Sad news today, as we have learned that Chikao Ōtsuka has passed away at age 85. Chikao Ōtsuka was the Japanese language voice actor of Doctor Eggman, and the longest running Eggman voice actor to date, voicing the character since 1998’s Sonic Adventure. Chikao Ōtsuka’s passing was confirmed on the talent agency website for Aoni Productions, the cause of death was given as ischemic heart failure.
Our thoughts are with Chikao Ōtsuka’s family, friends, and fans at this sad time.
After Burner is just one of those franchises by SEGA that took American arcade goers by storm due to the sheer speed of the game, the eye catching cabinet, and its highly detailed (for the time) graphics. I truly believe that After Burner is just one of those arcade games that don’t get enough credit by gamers today, so jump into your F-14 Tomcat and blast through our After Burner retrospective. You never know, you might learn something!
A patch for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric has gone live, and apparently it’s quite hefty, weighing in at roughly 1030MB! That puts this update at just over a gigabyte!
The news of the patch comes from multiple Twitter sources, confirming an update had indeed gone live; and now, one member of the Sonic Stadium forums has claimed the update clocks in a just over a gigabyte. That’s a pretty insane file size for a patch (though still not quite as bad as Ubisoft’s recent Assassin’s Creed patches…)! As for what the patch actually fixes, it is as of yet unconfirmed; early claims are that the Knuckles Infinite Jump glitch is finally gone, and that the visual performance in co-op mode has been improved somewhat. We’ll update here as details become more clear.
Thanks also go to Feniiku on Twitter for helping us confirm the release of the patch.
UPDATE: The patch is currently only live in Europe, from the looks of things.
SEGA has announced the global release dates for the upcoming Nintendo 3DS title Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX! The game will be releasing to North America on May 26th of this year, hitting both store shelves and Nintendo’s digital download service the eShop. Fans in Japan and Korea can expect a May 28th release, and Europe will follow on May 29th. Hatsune Miku: Project Mirai DX isn’t your usual Hatsune Miku game, as SEGA has teamed with Good Smile Company to present the characters in their chibi-style Nendoroid figure style. You may remember that Miku and Sonic got the Nendoroid treatment, and as somebody who owns the Sonic figure, I can tell you that Good Smile Company does a fantastic job with both the physical figures, and the Nendoroid redesign.
After the break, check out a full press release, a trailer, and gallery of images!
As it turns out, the game will combine Total War with the Warhammer series in Total War: Warhammer. Seeing how this book is coming out in a little more than a week, hopefully SEGA will give us a good look at this game pretty soon.
Before SEGA AM2 brought Shenmue to Dreamcast owners everywhere, they created a Japanese RPG in the late 80’s for the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive. That title would help SEGA-AM2 dip their feet into the console market, that first game was Sword of Vermilion. The game was a early Genesis/Mega Drive title and was one of the spotlight games in SEGA’s timeless “Nintendon’t: advertisement campaign.
While Sword of Vermilion was ambitious for its time, it wasn’t really known as a great game and possibly one of the lesser known games by the publisher. But regardless of that status, the soundtrack for this game is actually great. Composed by Hiroshi Kawaguchi (After Burner, Out Run, and more) and Yasuhiro Takagi (Virtua Racing, F355 Challenge and more), both composers who where literally at the top of their game during this time period.
The SEGA Blog has kicked off another series of translated interviews held between 3D Classics developer M2 and Game Watch & Impress, this time focusing on the upcoming 3D After Burner II which is due out on January 15th for Nintendo’s 3DS. The article, which you can find here, not only delves into the development of the 3DS remake, but also Okunari provides photos and videos of the After Burner II cabinet in SEGA of Japan’s permanent storage warehouse. Suddenly I’m having visions of the ending to “Raiders of the Lost Arc” with every crate sporting a SEGA logo.
Online video series Did You Know Gaming has featured SEGA on past episodes, such as their Sonic the Hedgehog retrospective, and their latest episode takes a look at SEGA’s console swan song the Dreamcast. The video does a nice job putting all the interesting facts revealed over the year in chronological order, touching on the Tom Kalinske’s dealings with Sony during the 1990s, Microsoft’s early involvement, and how piracy both hurt the console and then later helped the indie scene.
I’ll admit, I thought I knew everything about the SEGA Dreamcast, but there were a few factoids I was unaware of like the “potato” chip gag. Was there anything in the video that surprised you?
