The Weekly Five: The Most Disappointing SEGA Games of 2011

2011 was an unbelievably great year for SEGA…for the most part. Even the best game company will always have its strings of hits and misses. However, last year I could only really think of one bad stinker. One starring a certain Norse god you will read about later on. With that in mind, I decided to comprise a list of SEGA games that disappointed me in some way. Games that while not outright bad (except one), did not live up to their expectations. If you find a certain favorite of yours on the list, do not take it personally, as this is mainly coming from my own personal view. Read on to find what SEGA games left me a little flat.

The Weekly Five: SEGA CD Games that Deserve the Christian Whitehead Treatment

Given the success of the Sonic CD rerelease, both critically and in sales, I think it’s about time SEGA gave Retro Engine creator Christian Whitehead his own studio tasked with rereleasing more classic SEGA games from the Genesis/Mega Drive era. While the Retro Engine can cover more than just SEGA CD titles, I think the SEGA CD library is long overdue for some ports. While the SEGA CD console gets a fair share of shit from the gaming community, there is no denying that the add-on had a number of awesome games. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll highlight five great SEGA CD games that deserve a rerelease utilizing the Retro Engine. I’ve tried to keep the list tied to games that SEGA could conceivably rerelease, so there is no Snatcher due to that title being owned by Konami.

The Weekly Five: The Games of 2012

Last week we shared our favorite games of 2011, and while we didn’t officially announce winners or give out some award for SEGA to stick on their box art (I’d imagine we’d award a gold Opa Opa statue nicknamed “the bitty”), the “winners” deserve another mention. Sonic Generations and Yakuza 4 were the top picks, while Guardian Heroes was picked as an excellent download release. Shinobi for the 3DS also earned a spot on the list. Other notable games included Shogun 2, Sonic CD, Daytona USA, Virtua Tennis 4 and Football Manager 2012. Overall, 2011 was a great year! Being only a week into it, 2012 is still young. However, SEGA has a number of great looking releases on the horizon. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll look at five of those hotly anticipated titles. Could any of these become our favorites of 2012? Probably.

Five Great Santas in SEGA History

Consider this a SEGAbits exclusive: Santa is real! Yes, as it turns out the annual gift giver is the real deal. All those Santas we see at malls? They’re just the middle men. They’re the guys that report to the real Santa. How about all those variations we see of Santa in the media? This is a marketing effort on the real Santa’s part to keep his image alive. Proof of this exists everywhere, but today I thought I’d highlight five notable Santas in SEGA history. After the break, we reveal our Claus.

The Weekly Five: SEGAbits Holiday Gift Guide

‘Twas two weeks before Christmas and all through the site, SEGA fans deserved presents, whether naughty or nice.

Okay, “site” and “nice” don’t rhyme. But you get where I’m going with this. The holidays (Christmas specifically, let’s not beat around the bush) are approaching, and you need ideas for what to give the SEGA fan in your life. If you don’t have a SEGA fan in your life, chances are YOU’RE the SEGA fan in your life. So what follows are five unique gift ideas for the holiday Christmas season.

Five of the Weirdest and/or Worst SEGA Accessories

SEGA is awesome, there is no doubt about that, but they’re not infallible. Back in the hardware days, SEGA made their fair share of mistakes. I won’t name off the 32X and SEGA CD like a lot of gaming sites do, because to be honest, as an owner of both systems I have to say they have some really great titles. I’ll even defend accessories that only exist for the sake of a few games. Just because the Dreamcast fishing controller is rarely used, due to the limited library of fishing games, does not make it a bad accessory. It’s just highly specialized, and when put to use it is very effective. Same goes for the Samba de Amigo maracas and Virtual-On’s twin sticks. But there are SEGA accessories and add-ons out there that were failures, or were simply too weird to take seriously. This week we’ll take a look at five of these hiccups in SEGA’s history.

