SEGA hinting at Sonic’s upcoming game?

SEGA those sneaky bastards. They posted up a ‘Happy Hedgehog’ post for groundhogs day. I read it and it rambled on about stuff about Greeks and hedgehog homes. Boring. Then it said…

“Rumor has it, in fact, that there are two styles of science: compared as either objective or abstract. Find the false line within this paragraph itself, and you may find hidden answers of your own”

A challenge. If you re-read the paragraph, some letters are bolded. If you put them together you get: Berlin. What does this mean? I have no idea, but we will get our SEGA detectives on the case.

[Source: SEGAblog]

Conduit 3DS Incoming

High Voltage Software confirmed they were doing 3DS work during an interview SEGAbits conducted on behalf of Conduit Portal during PAX. Apparently it’s a Conduit project!

This is what High Voltage chief creative officer Eric Nofsinger had to say to EuroGamer:

“We are very much pulling over this engine and this technology on this new hardware. We’re still early. The resolution is definitely lower, but the screen real estate is smaller so it balances out. We’ve not had a lot of severe optimisation yet, but we’re going to be able to have something very close to this [Conduit 2] on the 3DS probably by GDC. We’ve got environments from this already up and running around. You can shoot, you can select different weapons and you can see enemies. It runs pretty darn well with full 3D and everything. I would guess that SEGA will be interested. I had a nice conversation just yesterday with their head of artist and repertoire. At DICE, the conference in Vegas that’s coming up, we’ll probably have some more chats. We’re very excited about that system and what we’re going to be be able to do on it. The work we’ve done with the Wii, we’re going to have a serious leg up. It’s quite different than developing for the DS and the DSi. Developers like us that have more of a console experience on GameCube and on Wii are going to be able to take advantage of the 3D better and they’re going to be able to do a little bit more with the hardware than people who are coming at it from the straight DS angle and used to doing more 2D, or very limited 3D, kinds of things. There’s nothing like it at all (on 3DS). We can be a shining star on this.”High Voltage’s Eric Nofsinger

It is currently unknown whether this is a port or an all new game. Here’s hoping HVS is able to take the lessons learned from Conduit and it’s upcoming sequel and apply it to this.

Former SEGA Employee Selling Awesome Swag On Ebay

A former SEGA employee is selling a load of awesome things he acquired during the Saturn/Dreamcast era. It’s mostly T-Shirts, but it’s all stuff only a SEGA employee could get, so don’t blow it off! Among things currently on sale is a promotional Jet Grind Radio shirt, a “Bernie’s Rangers” Burning Rangers shirt referring to SEGA of America president Bernie Stolar, and a Rent a Hero shirt with logos for every single piece of SEGA hardware ever made, and a Jet Grind Radio Music Sampler promo disc.

You can check it out here.

SEGAbits 2011 Survey closing soon

The survey will be closing very soon, but you still have a chance to take it if you haven’t yet! The survey will be closing at 12am PST February 4th. So that would be tonight for most people who live in North America.

Thank you everyone that has taken it! It helps a lot. Anyone who hasn’t taken it… we would really appreciate it if you did now! xP

Anarchy Reigns – Big Bull Trailer

Yet another Anarchy Reigns/Max Anarchy character trailer, the new online brawling game from Sega and Platinum Games.

This trailer highlights BIG BULL, another character from Platinum’s black and white ultra violent Wii game MadWorld.

According to Andriasang,
Big Bull, the cyborg; a 31-year-old became a 2.88 meter tall 1.3 ton cyborg four years back. He uses the “Jet Hammer” as his weapon, so named because it usually serves as his jet propulsion system.

Sounds like fun!

“Wind & Water Puzzle Battle” PC Port – Free Download

Barry the Nomad’s favourite indie DC game Wind & Water:Puzzle Battle was recently ported to PC and is downloadable for free.

Yuan Work’s are currently optioning an online mode, which could be added depending on the feedback they receive from the community. Head over to wind-water.net to download your copy now or buy the Dreamcast version at redspotgames store for only 13$. 

Read the Press Release at Yuan Work’s Development Blog.

A look at Super Monkey Ball 3DS’s fight mode & new stage

One of the modes in the upcoming Super Monkey Ball 3D (or as we call it 3DS, we are cool like that) is Fight Mode. You start off in a level with other friends, you can pick up bananas, whoever has the most when the time runs out wins. Issue? You can hit each other and steal bananas from opposing players.

Every player has the “Banana Shake”, which shakes bananas from the other player, issue is that you lose some bananas too. During play there will appear a “Golden Barrel” somewhere on the level, the monkey to get the tenth hit will get a super power. If you fall off the playing field, you also lose a ton of bananas and will have to make your way back on. An example shown is you falling on a pirate ship, using the canon to blast yourself back into play.

