I sit down with Joe Neate, Producer for Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed, to have a talk with him about the game. Will All Stars be usable online? Will there be more online modes? Will there be a larger number of franchises represented? Find that out and more in the video interview above.
This isn’t the entire story, though. For a more Sonic centric interview, check out Nuckles87’s interview over at Sonic Stadium!
Today, Sega has officially announced that Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed is coming to PS3, 360, Vita, 3DS and other consoles this fall. The “Transformed” subtitle refers to the fact that your vehicle transforms into other modes depending on what kind of track you’re racing onto. This includes the traditional road track, a water/river track that changes your vehicles into a watercraft, or the not-so friendly skies where your vehicle turns into a plane for some air combat racing. There are 16 brand new and unique courses to race on and several classic Sega IP’s will make their first appearance in this game. This goes from a glorious Panzer Dragoon track to Vyse from Skies of Arcadia as a new racer.
Both me and Nuckles87 got to check out the game last week in San Fransisco. You can check his hands-on over at Sonic Stadium or just stay here and check out my own preview. On top of that, we got me, Nuckles87 and Sven Joscylene from Sonic Stadium and Spong on a brand-new Sonic Talk later today for a one-hour special all about the game AND a video interview with Sumo Digital’s own Joe Neat tomorrow. Do we love you guys or what?! Not enough? Click the link to check out screenshots of the game! Our coverage is gonna set your heart racing!
Craig Harris. If you hear the name you probably recall him from his work at IGN, well he is now working over at SEGA on Aliens: Colonial Marines. He just happened to be on the podcast The Mush Room Podcast (aka not the best podcast ever aka The Swingin’ Report Show) and had a lot to say about the Wii U. One thing he did confirm is that the game wouldn’t be coming out on Wii U if the Wii U was inferior to current gen systems.
“Nintendo… has to release hardware that’s of the expectations of the gamer today … I don’t think we would be bringing the game to a system that would be inferior to current gen. (HD) systems.” – Craig Harris
I guess there is quite a bit of rumors about the power of the Wii U. I’m on the side of those that think it will most likely be better hardware than current generation systems. The issue though, its not going to compete against the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. It’s going to compete against the “Xbox 720” and the “Playstation 4”. I don’t think it will have the power to match those, but we will see.
Seems that Gearbox Software CEO Randy Pitchford is going to pimp the Wii U version of their long awaited shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines. Pitchford told Vox Games that the Alien shooter will take advantage of the system’s ‘innovative’ tablet controller.
“The Wii U version has so much more to offer. No other platform can do what the Wii U can do. If you love [Xbox] 360 games, you are not used to being in a world where you have this new interface. But once you get used to that, you imagine the possibilities. There are some opportunities that are just not possible on any platform that does not have that device. I don’t want to give spoilers away on some of the things we are thinking of or thing we have actually implemented already, but there are a lot of cool opportunities with that device that are going to make a very unique and compelling experience on that platform,” – Randy Pitchford, CEO of Gearbox Studios
What do I think about this? I think it is a bit of nonsense. Don’t get me wrong, the Wii U might be a good system, but selling me the same game from the Playstation 3/Xbox 360/PC on a Nintendo console with a new ‘second screen’ on my hands isn’t innovative. How is this better for me? Not only that, the game is coming this autumn to PC, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360. The Wii U version is set to come out sometime ‘by the end of the year.‘
If you log into your XBLA account, you will be able to purchase the fabulous Daytona USA and SEGA Rally Online Arcade ports for only 400 MS. These usually go for 800 MS. The sale will be good all the way till April 3rd.
What are you guys waiting for? No excuses, pick these games up now.
So if you didn’t know, Japanese consumers have been treated to free DLC for Binary Domain. We English speakers haven’t received such luxury. But you know what? I really want this DLC, since it lets you play as Yakuza characters in mulitplayer. Sadly, I own the Playstation 3 version and I tried downloading the DLC from the Japanese PSN store. Guess what? Nothing.
Though the Xbox 360 version will work with the Japanese DLC. Isn’t it ironic that it doesn’t work on the Playstation 3 after they boasted so much about it being region free? Thanks to Sanus, who wrote about the Xbox 360 DLC being region free. The DLC adds Goro Majima as the ‘Crusher’ class with a shotgun, Shun Akiyama as the ‘Gunner’ with a submachine gun, and Ryuji Goda is the ‘Defender’ with a heavy machinegun. Kazuma Kiryu sadly isn’t free DLC, it was a pre-order bonus in Japan. More screenshots of the DLC can be found here.
