SEGA Saturn

Retro Review: Sakura Taisen 2

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After the first Sakura Taisen game was met with commercial and critical success in 1996, a sequel was inevitable. The SEGA Saturn, though successful in Japan, was hemorrhaging money abroad, making a sequel to one of the company’s few late 90s success stories all the more important. So, SEGA collaborated with RED again to produce a sequel.

Sakura Taisen 2: Kimi, Shinitamou Koto Nakare, which roughly translates to “Beloved, You Must Not Die” was released for the SEGA Saturn on April 4th, 1998 as a three disc set. Introducing two new characters and improved game play, it remains the most successful game in the series. It sold over half a million copies, making it the second best-selling dating sim of all time. It was re-released for the SEGA Dreamcast two years later with brand new features that showed what the system was capable of.

Here is our retro review of Sakura Taisen 2 for the Saturn and Dreamcast.

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2014: The Year of the SEGA Console – join us as we celebrate SEGA hardware all year long!

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Twenty-five years ago, the SEGA Genesis graced American shores, where it would come to dominate the console market for years and make SEGA a household name. Twenty years ago, the Saturn was released in Japan and went on to become SEGA’s biggest success in their home country, though success that would unfortunately not be repeated abroad. That same year, the SEGA Pico and 32X left some US gamers scratching their heads as they introduced weird concepts of what gaming hardware could be. Finally, fifteen years ago on 9.9.99, SEGA released their swan song, the Dreamcast.

We at SEGAbits love a good anniversary, and 2014 is full of them. Throughout 2014, we intend to honor these core pillars of SEGA’s hardware legacy with 2014: The Year of the SEGA Console. We’ll be devoting entire weeks to certain games, entire months to certain consoles, and we have several special guests planned for the SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show. We’ll write about the Genesis and how it introduced many of us to SEGA. We’ll look back at SEGA’s quirky art house console, the Saturn, and the many ups and downs the console experienced. We’ll remember the Dreamcast for the good times and unique and innovative experiences it delivered in the twilight years of SEGA’s time as a platform maker. We’ll give the 32x some overdue respect. Finally, we’ll all get SEGA Picos so that we can tell you about games like Tails and the Music Maker and The Great Counting Caper With the 3 Blind Mice!

Hope you’re looking forward to 2014 as much as we are, it’s gonna be a blast!

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My Life with SEGA battles it out in Marvel Super Heroes for the SEGA Saturn

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Marvel Super Heroes was Capcom’s follow-up to their equally successful X-Men: Children of the Atom fighting game.

Like its predecessor, Marvel Super Heroes shares much in common with Capcom’s prolific Street Fighter series with over-the-top anime-style action, combo system and so on. While the arcade game was first released in 1995, console gamers wouldn’t receive a home port until late 1997 on Sony PlayStation and, of course, SEGA Saturn.

The Saturn version is fantastic. The animation is like an explosion of color that’s very faithful to the arcade original, with an energetic soundtrack and kick-ass sound effects. Now that Lauren’s joined the League of Extraordinary Dorks, I feel it’s high-time I make her suffer for NHL ’94.

FUN FACT: The American version is the one and only game outside of Japan that supports the RAM cartridge. To learn more about this delightful peripheral, check out the episode of My Life with SEGA dedicated to it!

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Yu Suzuki to deliver a postmortem for Shenmue at GDC

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[SEGAbits at the GDC 14 event]

SEGA legendary developer Yu Suzuki is set to deliver a postmortem on Shenmue at this upcoming year’s GDC. GDC says that the creator will be talking about the classic game for the first times, starting from its origins as a Virtua Fighter based RPG for the SEGA Saturn all the way till its release in 1999. But that isn’t all, Playstation 4 lead system architect and game designer Mark Cerny will be translating the presentation! I guess that was what talked about last year?

Sadly for people like us that aren’t invited or can’t make it to the the event, good old GameSpot will be live streaming the event, so we don’t miss on any ‘surprise announcements’. So, who’s excited?

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SEGA Memories: A look back at Toys ‘R’ Us’ 1996 holiday video game catalog

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Its almost that time of season where most kids are waiting to tell their parents what modern day war shooter they want under their Christmas tree. Its also the time where older folks, like ourselves on the site, think about our previous holidays and how we used to make our parents waste hoards of cash to buy our affection. Wasn’t that great? Well this week on Monday Memories we will look at the 1996 holiday Toy ‘R’ Us video game catalog. I remember these where awesome as a kid, it was like window shopping for games in my underwear.

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SEGA Memories: Dave’s Sega Saturn Page

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Obviously SEGAbits isn’t the first and won’t be the last website dedicated to the big blue. Throughout the life of the internet, there have been thousands upon thousands of SEGA related websites and out of all those websites there are few webpages that we would visit regularly. Dave’s Sega Saturn Page was one of those sites I always kept bookmarked along with others that we will most likely cover here on Monday Memories.

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My Life With SEGA reviews Panzer Dragoon

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My Life with SEGA returns this week with a review of the acclaimed SEGA Saturn game, Panzer Dragoon. Probably one of my favorite franchises in SEGA’s huge catalog of unique IPs, this week you get to see A.J. give you his take on the game.

Make sure if you want more videos from My Life from SEGA and others, to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Its groovy, I swear.

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Crimson Dragon creator wants to to make a Crimson Dragon RPG

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Yukio Futatsugi is the creator of the acclaimed Panzer Dragoon franchise, though he has left SEGA to work at Microsoft Game Studios Japan, the developer working on Crimson Dragon. Yes, that Xbox One title that looks very similar to the iconic SEGA franchise.

