This week on the Swingin’ Report show George and Barry the Nomad are accompanied by Bartman (writer for Sonic Retro) where he talks about his time in Pax, we discuss SEGA now owning Atlus and our thoughts on Phantasy Star Nova! Tune in and tell us what you think! Hit the jump to see the show notes.
Perfectly timed to coincide with All-Stars Racing Transformed debut comes a massive update to SEGA’s Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing for the iOS. The game has often been cited as being a big success, making a number of critics’ best games lists and it even made it into a iPod Touch commercial. So it only makes sense that SEGA and Sumo Digital would continue to update it. The update adds: Knuckles and Shadow as playable racers, a new track – Samba de Amigo’s mountainside Sun Fair track, a new home screen icon, Airplay-out mode, HDMI-out mode, iCloud saving, character faces on the minimap (originally racers were shown as anonymous red dots, now you’ll see that Beat is trailing you), Game Center profile pics on the minimap in multiplayer and many other improvements and bug fixes. I’ve explored the game some and found another unmentioned update, the ability to buy SEGA miles via in-app purchases. Very clever way to get a bit of money out of customers, SEGA. It should be noted that Knuckles, Shadow and the new track need to be purchased with SEGA miles. They are not unlocked once you update the app.
Courtesy of TouchArcade, The Appera and IntoMobile come a collection of hands-on Sonic & SEGA All-Star Racing gameplay videos. The game looks quite impressive for an iOS title, especially one that seems to be for all platforms and not just the beefed up iPhone 4 and iPad. Despite being only a pre-alpha build, impressions have been positive!
After the break, check out two more videos featuring B.D. Joe in Tokyo-to, a look at Blizzard Castle and a tour of the menus.
2010 has come and gone, and with it came a slew of excellent SEGA games. I won’t list them off as I’m certain every reader here knows all the great titles that released. However, I do want to point out one of the releases that made it into my top ten games of 2010 list: Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing. When first announced in 2009, many let out a collective “meh”, and rightfully so. Up until that point, Sonic spin-off titles have ranged from terrible to good, but never great. SEGA Superstars Tennis, the predecessor to All-Stars Racing, was a good game. However the roster was lacking, the mechanics needed polish and the mission mode was a bit unforgiving.