Classic SEGA Magazine Corner: Make your own Death’s Head Maracas

Welcome back to Classic SEGA Magazine Corner! On this installment, we’re taking a look back at issue 12 of the Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine, dated March/April 2001. This issue is notable, as it was the final issue of the magazine’s run and the first issue to not include a demo disc. In fact, the issue came with a letter apologizing for the lack of a demo disc and the announcement that demo discs would no longer be included. The fact that this issue would be the final issue was unknown to the staff at the time, as detailed in our Official Sega Dreamcast Magazine reunion podcast from released almost ten years ago.

But our focus today is not on the magazine’s conclusion, but rather a goofy arts and crafts feature they had in which they chopped up Samba de Amigo maracas to create funky skull head variants! Let’s dive in!

Samba de Amigo: Party Central Releases On August 29th for Nintendo Switch; Sonic & SEGA DLC Announcement

Samba de Amigo: Party Central will be partying its way for Nintendo Switch on August 29th and SEGA has also announced today that the digital editions of the upcoming rhythm action game are now available to pre-order for Nintendo Switch on the Nintendo eShop.

Those who purchase the Samba de Amigo: Party Central Digital Deluxe Edition ($49.99 MSRP) on the Nintendo eShop will receive the following:

  • The Standard Edition of the game
  • Sonic Music DLC Pack that includes fan-favorite tracks such as “Open Your Heart” from Sonic Adventure™, “Reach For The Stars (Re-Colors)” from Sonic Colors™️: Ultimate, and “I’m Here” from Sonic Frontiers™!
  • SEGA Music DLC Pack has you setting the festivities on fire with popular tracks from SEGA’s history: “Bakamitai (Taxi Driver Edition)”, “Go Go Cheer Girl!” from Space Channel 5™️: Part 2, and “Rhythm Thief Theme” from Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure™️!
  • Special costumes inspired by Sonic and Tails from the Sonic the Hedgehog™ series; Space Channel 5Super Monkey Ball™️; and Puyo Puyo™️!

Samba de Amigo ver. 2000 English fan conversion now available

 

While you wait for the release of Samba de Amigo: Party Central for Nintendo Switch, here’s a new development for what is probably the next best Samba de Amigo game. 

Samba de Amigo ver. 2000, which originally released on Sega Dreamcast exclusively in Japan in the year 2000, has gotten a new English conversion by Dukeblooders. While the game originally didn’t have much Japanese text in it, and didn’t strictly require a mastery of Japanese to play anyway, Dukeblooders went the extra mile and converted as much of the game’s text as possible, mostly using audio or graphics from the Wii version of Samba de Amigo from 2007, which had most of ver. 2000’s features anyway. It may not seem like too much of a change, but it should help the game feel like a more complete English release that never was.

Currently, you can download the patch from Dukeblooders’s Github page. According to this page, patching your copy of the game requires the Universal Dreamcast Patcher software by Derek Pascarella, which you can get from his own Github page. Playing the patched game currently requires a Dreamcast ODE (Optical Drive Emulator) such as a MODE or a GDEMU, as it cannot run from a burnt CD-ROM at this time. It should run perfectly fine in a Dreamcast emulator, theoretically. 

If you’re able to try this out, let us know what you think in the comments below.

Samba De Amigo: Party Central announced for Nintendo Switch, Releasing June 2023

While news leaked earlier today on social media, Nintendo Direct has officially dropped the news that SEGA’s iconic rhythm action game series, Samba de Amigo, will be making a comeback on the Nintendo Switch titled Samba de Amigo: Party Central with Amigo sporting a new attire for the upcoming game.

Samba de Amigo: Party Central will include 40 musical hits from the world’s most popular genres including EDM, pop, Latin, and more along with a wide variety of mini-games and challenges to enjoy; a ton of unique costumes and accessories to unlock and wear; and new online features – including an 8-player World Party mode.

Samba de Amigo: Party Central will be released on the Nintendo Switch June 2023!

SEGA Talk Podcast #59: Samba De Amigo (1999)

Samba De Amigo! If you can’t tell, Barry and George are excited to discuss the arcade, Dreamcast and Wii releases of Samba De Amigo on this episode of SEGA Talk! Learn about the various maraca accessories, the differences between releases and the future of the Sonic Team rhythm dance franchise.

Support us on Patreon! Get early access, tell us what games to cover, and have your SEGA memories read at the end and more!

[iTunes – Stitcher – YouTube – Play Music – RSS – Download]

If you want to give us feedback, suggest a topic for the next podcast or want to ask a question for us to answer on the next episode you can add  them as a comment below or send theme directly to our email. Make sure you use subject line ‘SEGA Talk’ and as always, thanks for listening!

SEGA Slots mobile released worldwide featuring classic SEGA IPs

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SEGA has now launched their mobile app SEGA Slots world wide. This lets you play ‘some of the fastest, most addictive slots machines around!’ according to their product description. These addictive slots machines just happen to have some of our favorite SEGA IPs attached to them. While its cool to see our favorite characters being represented, its a tad sad that they are stuck in a casino style mobile gambling game.

