Via Arcade Heroes comes the news that SEGA Amusements will be debuting a new arcade racer at next month’s IAAPA 2018 trade show in Orlando, FLorida. The game is titled ATV Slam and, as the title suggests, is an ATV racer. This appears to be a new IP created by SEGA, as Arcade Heroes could not dig up any information on the game outside of this announcement. On our end, it appears to be a new IP as well.
On this SEGAbits Swingin’ Report Show podcast Barry is joined by Aki-At, developer of indie game Brock Crocodile, site contributor and one of the original three Swingin’ Report Show hosts, to interview Matt Phillips the creator of the Mega Drive/Genesis indie game Tanglewood. Matt’s past experience includes work at Traveller’s Tales, Crytek and Deep Silver Dambuster Studios. Learn how Tanglewood came about and how one goes about making a new game on 30 year old hardware.
Learn more about Tanglewood and purchase the game for Steam and SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive.
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Following the initial tease, SEGA has officially announced that Revolve8, a real-time strategy game for iOS and Android, will be releasing globally. The card based game features fairy tale characters and the staff includes Koji Igarashi (Castlevania series producer, Bloodstained) working on character designs, Masayoshi Kikuchi (Yakuza series, Dx2 Shin Megami Tensei Liberation) as senior producer, and Ryota-H (Fate/Grand Order and Lord of Vermilion) as character artist.
registration for a closed beta starts today, and the test itself will take place from October 23rd to November 2nd. Despite the negativity mobile games get, the art looks pretty cool. I especially love Cinderella on a jack-o-lantern motorcycle.
We haven’t been shy to share our opinions on SEGAbits about the upcoming Team Sonic Racing, specifically the lack of marketing hype surrounding the game. Set for a winter 2018 release, the game has only seen a few teaser trailers and appearances at conventions. For a game that should be releasing in just a few months, it sure doesn’t feel like it is releasing in just a few months. Via Sonic Stadium comes the sighting of a pamphlet from a Russian computer and gaming expo that gives the game a 2019 release date. Such a delay would fit with how SEGA has been treating the game, and I did note that the official website for the game and the SEGA Press site does not list any release date information. Plus, SEGA has made it clear that quality is important for the Sonic brand moving forward, which has led to delays for games like Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice and Sonic Mania.
Of course, this could also all be false and the Russian event just had the wrong information. It wouldn’t be the first time Russians disseminated false news. We’ll see what information we can dig up on the potential delay, so in the meantime let’s classify this as a rumor.
It’s the first week of the month, which means a preview of SEGA News Bits Extra! Extra is a weekly series for our Patreon supporters where we discuss news not seen on the SEGA News Bits videos. New to the monthly preview is the return of SEGAbits Q&A! All Patreon supporters get question priority, and after that we may dip into the Twitter, YouTube and SEGAbits.com comments sections for random picks.
This week we discuss the House of the Dead style mini game in Project Judge as well as an easier way to get online with the SEGA Dreamcast. Thank you to our Patreon community for the support and consider joining the community yourself if you enjoy our content!
Somebody at Sony jumped the gun, as the November graphic was used temporarily on the PS Plus page promoting the free games subscribers will be able to download. Listed on the official PlayStation site are Bulletstorm: Full Clip Edition and Yakuza Kiwami as November’s PS Plus free games. The graphic has since been pulled, but various sites and people on social media managed to save the graphic.
This is great news, as Yakuza is continuing to gain more and more fans and a free release of the remake of the original game is sure to bring in even more fans!
On this Swingin’ Report Show, Barry talks with Kiel Phegley. Kiel is the author of “Sonic and the Tales of Terror” and the Sonic The Hedgehog “Race Against Chaos Sticker Activity Book”, and is a freelance author who has worked with Penguin Random House and Marvel. Kiel is currently is a professor teaching writing and literature and was the news editor for Comic Book Resources.
We discuss how Kiel landed the Sonic writing job, his approach to books for younger readers, Sonic’s personality, his Sonic The Hedgehog fandom and his future projects!
Check out Kiel’s Penguin Random House books!
