Madou Monogatari II (Sorcery Saga II) gets English fan patch for SEGA Game Gear

If you never heard of the dungeon crawler by Compile, developers of Puyo Puyo, I don’t blame you. The games stars our good girl Arle Nadja, while the first game was about her graduating kindergarten (seems harder in Japan, right?) this one she is 16  years old as she goes to a distant Ancient Magic School to study. For some reason a man she meets along the way knocks her out and throws her in a dungeon, now you have to use your skills to escape. Yep, that got dark fast.

“The Madou Monogatari games are a series of dungeon crawlers by Compile, originally released for Japanese computers and later ported to many other platforms. They’re known for their distinct style of magic-oriented combat, with no HP or MP meters, individually-crafted attacks for every enemy, and prolific use of voice samples. They should also look very familiar to Puyo Puyo players – Puyo Puyo began as a spinoff of Madou Monogatari and imported most of its original cast from the series.” – Via Romhacking.net

You can patch the English translation patch via here. You can also check out the first game which got translated back in 2010.

Celebrating a year of SEGAbits & SEGA Retro Lock-On Technology

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A year ago today, we made the late night announcement that SEGAbits would be partnering with Sonic Retro, and the expansive SEGA Retro wiki would fall under the SEGAbits banner – making it our dedicated information site for all things SEGA. Since the announcement, we’ve made the move to Sonic Retro’s servers, writers from Sonic Retro have taken on writer roles at SEGAbits, we’ve utilized the SEGA Retro wiki in articles highlighting classic SEGA games and consoles, and in collaboration with SEGAbits and Sonic Retro writer Bartman we’ve created SEGA Channel Retro – a revamped retro streaming channel for SEGA content.

While we didn’t accomplish everything that we have hoped for over the past year, we have some exciting things on the horizon! This Spring we plan to introduce SEGAbits Model 5, a website redesign that will truly bring SEGAbits to the next level. We can’t spill the beans yet, but at the very least we can say it will be wider. Also, on June 28th SEGAbits and Sonic Retro will be co-hosting a panel entitled Surviving the Dreamcast Apocalypse: SEGA Fans in the 21st Century at the Too Many Games convention in Oaks, PA. Then, of course, there are our plans for tomorrow.

On behalf of myself, George, and all the writers and contributors, I want to thank our readers and community members for their continued support in making us the number one SEGA news and information site on the internet!

We are celebrating our 4th anniversary!

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Holy Sonic balls, we are now 4 years old. I know that if you have been scrolling through the site lately you probably have noticed that there has been quite a lack of ‘George’ written posts and I’m here to inform you that I have not abandoned the site. If anything, I missed it. It’s just something I have been doing since I first got internet on my Dreamcast back in 1999! It started off with chats on IRC rooms, moved over to forums and eventually ended up blogging! This lead me to wanting to own my own SEGA site, thus here we are at SEGAbits.

Thankfully I have had great people on board here to help me come up with ideas, this site might have been started by me, but decisions are group based. I want to thank the awesome staff we have here, who work very hard on the site and usually have some of the most brilliant ideas. One of the big reasons the site looks so well is because of our web designer Will, who is working on a new look for the site and has been with the site since before it was even launched! I want to thank A.J. for single handily making our YouTube channel relevant, thanks to Nuckles and Shigs for going to events for us and running the Sonic Talk podcast, thanks to Ben for all that work he does behind the scenes with his editing skills and I also want to thank Barry The Nomad who came in and created some great images for the site, while also helping me make the Swingin’ Report Show podcast awesome. One of the biggest help we had on the site last year was our partnership with Sonic Retro/SEGA Retro, so I definitely want to thank those guys. Its been a great partnership!

But mostly I want to thank everyone that reads the site! You guys make our little fun hobby way more enjoyable. What’s 4 more years?

SEGA Retro Spotlight: Happy 25th anniversary to the SEGA Mega Drive

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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.

The SEGA Pluto console revealed!

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Thanks to the Assembler Games forums, we can now check another item off our list of “SEGA hardware with planetary code names”. While Pluto is no longer classed as a planet, Assembler Games forum member Super Magnetic has revealed that it was in fact a proposed SEGA console! Don’t get too excited, however. Super Magnetic revealed that the SEGA Pluto was a SEGA Saturn with the Netlink Adapter built in. As Super Magnetic explains:

After a good 14 years or so of sitting on this, I’ve decided it’s time to share a little bit of Sega lore with those who would appreciate it most.

First, a little background info — I was introduced to this site by Monkfish (a great friend who recently passed away, RIP), who provided everyone with the Geist build, if memory serves. We worked together at Sega back in the day, and a bout of reminiscence over my old friend led me to remember this site, which leads us to today.

I’m here to reveal a piece of unreleased Sega hardware — the Pluto. And no, it’s not that Nomad wannabe — it’s a Saturn with a Netlink built in.

SEGAbits to partner with Sonic Retro and SEGA Retro, creating the ultimate SEGA and Sonic fan resource

No fooling! SEGAbits, Sonic Retro, and SEGA Retro welcome you the next level of SEGA fansites.

We’re excited to announce that SEGAbits will be partnering with Sonic Retro and SEGA Retro! Yes, we know, it’s April Fools day, but we are not joking. Administrators from both SEGAbits and Sonic Retro have made the decision to join forces to create the ultimate SEGA fan resource. Let’s get the big questions out of the way:

Will SEGAbits be drastically changed? No. SEGAbits will continue to bring readers news, reviews, original content and more. No design changes will be made, aside from our usual improvements as well as some additions mentioned below.

Will communities remain separate? Yes. We realize that both Sonic Retro and SEGAbits have their own communities and we do not want to merge either one into the other. SEGAbits.com and SonicRetro.org will remain.

What are the plans for Sonic Retro? Sonic Retro will continue be the Internet’s ultimate Sonic the Hedgehog resource. The Sonic Retro forums will still be home to the vast Sonic Retro community. As for the home page, SEGAbits and Sonic Retro staffs are hard at work on redefining Sonic Retro’s home page goals and once we have a plan set, you can expect it to be a change for the better.

So what’s the big deal? For starters, the plan is to integrate the expansive and informative SEGA Retro wiki into SEGAbits. We don’t want to give too much away, but expect to see SEGA Retro content improving and expanding on SEGAbits content. For example, a SEGAbits review of a game will be greatly enhanced with the integration of SEGA Retro information.

With the integration of SEGA Retro, SEGAbits will offer news, reviews, original content, a forum for SEGA fans to interact in, as well as a hugely informative wiki packed with SEGA information. Have more questions about the partnership? Comment below or visit our dedicated forum topic. We can’t wait to see where this new future for SEGAbits and Sonic Retro leads – we assume to blue, blue skies.