SEGA announces Jet Grind Radio for PSN/XBLA

Well, little else needs to be said. My only hope, and I know it might be a long shot, is that we get the whole soundtrack intact. The music, each and every song, is crucial to Jet Grind Radio, so hopefully SEGA won’t be pulling a Crazy Taxi on us.

No release date has yet been given for what will hopefully be a truly epic blast from the past. The teaser also does not indicate whether any new features or graphical improvements will be added.

Sonic Monopoly Arriving August 2012

Thanks to the Sonic Stadium’s resident merch hound Hogfather, it has been discovered that American board game company USAopoly will soon be releasing a line of Sonic the Hedgehog games and puzzles due out in August 2012! Various online toy and game retailers have started posting up pre-orders for games and puzzles, including a Sonic die cut puzzle, a Sonic memory game and… a Sonic Monopoly! The last item mentioned is the most exciting of the three. Many franchises have gotten the Monopoly treatment, including Nintendo, World of Warcraft, Seinfeld, Simpsons and Futurama.

A Sonic Monopoly could be awesome, or it could be a disappointment. USAopoly has a history of some great versions of the classic game, such as the Simpsons version. However, other franchises aren’t so lucky. Nintendo Monopoly, for example, features a plain white board with Nintendo characters acting as property. How uninspired! I only hope that some Sonic fans are working on the project, so we get a Monopoly that the franchise deserves. And hey, if it doesn’t work out, you can always print out and play the Sonic Monopoly that I’m making! The image above came from my work-in-progress board.

eBay: The complete US Master System collection

No, I’m not going to start heckling my crap to you guys, plus this isn’t crap. If there are any girlfriends or moms reading this and saying that video games are crap, then this is crap I want. All over me. The collection includes a US Master System with 114 US Master System games. Impressive!

Happiestsellever!, you can thank me for the shout out later. Check his auction here. Yeah, the dude wants almost 5 grand for the whole thing. Is it worth it? How much would you pay?

Sonic Heroes hits PSN in Europe


Sonic Heroes is now available to purchase via PSN as part of the Playstation 2 classics re-releases. This means that it’s emulating the PS2 version of the game, which some say is the worst of the lot. But hey, its only £7.99/€9.99. I assume that it’s going to come out for the US PSN very soon as well.

What other SEGA PS2 classics do you want to see re-released through PSN?

 

Binary Domain debuts at #2 in Japan

This week saw the release of several new games in Japan, with SEGA’s Binary Domain likely being the main point of interest for anyone reading this website. As reported by Eurogamer with charts from NeoGAF, Nagoshi’s cover shooter debuted at #2, selling around 73,683 copies on the PS3, with the Xbox 360 version evidently not making the top 20.

It was a stronger Japanese debut than SEGA’s previous third person shooter, Vanquish, and a solid start for a new IP in that territory, though Binary Domain isn’t likely to become the next Yakuza over there at this rate. New Love Plus from Konami took the #1 spot with 104,969 while Square-Enix’s rhythm-based Final Fantasy spinoff settled for 3rd with 67,206.

Full chart after the break.

SEGA teaming up with Capcom and Namco Bandai to develop 3DS game

As promised, Nintendo held their Nintendo Direct conference this morning, and undoubtedly the biggest piece of news to come from the event was the information that SEGA, Namco Bandai, and Capcom are teaming up to develop a 3DS game.

So far the details of the project are being kept under wraps, though a teaser site has been created, one featuring the intriguing image of a vault door being opened. (A retro franchise revival, maybe? Or a crossover?)

We’ll keep you posted on any new info that comes from this pretty epic-sounding collaboration.

On another note, Game Gear titles will be heading to the 3DS Shop Channel this March in Europe and Japan, while no North American date was given. Game Gear installments in the Sonic the Hedgehog and Shinobi franchises, as well as the dungeon crawler Dragon Crystal, are said to be among the first titles that will be available for download.

Yes Virginia, you can play most Sega PSP games on your Vita!….If you have a PS3.

Hello fellow Vita owners and congrats on your purchase! Now, if you’re a Sega fanboy like me, you may be dissapointed in the selection of Sega games available for PSP through the Vita store. There’s Crush for $4.99 and nothing else. You’re probably thinking “Is that all of the PSP games compatible with my Vita?” Well, the answer is…no! There are a ton more PSP games that work with the Vita that for some reason are not on their store. This includes almost all Sega PSP games with one huge exception. Keep reading to find out how!

