Ever dreamed of coming to a fan convention that pays tribute to SEGA’s line-up of video games, chat with other fans and meet guests that worked on your favorite SEGA titles? Kori-Maru here to bring you my impressions and experience hosting the second year of Fan Jam, a event dedicated to the SEGA fan community. Hit the jump to read what went down at this year’s event!
If you’re a fan of SEGA living in Georgia and like retro video games, we will be making a guest appearance at Savannah Comic Con in Savannah, Georgia this Saturday on June 20th. We will be featuring our SEGAbits original content such as My Life with SEGA, This is Saturn, Weekly Five and many more.
We will also be promoting our fan event, Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2015, with playable retro SEGA video games, hosting a Sonic Adventure 2 tournament provided with Sonic/SEGA prizes and a glimpse of what’s coming to the fan event this Fall. Don’t forget to check out our TooManyGames 2015 appearance with Sonic Retro on June 27th as we uncover secrets of the never released SEGA Saturn game, Sonic X-treme. Welcome to the Next Level of Excitement!
We’re excited to announce that SEGAbits and Sonic Retro will be returning to Too Many Games to host a panel on Saturday, June 27th at 4:50pm in Oaks, PA! Last year we uncovered the secrets of Sonic the Hedgehog 2‘s Hidden Palace Zone, and this year we return to the topic of Sonic mysteries with “The Sonic X-treme Files”. The panel is to feature Sonic Retro admin and writer David the Lurker and SEGAbits admin and writer Barry the Nomad as they embark on a chronological behind-the-scenes look back at the never released SEGA Saturn game Sonic X-treme!
Also appearing at the panel is creator of the YouTube series “Hit Reset” Adam aka Gunstar with the premiere of his latest Hit Reset episode which shines the spotlight on Wild Woody for the SEGA CD. The video is to feature special guests including Wild Woody composer Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal and Woody voice actor Joe Kerska!
We’ll also be giving away some rare SEGA prizes at the end to ensure that you don’t walk out at the halfway point!
Register today at TooManyGames.com and we hope to see you there!
MomoCon has recently announced the return of SEGA’s appearance to this year’s convention event with panels and first playable demos of a number of unreleased games from their lineup! These games include the upcoming Nintendo 3DS games Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX and the entire SEGA 3D Classics arcade roster. Also for consoles the first North American playable demos of TEMBO THE BADASS ELEPHANT, and Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax!
I will be attending the convention once again to interview the cool reps from SEGA of America on their line-up titles for the summer and will be bringing you coverage and videos from the convention floors. If you have any questions on the following titles, be sure to leave a comment below.
Last November, we at SEGAbits hosted our very own gathering for all SEGA fans & gamers. The event was named Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2014, and was made possible with the awesome help of The Guild Hall of Savannah which provided us the venue space. As the person who spearheaded the event, it was a great experience to host a convention which celebrated SEGA’s video games ranging from classic to current releases. Attendees had a variety of games to play, SEGA fan films from talented filmmakers and animators to watch, and special guest appearances of talented Archie Comics Sonic The Hedgehog artist Tracy Yardley and Matt M. the host of Sonic The Hedgehog YouTube channel Tails Channel!
This year, we are happy to announce the launch of the Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2015 website, announcing the event coming this Fall. Like any sequel, we aim to make it bigger for everyone in the southern east coast area with more games, activities, and special guests from the SEGA community. In addition to the official site, we’ve worked on developing a Facebook page for the event to keep you guys up to date on news and special guest appearances. In the coming months, we will announce special guests, ticket prices, and many more details. Want to show your support by helping us with donations for the event? Be sure to click the jump for more details.
Running from March 28th to the 29th in Japan this year is the “Comiket Special 6 – Otaku Summit 2015,” a massive event packed with stuff for, well, ‘otaku.’ However, SEGA have announced they will be in attendance at the event, with a corporate booth to sell merchandise. And when they say “sell merchandise,” they aren’t kidding!
SEGA has shown off some of the items available for purchase at the event, a snippet of which we’ve included below. It covers a huge range of SEGA stuff; Fantasy Zone, Space Channel 5, Sakura Wars, and Virtual On all get nods, along with some obvious faces such as Sonic, and the usual console themed stuff (including a rather nice SEGA Saturn bag). Also slated to be available at the event is merchandise for the SEGA feat. Hatsune Miku Project (plus Mikudayo, the terrifying Project Mirai mascot costume that became something more) and the much-loved SEGA Hard Girls.
So, for my first article proper on the site, I figured why not talk about my favorite gaming event of the year, MAGFest, which just wrapped this past weekend at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in National Harbor, Maryland. In its thirteenth year, this gaming festival was primarily started as a celebration of music in gaming and all the video-game inspired bands that have risen up in the past decade or so, but has grown to become an all-encompassing celebration of gaming culture at large. From gaming developers, artists, journalists, personalities, and even other aspects of geek culture, it truly has something for everyone.