Reminds me a bit of Power Stone. As for the new stage, it is a ‘spooky’ themed one. Its called “Bananightmare”. You can check that out in the gallery, after the jump. The first four photos are of the new stage.

Yakuza 4 gets hostess trailer & demo date


Those people that missed chatting up the hostess girls in Yakuza 3 will be glad to know that they are back for the fourth installment. Don’t believe us? Check out the trailer!

As for the demo, it will hit PSN on February 15th… if you are a Playstation Plus subscriber. For some reason, they thought it was a good thing to make this demo timed exclusive. Rest of us have to wait till February 22nd, a week later.

[Source: SEGA]

Make-A-Wish grants J-Jay’s Sonic the Hedgehog wish

The Make-A-Wish Foundation started with the goal of fulfilling wishes of kids that are in life threatening medical conditions. Here we have J-Jay, a kid from the Netherlands who’s a huge Sonic fan. What did he want? Eat a slice of birthday cake with the blue blur himself.

So the foundation contacted SEGA Benelux office, and got someone from SEGA Europe over to Holland to start planning a boy’s dream party. To read the rest of J-Jays story and view more photographs from the event, click here.

Glad that everything worked out for J-Jay and his family. Looked like an awesome party.

Valkyria Chronicles 3 debuts at #2 in Japan

The latest weekly sales charts (January 24th-January 30th) out of Japan paint a nice picture for Valkyria Chronicles 3, which managed a series-best debut of 102,779 copies sold, good for second place behind Nintendo’s The Last Story. This was a little better than the first week sales of Valkyria Chronicles 2, which managed around 94,000 last year.

It’ll be interesting to see what SEGA’s future plans are for the franchise, with Sony’s new PSP system lingering on the horizon.

[Source: IGN]

Anarchy Reigns: Sasha & Zero character trailers


First we have the Ice Queen, Sasha. She will use ice based attacks like Snowy Spikes to take out enemies. Insert joke on how she is a cold bitch here. She seems like a fast, over the top character like Bayonetta, could have just made her a cameo, to be honest.

We also have the newly introduced ninja character known as Zero. The man wields two swords known as Onimaru and Juzumaru, rumored to be pieces of the “Tenka Goken” blades of myth. Hit the jump for the Zero gameplay trailer.

Now you have more information to answer the question of the poll on the side, if you haven’t already.

SNES vs. Genesis: Which had tougher cartridges?


If you were a kid like me, your parents would have probably needed information like this. Trust me, I was a destructible child. Thank God for my parents that ‘CD based games’ really didn’t take off when I was so young or i’d go through games faster than I went through diapers (So what? I liked to poop).

Here is an informative video on cartridges, both for Genesis/Mega Drive and Super Nintendo. If you are a SEGA fan (if you are on this site you should, unless you googled Nintendo amazing Zelda rom and ended up here) you probably guessed the winner.

[Source: BlisteredThumbs]

Sonic 20th Anniversary Action Figure Collection Revealed! (drools)

Just when I thought Jazwares has taken all the money they could take from me, they reveal this epic collection! Jazwares is celebrating Sonic’s 20th in style by producing figures that span his 20 year career. These photos found online were snapped at JazWares’ booth at the 2011 UK Toy Fair. One collection revealed is “Sonic Through Time”, which will depict the various designs of Sonic over the years. Photos reveal a 1991 Sonic and a 2008 Sonic, but I’m sure we’ll also see a 1999 and perhaps 2011 model as well. Very cool. After the jump, Eggman takes center stage.

click here to read more!

SEGA Rally Online Arcade gets officially announced


We posted about it before, but now it’s official. The game will be hitting PSN and XBLA. It will obviously feature single player challenges like ‘Time Attack’ and ‘Championship Battle Mode’. New achievement system will be used for unlocking content, the game will have 13 cars to pick from.

Multiplayer will support 2 player offline and 2-6 players online. You will be able to purchase it this Spring. More information as it is released.

Rumor: Classic SEGA Games Releasing Under XBLA “Classics Live” Banner This Summer?

File this one under rumor: The rumor began when fans of XBLA’s Game Room were speculating the future of the service. For those who don’t know what Game Room is, Game Room is a free application on XBLA that allows retro video game fans to buy 70’s and 80’s Atari, Konami, Activision and Intellivion games and set up the games in their own virtual arcade. I found the service to be a lot of fun, and full of promise, however SEGA had yet to get on board (despite a Genesis controller appearing in a menu icon) and Microsoft has yet to release new games since the last update in December. Game Room fans speculated that the service was dead, however recent discussion at the official XBOX 360 Game Room forums says otherwise. So where does SEGA come into this? What is the rumor? Get to the point, Barry!