Shinobi

Weekly Five: Five After Burner Cameos

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weeklyfiveafterburner

Like any beloved SEGA franchise, After Burner has had its share of cameos. Unfortunately, unlike Fantasy Zone and Sonic the Hedgehog, these cameos have been few, so we did have to stretch things just a little bit to fill out this weekly five. As they say though, quality matters over quantity, so even though After Burner’s cameos have been few, they’ve often been quite great. So grab a snack, sit down and enjoy as we look through After Burner’s five best only cameos.

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SEGAbits Summer of Art/Season of Colors Contest: the Silver and Bronze winners

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Oboro in snow

There can only be one winner, but that doesn’t mean we can’t also have stuff for the people who got second and third place. Above is one of the many entries sent into us by SEGA Nerd’s Kopke, aka Manuel Garcia Melgar. This awesome depiction of Hotsuma from SEGA’s criminally underappreciated Shinobi PS2 was one of several entries that nearly won him the grand prize. Here’s the one that came the closest. Please click it to see it in its full resolution glory!

Check below the fold for Manuel Garcia’s silver winning entry, as well as our bronze winner, Chase Svent!

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SEGA Five: A Salute to the SEGA All-Stars Part 2

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Our Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed celebration continues with part 2 of our salute to the SEGA all-stars who will hit the track this November. In part 1 we featured Sonic, Vyse, NiGHTS, Gum and Amigo. This week, we take a look at more characters from the Sonic and Jet Set Radio franchises, keep the ball rolling with the star of Super Monkey Ball and we see the return of a certain iconic ninja. After the break, it’s an all out all-star salute!

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Say it ain’t Joe! Shinobi track coming to All-Stars Transformed?

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Courtesy of Kori from The Website of the Dead comes a photo from the title screen of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed, taken at SEGA’s Arcade during Comic Con. Kori claims that this is a yet to be announced Shinobi track, and we can definitely see the resemblance to Joe’s 16-bit adventures. Sumo Digital has said that tracks will be selected, at least in the story mode, via an world map of floating islands. Each island represents a track, and this island looks very Shinobi themed. What do you all think? Is Joe getting a track to call home?

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Meatbun offers up three cool new SEGA inspired shirts

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Meatbun have some crazy talent designing their gaming related tees, and I get the feeling they may have a bit of a Sega fan streak in them judging by how 3 out 4 of their latest designs are Sega inspired. Many are quite surprising mash ups too! First up, Passing Breeze. This looks like it could have come directly out of a mid to late 80s Japanese indie fan magazine, right down to the manga like toning. A gorgeous illustration that nails the vibe of the classic Outrun.

Check out SEGA Memories for the other two designs!

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Nuckles87’s PAX EASTer Egg Hunt

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See Shigs, I can do puns to!

Greetings, SEGAbitters. This Nuckles87, talking to you from PAX EAST. Today, I would like to announce a little contest I’ll be running while I’m at PAX: an easter egg hunt. In this case, the easter egg is me, or more specifically, my 3DS’s Mii. You have to street pass me with your 3DS!

My Mii is a rather portly fellow in a blue shirt wearing a pirate hat, named Alex. He greets you with the SEGAbits web address, so you’ll know it’s me! More details below the fold.

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Insert Coin shows off new SEGA shirt designs, including Ryo Hazuki inspired hoodie

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The fine folks over at Insert Coin Clothing have now released their concept art for their upcoming SEGA Reloaded shirts (and a hoodie). The hoodie above is inspired by Ryu Huzuki’s brown jacket in Shenmue. In the back it has the Hazuki tiger.

To see more of the shirt designs, hit the jump. Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, and Golden Axe? Yes, please.

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Insert Coin to add new Sega line of clothing

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UK based clothing company Insert Coin is adding more Sega franchises to their Sonic line of clothing. This includes such games as Shemue, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage and Jet Set Radio.

All of these games are very special to us and so it is fantastic to be able to honour them with some slick new tees and hoodies – and hopefully we’ll be able to show you what we have planned very soon!