Looking back, the SEGA Saturn ad campaign in America was nowhere near as memorable as the Genesis and Dreamcast era campaigns. While the Genesis ads were funny and subversive, and the Dreamcast ads were magical and, dare I say “dream-like”, Saturn’s ads were both weird and forgettable. While some ads did stick in many people’s minds, I’m not sure it was for the right reasons. The “Fly Plaything, Fly” commercial, for example, was a risky move that didn’t pay off. SEGA did indeed beat Nintendo years prior, but in no way did SEGA’s Saturn topple Sony’s Playstation. As much as a Saturn fan that I am, I have to concede that it was the Saturn that was “not ready”.
Other Saturn era ads, like this week’s featured commercial for SEGA-AM2’s Virtua Cop, went with the gritty “is this a game, or is it real life” route. While 3D games were quite impressive at the time, and Virtua Cop is a fantastic game, it was far from being “a little too real”. In fact, those who bought and played the game would discover that Virtua Cop, much like AM2’s other games at the time, existed in a quirky arcade-like world where over the top things like a seemingly endless army of identical henchman and criminal leaders in helicopters shouting “meet your maker!” are common occurrences in the life of a cop. Had SEGA played up the frantic over-the-top gameplay of Virtua Cop, showing that the game is far from “a little too real” and was in fact like nothing you have ever played before, then maybe they might have had a better ad.
After the break, check out some Virtua Cop print ads from around the world! Could somebody explain that “Bum Bum Bum” ad to me?
Welcome to our new video series The Weekly Five, a top five list covering a wide range of SEGA topics. We are celebrating The Year of Developers over at SEGAbits.com, that means that each month throughout the year we will be covering notable notable SEGA developers. This month is all about a developer that is close to my heart, SEGA-AM2. What better way to kick off the new series than to discuss five ways SEGA-AM2 changed video gaming.
Upcoming UK Sonic convention Weston Super Sonic has finally reached the end of its illustrious guest list, with the announcement that Sonic the Comic editor Deborah Tate will be in attendance!
Deborah was responsible for editing over 100 issues of the UK Sonic comic series, running from Issue #39 to #166, and was also responsible for many staples throughout the series’ life such as the Graphic Zone, Photo Zone, and reshaping Amy Rose’s look and character. This is no mean feat; to say she contributed hugely to many Sonic fans’ childhood is a huge understatement!
We’re in the home stretch now folks; don’t forget to stay tuned to SEGABits if you can’t make it, as we’ll have all the details from the day!
Weston Super Sonic is on 17th January in Weston-Super-Mare, and is ticket-only. All tickets have been sold, which is nothing short of impressive to say the least.
SEGA AM2 has a huge library of developed games, but nothing is more shocking at how much they change genres and still delivered a game that would defy that same genre. For example, Virtua Cop which in my opinion is one of the best light gun shooters around.
Nothing has a bigger impact on you than the first stage’s music. Its the song that draws the player into the game and Virtua Cop succeeds with its Stage 1 Theme: “Arms Black Market”, giving you that feeling that you and a buddy really are taking down this black market gun rig.
Hucast, the folks behind DUX, Redux: Dark Matters, and Ghost Blade, have recently announced another indie title slated for the SEGA Dreamcast. The game, given the odd title of Alice’s Mom’s Rescue, is a pixel art platformer in which Alice (potentially of Wonderland fame) must rescue her mom from a giant raven. The game will feature three worlds with twenty five stages, and gameplay includes battling evil animals and using magic mushrooms to change Alice’s height. The game will support 240p, RGB cable, S-video, and VGA and is due to release on March 23rd, 2015.
The game is up for pre-order in two styles, a 2-disc limited edition in a DVD case featuring the game, the soundtrack, and a 12 page manual for 42.95 euros and a standard edition which features the game in a jewel case with a 4 page manual for 24.95 euros. Check out screens from the game in the gallery below, and see the game in motion over at Vimeo.
SEGA and Atlus have had a long history together. Before SEGA bought the company in 2013, the companies collaborated on various titles which appeared on home console and arcade hardware. 1997’s Groove On Fight: Gouketsuji Ichizoku 3 was one of these titles, the third in Atlus’ Gouketsuji Ichizoku/Power Instinct series of fighting games.
In this week’s My Life with SEGA, AJ and Mickey Mac put Groove on Fight to the test! Is this really one of the best SEGA Saturn games you’ve never played?
