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Zombie MAYhem – My Life with SEGA enters The House of the Dead

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Zombie MAYhem comes to a close with my review of The House of the Dead for SEGA Saturn.

The original was a smash in arcades way back in ’97. It spawned four sequels and two atrocious cinematic adaptations. While the arcade game was met with praise, the Saturn port was slammed pretty hard upon release. Game Revolution gave it ‘C’ and called it a “sloppy port” and warned “don’t go in this house”.

But how can this be? The Saturn gave us some stellar ports, like Virtua Fighter 2 and the Virtua Cop. Why is this? Watch and learn. Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

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Sonic 1 heading to 3DS…in 3-D!

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Looks like we’ll be getting a heavy dose of the original Sonic 1 this year.

Thanks to our sister site Sonic Retro, we have learned that Sega of Japan have announced Sonic 1 as the third Sega game (along with Space Harrier and Super Hang-On to get the 3-D treatment. It looks like this will not be the same as the version coming from Christian Whitehead for the iOS. While it will have full 3-D effects, it will still looks to be in 4:3 mode. Besides 3-D other new features include..

  • Switch between Japan/Western version with some minor differences.
  • Spin Dash.
  • New animations in backgrounds like rippling effects in water.
  • CRT mode to give it that “classic” look.
  • Full controller customization. Set it to press A to jump or B to jump, or X to Jump or Y to well you know where I’m going here.
  • Sound settings for PSG and FM.

While the game will be coming to Japan on the 15th, but given how long it’s taking Space Harrier and Super Hang-On to come over here, it may be awhile before we see it stateside.

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Sonic Talk #19: Ask Ian Part Duex

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It’s been 13 episodes, but Sonic and Mega Man comic scribe Ian Flynn is back for another interview! We’ve got over two hours of questions from you, the fans! We’ll be taking about World’s Collide, the future of the books, his team up with Dawn Best on Sylvanna and his work on the superhero comic, The New Crusaders.Also, check out my written interview with Ian over at the Sonic Stadium.

For those waiting for the MP3/iTunes version, that will be up later this week.

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SEGA Tunes: Sonic Adventure’s Run Through the Speed Highway

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You know what had an awesome soundtrack? Sonic Adventure. Even if you hate the cheesy rock tunes of Crush40, it is hard to deny that Adventure’s soundtrack was by and large pretty awesome. Some of the game’s best tracks were those that went well with the blistering pace of Sonic’s levels. Case in point, “Run Through the Speed Highway”, the first theme of Speed Highway. Enjoy!

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SEGA Memories: Wacky Worlds

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These days, gamers can be quite adamant about the legitimacy of video games as an art form. I certainly wouldn’t disagree: a case can be made that making great video games requires just as much creativity as any book or movie. But I think what often gets lost in this pursuit to prove that the video game is a form of artistic expression is the fact that video games are also, essentially, toys. Especially games from the 80s and 90s, and Wacky Worlds was one of my favorite toys from the 90s.

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Round Table: Which ex-SEGA developers do you miss the most?

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Most people follow around sport teams and their players, here at SEGAbits we follow SEGA studios and developers. There have been tons of employees and developers that SEGA have fired or left throughout its long history, as is expected with every big publisher. But sometimes there is that developer that was behind one of your favorite games, when he leaves the company it really tugs at the heart strings. So in this week’s round table we will be discussing which ex-SEGA developers we miss the most!

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SEGA and Gearbox claim Aliens: Colonial Marines lawsuit is “without merit”

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Just a few short days after a class-action lawsuit filing in the California court system claiming that SEGA and Gearbox released and sold Aliens: Colonial Marines to the public under the pretense of false advertising, the two companies have responded by unsurprisingly dismissing it .

“SEGA cannot comment on specifics of ongoing litigation, but we are confident that the lawsuit is without merit and we will defend it vigorously,” the publisher said.

Gearbox, however, wasn’t quite so soft of the wording, defending its use of unlabeled demonstration walkthroughs.

“Attempting to wring a class action lawsuit out of a demonstration is beyond meritless. We continue to support the game, and will defend the rights of entertainers to share their works-in-progress without fear of frivolous litigation.”

As it stands, there’s little doubt that due to the very focused nature of the lawsuit that this whole scenario will ultimately end up just being withdrawn or thrown out by a judge. The damage has likely been done in the eyes of players however in terms of the public relations perception, more so for the developer Gearbox than Sega.

The response comes after news that co-developer Timegate Studios has filed for bankruptcy.

