SEGA Talk Podcast #60: Sonic Colors (2010)

On this Christmas Day episode, George and Barry celebrate the tenth anniversary of Sonic Colors with a special look back at the game and the impact it made on the franchise. This is also our 60th episode, and the last episode of 2020 which happens to be SEGA’s 60th anniversary!

Support us on Patreon! Get early access, tell us what games to cover, and have your SEGA memories read at the end and more!

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If you want to give us feedback, suggest a topic for the next podcast or want to ask a question for us to answer on the next episode you can add  them as a comment below or send theme directly to our email. Make sure you use subject line ‘SEGA Talk’ and as always, thanks for listening!

SEGA Forever Bares its Knuckles in New Streets of Rage Retrospective Video

SEGA Forever, SEGA’s nostalgic social media machine, has dropped another retrospective pop-up video, this time focusing on the Streets of Rage series. Streets of Rage has seen a trilogy of great beat ’em ups on the Genesis/Mega Drive, and most recently on modern consoles with Streets of Rage 4. Check out the video above and be on the lookout for more SEGA Forever retrospectives!

SEGA News Bits: Our Favorite SEGA & ATLUS Games of 2020

On this SEGA News Bits, George and Barry share what they thought were SEGA’s best offerings, and reflect on the year as a whole. How was a year without Sonic? What did SEGA’s 60th anniversary have to offer? Click play and hear our thoughts!

If you want to support this type of content, you can check out our Patreon!

If you enjoy our SEGA News Bits segments and want to support us: Give us a sub and give this video a thumbs up so it shows up on more like-minded fans YouTube recommendations. You know, how that YouTube algorithm is.

SEGA News Bits: Most Disappointing SEGA Games of 2020

Every year we pick our most disappointing SEGA games that we played, because in our eyes no SEGA game is truly “bad” or the “worst”. This year, we think our choices reflect just how good the year actually is. We hope you’ll agree, and if you don’t… sorry!

If you want to support this type of content, you can check out our Patreon!

If you enjoy our SEGA News Bits segments and want to support us: Give us a sub and give this video a thumbs up so it shows up on more like-minded fans YouTube recommendations. You know, how that YouTube algorithm is.

SEGA Sammy Creations announces new arcade cabinet called ‘GENESIS CREST’

Even though SEGA has sold a majority of their arcade locations in Japan, the company isn’t going to stop making arcades and they showed that today with the announcement of the ‘GENESIS CREST’. This new arcade unit is being created by SEGA-SAMMY Creations and is a brand new high end arcade cabinet by the company.

“The Genesis Crest cabinet will provide expansive game library and more immersive gaming experience to all kind of players with an ultra high definition 4K monitor on 49 inch and alluring LED lighting effects.”

As far as I can tell, this will have nothing to do with SEGA’s FOG gaming idea. They did say that the machine will have a continuously updating library of games and pointed to this list of games available. Four games. Not a great start especially considering they look like mobile game. Sadly it seems this is one of those machines that is really used to play mobile type games. Something that is popular right now at arcade places. The machine is set to ship out January 2021.

Unboxing: Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Animation Legends Blind Bag

If you’ve been a longtime reader of SEGAbits, you might have picked up on the fact that I am a big fan of the 1993 cartoon Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. Shortly after the series wrapped, my dad gifted me three framed animation cels. Hand-painted animation cels for the series have been available for years, but you either had to hit eBay or animation art galleries. Earlier this year, I started seeing ads for Animation Legends, a company that was selling blind bags of animation cels from a number of cartoon series from the 70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s. The promise is that you are guaranteed to have an A rated cel (80% – 100% of a character), and the remaining cels will be randomly selected with a B (cel visibly shows less than 80% of a character) or C (cel might include parts of a character but these cels mainly include scenery or other aspects of the show) grade.

I ended up ordering a 15-pack and since then I have been hooked. Above you can check out my second unboxing (unenveloping?) and after the break my first bling bag unboxing.

If you like what you see, hit up Animation Legends and check out their offerings. Many cel packs are currently 50% off, and as an added bonus you can use promo code SEGABITS10 to take an additional 10% off your purchase!

Sakura Revolution is available now in Japan for iOS and Android

Sakura Revolution, a Dramatic RPG mobile game and spin-off of the Sakura Wars series, is now available for download in Japan for iOS and Android devices!

The game takes place in an alternate version of Tokyo, in the year Taisho 100 (2011 CE). In the year Taisho 84 (1995 CE), disaster struck the capital in a calamity known as the Great Imperial Capital Disaster. The nation was able to rebuild and recover, thanks to the discovery of a new energy based on spiritual power, known only as Mirai.

Sadly, with the activation of the New Imperial Tower, the cherry blossoms stopped blooming. Moreover, demons known as “Koki” began to increase in number, lashing out to attack people across the nation. To protect the people, the government formed the Great Imperial Combat Revue B.L.A.C.K., who protect the people from evil while bringing light to their hearts with unmatched live performances.

While peace reigns among the people thanks to Mirai and B.L.A.C.K. and many have put their trust in the government, some have come to realize that it is but a false prosperity.

These brave souls are known as the Imperial Combat Revue, and their mission is to uncover the government’s conspiracy and retake Japan!

If you want to try the game yourself but don’t live in Japan, Combat Revue Review has a guide available (for Android users) to use over on their website.

 

SEGA Talk Podcast #59: Samba De Amigo (1999)

Samba De Amigo! If you can’t tell, Barry and George are excited to discuss the arcade, Dreamcast and Wii releases of Samba De Amigo on this episode of SEGA Talk! Learn about the various maraca accessories, the differences between releases and the future of the Sonic Team rhythm dance franchise.