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ESRB rates two Game Gear Games for Nintendo 3DS

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Back in March of last year, Nintendo announced that Sega’s Game Gear games would be coming to the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. Sadly, we hadn’t heard anything new since…until today! The ERSB has put up ratings for Sonic Triple Trouble and Shinobi. Both these Game Gear games were rated for the Nintendo 3DS. Looks like we’ll be getting them sooner rather than later.

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Shinobi 3DS – History of Shinobi Trailer

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Here’s a Shinobi trailer where members of Sega of America, such as producer Stephen Frost, feel like they need to prove to us that their new Shinobi game is a ‘real’ Shinobi game. But in doing so, they kind of just remind everyone that it isn’t a real Shinobi game. At one point, Stephen says that they took what was great about the classic Shinobi games and made it better, and those are some pretty strong words.

Na- Just kidding! From what I’ve heard it’s- well- not terrible! Which is a real achievement for Sega of America who like to farm out our most beloved Sega classics to unknown developers that previously only made license games… I only hope that when Sega of America re-imagine the next Sega Classic they make sure it’s treated like a classic and not like Golden Axe: Beast Rider.

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Shinobi for 3DS in Stores Now!

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I’ve been an advocate for this game pretty much since I played it at E3. I’ve liked what I’ve played of my two playthroughs at E3 and NYCC so much that I picked up at midnight last night alongside Halo Anniversary. Several hours in, I must only reiterate what I’ve said before: if you have any love for Shinobi or old school games in general, you must buy this. This is easily one of the best 3DS games I’ve played all year, not to mention one of the best SEGA games I’ve played. The difficulty is punishing and pure old school Shinobi at it’s finest. The controls and level design are rock solid so far, and there are plenty of references to past Shinobi games hidden throughout. Remember those killer brains from Shinobi 3’s Body Weapon level? I just got mauled by one a few minutes ago.

And remember, if you don’t buy it, we won’t get another one.

Shinobi is out in stores now. SEGAbits will be doing a few things to promote the game, so keep an eye out.

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Preview: Shinobi 3D

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This was the same demo available at E3. As such, there are certain things I don’t cover in this preview. For the full picture, check out our E3 preview!

Back at E3 I previewed Shinobi 3D for the first time. I loved what I got to play, but my time with the game was limited. At last month’s New York Comic Con I was able to give the game another go, so I’d like to talk more about it.

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Shinobi goes on sale on XBLA, will cost you 200 MS Points

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Now you can sit your kids around your Xbox 360, purchase Shinobi (arcade edition) for 200 MS Points and scare them as you scream at the television because you lost at the same part 20 times in a row. Hey, at least you didn’t spend too much money.

In all seriousness if you can’t wait for Shinobi 3DS, this sale might hold you off until the game gets released. Shinobi 3DS hits Europe on November 11th and America on the 15th.

[Source: SEGA|Blog]

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Shinobi 3DS – 12 Minutes of Gameplay

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I’m still not convinced that this is the way I wanted Shinobi to return, considering how great Shinobi could be on a HD console. Still I am glad that it has returned! Whilst there are some design choices that I’m not a fan of (namely the combo scores that pop-up all over the screen instead of tidily in the corner) I think they’ve gotten a lot of things right and have captured a lot of what made Shinobi 3 such an awesome game.

Then there’s those graphics…

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Shinobi 3DS game pitched to SEGA on Assassins Creed game engine

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Did you know that Shinobi 3DS is not being developed by in-house SEGA team? It is being done by Griptonite Games, the team who worked on Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions and Assassins Creed: Bloodlines on the PSP. But did you know that it was Griptonite Games who pitched the idea to SEGA of bringing back Shinobi?

“There’s a group of guys there who were very excited about Shinobi as a franchise. They had worked on Assassin’s Creed [Bloodlines] for PSP and Web of Shadows, which had a great combat system, and things like that, and we started to talk about bringing back Shinobi but in a classical sense,” he revealed. “If we were to put together a spiritual successor to the old classic Shinobi games, what would that be like?”

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