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Swingin’ Report Show #55: Localize It! with Segalization

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This week’s episode is a special one, as Barry and George reunite to talk with Draikin and InTheSky of the SEGAbits partner site Segalization – a fan campaign dedicated to promoting the localization of SEGA games. While Western SEGA fans have enjoyed a number of great releases over the past few years, there are several titles that fans have never been able to experience due to SEGA not localizing hits from Japan for Western audiences.

Draikin and InTheSky talk about the inception of the Segalization campaign, and share their thoughts on how SEGA could go about localizing titles including Valkyria Chronicles 3, Yakuza 5, Yakuza Ishin, and Puyo Puyo Tetris. We also reveal another new partner site, Panzer Dragoon fan site The Will of the Ancients, and deliver the usual off topic banter. Enjoy the show!

Want to support Segalization? Visit their website, follow them on Facebook and Twitter and sign their petition to bring Japanese SEGA titles to the West!

[Download] [RSS] [iTunes] [Archive]

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SEGA Tunes: Sakura Taisen’s “Kimi Yo Hana Yo (Live)”

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As some of you may remember, we’ve covered Sakura Taisen on Tuesday Tunes before, featuring music from both the game itself and its stage show incarnations. As a musical theatre buff myself, I am extremely jealous of Japanese fans for the dozens of Sakura Taisen related stage shows they’ve had over the years. After all, the closest thing us westerners have gotten to a proper SEGA related stage show is that awful Sonic musical from Australia.

A Sakura Taisen stage show is rather fitting though, given that the game itself stars performers who actively sing and dance on stage. The above video is from the 2003 Shichifukujin show, which features all the voice actors from the Sakura Taisen video games and anime reprising their roles on stage. From what I’ve seen of the show it looks pretty cool, and the performers themselves are definitely talented.

The song “Kimi Yo Hana Yo” was originally composed by Kouhei Tanaka for the end credits of Sakura Wars 4. The stage version features all of the games voice actors reprising their roles as members of Flower Division, including Akio Suyama as Captain Ichirou Oogami and Chisa Yokoyama as titular character Sakura Shinguji.

Check below the fold for the version of the song featured in the game!

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SEGA Retrospective: Sakura Taisen Week – Imperial Assault Force, Move Out!

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Konnichiwa! Kori-Maru here to welcome our readers to Sakura Taisen week.

In commemoration of Valentine’s Day we’ll be providing you with a full week of coverage for SEGA’s popular dating/strategy game. Since its release in Japan on the SEGA Saturn back in 1996, the franchise expanded with sequels, spinoffs, stage shows, animation, and even a motion picture. While Sakura Taisen was a smash hit in Japan, the franchise was never given much exposure in the west due to SEGA’s western branches not believing the series would find an audience.

Luckily, other companies disagreed, and Sakura Taisen’s anime and manga would reach western shores in the early 2000s thanks to companies like ADV films and Tokyopop. Thanks to NIS America, even Sakura Taisen’s latest game, Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love, was able to make reach western markets. Most recently, last year’s Project X Zone for the Nintendo 3DS saw a Western release and featured Sakura Taisen characters and locations.

To get you guys prepped for a week of Sakura Taisen, check below for an overview of the series!

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Yakuza Restoration demo hits Japanese PSN on February 13th

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YakuzaRestorationDemo
Playstation 3 users might want to mark February 13th on their calendars as the day you get to try Yakuza Restoration for the first time. The game’s demo will be downloadable and will include mini-games like fishing and going to a singing bar.

The demo will weigh in at 2,410 MB. The game will come out on February 22nd on both Playstation 3 and Playstation 4. No Western release plans have been announced.

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Transformers Mega Drive Megatron is pretty much the coolest toy ever

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Transformers Mega Drive Megatron Transforms into Sega Game Console FIgure Image (1)__scaled_600
 
Via Tformers comes the reveal of a very cool new Transformers figure: The Mega Drive Megatron. A collaboration between SEGA and Takara Tomy, the figure is, as you would expect from the name, the Decepticon leader Megatron who transforms into a SEGA Mega Drive. This special edition figure was revealed at the Tokyo Toy Show Winter Wonder Festival, and from the photos it is assumed that the figure will act as a USB device based on the end of Megatron’s arm mounted weapon. Once we learn more of this awesome figure, including where you can buy it, we’ll be sure to let you know!

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Classic SEGA Ads: Did you know SEGA Master System is the best thing ever?