Support us on Patreon! Get early access, tell us what games to cover, and have your SEGA memories read at the end and more!

[iTunes – Stitcher – YouTube – Play Music – RSS – Download]

If you want to give us feedback, suggest a topic for the next podcast or want to ask a question for us to answer on the next episode you can add  them as a comment below or send theme directly to our email. Make sure you use subject line ‘SEGA Talk’ and as always, thanks for listening!

The Yakuza Remastered Collection and Yakuza 6: The Song of Life are coming Xbox Game Pass, Windows 10, and Steam in 2021

During the Game Awards 2020, SEGA and RGG Studio have announced that The Yakuza Remastered and Yakuza 6: The Song of Life will be available on Xbox Game Pass, Windows 10, and Steam. Players will now be able to experience the entire mainline Kiryu Saga on these available consoles.

The Yakuza Remastered Collection will be released January 28, 2021 (Yakuza 3, 4, and 5 also available separately) and Yakuza 6: The Song of Life on March 25, 2021.

Netflix and SEGA Announce Sonic The Hedgehog 3D Animated Series, Premiering in 2022

Big news today, as Netflix tweeted out that a new 3D animated Sonic The Hedgehog series will premiere in 2022, created in partnership with SEGA, WildBrain and Man of Action Entertainment. For a better idea of what to expect from the series, WildBrain is best known for producing Apple TV+’s Snoopy in Space and Netflix’s Carmen Sandiego while Man of Action Entertainment is best known for Ben 10Marvel’s Avengers: Assemble, and Marvel’s Ultimate Spider-Man.

You can read the full descriptions of these two companies after the break, and we will update this article if more information is revealed today.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Review – Solid Yet Conflicting (Nintendo Switch)

Review code provided by SEGA

Puzzle games! They’re fun! They’re varied! They’re kind of strange to talk about, too, they’re very weird and specific in that way. Why do you play them? I play them because I want something fun and simple that puts my brain to work, or to put my brain against some other person’s brain and see who can work their brain better, or something. And that’s awesome! I love these games!

But there’s a lot of them. Puyo Puyo and Tetris are two of the biggest puzzle games on the planet, they have such long, storied histories, they play in such similar yet contrasting ways, it’s fascinating playing a game that has them both in one package. But it’s also not the only time they’ve been in one package. When I previewed this game, I mentioned how it was comforting how little had changed between games, because it meant I was gonna have a good time regardless of which one I booted up. But now that it’s out, I gotta ask myself: does that comfort hold up after a few weeks of playing?

Persona 5 Strikers coming West to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 and Steam on February 23rd, 2021

The wait for Persona 5 Strikers is almost over! I know there has been a lot of upset fans that Persona 5 Strikers had been pretty hush, hush on its release in the West. This trailer was actually leaked, so its not ‘OFFICIALLY’ announced yet.  Persona 5 Scramble actually came out earlier this year in Japan, in February. That means that it will be 1 year that we get it in the West. Its not that bad of a turn around. The game takes the Dynasty Warriors hack and slash style and combines it with Persona 5‘s great storytelling and characters. Even better? This is suppose to serve as a sequel to the original game.

2020 is so crazy that now Persona is real time combat and Yakuza is a turn based game. Wow.

There was rumors that Koei Tecmo put on their finanical report that they weren’t publishing this title in the West, that’s because its being published by Atlus (aka SEGA basically). As always, I’m super excited to return to the world of Persona 5 and see where this game takes the franchise.

Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 Preview – Comfortable Iteration

As I write this, I’m not actually sure what’s running on my Switch; Puyo Puyo Tetris, or Puyo Puyo Tetris 2. There’s almost a comfort to that, knowing that no matter what, a solid puzzle game is, waiting for me when I go get it off my nightstand. That comfort was even felt when I first booted the game, where I immediately launched into a standard 150 line Tetris challenge from the main menu and lost at line 140 due to being tired. There’s a comfort to the game being similar to my experiences to the first game, a comfort to the idea that I know what I’m getting into with a sequel, on some level.

I am not really an expert on Puyo Puyo. I’m not even really a Puyo Puyo player. My first experience with the series was the small Puyo minigame in Project Mirai DX back on the 3DS. But I am at least a big Tetris fan, I could eat Tetris for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. No library of mine is complete without a Tetris game somewhere in it. I find this puts me in an interesting position in comparison to the site’s resident Puyo fanatic, FlareHabanero, to preview, and then eventually review this crossover sequel. I have to save much of my thoughts on PPT2 for the review, but I can at least tell you from playing this game over the past few days that PPT2 is an excellent, polished, and feature-rich package I want to sink more hours into.

SEGA Nomad prototype shown to public for the first time ever

Hey buddy, you like SEGA handheld consoles? Remember the SEGA Nomad? It was a small size SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive that you could take on the game. Yeah, like a Nintendo Switch but in the 90s. Recently SEGA has been celebrating the companies 60th Anniversary and they posted the following video above, a class room type setting going through the history of SEGA hardware. One of the pieces shown off for the first time? The SEGA Venus, which was a prototype that became the SEGA Nomad.

Its interesting to see the early designed console, it looks cool but the color scheme seems to be very different from anything ‘SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive’ related, which went with more ‘black’ slick style, this has a more bronze/grey look. Also seems that this version had more normal looking front facing buttons compared to the final model that hard buttons that sort of reminded me of the launch SEGA Saturn buttons (on the unit itself).

[Via: SEGA-16]