The SEGA Dreamroom is here! Enjoy live streaming Dreamcast games from 9am ET to 6pm ET – head on over to our twitch channel to chat as we play.
9/10 Update: Dreamroom 2014 was a huge success! Thank you to all those who tuned in. Enjoy the archived broadcast embedded above, and we’ll see you in the Dreamroom next year!
With Dreamcast month currently underway, I thought I’d share my launch memories with all of you. It’s a little different from the launch discussion we’ll be talking about in our next round table, because I already had an import Dreamcast for a little while. This is more about helping a small business out by giving them a bigger launch while helping big business sell out it’s stock. Well…that and paying off some debt.
The Dreamcast is turning 15 years old and we here at SEGAbits will take this opportunity to talk about a game that we thought defined the console. Its hard to just pick one when the console had multitude of fantastic and unique titles.
Like always you can share your title via the comments.
Calling all Sonic & SEGA fans in the Georgia area, we are happy to announce our big event in association with Savannah, Georgia’s very own The Guild Hall on November 22nd titled “Sonic & SEGA Fan Jam“. We will be hosting a fan event to not only celebrate the launch of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric/Shattered Crystal but other SEGA games including: Hatsune Miku Project Diva F 2nd, Dengeki Bunko Fighting Climax and more! Another surprise that we have for the event is that we will have Tracy Yardley, penciler/writer for Archie’s Sonic the Hedgehog series, and Tails’ Channel owner Matt as our special guests. We’ll also be featuring some more surprise guests who will drop in and say hi via video. Want in on more details, such as events and location? Be sure to hit the jump!
The Dreamcast had one of the best advertisement campaigns in video game history. Period. Its ads took all of the best parts of SEGA’s Genesis era advertisement and infused it with fun and consistent quality. Every single time I click a Dreamcast ad and expect something ho-hum, I’m surprised by yet another kick-ass ad.
Here we have a parody of the classic Reagan re-election ad, “Morning in America”. With narration by Seaman. And whistling by guys from Quake 3, NFL 2K and NBA 2K. And a bunch of SEGA characters screwing around inside people’s Dreamcasts. And while Seaman gives a beautiful speech about Americans coming together so they can whoop each other’s asses, you’ve got gamers celebrating and raging over victories and losses. You’ve got house fires, decapitated teddy bears and exploding trailers. This ad is a perfect example of a great SEGA ad: well written, well directed, well voiced, plenty of game footage and plenty to get you pumped.
This ad is a thing of beauty. I hope you enjoy it, have a fine Saturday morning and play some Dreamcast.
From 2009 to 2011 at The Dreamcast Junkyard, I hosted the Dreamroom – a SEGA Dreamcast marathon celebrating the console’s memorable American launch date. Since 2011, however, the Dreamroom remained locked. I knew I wanted to host another, but I was busy with work and my increasing duties at SEGAbits. Not to mention, I didn’t think aiming a webcam at the TV cut it as a live stream anymore.
This year, however, I’m excited to announce that the Dreamroom is reopening on 9/9 at 9am ET at the SEGA Channel Retro Twitch channel for a special 9 hour marathon of Dreamcast games streaming directly from the console! Yes, I’ve finally caught up with streaming technology.
Hope to see SEGAbits and DCJY readers new and old there as we celebrate 15 years of the SEGA Dreamcast!
Dawn of War II is a Warhammer 40k based RTS that was massively successful when it came out in 2009. To many people’s dismay it used Game of Windows Live as its multiplayer and even with these hurtles it was massively successful. Fans asked for years for the developer Relic Entertainment and its then publisher THQ to remove Microsoft’s Game for Windows Live.
Relic was bought by SEGA in 2013 and with that all their game’s transferred ownership to SEGA. Seems they don’t have plans on abandoning support for older titles since a new update (2.6.0.10216). Not only that, this and its predecessor Dawn of War 1 have now been moved to dedicated servers. This is a big update for the game that fixes a lot of lag experienced by players.
Game also uses Steamworks for matchmaking, but since the removal of GFWL it will be impossible to unlock achievements, but there will most likely be a update on steam to add Steam achievements in the near future.
More than eight years since the death of SEGA’s final console, SEGA fans have been left digging deeper and deeper into their console’s libraries, looking for new games to play. Though impressions, reviews and videos for SEGA’s English language releases are typically easy to find, information on their console’s Japanese exclusive selection of games can be quite elusive. That is why we at SEGAbits are launching a new feature focused on the quality and playability of SEGA console regional exclusives. Today, we will be looking at an obscure rhythm game released by SNK exclusively for the Dreamcast in mid-2000: Cool Cool Toon. I’d like to give a special shout out to my niece for getting me this for my birthday!
