Wii

SEGA Japan shutting down servers for Shiren the Wanderer DS & Wii

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If you have the Japanese copies of Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, Shiren the Wanderer DS 2, and Shiren the Wanderer 3 (released in America by Atlus as Shiren the Wanderer) then you might want to know that they will be going offline coming this November. The servers will be shut down on October 31st, SEGA announced today.

That means stuff like leaderboards, time attack rankings, item trading and the rescue system will not work in the games anymore (at least the Japanese versions). It is not confirmed how this will effect the other versions of the game.

Only the SEGA published Shiren the Wanderer games are going offline, so that means Shiren the Wanderer 4 will still be online for the world to play.

[Source: Siliconera]

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Yuji Naka talks about his cancelled Wii game Haunted Tower

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[Yuji Naka shows his troll face to Nintendo]

Nintendo had one of their ‘Iwata Asks developer round table’ things, where Iwata asks all the hard hitting questions to developers. This week they had other developers from companies that worked on Wii Play: Motion. This included Yuji Naka who represented Prope. Oh yeah, Naoto Ohshima from Arzest is also there in the picture.

Naka revealed that when Nintendo first showed MotionPlus two years ago, he pitched a game to them called Haunted Tower. The point of the game was defeating monsters, only that they would not just be on your TV screen, but also “outside the screen”.

The project was cancelled and Prope instead helped work on Wii Play: Motion. They did the mini-game called “Trigger Twist“.  How far along the game was in production is unknown, though most likely it was just in planning stages.

[Source: Siliconera]

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Virtua Tennis 4 rallies back to fifth in British charts

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Thanks to the conclusion of Wimbledon over the previous weekend, two tennis games saw a jump in the charts and it was SEGA’s Virtua Tennis 4 that triumphed over rival Top Spin 4. It has been reported by a NeoGAF member, using some calculations provided by Chart-Track, that Virtua Tennis 4’s combined sales last week was no more than 9,300. Whilst not as impressive as Djokovic was against Nadal, it is none the less a good number of sales in this time of year as the British market is often sluggish during June. Expect to see Virtua Tennis 4 in the British charts for a few more weeks to come.

[ Source: Chart-Track and NeoGAF]

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Takashi Iizuka confirms Sonic 4: Episode 2

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The guys over at Siliconera had a chance to ask Iizuka if Sonic Team is planning a follow up to Sonic 4: Episode 1, in which he responded:

“We named Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, so there will be an episode 2. Since this year is the 20th anniversary of Sonic we wanted to focus on Sonic Generations. We don’t have a release date or anything.But, we can tell you it will be in the near future.”” – Takashi Iizuka

Near future? Iizuka and his love for time traveling plots. In all seriousness, it seems that Sonic Generations is getting the physics for cassic Sonic right. Would be interested if the physics being used in Generations will be used in Episode 2.

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1up: Sonic games? Best post whiny video

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Oh lawl, I get it. It’s a Sonic game, we best make a “funny video” slowly making fun of the quality in Sonic games. Yes, I know most of us aren’t into Mario & Sonic games, but are they the worst thing to happen to Sonic or even Mario? No.

Funny how this makes a site like 1up depressed, didn’t even seem like the person in the video even played the game before citing it as crap. Journalism. Didn’t they also announce like 3 Mario solo games at E3? No Mario video? Just Sonic?

Yeah, 1up isn’t going to be missed now that they got bought out by IGN.

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Yuji Naka working on a fishing game with Namco Bandai

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Famitsu has revealed a new fishing game being done at Namco Bandai. In the write up, they say that the producer is none other than Yuji Naka. Well, isn’t that something. The game is obviously set to appear on the Nintendo Wii.
The game will take the player to tropical island resorts, jungle lakes and other watery locations to catch over 200 fish and collect over 1,000 items. Included in the game are penguins, because Naka loves those little guys.

Didn’t know there was a huge market for fishing games, but just gives you a little hope for a Big the Cat fishing game from SEGA.

[Source: AndriaSang]

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Mario & Sonic at the London Olympic Games E3 trailer

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Here is a feel good CGI trailer featuring Nintendo and SEGA mascots going at it. Seems that the fans love these games since they buy them by the truck loads.

I’m a bit tired of this Olympic stuff. I think they should just make a mini game compilation, the Olympic license isn’t selling these games. While we wait for that game, we can watch this trailer for Peach in a skimpy outfit and Amy for her slow motion Baywatch part.