[Via Kotaku]

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Banjo- Kazooie composer creating the soundtrack for Castle of Illusion HD

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SEGA and Disney are teaming up to bring Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse HD to all major platforms, the remake will even have a new soundtrack for what it seems. They are teaming up with Grant Kirkhope who is best known for his soundtrack in Rare games like Bajo-Kazooie, Perfect Dark and Golden Eye. Mr. Kirkhope tweeted the following a few days ago.

‘Should hopefully finish my final piece for “Castle of Illusion HD starring Mickey Mouse” tonight!!!’ – Via Grant Kirkhope’s twitter.

So new graphics, new box art and new soundtrack? Hows that for a remake?

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Aliens: Colonial Marines co-developer TimeGate studios files for bankruptcy

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TimeGates Studios, who where previously known for their Section 8 games and now for co-developing the controversial Aliens: Colonial Marines has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Texas Southern Bankruptcy court yesterday.

The guys over at Polygon obtained the court papers, which stated that the developer is in debt to more than 50 creditors and owed total liabilities ranging from $10-$50 million dollars. Their top creditors include Epic Games (Unreal Engine), Agora Games (online game service), and DJ2 Entertainment. Funny enough, a local pizza shop was listed in the documents, which TimeGate owes $34.80. Wow, are these developers all in the 7th grade that they can’t pay a $35 dollar bill?

I guess life isn’t good for TimeGates Studios and the recent class action lawsuit isn’t going to help them. Weird seeing them lose all this money and still announce a game last month.

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Shinobi 3DS developer faces layoffs

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Griptonite games, makers of Shinobi on 3DS, Captain America on DS and many other portable games is hitting some tough times. The company, which has recently been aquired by Glu Mobile has had to make some cutbacks in order to maintain revenue. In this report from IGN, Glu Mobile CEO Niccolo de Masi gave the following statement.

We believe concentrating resources on fewer titles, with a greater centralized support infrastructure will accelerate revenue growth in Q4 2013 and beyond. We made over 20 new ‘games-as-a-service’ (GaaS) hires in Q1 and anticipate hiring at a similar rate throughout the year. Our goal is to shift headcount investment out of raw studio team volume and into our centralized GaaS functions. This rebalancing is expected to leave R&D costs approximately flat year over year. A reduction in force was commenced today to promote talent density throughout the studio, as well as fund over 80 new GaaS colleagues. This reduction is equivalent to circa 12% of the year’s starting headcount of 564 employees. Adding back forecast hiring we anticipate finishing 2013 with 582 Gluers worldwide.

Read the full article here.

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SEGA Pluto Back On Auction Block

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Have a couple of grand you want to burn on a rare piece of SEGA hardware? Roger Vega, a.k.a. kidvid666, has put his rare SEGA Pluto system up on eBay after its initial auction ended at $7,600, failing to meet its reserve limit.

The SEGA Pluto is a sub-planet SEGA Saturn variant, of which only two knowingly exist in the world. The system, while much larger than its model 1 and 2 Saturn brethren (and roughly larger than a combined Model 2 Mega Drive and Mega CD), features a built-in NetLink modem, enabling the system to connect to the Internet for web browsing and playing certain online-enabled titles such as Daytona USA: Championship Circuit Edition, SEGA Rally,  Saturn Bomberman, and Virtual On. Otherwise, the system is a typical U.S. NTSC Saturn.

Vega demonstrates in a YouTube video that the system, while fully functional, has a broken disc door that needs to have constant pressure weighing it down in order for the system to function properly. As of this posting, the auction is at $501 with over 21 bidders. It is set to end on May 10.

[Image courtesy of Roger Vega]

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Zombie MAYhem – My Life with SEGA’s postmortem on Corpse Killer

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It’s time for some zombie MAYhem! In this first installment, I’m reviewing one of the first zombie games I ever played, as well as the first SEGA CD 32X title I purchased. This foul beast could only be unleashed by Digital Pictures, the same bastards that brought us a game like no other: Night Trap.

Yes, I’m talking about Corpse Killer. This monstrosity was released in 1994 for SEGA CD, though I missed it completely. Once I saw the 32X version, I couldn’t resist. I wanted to see a game that used both the power of SEGA CD and 32X.

Anyway, click ‘PLAY’, brah! We need to get our zombie poison down up in ‘dis bitch! Like this video? Subscribe to the SEGAbits YouTube channel!

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NeoGAF user creates a fantastic Dreamcast themed 3DS

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Hey, we all here love SEGA and we know that we won’t get another console. NeoGAF user A 3 Legged Goat , a huge Dreamcast fan, who designed a concept art above. The idea is to make his 3DS look more sexy, Dreamcast sexy.  Above and below are his photoshop renders.

If SEGA and Nintendo teamed up to release a limited edition Dreamcast design, they would have all my monies.

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