Buy any version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed at Gamestop, get a free Hot Wheels Danicar

Update: I visited a local Gamestop to learn more about the offer. Since I had my heart set on the 3DS version, I asked to pre-order the game. I was told the game was set for a February 12th, 2013 release date and that I could put down anywhere from $5 to the total cost of the game to pre-order. I put down $5 and then asked for the Danicar. The cashier was surprised I knew they existed, and asked the manager if I could have one. It was then that I learned stores were told that only those buying the game would get a car, but it wasn’t made clear if pre-ordering also meant the customer gets a car. Since, in the managers words “they had a lot” of the Danicar, I could have one. In short, buying the game now for the 360, PS3 or Wii U will get you a car (if they have them in stock). Pre-ordering for Vita may or may not get you the car, but given the game releases next week, you’ll just have to ask nicely and perhaps putting down the full amount for the pre-order will sweeten the deal. Same goes for the 3DS version. End update.

Back in October, SEGA unveiled Danica Patrick’s in-game model and made the announcement of an exclusive Hot Wheels SEGA-branded Danicar. Where could fans get the toy? Who knew! All we were told was that “the ‘Danicar’ will also be available as an exclusive diecast vehicle available this holiday season with purchase of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed at select retailers.” Awesome! A month passed, the game released and… no Danicar. No sign of it at any store. Some fans, such as myself, waited until release week hoping to learn which “select retailers” would have the freebie before making a firm pre-order. No news turned up, so the Danicar was forgotten, fans bought the game and a month passed. Then, fans over at The Sonic Stadium forums discovered the toy car on ebay, with a “Gamestop Exclusive” label and as such, turned to Gamestop to see what the deal was. Some stores were genuinely confused, directing fans to stores like Toys R Us where they can find Hot Wheels cars. Other stores had the cars, but weren’t quite sure what to do with them. As of Sunday, it seems, stores are now giving the cars away with copies of the game.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed 3DS likely delayed until February

It’s not racing, it’s racing delayed! Via The Sonic Stadium comes news that Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed for the 3DS has most likely been delayed until February 2013. While the game released to 360, PS3 and Wii U in mid November, and the Vita version is due December 18th in the US, the 3DS version has been missing in action. SEGA hasn’t done a very good job in letting fans know when to expect the 3DS version of the game, and as such many have relied on retailers like Amazon and Gamestop. Both sites list a February 2013 release date, and a recent post from Nintendo Europe seems to confirm the delay as the 3DS version is listed with a February 2013 date.

Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown wins “Best Fighting Game of 2012” by G4TV’s X-Play

On December 6th, G4TV’s X-Play did their Best of the Year Video Games Awards for 2012. In the fighting game category, the nominees were SoulCalibur 5, Persona 4 Arena, PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale, Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown and Skullgirls.  The people have voted and the winner of the “Best Fighting Game of 2012” goes to SEGA’s Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown! Glad to see SEGA’s famous fighting franchise taking the spot. It’s one of the greatest arcade ports ever made. Hope to see what AM2 has in store for the series in the future. I look forward to the next bout!

Sonic, Eggman and Neff make the blu-ray cover art for Wreck-It Ralph

Disney has just revealed the cover art for the blu-ray releases of Wreck-It Ralph, and look who made both covers! Sonic stands alongside main characters Ralph and Felix in the gold bordered Ultimate Collector’s Edition release, with SEGA villains Eggman and Neff on either side. Meanwhile, the standard blu-ray release features Sonic, Eggman and Neff amongst other video game icons. Price and release date have yet to be revealed, but expect them to go for above or around $20 on release and to hit in March/April of next year.

SEGA and Creative Assembly partner with Games Workshop to create Warhammer games

SEGA’s Total War series is the king of PC war strategy games. Warhammer is the king of tabletop miniature war strategy games. So could Creative Assembly, the developer of the Total War series, developing Warhammer video games be a match made in heaven? SEGA seems to think so! Today, SEGA has announced a partnership with Games Workshop, the company behind Warhammer. The SEGA blog laid out the deal, stating that a “new high-calibre development team has been set up at Creative Assembly’s UK studio to work alongside the existing Total War, Alien IP and Mobile teams on the first Warhammer title in the deal, scheduled to launch from beyond 2013”. Tim Heaton, Studio Director at Creative Assembly promised “we’ll be doing the Warhammer universe justice in a way that has never been attempted before. We’re bringing those 25 years of experience and expertise in extremely high-scoring games to bear, delivering a Warhammer experience that videogamers will absolutely love”.

Spiral Knights developer releases Spellwood to Android and iOS

From the SEGA Blog comes news that Three Rings, the developer behind the awesome Spiral Knights,  has released Spellwood to Android and iOS devices. Spellwood is a Scrabble-style word puzzle game which offers up single player and two player modes. What makes the game unique, when compared to most other mobile titles in the genre, is that it has characters and a story mode with RPG elements as well as the aforementioned single player mode. In the single player mode, you play a fuzzy little word wizard who takes on over 90 adversaries with different levels and styles of play. Two player mode has you taking on friends as you would in any other mobile puzzle game. The game is priced at $1.99 and is now available on iOS for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and Google Play for Android smartphones and tablets.