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Captain America gets pre-order bonuses at Gamestop

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Captain America: Super Solider is looking like it will be the best SEGA and Marvel tie-in game in recent history. Yes, that is not saying too much. If you pre-order the game via Gamestop (US only as far as I know) you will get the “Ultimates” DLC pack below.

  • Ultimates 1942 Captain America costume
  • The “Ballroom Blitz” Challenge Mode Map
  • Early in-game access to Cap’s “Weaponize” ability

Below are more screens of the DLC stuff in action. You can go here to pre-order or your nearest Gamestop. You know those stores are spawning everywhere.

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Drama: High Voltage & Joystiq won’t get along

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Summary: Basically what happened is that Joystiq wrote a negative Conduit 2 review. Joystiq rated the game a 1/5, which would usually be the end of the story. But not with High Voltage. The writer for Joystiq, who happens to have a published book, all of a sudden just got a ton of negative spam reviews on Amazon.com for the book. After people accused High Voltage Software of writing them, the company has finally confessed that they did come from someone in the studio.

“Matt Corso did indeed write that internal email, however if you read the email he encourages folks to read Mike’s book and then write their own review in a ‘turn-about is fairplay’ sort of way” wrote Nofsinger in an official explanation. The email went to 70+ people on the list contains nothing slanderous or inflammatory; I believe people took it as such (the fact that there aren’t 70 negative reviews would support that assumption). Sure, it’s a tad unprofessional but if you knew Matt personally as I do, you would know it was nothing more than a tongue-in-cheek jibe at most. And for that, I apologise on behalf of High Voltage Software.” – Eric Nofsinger, Chief Creative Officer at High Voltage

So what does the writer for the inflammatory review have to say? What about the Joystiq writer who wrote the review?

Continue Reading ➜

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SEGA Sequel Saturdays: HOTD Overkill!!!!!!

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It might seem crazy now, but there was a time when the Wii was genuinely looked at by some publishers as a system where adult-targeted games could flourish. (Welcome to Sequel Saturdays number 18. Remember readers, if you want to write one of these yourselves, drop me a PM and we’ll work something out.) SEGA deserves credit for trying, as they delivered not only one ultraviolent Wii game, (PlatinumGames’ MadWorld) but two, and House of the Dead: Overkill was a bold step not only because it was a violent game on a Nintendo system, but because it was a classic SEGA franchise that had been given a pretty big makeover. The game was not developed by the studio responsible for the other HOTD games, in fact, it wasn’t developed by SEGA at all. The reigns were handed over to UK studio Headstrong Games, who took the opportunity and totally ran with it.

Continue Reading ➜

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Mario & Sonic platformer never happened due to internal disagreement

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When we where kids, growing up in the 16-bit era, we always took sides with either Sonic or Mario. But deep down inside, we always wanted to see them do a game together, an awesome platformer. Then SEGA announced Mario & Sonic Olympic series, making people angry. But why not make a platformer game?

“Prior to this project there has always been a discussion between Nintendo and Sega about bringing Sonic and Mario together somehow. But every time we talked about it, there was an issue as to exactly how we could achieve that.

These characters come from two totally different backgrounds, and have completely different worlds. If you do any kind of collaboration, you can’t just get them to run on one of the Sonic stages or vice versa. You have to create something from scratch, a neutral location. Nintendo and SEGA never managed to agree on just where or what kind of universe we could set a Mario and Sonic adventure in.

Then, some time ago, SEGA secured a license to create games based on the Olympics. At that point I came up with the idea of having Mario and Sonic compete with each other in the Olympic games setting. We proposed that idea to Nintendo and they were really positive and interested in the idea, so that is where we started building it into a concrete game proposal.” – Osamu Ohash, Producer.

Very interesting, minigames seem to be the easiest way to cash in on the brand names.

[Source: Spong]

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Rumor: Nintendo only Sonic game incoming? [update]

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[update] Seems like some sources have changed or the lack of sleep really got to me. The game is NOT teased as ‘Nintendo developed’ but as being on a ‘Nintendo platform’. 95% sure this will be the Sonic 3DS game. [/update]

Nintendo fans have been complaining that HD users are getting Sonic Generation, but those Nintendo only users might have their own exclusive title to look forward to!

According to Eurogamer Portugal, the next  issue of Nintendo Power (the E3 edition) is going to reveal a new Sonic game exclusively for a Nintendo platform.

[Source: Eurogamer]
[Via: TSSZnews]

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