If you guys didn’t know, I have an addiction to Reddit. Yesterday, Reddit user synbios16 posted his Sonic 2 logo (picture above), he made it out of 24,651 little beads. Just for scale he put one bead on the right and the Sonic 2 cartridge on the left. I have to say, that would look good hanging on any wall.
Makoto Osaki and Daichi Katagiri of AM2 sit down with SEGA America and give you some of their history with SEGA and what Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown is all about. Pretty interesting look if you are into Virtua Fighter.
SEGA Media is a one stop shop for all your fan favorite SEGA-related media, so we decided that it’s time to spread the Swingin’ Report Show around. We will now have the latest SEGAbits podcasts posted over there for fans. You can rate, comment and even help us rank in their weekly chart.
So head over here and show us some love. Episode #25 will be posted in a couple of days, then a new episode is coming this Friday.
If you guys recall, SEGA was hiring and opening studios in SEGA Australia like they were giving them away. Their SEGA Australia team sadly didn’t deliver hits, releasing the low selling Stormrise. SEGA is restructuring SEGA Australia to focus on digital releases.
“The rise of digital gaming provides an opportunity to align the studio with a rapidly growing market at a time when the games industry is undergoing a significant transition. To this end, we can confirm that SSA has signed a multi-product deal focussing across the digital marketplace. We have commenced development on these titles and will announce more details in the near future. As part of this focus on digital avenues, there is a requirement to re-structure the studio resources accordingly and regrettably, we are announcing the loss of 37 staff. The decision to downsize was not taken lightly but this strategic re-structure will ensure we have a more effective and agile team that will enable us to quickly adapt to consumer needs and deliver strong content across multiple digital platforms. We thank those team members affected for their contributions and wish them well in their future endeavours.” – SEGA to Kotaku
SEGA Studios Australia is the developer doing the upcoming London 2012 Olympic Games. They stated that the development on that title is nearing completion. The studio has signed a mutli-product deal that will mean releasing games for a digital marketplace. The details and titles are yet to be revealed.
You know you’re listening to a great theme when your moving your dragon to it. The jungle level was one of my favorite areas in Zwei. Enemies coming at you from every direction, as you fly under a forest canopy, and one of the first really good themes of the game playing the background. I was really tempted to go with the stellar menu theme here, but I really wanted to go with something from inside the actual game.
It was in Zwei that we really began to get the Panzer Dragoon music DNA that would permeate the rest of the series. In place of the epic, westernized orchestrations of the original Panzer Dragoon was instead a soundtrack that relied heavily on music that sounded tribal in nature. This music helped define the series as something unique and all together different from other games, and helped give Panzer’s unique world some additional, cultural flavor.
Another great example of this is “Ruins”, which you can hear below the fold.
Developer Three Rings was already working on Doctor Who: World in Time before SEGA purchased them and the publisher made no mention of the game based on the highly popular and critcially acclaimed science fiction show until today when SEGA posted on their official blog a behind the scenes interview with Daniel Jones of Three Rings. The video offers glimpses of some gameplay and of a very nicely fitted office for the developer themselves. Follow the source link below to find screenshots, wallpapers and artwork for Doctor Who: Worlds in Time featured all on SEGA’s official blog.
It’s hard to imagine that we have had the site up for 2 years. When I first started the site, I laid out what I wanted to do in the future. Even though some of the things we set out to do have changed, we are still committed on delivering the best SEGA content on the web.
So it has been 2 years of hard work and there is still so much most of us on staff want to do with the site. We aren’t anywhere near in completing our vision for this site. I hope that in 2012 we surprise and entertain everyone, even non-SEGA fans. We have been around for 2 years and have already made more than 2,000 posts. I’m glad to report that our posts didn’t go unnoticed by readers, we have collected over 10,000 comments. How many Sonic/SEGA fan sites update as much as us? Most likely none.
Below I’ll attach some early images, most are just planned ideas done quickly. But it shows you how far we came to have the site we have now. I want to thank all the staff writers for working hard on posts, for our readers and everyone else that supported us.
We already know that Namco wants to have a crossover game with SEGA, but if you can’t get the big blue to agree at least you can add a create a fighter feature. Here is someone recreating Selvaria from SEGA’s fan favorite game Valkyria Chronicles.