The Weekly Five: Sonic’s Next Adventure

While Sonic Generations is just over a week old, fans from all corners of the interwebs have started to discuss what’s next for the hedgehog. I would say it’s a bit too soon to start speculation on the next game, but even series producer Iizuka has started hinting towards the future. So with Generations considered completed and released, let’s look towards 2012 and beyond, and just what we might expect from the next Sonic game!

SEGAbits Halloween Playlist

Believe it or not, the day before Sonic Generations releases there’s a little holiday going on called Halloween. Everybody has their own Halloween traditions, mine focus on pumpkin carving and scary movies. This year I thought I’d mix things up by throwing video games into the mix, specifically five games with a Halloween slant, each played on a different SEGA console. What follows are the five games I’ll be playing over the Halloweekend, and I hope if you have any of them you’ll revisit them as well.

The Weekly Five: Sonic Generations Classic Callbacks

While Sonic Generations release is still a month away, thanks to the many screens and video clips released by SEGA, fans have been able to pick apart every pixel. Some screens feature road signs with in-jokes, while others feature references to classic Sonic stages from the Genesis/Mega Drive days. Yes, even though the game only features a handful of classic era zones, that hasn’t kept Sonic team from including callbacks to zones not featured in the game. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll run through five of these way past cool references.

The Weekly Five: Best “Post-Dreamcast” Games

When the Dreamcast breathed its last back in 2001, many thought it was for the best. “They’ll be more successful as a 3rd party publisher!” “They’ll be able to make more money since they’ll be on more systems!” But sadly, that wouldn’t be the case for a long, long time. In fact, only in the last two years has there been a big enough turnaround in quality. When Dreamcast died, much of the creativity and spark of the developers seemed to die with it, 2006 being the best example of Sega’s worst time in the industry.

But not all of it was bad. In fact, their initial outings on GameCube and X-Box were quite strong. Even during Sega’s worst times in 2003-2008, there were some diamonds in the rough. Continue on to see my top 5 favorite “post-Dreamcast” Sega titles from 2001-present.

The Weekly Five: Rise of Nightmares X The House of the Dead

I’d think any true blue SEGA fan has a special place in their heart for The House of the Dead franchise. Being an arcade lightgun classic, and spanning three console generations, The House of the Dead has produced a number of sequels, spin-offs and even ventured outside of the video game world by way of two horrible films. When Rise of Nightmares, SEGA’s latest Kinect title, was revealed at last year’s Tokyo Game Show, little was known of the game aside from “save your wife from an evil scientist”. Was it internally developed? Was it a House of the Dead title? We just couldn’t tell based on the short and creepy trailer. But now that time has passed, and the game is in stores, we have all the answers. In this week’s Weekly Five we’ll take a look at five reasons why I think Rise of Nightmares sits well alongside the beloved House of the Dead series, despite not carrying the series title, and why HotD fans should check the game out!

Weekly Five: Best Unknown Dreamcast games


We all know about Skies of Arcadia, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure, and Jet Set Radio. I don’t think there is a self-respecting SEGA fan alive who doesn’t know what all the best Dreamcast games are. But the Dreamcast’s library is large, and I’ll bet there are five games out there many of you have not played. This list is devoted to those games, the most overlooked awesome games on the Dreamcast!

The Weekly Five: Great American Dreamcast Ads

It’s Labor Day weekend here in America, and only a week until the Dreamcast’s 12th birthday! So I thought it would be fitting to present to you a weekly five that is light on the labor for me, and Dreamcast related for you. Thus, we’re talking a look at five great Dreamcast adverts that ran on American television. So let’s get started, less reading more watching!

The Weekly Five: You’re a SLACKER, SEGA!

Obviously, I love me my SEGA. Why else would I be writing for this place? But just because I love them, doesn’t mean I can’t be a little bit peeved with them when it comes to a few things. In this week’s Weekly Five, I’ll be going down my list of areas in which SEGA is slacking.