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SEGA announced today that they are working on a real-time strategy game for mobile devices called Revolve8: Episodic Dueling which will have an all-star Japanese staff behind the title. The staff includes Koji Igarashi (Castlevania series producer, Bloodstained) working on character designs, Masayoshi Kikuchi (Yakuza series, Dx2 Shin Megami Tensei Liberation) as senior producer, and Ryota-H (Fate/Grand Order and Lord of Vermilion) as character artist.
On the other side the game’s sound team will include Shunsuke Tsuchiya (Another Eden and Stella Glow) along with Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono series, Xeno series). The games teaser page is already up in both English and Japanese. So, yeah this game is going to be SEGA’s next big release considering the staff has some pretty big names. I first reported this game as a mobile game but made a mistake since there isn’t platforms announced. We will find out more information on October 10th!
Reicast Libretro has now gained modem and PPP support, which uses dreamcastlive.net to make online play possible. This new update should work flawlessly on Windows, Linux, Android and even macOS without inputting gibberish like IP address. What is that anyway?(I’m being sarcastic)
According to Libretro, this is the first time a emulator has supported a zero-configuration online gaming for Dreamcast and since it uses dreamcastlive.net, it seems you will be able to play with actual Dreamcast servers. What a good timeline. More information here.
SEGA has unleashed the new extended trailers for Judge Eyes (Project JUDGE), one for the story mode and the other for the gameplay. In the gameplay one SEGA showed off a ton of different things you’ll be able to play through, one of the sections was the arcade games that will be included in Project Judge showing off Motor Raid (which we knew was coming already), but they also gave us a glimpse at The House of the Dead play spot (5m28s in). The question now is if that is actually House of the Dead or maybe a made up in-universe mini-game that is influenced by House of the Dead.
So am I going crazy or is this not one of the past House of the Dead games? One of the biggest giveaways is the art style and the UI. The lives used in Judge Eyes is hearts when in The House of the Dead series they use torches. Maybe this miini-game will play like House of the Dead but be its own thing? Maybe it’ll be based on Yakuza: Dead Souls?
After a long hiatus, partially due to the downfall of the company Technosoft, the Thunder Force series is steadily regaining it’s spark. SEGA has been courteous enough to give fans of the series some much needed love, first with M2’s version of Thunder Force III as apart of the SEGA 3D line of titles for the 3DS, then later it’s follow up Thunder Force IV (aka Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar) and the arcade game Thunder Force AC as apart of the SEGA AGES line of titles on the Nintendo Switch.
Today we’re going to be looking at SEGA AGES Thunder Force IV in particular. This is arguably the best game in the series, and commonly praised as an example of one of the SEGA Genesis’ best shmups available on the system. But does this SEGA AGES version live up to this praise, or is it more like flying into a stray bullet and dying multiple times?
The original Sonic the Hedgehog has a very long history with re-releases on many systems. Starting with Sonic Jam on the SEGA Saturn, the blue insectivore’s first outing has appeared on many systems from the likes of SEGA, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. These ranged from the fantastic like Taxman’s efforts on mobile devices, to the absolute atrocious like the infamous Sonic the Hedgehog Genesis on GBA. Either way, Sonic the Hedgehog is once again on a new platform, this time Nintendo’s latest console the Nintendo Switch.
Though on the surface it seems like a straight forward port, the developers at M2 decided to add new features to spice up the experience a bit, giving the player new options to toy with while retaining the original feel of the original release. Does SEGA AGES Sonic the Hedgehog give the game a much needed breath of life, or is it just another cheap cash grab?
Recently, SEGA of Japan ran a survey asking fans what games they would like to see added to the SEGA AGES lineup, and the results were quite revealing. On this SEGA News Bits, we run through the list and share our thoughts on what this could mean for future rereleases.
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While its been about a decade since the first Valkyria Chronicles title premiered on the PlayStation 3, now we have Valkyira Chronicles return to consoles with the original formula that made us fall in love with the franchise. This is the SEGAbits review for Valkyria Chronicles 4 played on the PlayStation 4.
It was recently revealed that the upcoming Project Judge, developed by the studio behind the Yakuza series, will contain playable SEGA arcade games. These games include Fighting Vipers and the rare racer Motor Raid. On this SEGA News Bits we discuss this news and what we can expect from the ports.
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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.