SEGA also had a spin-off of sorts called Panzer Dragoon Saga, which happens to be an RPG instead of a rail shooter. That title was created by Yukio Futatsugi, and when asked at E3 if he would ever return to make a new RPG, he said he would like to make one based in the Crimson Dragon world. Seems that the team is full of SEGA employees that worked on the old Panzer Dragoon titles and it shows.

When he was also asked if he would like to see Panzer Dragoon Saga re-released by SEGA, he stated yes. He said that they’ve talked about a re-release over at Grounding Inc (the name of his studio) and ultimately came to the conclusion that it would be too hard to remake. Of course, this RPG will only happen if Crimson Dragon does well on Xbox One…

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UPDATE: SEGA Pluto Auction Ends at $15,500, Still Not Enough

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[UPDATE – 12th May, 2013:] The saga continues!  Vega has responded via Twitter to the utter disbelief of the price being rejected. According to him, the highest bidder got cold feet and backed out of the deal after it ended. A user on Reddit by the name of lordloss has uploaded a photo of a second chance offer from Vega to purchase the machine for $11,000. We’ll update as the Pluto’s saga continues to unfold. What a roller coaster!

After nine days on the auction block, the auction for a rare SEGA Pluto prototype unit amassed $15,500 over 89 bids, but no exchange will be declared as the auction failed to once again meet its reserve price.

This comes after the initial auction garnered only $7,600 and claims from owner Roger “kidvid666” Vega that he picked up the unit for only a dollar. Looks like 15,500 times profit isn’t quite enough to get yourself a SEGA Pluto prototype unit from him.

At this point, we don’t know if it’s straight up greed or if he wants people to start donating organs/first born children. But chances are, if this system is to join any game collection, it’ll take more than $16,000 at least to possibly make it happen.

Start saving.

[Image courtesy of Roger Vega]

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SEGA Pluto Back On Auction Block

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Have a couple of grand you want to burn on a rare piece of SEGA hardware? Roger Vega, a.k.a. kidvid666, has put his rare SEGA Pluto system up on eBay after its initial auction ended at $7,600, failing to meet its reserve limit.

The SEGA Pluto is a sub-planet SEGA Saturn variant, of which only two knowingly exist in the world. The system, while much larger than its model 1 and 2 Saturn brethren (and roughly larger than a combined Model 2 Mega Drive and Mega CD), features a built-in NetLink modem, enabling the system to connect to the Internet for web browsing and playing certain online-enabled titles such as Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition, SEGA Rally,  Saturn Bomberman, and Virtual On. Otherwise, the system is a typical U.S. NTSC Saturn.

Vega demonstrates in a YouTube video that the system, while fully functional, has a broken disc door that needs to have constant pressure weighing it down in order for the system to function properly. As of this posting, the auction is at $501 with over 21 bidders. It is set to end on May 10.

[Image courtesy of Roger Vega]

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Panzer Dragoon creator talks about his time at SEGA

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Eurogamer is running a pretty neat piece on Yukio Futatsugi, the creator of the Panzer Dragoon franchise. Like every great piece they go into detail on how he grew up, the schools he went to and how he ended up at SEGA. One of the neat pieces of information was that at age 23 he took over Team Andromeda. Think about it, this dude was in charge of many people older than him at the age of 23. He was 25 when Panzer Dragoon came out. Crazy!

“I handed in several proposals, one of which was Panzer Dragoon,” says Futatsugi. “I’d only been there about two years, but they accepted my proposal and put me in charge of the project. Just like that I was making Panzer Dragoon for the Saturn launch. It was a difficult project. All the programmers and designers were above me in the company but I had to tell them what to do, which was tricky. But I was young, so I could be stubborn.”– Yukio Futatsugi

The piece goes on and talks about his work after leaving SEGA, working at Microsoft Studios and releasing Phantom Dust (a great Xbox game, if you haven’t played it). He also confirms that Crimson Dragon is still in the works!

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My Life with SEGA celebrates Kenji Eno with D for SEGA Saturn

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In honor of Kenji Eno, I’m reviewing the survival horror/puzzle classic; D for SEGA Saturn. This game was his first major success and helped pave the way for Enemy Zero, the SEGA Saturn exclusive, and D2 for Dreamcast. D has been subjected to a great deal of mockery and derision due in large part to it’s heavy use of FMV and slow pace….

Is it deserving of such ridicule, or has it been treated unfairly? Turn out the lights and see for yourself.

Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel! My Life with SEGA will be taking a short break, but will return on May 2nd with two zombie classics. Continue reading to check out the awesome teaser video!

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SEGA Saturn game designer Kenji Eno died yesterday

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Kenji Eno was always very anti-Sony and pro-SEGA back in the day. So much so that his franchises turned out to be exclusive and the man would go on a media rampage to put down Sony when he could. He is known for his horror SEGA Saturn titles like Enemy Zero and D (which later got a sequel on Dreamcast).

“I felt betrayed when Sony was treating me like that, so when I heard that the Sega vice president was a very interesting guy, he and I met and created this whole plot. My original conditions to make the game exclusive for Saturn involved my earlier story about supplying 1,000 Saturns for the blind people, and also to have Sega’s president appear onstage, personally, for the event. That was the original plot, and that was what was going to happen until the last minute, but he had a board meeting at Sega, and they were like, “OK, you’re actually appearing?” Like, Sega is a big, successful company, and a high-up management-level guy in that kind of company appearing in a situation like that isn’t good, so everybody stopped him. So he appeared in a video rather than in person.” – Kenji Eno tells 1up in a exclusive interview back in 2008.

Cause of death is said to be heart failure brought on by hypertension. Its funny how ahead of his time he was, one of his conditions to make his games exclusive to Saturn was for SEGA to give a 1,000 Saturn’s to blind people. He even created a game for them called ‘Real Sounds: Kaze No Regret‘ for the Saturn that was later re-released on Dreamcast.

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