SEGA CD Month – My Life With SEGA investigates Rise of the Dragon

32X month is behind us, and SEGA CD month has begun! A.J. kicks things off with a fun, and affordable, SEGA CD classic!

It’s Sega CD month, gang! First up, we’re playing Rise of the Dragon. This is the graphic adventure game that is often compared to another Sega CD classic, Snatcher. While it does bare resemblance, thanks in large part to the cyberpunk influences, this isn’t some knock-off; Rise of the Dragon has it’s own identity. So strap in, ladies and germs….

The dragon is rising.

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SEGA Tunes All-Stars: Burning Rangers’ Angels With Burning Hearts

The inclusion of a Burning Rangers course is easily one of the biggest surprises in Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. In addition to a surprisingly dynamic stage that has you racing through an underwater water park that is slowly falling apart and filling with water over the course of the race, you are also treated to an excellent remix of the game’s main theme; Angels with Burning Hearts, courtesy of Richard Jacques.

This week I’ve decided to go with the Japanese version of the track, given that I’m sure you’ve all heard the English lyrics ad nauseam while racing through the course. Keep an ear out for the awesome saxophone solo at the three minute mark! Check out Richard Jacques’ remix of this track after the break.

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed Wii U patch finally arrives

For the past two weeks, gamers and SEGA fans have been plagued with a broken All-Stars Racing game on Wii U thanks to Nintendo’s forced patch to make the game online playable (which every launch game had to have). It broke what was working fine (I played it pre-update) and caused problems with boost challenges, getting the final racer in “World Tour” and heavily affected online arena matches causing them to crash. It even effected my review grade for the WiiU version of the game. Sumo Digital sent out a patch last week and it has finally been approved in the U.S. After playing some online and local, plus checking other forums, I have found out that not only are the boost challenges fixed, but online arenas work fine now and there’s been a bit of a boost in frame rate in some areas, especially local split screen. If there’s still some bugs, I’ll update on it later. Now, time to test this bad boy out and change my grade.

Tee Fury: “Super Sonic Bros” shirt available only for today


If you haven’t heard of Tee Fury, its basically a site that sells ‘geeky’ themed shirts (may it deal with comics, movies or video games) for a limited time. How long? 24 hours. After a day they put up a new design to sell. Meaning that you can collect shirts and you won’t have to worry about having the same shirt as everyone else. How much do they cost? Only $10 bucks.

Today they have up a shirt titled “Super Sonic Bros”, check out the design above. What do you think? Blasphemous ?

SEGA Five: Why you should own a 32X

As November comes to a close, so does our 32X month. Our My Life With SEGA video series has featured the ill-fated add-on in weekly video reviews, and I thought it would be fitting to end 32X month with an extra special SEGA Five. I’ll admit it, I was a 32X hater until not too long ago. When the add-on released in 1994 I didn’t quite understand what it was. The Genesis already took cartridges, and CD’s thanks to an add-on, so why was yet another add-on being introduced? To be fair to myself, I was only 10 years old at the time, and before I completely understood what SEGA was trying to do with the 32X, the add-on was dead. A few years later I began to understand what the 32X was, and thought it was a complete joke.

A giant plastic mushroom that only offered up an additional 36 titles to Americans, and even then a bulk of the games were not worth owning? HA! Much later, the Angry Video Game Nerd tore the 32X to shreds and finished it off with an arrow. Again, I laughed. But soon, I became acquainted with sites like the SEGA Junkyard blogs (see our SEGA Network links in the right column to check those out) and in turn began to appreciate aspects of SEGA that I originally only thought negatively of or outright ignored. In October 2009, I finally gave in and bought a 32X used (with all cords, amazingly) off ebay for $30. It was one of the best SEGA purchases I ever made, and I’ll tell you why.

NiGHTS into Dreams on PSN and XBLA Patch – Available Now

Somewhat out of the blue Sega has today announced that they’ve released a patch for NiGHTS into Dreams for PSN and XBLA. The patch includes adjusted controls to allow analog input in 24 directions, which will allow for greater control of our favourite purple jester. Not only that but the speed of the drill-dash move has been aligned with the speed of the Saturn original version.

Best of all the patch is available right now, go and download it Nightopians!

Jet Set Radio tags iOS and Android today!

Via the SEGA Blog comes news that Jet Set Radio has officially released to iOS and Android devices. Priced at a competitive $4.99 (4,49€/£2.99/AU $5.49), and weighing in at 523 MB on iOS, the game is essentially 1:1 with the XBLA, PSN and Vita versions. Mobile exclusive extras include touchscreen gestures when tagging and the ability to snap photos with your device and tag within the game. After the break, check out a gameplay video of the game in action on an iPad!

MODEL 2 COLLECTION: AM2 Fighters now available on PSN & XBLA

Today is a great day to be a SEGA arcade lover of the 90’s. The three legendary AM2 fighters that ran on the MODEL 2 hardware is now available on Playstation Network and Xbox Live Arcade for only $4.99 (400 MSP) each. Also, for those who are wondering about an option to change the screen size, there is an option to do that under “Settings” from 4:3 to full. I’ve just played it this morning and they are all way better than the original ports from the Sega Ages 2500 line and Gems Collection. Hope they sell well because I want some of that The House of the Dead and Dynamite Cop on my home console. Anyone up for some matches this weekend?