Hello SEGAbits readers, Kori-Maru here and fresh from our fan convention event in Savannah, Ga. I would like to thank everyone who’ve attended our event and The Guild Hall for their support and using their venue for the event. Met new friends and had some great moments at the event. Want to learn how SEGA & Sonic Fan Jam came to be and how the even turned out? Hit the jump of my impressions of Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2014 including a ton pictures.
Tickets for the upcoming Weston Super Sonic 2015 event based in Weston-Super-Mare, England, have officially gone live; and they’re going pretty fast!
Since ticket registrations opened yesterday, already over a quarter of the tickets have been sold, which is no easy feat for a fan convention to accomplish! The tickets are provided free of charge, and guarantee you access to the event – an event that sounds rather awesome, sporting guests such as Sonic the Comic artist Ferran Rodriguez, as well as other StC heavyweights Richard Elson and Nigel Kitching. If that wasn’t enough, Mike Pollock will also be providing a Skype Q&A at the event – and this isn’t even everything, with more events and guests planned than those listed here, such as tournaments and art contests with prizes available!
You can get tickets for the event by clicking here!
If that wasn’t enough, as we previously stated SEGABits will be there on the day, providing coverage to the great standards we strive for!
It’s certainly looking to be a incredibly promising and exciting event, and for those of you in the UK, we hope to see you there!
For those in the US, don’t forget about the upcoming Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam based in Savannah, Georgia coming later this year, hosted by us at SEGAbits!
Upcoming UK Sonic convention Weston Super Sonic has announced that Spanish artist Ferran Rodriguez will be in attendance at the event.
Ferran’s art style was recurring throughout the UK Sonic the Comic’s run, and covered a wide variety of material throughout the series, such as covers, comic strips, and pin-ups. Ferran is flying in from his home in Barcelona just to be at the convention – now that’s dedication!
In addition to Sonic, Ferran has also done work for Disney, Nickelodeon the Angry Birds license, and other properties and brands – quite the resume.
This guest announcement is just one of quite a few that Weston Super Sonic has made; they previously announced that fellow Sonic the Comic legends Richard Elson and Nigel Kitching will also be in attendance, and that Mike Pollock, voice of the nefarious Doctor Eggman will be conducting a live Skype Q&A at the event. Exciting stuff for UK Sonic fans!
Also planned are speedrun tournaments for SA2, art contests, cosplay contests, and other events to keep fans entertained throughout the day. The convention takes place Saturday 17th January 2015 at The Grand Pier in Weston-Super-Mare, England, and SEGABits will be there to provide coverage!
The official site for the convention can be found here. Currently donations are being accepted until September, and a mere £5 is all it takes to guarantee entry.
Will you be attending? Let us know in the comments!
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.
Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!
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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No SEGA Dreamcast consoles were harmed in the making of this panel.
We’re excited to announce that SEGAbits and Sonic Retro will be hosting a panel at Too Many Games 2014 on Saturday, June 28th at 12pm in Oaks, PA! Dubbed “Surviving the Dreamcast Apocalypse: SEGA Fans in the 21st Century”, the panel is to feature SEGAbits admin and writer Barry the Nomad, Sonic Retro admin and writer David the Lurker, creator of the YouTube series “My Life with SEGA” A.J. Rosa, and SEGAbits writer and The Website of the Dead owner Kori-Maru as they discuss that fateful day when SEGA discontinued the Dreamcast, and where both the company and its fans ended up over ten years later.
Highlights of this SEGA celebration include stories from SEGAbits and Sonic Retro, rare materials from the development of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and unseen clips from the “My Life with SEGA” series! Whether you’ve lived and breathed SEGA’s blue skies since you could hold a game controller, or have just recently been welcomed into the next level, this is the panel for you. Scream it with me now: “SEGA!”
We’ll also be hosting a SEGA trivia contest at the panel, with rare SEGA prizes to hand out as rewards for your knowledge!
Register today at TooManyGames.com and we hope to see you there!
Talking Classics star Keith Apicary performed at Too Many Games 2013 in Oaks, PA and we got a chance to talk to him on the floor before his big show! Barry the Nomad asks the tough questions regarding the console war that has been going since 2000, and whether we will see a Shenmue III. Check it out!
After the break, watch Keith’s Dreamcast 2 music video.
SEGAbits staffer A.J. Rosa, the man behind the My Life With SEGA video series, will be on a number of panels at this weekend’s Intervention 2012 convention in Rockville, Maryland which is just outside Washington D.C. What is Intervention 2012?
We are here to intervene and inspire you to embrace your inner (and outer) geek! Intervention (a shortening of the words “Internet Convention”) is where you can meet, talk with, learn from, and party with the people you see online everyday. We aim to make it “One Part New Media, One Part Gaming, One Part Nerd Party”. It has a strong emphasis on Independent artists who use the internet as their main distribution method for their work.
“Internet Culture” is a broad term that loosely means “elements of culture that are developed through and on the Internet”– music, podcast, comics, art, video, etc. being enabled primarily because of the Internet itself, and a reflection of Internet’s influence on how and what then gets developed for that online audience.
The con runs from September 21st -23rd and tickets can be bought online or at the door. What will A.J. be talking about? After the break, a full list of the panels!