The Last Boss: The Magician

Welcome to the first ever ‘The Last Boss’, where I’ll be covering a different Sega Boss Character/Fight each article. It’s something I hope to do on a semi-regular basis, and as you well know there are a lot of unique and great ones to cover. In an ironic fashion, lets dive into the First Last Boss, The House of the Dead series’ Magician.

The Magician, like all other bosses in the House of the Dead Series (barring Overkill) is named after a Tarot Card. In Tarot cards, the Magician is representative of ‘creation by willpower and desire’. In the House of the Dead Games, he is representative of lots of fireballs and repeatedly inserting more money into the machine as he kills you again and again. And again.

Iron Man coming to HOME this week

Do you like Iron Man? Do you like HOME? Do you like to compete for free virtual items? If you answered yes to all of the above, this post is for you!

Paramount Pictures and AUDI AG will be launching a Iron Man mini-game in their Audi HOME space.  The mini-game has you flying through the air, dodging mines and trying to beat top scores in the leader board.

The game will close on June 2010, if you are on the top 10 leaderboards, you will be awarded a Iron Man suit to keep. Not so talented? If you take the Iron Man 2 quiz in the Audi space, you get a free Iron Man 2 shirt.

[Source: EU Playstation Blog]

New Gain Ground game announced

Do you guys remember Gain Ground? Its that one game that SEGA keeps on putting in those Genesis/Mega Drive compilations and you ask yourself why they do it. Well, now they are making a new entry to the franchise, mobile only and in Japan. Guess the title? Gain Ground Again.

The game comes out today (or yesterday, don’t know the date in Japan). Gain Ground Again lets you team up with other users, much like the older counter part. We have screens of the game below, not too impressive graphically.

[Thanks: STORM!]

SEGA releasing Project Diva 2nd PSP bundle


SEGA has a PSP bundle site for Hatsune Miku Project Diva 2ndand the bundle is being called “Hatsune Miku Project Diva 2nd Ippai Pack” (translates to full pack). It is set to release on July 29th, priced at ¥26,980.

The bundle is not all you can get, you can also get accessories. SEGA will be selling a set of accessories pack that includes a pouch, UMD case, cloth, silicon cover, strap and stickers. The price for this pack is ¥3,980.

hit the jump for pictures of the accessories…

Rumour: Shenmue coming to XBLA?

Potentially massive news if true, the person responsible for the Jet Set Radio XBLA rumour is now claiming that Sega’s epic Shenmue may be coming to the service. A photo and his Youtube account back up the claims, but it’s best to take these things with a grain (or dumptruck) of salt until we get official word. Having said that, it does fall in line with Mike Hayes’ recent interview stating that Sega will be looking to increase the amount of games available Digital Download.

Shenmue was the only console specific game directed by the legendary Yu Suzuki, many consider it to be his finest work. The game was planned to have 16 chapters, but only 5 have thus far been covered through Shenmue and Shenmue II. No doubt fans of the game (such as yours truly) would be elated to see Shenmue return in any shape or form.

Thanks to max_cady on the forums.

[SOURCE: ScrawlFX, Xbox360leak]

Rumor: Jet Set Radio coming to XBLA


Oh, silly Microsoft and their PartnerNet stuff has leaked another gem. This time Jet Set Radio. Hopefully we get it in true widescreen and some nice upscaling. How about take advantage of the second joystick?

[Via NeoGAF]

1up talks to Mike Hayes about recent changes

SEGA has been restructuring its Western branch, adding more emphsis on digital content and letting go of workers. 1up now sat down with Mike Hayes to ask him some questions.

Hayes has confirmed that digital content will not slow down disc based releases, disc based releases are doing well and that firings will not effect release times for games.

Read the full interview here, now pray that we get some awesome arcade games ported over to XBLA/PSN like After Burner Climax!

Project Diva’s PS3 screenshots

This isn’t a full retail release for Project Diva, it is actually the PSP game rendered on the Playstation 3. What you need, is a USB cable, UMD copy of Hatsune Miku: Project Diva, and the Dream Theater program. After you connected all this nonsense together, you will soon be able to fap to Miku rendered in gorgeous HD.

Don’t have all the time in the world to connect wires and turn on video game systems? Well, don’t worry, you can fap to the screens on this post.

[Source: Siliconera]

Forklift Number 5 of 1000

Ryo's Forklift

It’s here! The major award has arrived: the ‘Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing’ Ryo Hazuki forklift statue. The short version of how I came about the figure: I entered a Sega contest a few months back and last week I won the figure. The figure was limited run of 1,000 was was only available via the online contest, with a handful making it over to Europe and distributed via Sega Europe’s Free Stuff Friday giveaway. Now enough chatter, let’s take a look at the figure!

Click Here To Read More…

SEGA fires 73 workers, expanding digital content


SEGA has let go of 73 of its employees today, all part of their business reorganization as they move on focusing on social and digital games. 36 of the employees are from SEGA’s San Francisco branch and 37 from London. SEGA of America is said to be working exclusively on downloadable content int their newly formed digital division, while SEGA of Europe will act as the administrative hub, also handle console and PC games.

“In recent years, digital platforms have taken an increasing share of video gaming revenues and we believe this growth is set to continue, SEGA has already enjoyed commercial success within this new and exciting gaming medium and it is now the company’s intention to fully embrace change and set a strategy not only to maximize revenues within the digital space but, through innovation and quality, take up a leadership position.”

Mike Hayes says this is just Chapter 2 in SEGA’s continued evolution from being a hardware manufacturer.

Project K screens look really good

No joke, the game is on PSP and it seems (from screens) that it will end up looking better than Yakuza 2! Got to give it up to  the team working on the game.

Also the Official Project K teaser site has now been launched. The message says the game has been revealed (this we know) and that it will take place in the Yakuza universe, but going to be something different.  The site teases May 13th, we assume an update on the site will be made on this day.

Hit the jump to see some artwork.

Media Create: Yakuza 4 still charting


Yakuza 4 came in at number 10 in this weeks Media Create charts. In total, the game has sold 523,000 units since April 18th (the day the new chart ends). Could this be the last week that Yakuza 4 charts in the top ten? We shall find out next week.

To see the full chart, hit the jump.

After Burner Climax info!

The Xbox360 versions of After Burner Climax hit XBLA today for a steal at just 800 points!

The game has 4 secret awards for you to earn as you play though the game and Sega Europe has been kind enough to highlight just how to get hold of these awards and what exactly they are!

Hit the jump if you want too know more about the awards, achivments and other AB:Climax related info!

Top 10 arcade games that need to come to PSN/XBLA


Afterburner Climax comes out today on XBLA and tomorrow for PSN, who would have thought we’d ever see the game hit consoles? I didn’t. Now to celebrate the release, I put together 10 other arcade only SEGA games that need to come out on PSN and XBLA.

Hit the jump to see the list. If you guys have a arcade game I failed to mention, throw it up in the comments.

Phantasy Star Universe getting updated this summer


Phantasy Star Universe servers are still up on the Xbox 360 and SEGA is planning to release version 1.00 patch. This patch has already been released in Japan, but we have to wait till the summer. The update is coming on June 21st.

Few things, Phantasy Star Universe (without the expansion) won’t longer have access to play online. Meaning you have to buy the expansion, Ambition of the Illuminus. Pretty lame.

The update will also bring new weapons, armor units, new outfits, new character customization options,  important balance changes, upgraded user interface,  and upgrades to MyRoom feature

[Source: SEGA]