SEGA Tunes: Anu Orta Veniya from Panzer Dragoon Orta

I love Panzer Dragoon. Panzer Dragoon Orta though? My favorite game of all time. Rail shooting gameplay honed to perfection. Graphics that to this day stand the test of time. Unique and varied locations ranging from epic air battles to lonely snow covered landscapes. Finally, its soundtrack never, ever misses a beat. I fell in love with Anu Orta Veniya the moment the credits began to roll after one of the most surprising and heart breaking endings I had seen in a video game at the time. Its amazing orchestration and beautiful vocals perfectly ended the most impressive gaming experience of my life.

An amazing end to an amazing series. Another song that stuck in my head was “Gigantic Fleet”. As usual, it’s after the break!

Bionic Commando developer was working on Streets of Rage remake, screens included


Grin was the developer that earned lots of respect for succefully rebooting Bionic Commando with Bionic Commando Rearmed on XBLA, then later released on PSN and PC. After this success, Capcom ordered them to make a full priced game which wasn’t meet with much critical praise.

Though that didn’t slow the developer down; Grin was working back at Capcom trying to reboot the Strider franchise for them. The idea was that it was supposed to launch on XBLA, PSN and PC just like Bionic Commando Rearmed did. But the project was cancelled in 2009. So they moved on and looked for another company that wanted to reboot their IP and naturally came to SEGA. The remake was set for digital platforms only and like their last project, it was supposed to be a reboot like Bionic Commando Rearmed.

Virtua Tennis 4 World Tour Edition Launch Trailer

Check out the launch trailer for Virtua Tennis 4 on the PS Vita. VT4: World Tour Edition includes some brand new features exclusive to the PS Vita including multiple control options, two player touch screen on one console, motion controlled first person view and more.

Sonic Talk #2: Early Bundle Edition

Because of some big, exciting Sonic news last week, we decided to do the second episode a week early! Unfortunately, it won’t be available until NEXT Monday unless you pre-ordered in advance and even then you get it with a small amount of memory and a crap game but you can’t resist because they put out all the software and accessories early and you don’t want to wait another week, you want it now!!!! “Huff. Puff.” In unrelated news, I have a Vita!

Our guests this week are GX Echidna from “The Spindash” podcast along with nSega54 while Nuckles87 takes the reigns as host. Read on to get full details on this episode.

[powerpress url=”https://segabits.com/wp-content/uploads/SonicTalk02.mp3″]
[Download]

Nikkei reports that Seaman’s being revived on the 3DS

Hold onto your hats, SEGA fans! It looks like the world’s douchiest sea creature may finally be seeing a return…on the Nintendo 3DS. In what’s being cited as an initiative by Nintendo to bring other publishers’ classic titles to their handheld, Seaman has been said by Nikkei to be one such game. No other details were given.

We’ll keep you updated on this news as it unravels. The advantages to a 3DS Seaman title would include the system’s built-in microphone, its touch screen, and, assuming they go all out with this, you’d also of course get to see Seaman’s ugly face in full 3D!

Keep in mind that this is not yet an official announcement, but Seaman creator Yoot Saito’s hint back in 2010 that Seaman could very well be seeing a 3DS revival adds credibility to the story.

Thanks to Chaosmaster8753 for the tip.

House of the Dead 4 for PSN took almost a year to port


So House of the Dead 4 is finally going to hit a home console, I have wanted a home version ever since I first laid eyes on it way back when SEGA released their ‘next gen’ trailer with Virtua Fighter 5 and (cough, cough) Sonic 06. The new PS3 port is built from the Lindbergh arcade board, the same board that runs Virtua Fighter 5, its supposed to make PS3 porting easy.

“It took almost a year to adapt The House of the Dead 4 for the console, from the initial game design to the product,” a Sega representative explained in an e-mail to Siliconera. “The main obstacles in converting The House of the Dead 4 from the Lindbergh board to the PS3 were the OpenGL and the data format conversion.  Also, the PS3 has only 256MB of RAM while the Lindbergh board has 1GB, making the conversion challenging.”

 “We did more than simply upscale the resolution to 720p. We brought the game render buffer up to 720p as well,” says SEGA “This makes the graphic quality and resolution far superior to all of the previous versions. In addition, we have re-made almost all of the UIs [user interface] in HD resolution.”

House of the Dead III recently made its way to PSN, featuring Move support plus a ton of unlockables. I want to say as an arcade fan, I’m glad SEGA is putting in work on these ports. I think SEGA has had a bad reputation due to their Genesis and Dreamcast ports. I’m glad they are willing to sit and make this title look spiffy on screen.