Like the rest of the world, when SEGA announced Binary Domain, the new IP by Toshihiro Nagoshi, I was wondering to myself if a Japanese studio could make a great third-person shooter. At least one that could stand up against the offerings of western developers. Now that Binary Domain has released on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, did Nagoshi’s team deliver in the end, or should they have stuck with the Yakuza series?
According to DigitalSpy, SEGA has told them that they are not planning to release any more episodes to the Sonic 4 franchise. Seems that it might end with Sonic 4: Episode 2. Who said a bold statement like that? Who else besides the one and only Takashi Iizuka.
“We are looking forward to hearing the feedback from the users for Episode 2, but we are currently not planning to release another episode. We just want to see how the users accept this episode.” – Takashi Iizuka, Producer.
Is it good that SEGA is ending the Sonic 4 episodes or do you want a 3rd episode added with Knuckles?
A new week and a new episode of the Swingin’ Report Show. This week George, Sharky and Barry the Nomad talk about Akria Yuki in Dead or Alive 5, salvia and much more. So sit back, enjoy the ride. We have also fixed our RSS feed, you can follow the new one below. We are also submitting the new RSS to iTunes, you shouldn’t have to do anything if you are already subscribed. Hit the jump for the show notes.
It was announced a few days ago that Dead or Alive 5 would be adding Virtua Fighter‘s Akira Yuki to their roster. According to the latest Famitsu interview with Team Ninja boss Yousuke Hayashi, he actually had to fight for SEGA to approve Akria as a guest character. So this means that the team went out of their way to make this happen. Team Ninja isn’t the only big developer that have wanted Virtua Fighter cross-over. Namco have also talked in interviews of their desires of doing a Virtua Fighter x Tekken title.
He says since they went through all this trouble of bringing Akira on board, that he won’t be the only character announced. Yousuke Hayashi doesn’t go into details if he even means the other planned crossover characters are SEGA related at all, but we all know that DOA has a tag-teamed style gameplay. Don’t be surprise if they announce a couple of other Virtua Fighter characters to join the roster.
Oh, for Virtua Fighter fans, Yousuke Hayashi says that Akira gameplay is mostly unchanged from VF5. At least you know some combos going into Dead or Alive 5. But guess what? Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is set to hit PSN and XBLA arcade. That title has all the Virtua Fighter characters. That one wins.
The boys and girls over at Game Radar got an exclusive Jet Set Radio HD trailer, sadly the trailer isn’t running in high defenintion. Game Radar is showing giving this exclusive video the 2008 era YouTube quality love.
For what it seems, looks like the Jet Set Radio we all know and love. Doesn’t answer the questions we really want to know like if they are going to use the second joystick on controllers to move the camera or if they are going to be taking off tracks from the soundtrack.
Grin was the developer that earned lots of respect for succefully rebooting Bionic Commando with Bionic Commando Rearmed on XBLA, then later released on PSN and PC. After this success, Capcom ordered them to make a full priced game which wasn’t meet with much critical praise.
Though that didn’t slow the developer down; Grin was working back at Capcom trying to reboot the Strider franchise for them. The idea was that it was supposed to launch on XBLA, PSN and PC just like Bionic Commando Rearmed did. But the project was cancelled in 2009. So they moved on and looked for another company that wanted to reboot their IP and naturally came to SEGA. The remake was set for digital platforms only and like their last project, it was supposed to be a reboot like Bionic Commando Rearmed.
Kazuma Kiryu is not the only character set to make the jump from the Yakuza series to Binary Domain. SEGA today has revealed free DLC skins for three other highly popular Yakuza characters in the forum of Goro Majima, Shun Akiyama and Ryuji Goda. Just like with Kiryu, each character will have either a government forces outfit, which is their default model, or a resistence fighter outfit. The characters will be released for PSN users in Japan starting with Akiyama on February 28, Goda on March 6 and Majima on March 13. XBLA users will get all three characters free on March 13. For all the screenshots, hit the jump after the break and for additional information on the sponserships that will be found in Binary Domain, hit the Andriasang link for more info!
The Playstation 3 Binary Domain demo is not the only item SEGA will be releasing today on their up-and-coming third person shooter. The publisher has released a new cutscene just under 4 minutes in length that takes place early in the game. The trailer focuses on the slums of Tokyo 2080 and the unfortunate and tragic role of children as weapon gatherers, showing the growth of social inequality found in the future of Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio’s latest title. SEGA’s Binary Domain is set to release for the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 on 24th February for Australia & Europe and the 28th for America.
If you have been waiting for an English demo of Binary Domain while all your friends gobbled up the Japanese demo on the first of the month, then your wait is almost over. You can expect the PS3 demo tomorrow (February 14) and the Xbox 360 one on Wednesday (February 15).
Binary Domain comes out in North America on February 28th, 2012. Are you ready?