SEGA has officially revealed Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania! The game is releasing in time for the franchise’s 20th anniversary. The game promises 300 recreated stages from the original three Super Monkey Ball games, as well as fan favorite mini games. Expect the game to hit October 5, 2021 to PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S.
SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania might be the worse kept game secret in a long time, having its platforms already leak and now box art and screenshots from TechnikNews writer Nils Ahrensmeier. I’ll be honest, that is probably some of the nicest box art I have seen from a Super Monkey Ball game and I really dig the logo.
Big spoilers, those mini-games you love from the original games? They back baby! Check out the screens shared by Nils below:
We posted before how the Australian Classification Board rated Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania and now it looks like the beans (I mean, bananas) have been re-spilled by a Brazilian certification board. But this time we got more information, which platforms the unannounced game is heading for and basically every modern piece of hardware:
Crazy enough, SEGA just revealed quite a bit of games, but still no word on this Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania title…
SEGA has officially announced that the legal action thriller Judgment from Yakuza series developer Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio will be receiving a sequel! Titled Lost Judgment, the game will see a simultaneous worldwide release on September 24 for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X|S, and Xbox One. You can check out the trailer now! We will be sure to share more details as we hear them.
As you know, back in March SEGA filed a trademark for the name ‘Lost Judgment‘, which lead people to speculate that SEGA will be making a sequel to Judgment (or Judge Eyes in Japan). Since then SEGA has released the next generation ‘Remaster’ of Judgment and has been teasing a sequel on social media (which is set to be reveal tomorrow).
But Japanese PSN can’t wait, it has updated its store page to show off the sequel right now. The game in Japan will be called “Lost Judgment” according to the leak. The Japanese PSN has been on fire since they also leaked Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown early. We also know that the game will feature a season pass in Japan, according to the site page. 
The game is set to launch in Japan on September 21st on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5! As far as the Western name for the game? I guess we shall see if we will get Judgment 2 or Lost Judgment; tomorrow at 7am PST!
SEGA Japan has released new streaming guidelines for Japanese audiences, which will now allow individual users to monetize videos and streams of SEGA owned games through YouTube and Twitch.
Its actually kinda crazy that SEGA didn’t allow this before considering how games like Yakuza got huge brand awareness in the West due to streamers and YouTubers making videos on the games. But it seems that SEGA in the past allowed users to create videos, but not profit from them. It seems that SEGA is also encouraging players to add reaction faces and comments, but also asking for spoiler tags on videos that ruin story moments. They have also asked not to do unrelated edits that would obscure actual gameplay, which seems a bit vague?
This whole guideline sadly isn’t applying to Atlus or western developed titles such as Total War, but if its a success for SEGA; we can all assume this will all change.
[Via: Siliconera]
There has been quite a bit of rumors on the fact that there will be another Super Monkey Ball game. Some of the rumors call it Super Monkey Ball Retro but it seems the Australian Classification board, which rates games for the region, has let it slip: SUPER MONKEY BALL BANANA MANIA!
So what do we know? The game will be rated PG and have mild violence, with online interactivity. The title will also be ‘multiplatform’ and the rating was done earlier today.
It seems SEGA is gearing up to have a epic year if all those rating leaks are anything to go by including: Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown and Lost Judgment.
Looks like the listing from Dot Emu on SteamDB was true, the new add-on DLC for Streets of Rage 4 is being titled Mr. X Nightmare. The DLC is set to have Estel Aguirre as playable, new game modes, new moves, new weapons, and even new tracks by Sonic Mania fame Tee Lopes.
But what if you just got Streets of Rage 4? Well, Dot Emu isn’t leaving the base game behind as this update for the DLC will also include free upgrade to the base game that will include Mania + difficulty, Training mode with tutorial, New color palettes, and more stuff to be announced in the future.
The steam page for the DLC is already up, if you guys want to add it to your Wishlist. This trailer has me hyped, lets go!
Similar to how Sonic Mania had its ‘Plus’ DLC leaked by a SteamDB listing, now the Streets of Rage 4 SteamDB listing has let the cat out of the bag that one of our favorite games of last year will be getting some upcoming DLC.
Considering that the DLC that is upcoming has minor spoilers, hit the jump to see what it is:
Yesterday the Japanese video game news site Denfaminico Gamer held an interview with SEGA-AM2 legendary arcade designer Yu Suzuki (Virtua Fighter), Tekken’s Katsuhiro Harada and Arc System Works’ Toshimichi Mori where they talked about the histories of their franchises that included Virtua Fighter, Tekken, Guilty Gear and Blazblue. There was also some talk about the possibility of creating Virtua Fighter 6!
The important bits of the interview were taken from @gosokkyu twitter account, who translates Japanese gaming news. If you like Japanese games, I suggest you give the account a follow.
If you’re a long time SEGA fan on Xbox and have been looking forward to Yakuza 6: The Song of Life on the Xbox and/or Xbox Game Pass for PC, then you’re in luck! In a little less than 2 weeks you’ll be able to finish the Kazuma Kiryu storyline.
It looks like March is a big month for Game Pass as its also getting:
Since Yakuza 6 will support the ‘cloud’ that means you’ll be able to stream it to compatible devices including your phone.
Last year was the launch of the first Panzer Dragoon: Remake. While the game had issues when it first launched on Nintendo Switch, publisher Forever Entertainment actually went in and fixed the game through updates. Later we got PlayStation, Xbox and PC versions with higher resolutions.
Now the Panzer Dragoon: Remake twitter account has confirmed that Panzer Dragoon II Zwei: Remake is coming this year:
Forever Entertainment is also doing a remake of House of the Dead 1 & 2, but we still haven’t gotten updates on that. I guess one game at a time.
Judgment is a great game, one that I think any fan of the Yakuza franchise should give a try. While I enjoyed most of the game, there were moments within the game that could have used polished (one of those scenes is actually shown a bit in this trailer), so I hope the newly announced “Judge Eyes Remastered” (Judge Eyes being the Japanese name) fixes those issues. The new remastered version will cost you $39.99. This will also mark the debut for the game outside a Sony platform, with it being on Xbox and Stadia (who cares about that one, right?).
This is also the first time a RGG Studio game has gotten a world wide release date on the same day in Japan with the rest of the world. The game is set to come out on April 21st, 2021! Judgment Remastered is said to run at 4K at 60fps, but also include all the DLC on the disc. Hit the jump for the press release from SEGA:
Review code provided by SEGA
Puzzle games! They’re fun! They’re varied! They’re kind of strange to talk about, too, they’re very weird and specific in that way. Why do you play them? I play them because I want something fun and simple that puts my brain to work, or to put my brain against some other person’s brain and see who can work their brain better, or something. And that’s awesome! I love these games!
But there’s a lot of them. Puyo Puyo and Tetris are two of the biggest puzzle games on the planet, they have such long, storied histories, they play in such similar yet contrasting ways, it’s fascinating playing a game that has them both in one package. But it’s also not the only time they’ve been in one package. When I previewed this game, I mentioned how it was comforting how little had changed between games, because it meant I was gonna have a good time regardless of which one I booted up. But now that it’s out, I gotta ask myself: does that comfort hold up after a few weeks of playing?
As I write this, I’m not actually sure what’s running on my Switch; Puyo Puyo Tetris, or Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. There’s almost a comfort to that, knowing that no matter what, a solid puzzle game is, waiting for me when I go get it off my nightstand. That comfort was even felt when I first booted the game, where I immediately launched into a standard 150 line Tetris challenge from the main menu and lost at line 140 due to being tired. There’s a comfort to the game being similar to my experiences to the first game, a comfort to the idea that I know what I’m getting into with a sequel, on some level.
I am not really an expert on Puyo Puyo. I’m not even really a Puyo Puyo player. My first experience with the series was the small Puyo minigame in Project Mirai DX back on the 3DS. But I am at least a big Tetris fan, I could eat Tetris for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No library of mine is complete without a Tetris game somewhere in it. I find this puts me in an interesting position in comparison to the site’s resident Puyo fanatic, FlareHabanero, to preview, and then eventually review this crossover sequel. I have to save much of my thoughts on PPT2 for the review, but I can at least tell you from playing this game over the past few days that PPT2 is an excellent, polished, and feature-rich package I want to sink more hours into.