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Watching Master System commercials from places like the UK and Australia sometimes feels like watching something from an alternate dimension, one where the NES didn’t obliterate its competition and establish an unbreakable monopoly on the 8-bit gaming market. That’s because despite the NES’s utter dominance of the US and Japanese gaming markets, Nintendo failed to establish much of a foothold in Europe or Brazil, where SEGA dominated. Thus, we have ads like this, that act like the Master System was on top of the world. Mostly because it was…in Australia anyway.

The ad itself is pretty typical for its time, lacking the flare and attitude that would eventually become characteristic of SEGA’s marketing in the nineties. It does give us a nice window into the Australia’s 1980s games market. The After Burner music in the second half is a nice touch, too.

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GamersGate having a huge SEGA PC sale

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If you are looking for some of SEGA’s PC games and want to get them for super cheap, check out the GamersGate SEGA sale. Not only do they have the newer, more often thought about releases but there are also some obscure games like Universe at War: Earth Assault and Space Siege.

Some hot picks: Jet Set Radio for $1.25, NiGHTS: Into Dreams… for $2.50, and Castle of Illusion for $5.10. Make sure you note, that the sale items in this link are the ones listed in red. Have fun gaming.

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SEGA Reports 44.3 Billion Yen Growth for 2013, Digital Market Thrives

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SEGA Sammy has released their earnings report for 2013, yielding a net profit of ¥44.3 billion, or $434 million, and a 564% increase year over year. The company attributed it to strong Pachinko performance and the sales of investment securities and non-current assets.

On the home electronics side, SEGA’s top three performing titles were Football Manager 14 at 680,000 units, Sonic Lost World for a combined 640,000 units, and the Japan-Only SAKATSUKU Pro Succer Club wo Tsukurou! for 200,000. Despite this, the nine-month period ending on Dec. 31, 2013 in which SEGA tracked numbers returned only 6.5 million total units of games moved, a decrease it attributes to “the harsh market environment.”

It’s not all doom and gloom because the company also found what they call “continued favorable” success on the digital side with Phantasy Star Online 2 and mobile phone titles Puyopuyo!! Quest and CHAIN CHRONICLE as the top runners there. The whole division saw a 19.7% increase year-to-year in net sales to a total of ¥72,934 million.

Keep in mind, back in November, SEGA purchased Atlus-parent company Index for a seemingly paltry ¥14 billion.

The release of the financial data comes hours after SEGA unveiled its plans for a massive spin-off of Sonic The Hedgehog with Sonic Boom.

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SEGAbits & Segalization partnership

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Hi SEGAbits readers! Some of you may have heard about Segalization, our new fan campaign that focuses on promoting the localization of Japanese Sega games. The project has already gone live a while ago, and today we’d like to formally announce a new partnership with our friends at SEGAbits. Other than having both websites link to each other, this partnership means you may find Segalization staffers occasionally contributing articles to SEGABits, which may or may not involve titles or news related to Segalization’s mission. In this first article, we’d like to talk a bit about the origins and goals of our campaign/website.

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We are celebrating our 4th anniversary!

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Holy Sonic balls, we are now 4 years old. I know that if you have been scrolling through the site lately you probably have noticed that there has been quite a lack of ‘George’ written posts and I’m here to inform you that I have not abandoned the site. If anything, I missed it. It’s just something I have been doing since I first got internet on my Dreamcast back in 1999! It started off with chats on IRC rooms, moved over to forums and eventually ended up blogging! This lead me to wanting to own my own SEGA site, thus here we are at SEGAbits.

Thankfully I have had great people on board here to help me come up with ideas, this site might have been started by me, but decisions are group based. I want to thank the awesome staff we have here, who work very hard on the site and usually have some of the most brilliant ideas. One of the big reasons the site looks so well is because of our web designer Will, who is working on a new look for the site and has been with the site since before it was even launched! I want to thank A.J. for single handily making our YouTube channel relevant, thanks to Nuckles and Shigs for going to events for us and running the Sonic Talk podcast, thanks to Ben for all that work he does behind the scenes with his editing skills and I also want to thank Barry The Nomad who came in and created some great images for the site, while also helping me make the Swingin’ Report Show podcast awesome. One of the biggest help we had on the site last year was our partnership with Sonic Retro/SEGA Retro, so I definitely want to thank those guys. Its been a great partnership!

But mostly I want to thank everyone that reads the site! You guys make our little fun hobby way more enjoyable. What’s 4 more years?

