Segabits @ E3: Off-screen video and more details on Hatsune Miku Project: VR Tech Demo

Shigs here. I’m at E3 and despite no Sega booth, I’m managing to find some Sega…bits of information here and there. As announced earlier, there is a Hatsune Miku VR demo at Sony’s Project Morpheus booth. In this virtual reality demo, you are at a Miku concert enjoying the music with the large, silhouetted crowd. They all have their glowsticks waving to the song “Viva, Viva, Happy” and you need to do the same (I think). Eventually, Miku brings you up on stage and it gets a little odd as words and random objects are seen all over her. You’re playing a rhythm game with the move controller and waving the stick at Miku and the crowd to the beat. The person playing seemed to be too interested in looking around and was obviously losing,  since X’s and storm clouds were appearing everywhere. Still, it looks like a fun game and I’ll try to get my hands on it Thursday when Project Morpheus demos are open to the public.

I apologize for the quality of the video, but it was taken offscreen.

Sega feat. Hatsune Miku Project: VR Tech Demo announced

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SEGA has revealed a new title for Sony’s Project Morpheus VR headset for PlayStation 4 which will transport players to the world of Hatsune Miku! Titled Sega feat. Hatsune Miku Project: VR Tech Demo (doesn’t quite roll off the tongue), the simple demo features Miku singing songs from artist Mitchie M. while dancing (what else did you expect Miku to do?). We don’t know much more about the demo beyond that, so any gameplay or interaction is possible but unconfirmed. Also, it has not been stated if this will lead to a full retail release once Project Morpheus releases next year. Still, this should be an exciting experience for fans who truly want to have some fun with Miku!

Nintendo pre-E3 Digital Event: Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games trailer

Nintendo’s Digital Event at E3 2015 has wrapped, and on the SGEA side of things we have a new trailer for the upcoming Mario & Sonic at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games title. The new trailer showcases summer sports that will be included in both Wii U and 3DS titles, though those hoping for any real surprises or hints at a story mode or party mode will be disappointed. Hopefully we learn more about the game soon, personally I’d like to see a beefed up London Party Mode (obviously set in Rio) and I think SEGA really needs to include some Samba de Amigo characters given the game’s setting.

SEGAbits X Sonic Prologue 2

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The wait is now over and we at SEGAbits are happy to announce our surprise partnership with NECOMIX with their upcoming sequel to their Sonic Prologue fan film, which had over 900k views since it’s launch last year in August, to celebrate Sonic’s 25th Anniversary next year. With this partnership, we will be posting updates on Sonic Prologue 2 exclusively on our social media network, Facebook & Twitter.

Sonic Prologue 2 takes place directly after the events of Sonic 2 and the beginning of Sonic 3 where Sonic first meets one of his earlier rivals in the series, Knuckles the Echidna. This time, the team is going to need support through donations to make this project happen. Hit the jump for the “exclusive” 60fps trailer, story synopsis, screenshots, a message from the director and details on donation support of the smash hit fan film.

Shenmue 3’s Kickstarter has been funded

 

Shenmue 3 is Real

No more waiting. No more false hope. Shenmue 3 is alive, it’s coming, and one day we’re all going to get to play it. As of a few moments ago, Shenmue 3 reached its $2 million goal on Kickstarter, breaking all sorts of records along the way.

Shenmue 3 has become the fastest game on Kickstarter to break $1 million dollar and the fastest to reach a $2 million funding goal, hitting it in less than hours with more than 24,000 funders. The game’s funding moved so quickly in its opening hours that it practically broke the kickstarter page, hitting prospective funders with errors.  It’s also currently on track to outpace Bloodstained, which recently became Kickstarter’s most funded game ever at $5.5 million. For comparison, Bloodstained required 24 hours to reach half of Shenmue 3’s initial funding goal.

Of course, this is just the beginning. With more than 30 days left in the campaign, the project as more than $2 million worth of stretch goals lined up, ranging from Shenmue 1 & 2 cinema shorts at $2.5 million to an expanded Baisha village and additional mini games at $4 million. According to the Kickstarter page, we’ll be hearing more about these stretch goals after initial funding. We’ll post more details as they come in!

