Shining Hearts

Shining Series artist releases his art book ‘Tony’s Artworks From Origin’ tomorrow

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TonysArtOriginRegardless of what you think of Tony Takas art since taking over the Shining franchise’s art duties all the way back in 2004, he seems to have acquired a massive following in Japan. While the Shining series has had trouble selling copies of their games, it seems that Japan responded positively to Tony Taka’s character designs. So much so that there is a ton of Shining series merch being sold, more so than the actual games. Tony Taka has even released a couple of Shining related art books as well, this will be more broad artwork he has done in the past.

AmiAmi will be selling the “Tony’s ART works from Origin” book which is set to feature various character designs from his career including magazine covers and vocaloids he has designed, including a long form interview looking at his history these past 20 years. The book will come in A4 page format, will have a hardcover backing and clear slip on box. The book will set you back 5,000 yen ($46), will have 100 pages and feature 80 illustrations. The details of the book also brag that about 30 of the character designs in the book got made into figurines. Good for you Tony Taka, I guess.

Hit the jump to check out preview pages of some of the artwork that will be in the book:

[Via AmiAmi]

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Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena demo now on Steam

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Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena demo header

A Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena demo has been released on Steam, allowing users to sample the game’s online multiplayer mode with 3 of the 16 characters.

Blade Arcus from Shining: Battle Arena was released to Steam on July 28th, 2016 and is based on Blade Arcus from Shining 2.1 EX, the most recent arcade version. It’s a 2D fighting game featuring characters from the Sega-published Shining Blade and Shining Hearts games.

Unfortunately, the game has potentially only sold a little over 2,000 copies if you go by the numbers SteamSpy suggests for it. Hopefully those excited to try it before buying will be able to find some online opponents this week thanks to the demo’s release.

The full game features a Story Mode, Training Mode, and local Versus Mode in addition to the Online Mode the demo restricts you to. If you fall in love with it, thankfully you’ll always have those and the new weekly tournament event to fall back on.

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SEGA bringing its Shining spin-off arcade game Blade Arcus from Shining EX to PS4 and PS3

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SEGA Japan has announced that they are porting the 2D arcade fighting spin-off Blade Arcus from Shining to the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 via Famitsu. SEGA will add ‘EX’ to the end of the game because the game will have loads of extras, including new playable characters.

In Japan the game will get two releases, a standard that will cost 6,990 yen ($56 USD) and a limited edition costing 9,990 yen ($80 USD). All first print copies come with the character Sonia from Shining Resonance. The “Blade Arcus from Shining EX Tony’s Premium Fan Box” limited edition comes with a Tony Taka-illustrated special box, “Shining Heroine Works” art book, Shining Ark character song CD, Shining Blade soundtrack CD, and “Shining Beach Heroines” swimsuit calendar.

As for it coming west, SEGA probably wants to see how Dengeki Bunko: Fighting Climax does later next month. As for the characters, if you are a old school Shining Force fan, don’t get too excited since all in-game characters are from Shining Hearts/Blade (some original characters for the game too). Hit the job to see who made the cut. 

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Operation Rainfall wants to know what SEGA game you want localized

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There have been a ton of Japanese SEGA games that haven’t made it West and the guys from Operation Rainfall want to know what game you guys want localized. If you never heard of Operation Rainfall, it was a huge movement started because Nintendo refused to localize Xenoblade Chronicles, after the huge response the campaign got, Nintendo eventually released the game in North America.

Seems they want to help localize other games and are aiming their cross-hairs at some SEGA games.  On their site they have a poll with the following games listed:

  • Valkyria Chronicles 3 
  • Yakuza 5
  • Yakuza 1 & 2
  • Shining Hearts 

Right now Valkyria Chronicles 3 is winning with about 50% of the votes. I, on the other hand voted for Yakuza 5,  since I really want to play that game in English. What game did you vote for and why? Leave your opinions in the comment section.

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The Weekly Five: SEGA PSP games that should be ported to PS3

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SEGA has had some highly rated games released on the PSP, sadly mostly everyone outside of Japan has decided to ignore the platform. Sony recently announced the ‘PSP Remasters’ series. Games from PSP ported over and enhanced on the Playstation 3.

One of the first games to get this treatment has been Monster Hunter Freedom 3, which looks great. I decided to put together 5 games that deserve the PSP Remasters treatment.

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SEGA games in Famitsu Top 100 2010

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On a yearly basis, Famitsu publishes the top 100 best selling games and as always, SEGA manages to make a few on the list. Although in terms of total, it’s not overly impressive, SEGA still maintains a strong position and suffers from far fewer financial failures than recent years, they managed to get 7 games in total and no prizes guessing which was the biggest seller for SEGA.