Product Pages: Play Store iTunes 

Regardless SEGA Slots, as of launch, has the following Classic SEGA IPs represented: 

Sonic Team producer expresses interest in making a new Samba de Amigo for Nintendo Switch

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Sonic Team producer, Shun Nakamura, was recently interviewed by Eurogamer discussing Sonic Mania and its impact on future Sonic titles. When asked about the Nintendo Switch’s features and his time working on Samba de Amigo for the SEGA Dreamcast, the producer expressed high interest in making another title in the franchise for the console. Here’s what he had to say in the matter:

“I really, really want to make it! This is coming from someone who had to make physical items you had to buy and plug into your console in order to play Samba de Amigo at home. When the Wii came out, there was only one Wii Remote, and you had to buy another one. You could still do it, but it’s a bit of a hurdle to get over. The first time I saw the Switch, I thought oh my god – this is it! You don’t have to buy another peripheral, you don’t need to buy another controller. I’m really, really interested in that.” – Shun Nakamura

Samba de Amigo made it’s latest outing on the Nintendo Wii with the help from Gearbox. What are your thoughts if Sonic Team themselves can produce another game in the franchise for the Switch?

SEGA Talk: Dreamcast Turns 17 Years Old, We List 6 Must Play Games

On this very special episode of SEGA Talk we list our six defining Dreamcast games that everyone needs to play as the Dreamcast turns 17 years old today. That’s right the Dreamcast turns 17 years old for us SEGA fans in North America.

So sit back with us for this year’s SEGA Dreamcast anniversary and listen to us discuss our defining games and like always you can tell us your personal defining Dreamcast games in the comments below.

If you enjoy our SEGA Talk YouTube series segments, make sure you subscribe to our channel as we try to update it weekly. Thanks!

Peter Moore talks SEGA Dreamcast days in recent IGN Unfiltered Interview

Peter Moore talked about the SEGA Dreamcast days in a Unfiltered interview posted up by IGN. The video is an hour and a half talk about the man’s career and what led him to be EA’s Chief Competition Officer. Some of the games that he said made him smile from the Dreamcast era included Seaman, Samba De Amigo and he even mentions Yu Suzuki’s SEGA-AM2 studio with Shenmue.

Peter Moore worked for the underdog brands which included Reebok, SEGA and later the Xbox division. Peter Moore is a interesting guy and this interview shows it with a few more bits like his son being a SEGA Saturn owner before he worked at SEGA, pitching his ideas to SEGA Japan and the mysteries behind his marketing TV spots. Really makes you miss the days of SEGA hardware, huh?

Rumor: SEGA Blast Heroes a new mobile SRPG gets leaked

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According to the mobile game website PocketGamer there is a new mobile game by SEGA, which features classic game IPs. Not only that, mobile ads for SEGA Blast Heroes (the games name) have been popping up. The ads describe the title as a ‘strategy RPG’. The Facebook page behind the ads leads to a page called ‘SEGA Mobile’ which has a bit over 150 likes at he moment. If you click to download the app from the ad, it takes you to StoreMaven, which is a service to help test upcoming app store conversion rates.

Below are some screenshots of the supposed game called SEGA Blast Heroes. Of course, it looks like it would play like Chain Chronicle. Just looking at the screenshots leaked so far I see Samba De Amigo, Space Channel 5, Sakura Wars, Valkyria Chronicles, Jet Set Radio, Wonder Boy, Alex Kidd, and a lot of unknowns populating the screens. It also seems that you will be fighting generic looking villains, which is a bummer.

This game doesn’t surprise me considering SEGA’s mobile division put out a survey asking fans about classic SEGA franchises. What are your thoughts on the rumor? Would you play SEGA Blast Heroes?

[Via: Segalization]

Nintendo pulls the plug on online features for Wii and DS games

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Nintendo of America has just announced that as of May 20th, you will no longer have access to WiFi connection service on their Wii, DS and DSi games. That will include features like online play, online leaderboards and anything else that it does online. All games will work perfectly fine online.

Honestly this move makes me more weary of Nintendo and actually makes me reconsider the idea of buying a Wii U. I know most people will post and say that I’m overreacting, saying not many people play DS titles online, but it sucks knowing that if we make a party on our forums to play Phantasy Star Ø, as of May 20th, we won’t be able to play online just because Nintendo decided they didn’t want to support online services going on to the next generation.

To see all SEGA games that will be affected, hit the jump.

SEGA Tunes: Samba de Amigo’s Samba de Janeiro

In Samba de Amigo, every day is a dance party, with and endless parade of singing, shaking and Latin music. Few songs in the game embody the spirit of Samba’s visuals as well as Samba de Janeiro does. This is what a wild party sounds like and it’s always a joy to shake maracas to. This carefree party atmosphere also makes Samba de Amigo one of SEGA’s quintessential summer games.

SEGA Five: A Salute to the SEGA All-Stars Part 1

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed is only a month away! In anticipation of the game’s release, we here at SEGAbits want to highlight the many All-Stars appearing in SEGA’s racing title. To do this, we’re kicking off a four week salute to the characters appearing in the game. Each week will focus on five SEGA All-Stars. We’ll share why we think these characters are important to SEGA’s history, and why we’re looking forward to racing as them. Let’s kick off part one with the first five, can you guess who they are?

The Weekly Five: 5 games best experienced on Dreamcast

The Dreamcast’s birthday is right around the corner, and you know what that means? That’s right, Dreamcast articles! As a big fan of many of the Dreamcast’s more obscure games I enjoy writing about Dreamcast games that even many Dreamcast owners, over a decade later, haven’t played yet. The five games in this list are games that are still relevant, games that Dreamcast owners should still pick up even years later. These games have aged gracefully and while not necessarily unique to the Dreamcast, are still games that need to be experienced on the Dreamcast.