Shenmue 3 is being developed by Yu Suzuki’s independent studio YsNet. It is currently unknown how (or if) SEGA is involved, and whether any outside parties are will be performing publish duties or providing outside funding. The game is currently scheduled for a December 2017 release. For additional information on the project and its developers, check out the official kickstarter page and the game’s website. For a look at a list of all the known stretch goals, check out the image below the break!

Shenmue 3 appears at Sony’s E3 2015 press conference, launches Kickstarter

Shenmue is just one of those game franchises that make all SEGA fans sequel in delight, talk to any of the fans that played them and they’ll go on for hours about what makes the franchise so great. This year at Sony’s E3 2015 conference, Yu Suzuki announced that they will be doing a Shenmue 3 kickstarter and you can fund it right now! The budget of the game via the kickstarter is only 2 million dollars, so chances of reaching it are very high (since its at 150k right now and it hasn’t even been an hour!). But 2 million dollars seems a bit low of a budget and it also seems to have a new character models that seem out of place. This is obviously very early assets that will hopefully change down the road. The game will also be developed by Yu Suzuki’s new studio called Ys Net. It seems that the project will only be available on Playstation 4 and PC.

Regardless you can fund the game and enjoy some of the rewards offered. $500 dollars gets you a set of capsule toys, who doesn’t like capsule toys? Are you guys excited for Shenmue III? Let us know in the comments.

SEGAbits appearance @ Savannah Comic Con this Saturday featuring a preview of Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2015

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If you’re a fan of SEGA living in Georgia and like retro video games, we will be making a guest appearance at Savannah Comic Con in Savannah, Georgia this Saturday on June 20th. We will be featuring our SEGAbits original content such as My Life with SEGA, This is Saturn, Weekly Five and many more.

We will also be promoting our fan event, Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam 2015, with playable retro SEGA video games, hosting a Sonic Adventure 2 tournament provided with Sonic/SEGA prizes and a glimpse of what’s coming to the fan event this Fall. Don’t forget to check out our TooManyGames 2015 appearance with Sonic Retro on June 27th as we uncover secrets of the never released SEGA Saturn game, Sonic X-treme. Welcome to the Next Level of Excitement!

Virtua Fighter cameos hit Smash Bros on Wii U and 3DS

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While the big news is that Smash Bros added two new DLC characters that include Roy (Fire Emblem) and Ryu (from Street Fighter), there were also other characters announced as Mii Fighters, including SEGA favorites Jacky and Akira from Virtua Fighter. That isn’t all that hit the market, you can also pick up Megaman.EXE (Mega Man Battle Network), Zero (Mega Man X), Isabelle (Animal Crossing), Inkling boy/girl (Splatoon), and even Heihachi (Tekken).

Each ‘custom Mii fighter’ will cost you .75 cents per fighter, if you want them on both 3DS and Wii U it will cost you only $1.15 each. If you get them all bundled for one version its $6, but if you get them for both 3DS and Wii U its $9.20. Not bad at all.

Anyone purchasing any of these pieces of DLC? Any other SEGA characters you want to see represented in Smash Bros?

SEGA announces Yakuza Zero has sold over 500k units, series has sold over 7.5 million

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We mentioned before on the last financial report on how Yakuza Zero has been the lowest launching Yakuza game in Japan, especially when it was released on both Playstation 3 and Playstation 4 consoles. Well, SEGA seemed to be aware and launched the game in Asia back in May where it sold out instantly. Now SEGA has stated that the game has sold over half a million copies, talk about a quick turn around.

SEGA has other games it is releasing over to in Asia including Phantasy Star Nova and Shining Resonance. SEGA hasn’t announced plans on releasing Yakuza Zero in English, but it will be releasing Yakuza 5 this fall on Playstation 3.

SEGA has also announced that the franchise as a whole has sold over 7.5 million. The franchise has had over 11 unique titles including spin-offs released since 2005. SEGA also announced before that the Persona franchise reached over 6.2 million, surprising seeing the Yakuza franchise outsell Persona when Persona‘s been around longer and is more popular in the west.

[Via: Playstation Lifestyle]

Akira and Jacky Mii outfits for Smash Bros 4 leaked

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Twitter exploded with news of a Smash Bros leak early this morning. While most of the attention is being lavished on the two new characters this leak unveiled, there’s much more to it than them: Mii skins of the Virtua Fighter characters Akira and Jacky (as well as Tekken’s Heihachi, which is the outfit on the left).