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‘Sonic Boom the Game’ revealed as third Wii U/3DS Sonic title

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Update: We reached out to SEGA of America over the big question of whether this is a reboot or it’s own thing. Their reply? “Sonic Boom is a new branch of the Sonic universe and does not replace modern Sonic.”

Update 2: The SEGA Blog has posted the official announcement. After the break, check out an image gallery for both the TV show and the game.

Update 3: This is crazy. So way back in March of 2013 a CryEngine 3 demo video was uploaded to YouTube, and the video featured some unnamed environments from Big Red Button. Those environments are actually from Sonic Boom the game! We’ve added the video after the break.

Not only is Sonic Boom the cartoon series landing later this year on Cartoon Network, but SEGA has also revealed today that LA developer Big Red Button Entertainment, a team made up of Ex-Naughty Dog staffers, will be leading the development of a video game adaptation of the series which will be exclusive to the Wii U and 3DS. This makes Sonic Boom the first Western created Sonic cartoon and video game adaptation in over 20 years, the last being Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine, as well as Sonic Spinball which featured Sonic SatAM elements as well as characters which were carried over to Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Some may be tearing their hair out in the belief that Sonic has been rebooted, Sonic Team are no longer developing the games, and Sonic will forever be Nintendo exclusive. HOWEVER we have yet to hear from SEGA themselves over whether we can expect to see the usual Sonic Team developed “modern Sonic” we’ve come to know continue and be seen as separate from Sonic Boom the cartoon series and game adaptation. Much like the aforementioned Western Sonic cartoons and games being separate from the Japanese developed titles. Once we learn more, we’ll be sure to share it!

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‘Sonic Boom’ TV series character redesigns revealed & teaser trailer released

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Update: After the break, another image of Sonic and the gang as they’ll appear in Sonic Boom the Game, which you can learn more about in this news post.

Update 2: Check out the TV show trailer for Sonic Boom after the break!

It’s been a long time coming, but the new Sonic Boom designs for Sonic and his friends have finally been revealed! At the moment we only have photos of Sonic and Knuckles, but according to Sonic Stadium Tails now has a tool belt.

Sonic Boom is also going to be much larger in scope then initially thought, as it will be more than just a television show. It will also be a toy line from Tomy and a new video game, which will be released on both console and mobile platforms.

Whether or not this is a permanent and franchise wide redesign of the character or something restricted to everything Sonic Boom related is currently unknown, but this is easily the most drastic official redesign of any sort that the franchise has seen to date.

We’ll keep you updated with more news as it happens.

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Contest: Win a SEGA Tommo iPhone 5/5S Genesis, Saturn, or Mega Drive case

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Today marks our four year anniversary, and it just so happens that we also have a contest to win a Tommo iPhone 5/5S case from our friends at SEGA and Tommo! What more, these SEGA iPhone cases come in SEGA Genesis, Mega Drive, and Saturn styles – consoles that celebrate milestone anniversaries this year, which we’ve aptly dubbed The Year of the SEGA Console! We have four cases (2X Genesis, 1X Mega Drive, and 1X Saturn) to give away to four lucky SEGA fans.

To enter, all you have to do is follow SEGAbits on Twitter and/or Instagram, take photos of your SEGA collection or your favorite SEGA hardware (be creative, it helps your chances) and share them with us, tagging your entry with #SEGAbitsContest. While you can submit more than one photo, we will only award one case per person and we advise you keep the number of entries minimal – think “quality over quantity”. We’re excited to see what our potential winners come up with!

Deadline for entries is February 28th. Winners will receive a randomly selected case, though a winning photo’s content may dictate which case we award. Contest not open to SEGAbits staff or staff of SEGA fan sites.

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Big Sonic Event in New York later today

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Looks like Machinima let the cat out of the bag early and accidentally posted an invitation poster on one of their youtube videos (although I’m not under embargo, I’m not showing it out of respect for Sega). The event promises “2014 will mark a renaissance for Sonic the Hedgehog” and shows a poster of the silhouetted images from the Sonic Boom teaser. It’s also states that Sega will make new announcements and plans for the Sonic brand. From what was shown on the poster, we can already guess it has to deal with Sonic Boom but will new game announcements be involved as well? Also, the use of the word “renaissance” has me a little worried. They wouldn’t be going all out if this wasn’t something really Big.

The presentation will start at 12:30EST and they’ll be interviews after at 1:20.

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