

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There’s a certain feeling I get when I’m playing a video game and, suddenly, I find myself absorbed into its world. It’s a feeling even greater than being pulled into a movie I’m watching, or even a book I’m reading, in the sense that this is a world in which I have control over my character. In a video game, you’re not simply along for the ride, but rather, you play a major role in the main character’s journey; you’re the force that guides your character through these worlds. SEGA has created some stunning worlds over the years, and the five I’m going to list here only scratch the surface. But these are a few of the worlds that SEGA has created which, ever since I first got to explore them, I’ve been wishing for a way to transport my real life self into them. Hit the break to read on.

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The Weekly Five: Sonic Generations Classic Callbacks

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While Sonic Generations release is still a month away, thanks to the many screens and video clips released by SEGA, fans have been able to pick apart every pixel. Some screens feature road signs with in-jokes, while others feature references to classic Sonic stages from the Genesis/Mega Drive days. Yes, even though the game only features a handful of classic era zones, that hasn’t kept Sonic team from including callbacks to zones not featured in the game. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll run through five of these way past cool references.

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The Weekly Five: Best “Post-Dreamcast” Games

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When the Dreamcast breathed its last back in 2001, many thought it was for the best. “They’ll be more successful as a 3rd party publisher!” “They’ll be able to make more money since they’ll be on more systems!” But sadly, that wouldn’t be the case for a long, long time. In fact, only in the last two years has there been a big enough turnaround in quality. When Dreamcast died, much of the creativity and spark of the developers seemed to die with it, 2006 being the best example of Sega’s worst time in the industry.

But not all of it was bad. In fact, their initial outings on GameCube and X-Box were quite strong. Even during Sega’s worst times in 2003-2008, there were some diamonds in the rough. Continue on to see my top 5 favorite “post-Dreamcast” Sega titles from 2001-present.

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The Weekly Five: Rise of Nightmares X The House of the Dead

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I’d think any true blue SEGA fan has a special place in their heart for The House of the Dead franchise. Being an arcade lightgun classic, and spanning three console generations, The House of the Dead has produced a number of sequels, spin-offs and even ventured outside of the video game world by way of two horrible films. When Rise of Nightmares, SEGA’s latest Kinect title, was revealed at last year’s Tokyo Game Show, little was known of the game aside from “save your wife from an evil scientist”. Was it internally developed? Was it a House of the Dead title? We just couldn’t tell based on the short and creepy trailer. But now that time has passed, and the game is in stores, we have all the answers. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll take a look at five reasons why I think Rise of Nightmares sits well alongside the beloved House of the Dead series, despite not carrying the series title, and why HotD fans should check the game out!

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Weekly Five: Best Unknown Dreamcast games

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We all know about Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, and Jet Set Radio. I don’t think there is a self-respecting SEGA fan alive who doesn’t know what all the best Dreamcast games are. But the Dreamcast’s library is large, and I’ll bet there are five games out there many of you have not played. This list is devoted to those games, the most overlooked awesome games on the Dreamcast!

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The Weekly Five: Great American Dreamcast Ads

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It’s Labor Day weekend here in America, and only a week until the Dreamcast’s 12th birthday! So I thought it would be fitting to present to you a weekly five that is light on the labor for me, and Dreamcast related for you. Thus, we’re talking a look at five great Dreamcast adverts that ran on American television. So let’s get started, less reading more watching!

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The Weekly Five: Downloadable Titles to be EXCITED About

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SEGA has a lot of exciting boxed retail releases on the way, but how about the downloadable games? I’m happy to say that there are a number of great titles heading to XBLA, PSN and mobile devices! In fact, dare I say this, as a whole I am more excited for the downloadable releases than I am the retail releases. Recently, SEGA has had a big upswing in the quality and quantity of retro rereleases. What’s more, SEGA will also be offering long awaited games via online marketplaces and are set to debut new IPs via this route. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll be highlighting five upcoming downloadable titles that we’re excited to play!

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