17. [PS3] Yakuza 4 (Sega) – 557,771
32. [PSP] Hatsune Miku: Project Diva 2nd (Sega) – 341,663
40. [PSP] Kurohyou! Yakuza New Chapter (Sega) – 264,766
49. [PSP] Keion! Afterschool Live (Sega) – 231,976
61. [PS3] End of Eternity (Sega) – 184,662
74. [PSP] Valkyria Chronicles 2 (Sega) – 153,487
89. [PSP] Shining Hearts (Sega) – 130,258

Another entry in the Yakuza series and again continues to slightly push up from sales of Yakuza 3 (Which did around 509,000 with the original release, not accounting THE BEST release which did a further 80,000) and Project Diva 2 improves on the sales of the original in a big way (Which managed 186,000) and becomes the 22nd most successful game on the PSP in Japan. The PSP Yakuza title does a modest amount, matching that of the sales of the original release of Yakuza Kenzan, indicator of the userbase in terms of sales for the next spinoff title perhaps?

K-On does very well for SEGA although I would imagine that would be it’s final total outside of a re-release in Japan, I can’t quite see it coming out in America or Europe. Valkyria Chronicles 2 does ever so slightly better than the original (8,000) but this does not include the re-release of the original title which nothced up a further 82,000 unit and the sales of End of Eternity certainly suggests a sequel maybe forthcoming.

Finally Shining Hearts, despite doing 100,000 in it’s first week, ends up with a modest extra 30,000 and it does seem that perhaps despite the impressive first week opening, it may not go down as the most successful and I can probably imagine a sigh of relief from dissatisfied fans of the franchise.

[Source: NeoGAF]

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Bad Shining Hearts review leaked, producer goes on the defense

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Shining Hearts is coming out this month in Japan on the PSP and the first review has already been leaked online fromDengeki PlayStation and it wasn’t very positive, highlighting that it had bad load times. What is a producer like Tsuyoshi Sawada to do? Sit in silence with his game gets trashed?

You don’t know Sawada.  He updated his twitter saying that the reason for the load times was the memory stick the reviewer was using was faulty. How did he know this? Does SEGA Japan send reviewers memory sticks? Faulty sticks at that?

Makes you wonder, I guess we will find out when user reviews and Famitsu reviews pop online. If you are wondering the score they gave the game, it was 75, 70, 80 and 60.

[Source: AndriaSang]

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Shining Hearts to let you raise pet spirits

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SEGA is trying to pack in a ton of stuff into the already full Shining Hearts. This new gameplay mode thing is “Pet Spirit”, I guess tons of spirits exist in the world of Shining Hearts. A chracter, Alvin, is a 119-year-old elf who has the ability to communicate with spirits and is always shown with her flying female wind spirit Kefia.

Outside of the story, the game lets you collect and raise spirits as pets. When you progress through the game and defeat monsters in battles, you will collect spirit eggs. If you take it to your place of employment, the magic bakery, you’ll be able to hatch them there.

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TGS round up would make Toshihiro Nagoshi proud

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[Nagoshi having a rest or tanning?]

So now that TGS is behind us and we are sprinting into fall, let us look back at all the awesome SEGA announcements and news bits we posted.

News bits:

Trailers & Videos:

Screenshots & Photos:

Don’t worry, there is still news to come. We will be stalking the internet trying to get all the Phantasy Star Online 2 information we can. As you can tell, I’m are most excited for this title. Best TGS in a long time?

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SEGA’s TGS 2010 line-up confirmed

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SEGA has let their ‘official’ line up out of the bag, of course, they have a surprise or two they don’t want to reveal yet. This is their ‘expect to be there’ and playable games.

  • Vanquish (PS3/360)
  • Virtual On Force (360)
  • Sonic Colors (Wii/DS)
  • Phantasy Star Portable 2 Infinity (PSP)
  • Black Panther New Yakuza  Chapter (PSP)
  • Shining Hearts (PSP)
  • K-On After School Live (PSP)

Of course they will most likely have a new Phantasy Star related product (anniversary game?) and for sure the new Yakuza PS3 game.

[Source: Joystiq]

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Shining Hearts coming out this winter

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The game is hitting Japanese store shelves on December 2nd for ¥6,279 ($74).

If you pre-order it you get a pirate fan disc that will include a soundtrack with song samples, voice collection, PC and PSP wallpapers, and a high resolution video of the game’s opening cinematic. Sorry, no Disney movie starring Johnny Depp.

This is the part in the article where I write “This is a fake Shining game, this is a fake Shining game.”

[Source: AndriaSang via: SegaShiro]

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Shining Hearts revealed

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Yep, Shining Hearts.
Yet another Shining game that nobody really wanted.

So far we know the game is for the PSP, the art is by ‘Tony’ apparently I should just know who ‘Tony’ is with out needing a second name. I already know a Tony; he’s always at my local pub propping up the bar and smells a bit like wee…  I hope it isn’t him doing the art. Finally from the screenshots (below) it seems to be a traditional JRPG… So another pass then.

Screens and more after the jump,

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