In the same post over at Siliconera they have more recreated video game characters, so if creating characters is your thing you should head over there.
Everyone has that “one game” that defines their tastes and preferences for the rest of their lives. That one game that helped them discover or rediscover a genre. That one game they fell in love with and, to this day, hold it aloft as the best game ever made. Being a SEGA fan working on a SEGA site, it should come as no surprise to anyone that for me, that game was a SEGA game. What may come as a surprise though, is that it wasn’t a game made for a SEGA console, or some original genre-defining experience. It was instead, simply a master class release for the dying rail shooter genre: Panzer Dragoon Orta.
On Friday, SEGA Sammy Holdings posted their 3rd quarter results for the fiscal year 2012. In it they gave out numbers for Sonic Generations, Mario & Sonic at the London Olympic Games 2012 and Hatsune Miku. Following the disaster that shaked Japan to its core, many Japanese business are recovering strongly but how did SEGA, in particular their consumer division, cope with the financial crisis in America and Europe? And did both their arcade operations and Sammy’s own business recover strongly from the disaster? Read on to find out.
Here are some of the latest screens and artwork for Shining Blade. The latest upcoming game in the Shining franchise. If you are a old school fan of the franchise, you might want to skip this. Seeing by the screens its full of wimpy looking boys and anime girls with huge boobs. But who doesn’t like boobs, right?
You’d think that this is a post full of drama where someone that bought one of the two leading HD consoles will end up butt hurt, but it really isn’t. It seems that The Yakuza team did really well, at least in demo form. The latest Binary Domain (released in the Japanese XBL/PSN) demo is taken for a test drive and compared. So what is the better version of the game?
That will depend on what you prefer. Either version looks about the same, but there are small differences. Livedoor says that they think the Xbox 360 version is running 4xMSAA, while it seems that the PS3 version is running MLAA. If the PS3 version is running MLAA, then this will be the first Japanese game to use the feature on the PS3. You can tell that the PS3 version has better anti-aliasing than the 360 version, especially the close ups. But the 360 version looks ‘sharper’.
Not only that, it seems that the demo version of Binary Domain on PS3 has some framerate issues. The 360 version usually averaged 30 frames per second (24 to 30fps) the PS3 version averaged 29fps (18.5 to 30.5fps). The 360 version had 0.183% tearing, while the PS3 had no screen tearing. Have to say, its weird how the 360 version is doing so well when its the team’s first Xbox 360 game.
Hit the jump to see the rest of the screens.
If you thought yesterday was the only time you’d see some Sonic 4: Episode 2 concept art this week, you’d be wrong. Sega has released more art. First up is “Scarabesque”, a scarab beetle badnik who rolls a deadly dung of death and devastation! Read on and you’ll win a chance….to see another badnik!
[The artwork above is by StarRanger. Here is his deviantart account.]
This morning I gave out 3 copies of Sonic CD to our twitter followers, if you missed it, no problem. If you comment on this post you will be entered to win a copy of Sonic CD for XBLA. That is right, just comment and using your legit e-mail (we have to be able to contact you).
Why are we doing this? Simple, we fixed an issue the site had with results. Basically it wasn’t indexing the site and if you now Google search us… Bam! Success. Not to mention that February the 6th is our 2 year anniversary! First winner being picked tomorrow on the 4th and the second winner is getting picked on Sunday the 5th. Best of luck.
Edit: Winner for Saturday, February the 4th is Phantoms-Heart. Cheers. You can still enter for tomorrow’s copy by commenting below.
Edit: The Winner for Saturday, Feburary the 5th is Joey. Cheers. The contest is now over. Keep checking back for our next contests later this month.
February 2nd, dubbed Hedgehog Day, marked the 18th anniversary of the American release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3. Damn, does that make me feel old. Sonic 3 marked a very important point in the Sonic franchise. At the time of release, Sonic mania was in full force. The franchise had multiple TV shows airing, comic books, fast food promotions and even had a float in the Thanksgiving Day Parade. In early 1994 it was near impossible to avoid Sonic, and the release of Sonic 3 only made the franchise even more of a hot commodity. It’s no question that SEGA had a lot riding on the success of the game. Of course, 18 years later we’re still talking about it, so clearly SEGA was successful. In this week’s weekly five, we’ll take a walk down memory lane and look back on just why we love Sonic 3 so much.