Lost Judgment Review – Our Favorite Detective is Back and Better Than Ever (PlayStation 4)

SEGA’s RGG Studio has really made a name for themselves as the premier triple A studio within SEGA. What’s more impressive than the quality of the games, which have all been pretty great, is how many games the studio seems to be able to release. This year the studio has brought us a sequel to Judgment, which is a spin-off to the Yakuza franchise, where instead of playing a Yakuza, you play as Takayuki Yagami, as you can tell from his cool wallet chain, tight jeans, shaggy hair, and leather jacket, this guy doesn’t play by the rules. He’s a Ex-Lawyer, Turned Detective for Hire that just happens to be well versed in Kung Fu. The first Judgment was a enjoyable experience, but it did come off as a bit janky towards the end. Did Lost Judgement fix these issues? Let’s find out!

Nintendo Japan lists Bayonetta 3 for 2022 release

Amiibos allow you to instantly unlock costumes in Switch Bayonetta
Bayonetta 3 was announced way back in 2017, its been awhile! Hard to believe how long the games been in development without a single in-game screenshot shared by Platinum Games or Nintendo, but it seems that might change and soon. According to Nintendo Japan’s release schedule, Bayonetta is scheduled for release in 2022 along with Splatoon 3 and Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2.

It will be interesting to see what happens considering we haven’t seen anything yet. Do you think Bayonetta 3 will come out next year?

SEGA’s New RPG Being Teased for TGS 2021 Is a Smartphone Game


We got the news the other day that SEGA had planned on announcing a new RPG during Tokyo Game Show 2021 livestream. Of course, the internet went ablaze with them listing older RPGs they’d like to see revived, some even said they’d be open to a new franchise while many long term SEGA veterans wisely gave up early suggesting it was a mobile game. Guess what? The vets are right, SEGA has opened and teased the game via their Twitter account. The game also got a brand new teaser website as well.

A rough google translation makes it seem that the game’s tag line will be something along the lines of: “Not a straight road, let’s make a one-time trip”. The teaser on the other hand confirms, within its Japanese text that its a mobile game plus shows off some really incredible artwork.

The one complaint I see from mobile fans is that SEGA shut down the Sakura Wars mobile a game within 6 months of launching, now the company is asking gamers to trust that this new RPG will last longer? I guess we shall see, full information will be coming out on the first of October.

SEGA plans to announce a new JRPG during TGS 2021


It seems that SEGA is continuing its trend of making more JRPG games, as its teased during its SEGA Atlus Channel presentation describing it as “Sega’s new RPG”. This new teased JRPG will be fully unveiled on the upcoming Sega Atlus TGS 2021 stream taking place on October 1, 2021 at 10pm JST.

SEGA actually has a pretty rich catalogue of JRPG franchises dating back to the 80s, but it seems that they are going to be adding a brand new franchise to the catalogue. What do you guys want to see from this title?

Jet Set Radio’s Art Director Ryuta Ueda Working at SEGA Again!


SEGA’s Ryuta Ueda left SEGA back in 2014, we even did a post. Back then he worked at SEGA for 19 years being the chief ard designer for Jet Set Radio, doing enemy art for Panzer Dragoon Orta and also directing the first two Yakuza games on PlayStation 2! At the time, he left the company to work at Yahoo, but according to Ueda’s Facebook page, he has been back at SEGA since May of this year:

“I have decided to resign from Yahoo Japan and return to my old company, Sega. I am very grateful for the many people I met and the many lessons I learned through various projects at Yahoo!

From now on, I will focus on making games again. Not only do I feel the excitement of making things, but I am also smiling a little at the thought of seeing old friends and meeting new people. I would like to fully demonstrate what I have cultivated through experience.

PS: I’m going to try to update my Facebook page a bit more. Oh, and if you are going to ask what I’m making, I can’t answer that.

What is Ryuta Ueda working on now? I guess we don’t know, maybe he will rejoin Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios on upcoming projects? As of right now, that remains a mystery!

SEGA’s Ikebukuro GiGO arcade in Tokyo set to close on September 20, 2021


In a Twitter post on August 2, the Ikebukuro SEGA arcade branch has announced that they will be closed on September 20th. They explained that the lease contract for the building that houses the arcade has expired and is ready for renovation. The arcade opened up in 1993, housing many arcade classics as the rising SEGA boom was taking over during the 90s (a 28-year open service). They also wish to provide the same premier customer service that brought in customers since opening. Currently celebrating the 28th anniversary, exclusive prizes can be won via UFO catcher machines or be bought for the month of August.

Yakuza 0 Vinyl Pre-Orders Open, Including a Double Deluxe LP and a Six Record Limited Edition

Looks like Laced Records has opened up pre-orders fro the Yakuza 0 vinyl soundtrack. The company is set to ship the records in October 2021 and this will include:

The cheaper, deluxe record is set to include 27 songs, with on record being green and the other light blue. It will also including songs like “Fever ☆ Time,” “Ignite Your Spirit,” “Koi no Disco Queen,” “One-Eyed Slugger,” and “Setsuna No Ningyohime〜Heart break​ mermaid〜【Full Spec Edition】.”

Now the Limited Edition Six Record Set will offer 90 songs with each record getting its own sleeve and its own ‘color-in-color’ design. If you want “Bakamitai”, you gonna have to spend more money on this edition.

[Via: Siliconera]

SEGA Japan announces its selling NFT digital content, upsets the internet so much they start trending

It really looks like the years of hard work to create good PR has all gone to waste, maybe! SEGA Japan announced it was going to partner up with ‘double jump .tokyo’ to create NFT digital content and utilize blockchain technology this upcoming summer. This obviously caused a huge uproar, so much so that it sent SEGA to trending on the front page of Twitter. Oh boy.