What’s really interesting about Akira’s outfit is that it is literally his model from the first game, complete with the old school, flat-shaded, segmented polygonal limbs. Jacky, on the other hand, seems to based off of his appearance from Virtua Fighter 5.

Of course, it should be noted that these outfits have not technically been confirmed by Nintendo, but given the size and breadth of this leak, not to mention the simultaneous release of the above in-game outfits and in-game victory movies and renders of the leaked characters that are obviously real, this confirmation is likely only a matter of waiting for tomorrow’s Smash Bros Direct.

One interesting implication of these Mii outfits is that it means SEGA’s crossover with Smash Bros no longer ends with Sonic. Could another all-new fighter be in the cards? We’ll just have to see.

These assets were found on RandomTBush‘s twitter.

 

Classic SEGA Ads: Super Monkey Ball 2 is like a party but better than a party!

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When SEGA made the announcement that they were going third party, a lot of fans felt the pain of not seeing SEGA games on SEGA hardware anymore. But that pain didn’t last long, as over the next few years SEGA would release a slew of modern day classics to the Sony Playstation, Microsoft Xbox, and Nintendo Gamecube. Each console had their own unique games, and each could claim a certain SEGA IP. While Xbox and Playstation owners had the more adult Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon games, the kid friendly Gamecube had the Super Monkey Ball series. I’ll admit, as a PS2 and Xbox owner at the time, I wrote the Super Monkey Ball games off as kiddie nonsense. Boy was that a mistake.

Atlus and ACE Team proudly present The Deadly Tower of Monsters

Atlus just announced a new game by ACE Team, the people behind Abyss Odyssey, Zeno Clash and Rock of Ages. This new top down game, called The Deadly Tower of Monsters, is heavily inspired by old B-movies that heavily rely on cheap practical effects. In this game you will have to climb a giant tower on which you’ll encounter various “stop-motion” enemies such as lizard-men, UFOs, nuclear ants, dinosaurs and even robot apes.

You can look forward to seeing the game on Steam and PlayStation 4 this fall. You can see various screenshots below and of course the trailer above.

SEGAbits & Sonic Retro present Boom Talkalaka #4: Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice Emergency Broadcast

SEGAbits and Sonic Retro team up to bring you a podcast focused on SEGA’s new Sonic Boom franchise! Hosted by Barry the Nomad of SEGAbits.com and David the Lurker of SonicRetro.org, Boom Talkalaka features discussion of the many aspects of Sonic Boom – from comics and episodes of the cartoon, to the video games and toys.

In this emergency broadcast, Barry and David discuss SEGA’s surprising reveal of Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice for Nintendo 3DS. That’s right, the games aren’t over yet! Oh… but the comics are, as we also discuss the sad cancellation of Archie’s Sonic Boom comics which will occur with issue 11. We also discuss the premiere of the TV series in Europe and *SPOILER ALERT* discuss a shocking revelation that alters the very fabric of Sonic Boom’s reality!

[Download] [RSS]

Sonic and Angry Birds cross-over in… Angry Birds Sonic Dash Epic?

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I honestly have no explanation for this. I’m not sure if this can be explained. Some guy from VideoGamer just tweeted these screenshots and I’m just incredibly confused right now. I mean, they’re both popular games sure, but… Angry Birds Sonic Dash Epic? Are they trying to outdo SONIC BIRDS vs. EGGMAN ROBOTNIK PIGS in the naming department? I’m so confused by this.

Okay, so it turns out that this is an in-game event that’ll go on for three weeks, in which you can unlock a different Angry Birds Epic character each week by collecting tokens. That, or you can just buy them. These includes Red ‘Knight’, Chuck ‘Mage’ and Bomb ‘Pirate’. You’ll still be able to use keep using these characters even after unlocking them. This event will be on all three platforms: iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

So uh, yeah, medieval Angry Birds characters in a Sonic game. Just in case for if you weren’t weirded out already by the Sonic Twitter suddenly becoming a lot more meta.

[Source: Invision Game Community]

After the break, check out gameplay footage of the first unlockable Angry Birds character.