Cool Cool Toon is a unique game in SNK’s Dreamcast library. A rhythm game made from the ground up for the Dreamcast, it was neither a fighting game nor an arcade port. It is so far removed from what SNK did for the system that it doesn’t even look like an SNK game at first glance. It does share one common thread with other SNK games though: it is very easy to pick up and play.
It seems that Square Enix’s manga branch is in a bit of trouble with companies for using copyright characters in their video game themed manga ‘Hi Score Girls‘. It seems that they used Virtua Fighter characters in the manga before SEGA actually granted them permission to use them and even though SEGA didn’t take legal action they did use them for a couple of years and that they ‘strongly objected’ the use. The weird thing is now they are OK with the usage of their characters in game if they are allowed to OK it before publishing and if it works for their PR for a game. The revelation comes in that ‘Hi Score Girl‘ manga was using copyright characters for years before getting permission.
This isn’t the only company to come out of the wood work years after the manga used their characters, SNK Playmore stated they where never asked if they could use their characters and showed 100 instances that characters from The King of Fighters, Samurai Showdown and other franchises where used in the manga.
The editor-in-chief of Squar-Enix’s Monthly Big Gangan has posted a message stating that the magazine will be put on temporarily halt due to alleged copyright violations. The manga launched in 2010 and the complaints are barely coming in, what are your thoughts on the issue?
As we previously reported, a new Sonic soundtrack album, “Passion & Pride: Anthems with Attitude from the Sonic Adventure Era” is on the way, due for September. Today we’ve gotten a plethora of new information on the release, including the rather awesome cover art, seen above, and a full tracklist.
The new information comes from the album’s official listing on the Japanese Sonic the Hedgehog website, Sonic Channel, and the tracklist, containing songs from Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, is as follows:
SEGA has just released Super Monkey Ball Bounce to Apple’s App Store and to Google Play, along with the above launch trailer. The game, which was revealed back in May, received the SEGAbits hands-on treatment in June at a special SEGA mobile event outside E3. Described as “Super Monkey Ball meets Peggle”, Super Monkey Ball Bounce is (as described by our own nuckles87 in his preview) a free-to-play game in which you launch a ball into a 2D course, try to bounce it off of various objects in the environment and hit specific targets marked with stars. There are bumpers and curved surfaces to bounce and roll the ball off of, as well as special “power up” blocks. This game is all about using physics and objects in the environment to hit all the targets before you run out of balls. It’s a fairly simple concept, but a fun diversion.
So if you have an iOS or Android device, give Super Monkey Ball Bounce a try and let us know what you think about it in the comments below!
Update: The Nintendo Direct has aired, you can see it above.
If you wanted to see more new stuff of Bayonetta 2, you’ll be able to see a lot pretty soon. Nintendo announced yesterday that they’ll be streaming a Nintendo Direct showing new Bayonetta 2 stuff later today. You’ll be able to watch it here. As for when it will start:
This post will be updated when alternative streaming links are available.
It’s a very special episode of My Life with SEGA where A.J. Rosa and his girlfriend Erica Winter play through some tried-and-true SEGA CD “classics” produced by Digital Pictures.
First off, Erica is exposed to the horrifically cheesy 1992 panty-raid Night Trap for the very first time. Can she save the airhead teenagers from the dreaded Augers, or will she have to sit this one out in the S.C.A.T. mobile?
Second, A.J. takes the controls in the SEGA Club oddity Kids on Site. Yes, the full-motion video epic that gave youngsters of the 90’s a taste of the fun and exciting world of….construction?!
Grab your tennis racquets and hard hats, kids. It’s gonna’ be a bumpy game!
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Seems that the drama never stops for SEGA of America and Gearbox Software, continuing with details on a new court filing by SEGA on September 2nd. According to SEGA’s attorney that despite what Gearbox said about them not being responsible with marketing. SEGA disagreed and stated that they had equal part and would sometimes overstepped their boundaries. SEGA went as far to say that they were kept in the dark about certain promotional decisions.
One of these claims is that Gearbox co-founder Randy Pitchford wold go to events and state to the press that the demos where “actual gameplay” which of course is false.
SEGA has already admitted to wrong doing and will pay $1.25 million dollars, Gearbox was allowed to join in with SEGA if they would agree to pay a additional $750,000 in the settlement, but it seems they will continue to fight on. According to Gearbox they operated as a contractor and that SEGA had final word on the game and marketing.
Bayonetta 2 is coming soon and a promotion just started with the augmented reality app called Junaio. If you download it right now you will be able to put a dancing Bayonetta anywhere you take a photo. The app is avalible for iOS and Android.
If you download the fan, hit the search and type ‘bayonetta2’ to get what your looking for. What’s cool is if you put her next to a pole shaped object she’ll do a little pole dancing.
I guess this is a photo contest in Japan, you can find details here.