For those not in the know and never heard of “NFT”, it stands for ‘Non Fungible Token’. So that doesn’t explain much, but what does it do and what does this have to do with ‘blockchains’ and Crypto? Basically NFT’s right now are a digital way of buying a painting or piece of artwork that only you own and will forever live on the blockchain. For example if SEGA puts an official Sonic piece of artwork, they can allow users to bid with Crypto to see who ‘owns it’. Right now the biggest NFT market is ‘Open Sea’, which lets you browse and explore how the whole thing works.

SEGA Japan officially allows Japanese users to monetize videos on YouTube and Twitch

SEGA Japan has released new streaming guidelines for Japanese audiences, which will now allow individual users to monetize videos and streams of SEGA owned games through YouTube and Twitch.

Its actually kinda crazy that SEGA didn’t allow this before considering how games like Yakuza got huge brand awareness in the West due to streamers and YouTubers making videos on the games. But it seems that SEGA in the past allowed users to create videos, but not profit from them. It seems that SEGA is also encouraging players to add reaction faces and comments, but also asking for spoiler tags on videos that ruin story moments. They have also asked not to do unrelated edits that would obscure actual gameplay, which seems a bit vague?

This whole guideline sadly isn’t applying to Atlus or western developed titles such as Total War, but if its a success for SEGA; we can all assume this will all change.

[Via: Siliconera]

SEGA closes sale on SEGA Amusements International and what it means for the future of western SEGA arcades

Back in March, SEGA Amusements’ Roger Penninton left the company after 31 years of service. Considering how SEGA’s Japanese management device was hit hard during Covid-19 which ended up selling 85% of the company back in November of 2020. I had a gut feeling big changes were also coming to SEGA Amusement International and I was right.

While most people write off SEGA Amusement International (prior where known as SEGA Amusement Europe) as just a company that distributes SEGA’s Japanese arcade games to the West; they actually have development teams that are creating original titles. One of the recent titles included Daytona USA 3 (or is that Daytona Championship USA?). All the way back in 2016, the company even wanted to try their hands at making OutRun 3!

So who bought SEGA Amusements International and what does this mean for the future? Oddly enough, the management team working within SEGA Amusement International including industry veteran Paul Williams. For what I read, nothing much will change as the company will still be ‘SEGA Amusements International’, still distribute SEGA’s arcade titles outside of Japan and still work on their own original titles.

SEGA of America Producer and Designer Michael Latham, best known for Eternal Champions, passes away

SEGA of America’s Michael Lathan has passed away, as reported by SEGA-16’s twitter account. Michael started his gaming character at Rainbird Software where he would localize computer games for the American market, he would then move to Mediagenic where he was a producer for Ghostbusters II and Tongue of the Fatman before the company went bankrupt in 1991.

“It was simply the most fun of any job I ever had. Everything just exploded, and for a young guy in the business it allowed me to do so much so fast. I entered the company as a producer, quickly moved up to run my own production group, and even became a VP before the age of 30, thanks to the unbelievable growth and talented people I worked with. It’s so hard to have all the right people in the right places, and when you do, you get hit companies and products. We were on movie sets, meeting with sport teams, going backstage at concerts – all kinds of exciting projects – and the development teams were still small and you really knew everyone you worked with unlike the mega development teams of today’s games.” Michael Latham talks working at SEGA during the early 90s

Shadow Man: Remastered coming to PC on April 15th

Do you guys remember the game Shadow Man? This action-adventure game by Acclaim launched on almost all platforms back in the day including Windows PC, Nintendo 64, PlayStation and of course the SEGA Dreamcast.

Well the game is coming back as Shadow Man Remastered, while we know its coming to PC on April 15th, its also coming to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 (no dates set yet). Also did you know the game had a sequel called Shadow Man: 2econd Coming on PlayStation 2? Wow.

Check out the press release and screenshots:

Sonic Revolution Announced for 2021 Online Event

Sonic the Hedgehog’s 30th anniversary keeps getting better with the announcement of Sonic Revolution, the 7th year that the event has been concurrently going and is the 2nd one to be online. The event has been a Los Angeles-located Sonic convention but due to the Covid-19 virus, the event will be hosted online through the Sonic Revolution Discord servers. Front runners Shanye (@sonicremix) and Licide (@Angelidia) are back to bring the biggest Sonic fan convention in the world on June 19th and 20th, 2021.

Total War: Warhammer III announced for PC, coming late 2021

SEGA and Creative Assembly have finally announced the last part of their ‘Total War: Warhammer Trilogy’ which was planned all the way back in April 2015. Total War: Warhammer III is set to launch in late 2021 on both Steam and Epic Games Stores. Pre-orders get a free DLC “Race Pack”, kinda funny that the gaming world is OK with pre-order DLC because the studio actually got grief when the first game launched over this practice.

Hit the jump to read the press release by SEGA and check out the awesome trailer above:

Sonic Prime to take place in Sonic Team’s video game universe, SEGA crossovers not ruled out

One thing that the Sonic the Hedgehog brand has been doing recently is trying to keep the brand more streamlined. We first saw this when SEGA took the Sonic license away from Archie and relaunched on IDW, but this time making the story take place within the Sonic Team game universe.

We have also seen another recent shake-up with Roger Craig Smith being let go as the voice for Sonic, with rumors spreading that Sonic Movie voice actor Ben Swartz might replace him (making him the main Sonic actor going forward).

Recently we got the official announcement of the upcoming Netflix show Sonic Prime, but not that much information has come out about what the show will actually be. As we know Sonic Prime is being written by Duncan Rouleau, who did give us a bit of insight into what we can expect from the TV show come 2022, including talking about possibility of future SEGA crossovers: