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Retro Fighters Launches Pre-Orders and Kickstarter for SEGA Controllers

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The modern retro accessory manufacturer Retro Fighters famous for the Brawler 64, a modern two-prong controller for the Nintendo 64 previously funded through Kickstarter, are now looking to release controllers for Mega Drive, Genesis and Saturn for pre-order as well as looking for funds for their Dreamcast controller via Kickstarter.

Featured on their website is the 2 in 1 controller designed for use on Mega Drive/Genesis and Saturn platforms named the BrawlerGen. Featuring six face buttons and an analog control stick supporting all platforms, a ‘Mode’ button for supported Mega Drive and Genesis games and two shoulder buttons for Saturn. The two handed design mimics the ergonomic form seen in modern controllers while supporting features necessary for all platforms. Bypassing crowdfunding, the controller is available with an MSRP of $39.99 for pre-order on their website with a launch date set for the 10th of June this year.

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Sonic Mania developers forms a new game studio Evening Star

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The developers behind Sonic Mania, and it’s follow up Sonic Mania Plus has formed a new game development studio called Evening Star. The new studio, based in Los Angles, Melbourne and London, consist of talented people behind Sonic Mania. Executive producer Dave Padilla serves as Evening Star’s CEO, Christian Whitehead is the creative director and lead engine architect, Tom Fry is the art director, Hunter Bridges is the technical and audio director, and Brad Flick is the design director. Here is a brief description of the game studio from their website.

“Evening Star is a boutique game studio founded in late 2018. Headquartered in Los Angeles, with operations in Melbourne and London, Evening Star’s mission is designing fresh, fun games which will stand the test of time.

For Evening Star, being a “boutique” game studio has a specific meaning. Every member pursues a goal to make their own great games. By encouraging strong technical foundations in every discipline, members are given a voice and latitude to impact games in unique ways. By reinvigorating gaming history’s more cunning techniques, the team boldly explores directions long since left behind. With that driving approach, and a proprietary engine and tool set, Evening Star has developed an innovative workflow which minimizes the barriers between ideas and execution.

Creating games that shine bright… Evening Star casts a light into the future.”

Seeing that most of the developers of Sonic Mania team coming together again may see the likelihood of a successor to Sonic Mania stronger or perhaps more unique games from Evening Star. What are your thoughts on this announcement? Give us your thoughts on the comments below.

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New Yakuza 0 PC patch removes Denuvo DRM and adds other fixes

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SEGA has just released a new (beta) patch for Yakuza 0, this patch removes the controversial Denuvo DRM. The beta patch was posted by SEGA over on the Steam forums where he goes more into on what the patch fixes. Of course this is a beta patch, it might still have bugs, so if you are a regular user you might want to wait for SEGA and other users to test how it runs.

Here are some other highlights:

  • Fix shaders and shadows on skin tone
  • Improved Ultrawide display support
  • Target monitor output for multi monitor setups

It seems that the biggest update will be the removal of Denuvo, which wasn’t confirmed by SEGA’s developers but by a user. It is nice to see SEGA continue to support their PC games with consistent updates. I just wish SEGA would do this more for console games, especially the Sonic the Hedgehog titles which always seem to ship with a lot of issues.

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ChuChu Rocket! might be making its return to mobile

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ChuChu Rocket! is one of those little oddball titles from SEGA that I feel was a great game that just didn’t get the recognition it deserved. Originally released to the SEGA Dreamcast, the game was puzzle game that could be played in a variety of ways. One style was a Bomberman-style battle between multiple players where cats (KapuKapus) and mice (ChuChus) ran about the screen and the goal was to direct the most ChuChus into your rocket. The other style was a single player experience where KapuKapus and ChuChus released and you had to place arrows into the right places to satisfy the puzzle’s requirements. Players could also create their own puzzles.

The game saw release on the GameBoy Advance as well as a 2010 iOS and Android version. Call it blasphemy, but I always thought the handheld versions were the better way to play, especially on a tablet, as it made a lot more sense to tap the screen to place arrows rather than dragging a cursor with your thumbstick.

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Team Sonic Racing mobile release revealed

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When Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed released, it hit nearly every platform under the sun. The upcoming Team Sonic Racing, meanwhile, was seemingly holding back as the team at Sumo Digital focused on one version of the game. However a recent Facebook ad that several fans have encountered, including Twitter user Radiant Emerald who we’re citing, features screenshots of a mobile version of Team Sonic Racing. Little is revealed outside of three screens and an app icon.

It makes sense that SEGA would want a mobile version of the game, as it has been the norm with the previous All-Stars Racing games as well as Sonic Forces which saw a Sonic Dash style game. The question is, will this mobile version be a direct port of the game right down to all the tracks and racers? Or could we be seeing a stripped down version, potentially on rails like Sonic Dash? We should know more, potentially during the Sonic panel at SXSW which will be held on March 16, 2019.

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Ecco the Dolphin creator wants to make new Ecco, Mr. Bones and Three Dirty Dwarves entries on Nintendo Switch

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Ecco the Dolphin creator Ed Annuziata has a new game coming out called Space War Arena for the Nintendo Switch. If you kept up on Ed’s social media, he has had meetings at Nintendo these last few years and this has lead to people assuming (more like hoping) was working on a new Ecco related dolphin game for the Nintendo Switch, but its actually a new IP! In a interview with Nintendo Life, Ed Annuziata talks about returning to work on some of his past titles including Ecco the Dolphin, Mr. Bones and Tiny Tank:

“One of the OCD characteristics of my personality is I never give up! When I was trying to convince Sega about Ecco the Dolphin it took me years to get them to bite. There are some challenges I need to overcome but eventually, there will be a new Ecco!

Also, I am trying to find a way to port our Saturn game, Three Dirty Dwarves, to the Switch. I think that’s an excellent game for the platform. Also, if I have it my way, modern versions of Mr. Bones (Saturn) and Tiny Tank (PS1) are heading over to the Switch someday!”

Its a pretty interesting interview and its awesome to see a creator of some of my favorite video games still doing new work. I’d be totally excited to play a brand new entry into the Mr. Bones and Three Dirty Dwarves franchises. Who’d of thought that we would be saying that in 2019?

 

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Take a behind the scenes look of Making of the Music for Team Sonic Racing – Part 1

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The Sonic the Hedgehog social media page has uploaded a new video showcasing a behind the scenes look of the music being composed for Team Sonic Racing featuring Sonic the Hedgehog music veteran, Jun Senoue and many other musicians. The video features sample tunes of many tracks such as Boo’s House, Frozen Junkyard, Market Street, and Green Light Ride.

As this is part 1 of Making of the Music for Team Sonic Racing, it would be cool to see Tee Lopes and Hyper Potions at work on video for part 2. Like the music for Team Sonic Racing? Let us know on the comments below.

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SEGA News Bits: SEGA and CAPCOM Beat EA in Publisher Rankings

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Metacritic’s ninth annual game publisher rankings revealed some good news for SEGA fans! Our favorite publisher placed second, beating out heavy weights like EA. On this SEGA News Bits, we discuss the top three and what they did to deserve their spots.

If you want to support this type of content, you can check out our Patreon!

If you enjoy our SEGA News Bits segments and want to support us: Give us a sub and give this video a thumbs up so it shows up on more like-minded fans YouTube recommendations. You know, how that YouTube algorithm is.

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Shenmue III officially reveals English voice cast

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The Shenmue III Kickstarter has sent out its 96th update, this time discussing the English voice overs that the game will receive. As we already know, Corey Marshall is reprising his role as Ryo Hazuki while Ling Shenhua will be played by new comer Brianna Knickerbocker who is said to have stunned people with her great performance.

We also got a behind the scenes video with the voice actors, Yu Suzuki and sound director Takayuki Nakamura in the LA studio. My main issue is how odd the audio is synced and how there is little to no information in this video. Which has been a common theme with these updates.Also seems like so few people to voice a game like Shenmue III, we even have Katana, Corey Marshall’s daughter making her voice performance debut. Should be a interesting product when Shenmue III releases later this year.

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SEGA places second in Metacritic’s game publisher rankings

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2018 certainly felt like a great year for SEGA and ATLUS games, and the recently released list of game publisher rankings by Metacritic solidifies it. While SEGA placed 3rd in 2017’s list, 2018’s list sees SEGA moving up a spot to second!

Sega landed in our top 3 for the third time in four years (with the exception coming in a year when Sega failed to release enough games to qualify for our “major” publishers group). That’s especially impressive given that Sega released more distinct titles than all but one other publisher in 2018. Note that all of Sega’s averages and totals include games published by Atlus, a recently acquired Sega subsidiary that (as of 2018) now shares top-level management with the parent company.

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IDW to give Sonic the Hedgehog comic characters Tangle and Whisper their own mini-series

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We’re a dozen issues and one video game adaptation special into IDW’s Sonic the Hedgehog comic series, and now we know what the first mini-series will entail! Via IDW’s April solicitations came the reveal of an issue #0 of “Sonic the Hedgehog: Tangle & Whisper”. The preview issue is said to give a sneak peek at their upcoming mini-series adventure and includes a recap of “season 1” of the main Sonic the Hedgehog comic (since when are comic books seasons?).

This news is notable as it shows IDW is ready to branch out with the Sonic series with mini-series (something IDW is well known for) and that they are willing to give original characters the spotlight. By comparison, it took Archie two years into their Sonic run before they gave Princess Sally Acorn her own mini-series, and that was the first and last time Archie gave a character not derived from the games their own comic book.

After the break you can read the description of the mini-series preview comic. The mini-series is due out this summer.

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SEGA FES 2019 announced for March 30th and 31st in Japan

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SEGA FES returns this year with another fan centric event in Japan where there will surely be some big announcements. This year’s event takes place March 30th and the 31st in the BelleSalle Akihabara event hall in Tokyo, Japan. Last year we saw the reveal of the Mega Drive Mini, SEGA AGES, a new Sakura Taisen game and the Japanese release of Shenmue I & II.

This year? Who knows! My money is on a more concrete date and details of the Mega Drive Mini, a trailer for Sakura Taisen and more SEGA AGES announcements. I know it’s a stretch, but I’m hoping we see more titles from SEGA’s survey of fan favorite franchises. Remember, the only games in the top 5 not to see new titles are Jet Set Radio and Virtua Fighter. A new game for either franchise would be awesome for fans!

Until then, we can only speculate but once the event arrives we will be sure to share the news of what is revealed!

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SEGA celebrates 30 years of Toshihiro Nagoshi with a look back at his career

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SEGA has released a sit down interview video with Toshihiro Nagoshi, chief creative officer at SEGA. SEGA fans know Nagoshi best for Daytona USA, the Super Monkey Ball games and Yakuza. The interview contains some interesting information, including Nagoshi saying that the games where he listened to other people didn’t work too well (Binary Domain, perhaps?). In regards to the Yakuza franchise, Nagoshi notes that the original Yakuza did not sell enough to cover development costs which led to the team having to more effectively use their resources for the sequel. Only a year passed between the first two Yakuza games, and this was an effort to keep the series alive in people’s minds, which meant a very busy and short development cycle. This hard work paid off, however, as Yakuza 2 sold twice as many copies as the first game.

Check out the video for yourself above, and here’s hoping we see more content like this from SEGA’s YouTube channel!

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Street Fighter II: Bloody Edition SEGA Genesis rom hack released

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Remember back in the day when the whole Mortal Kombat vs Street Fighter II school yard arguments? One big knock kids had against Street Fighter II back in the day was its lack of “extreme violence”.  Well, now you can get Street Fighter II: Bloody Edition modded rom created by NinjAkira based on Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition on SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive.

Street Fighter II: Bloody Edition just doesn’t add blood, it also changes the way the game plays:

Impact animations were replaced with blood sneezing and other improvements:

  • weak attacks have a very slow speed, normal attacks have not been altered and strong attacks have a very fast speed
  • Impact with strong attacks has been increased to give more brutality
  • Special attacks that need reload no longer need
  • The power bar is the same as Super Street Fighter to stay aesthetically better, but now with blood!

You can download it right here.

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