*Japanese Wii owners are lucky lot: SEGA announced yet another two classic games for Wii-store. Both Fantasy Zone II (Master System) and Wonderboy III: Monster Lair (Megadrive) will be available for download early next year.
*Sonic to Ankoku no Kishi (better known as: Sonic and the Black Knight) will be available in Japanese stores March 12, 2009.
Thanks: Gamefront for the above news.
*Segadatabase network update: Segadatabase.net has now reached 1500 records (=games) as of today! We’re hoping to have around 2500 same time next year.
*SEGA announced that four new classic games will hit XBOX Live Arcade and the PS3 Network. Sonic 3, Gunstar Heroes, Comix Zone and Phantasy Star II will probably hit XBLA and PSN sometime early next year and are likely to cost 400 MS points or ~5 euro.
*The ATEI is coming up and here’s a list of likely featured games: Sega Rally 3 (based on last year’s Sega Rally for next-gen consoles), Rambo, Shoot This Win This and Sponge Bob Ticket Boom. Perhaps we’ll see some surprises as well. More info on the games can be found HERE.
Another point of interest could be the SEGA Vision gadget. SEGA Amusements just might use the ATEI to show some more on the mysterious little thing. SEGA News should be able to bring you more news on the ATEI closer to the exhibition.
*Another interview, just before the year’s out: SEGA composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi (Daytona USA, Virtua Fighter, Sega Rally, Shen Mue) was interviewed by GameSetWatch.
Pre X-mas sales rolled in (althought some of them will be seen in next week’s chart) and here are the results: No all-format top 10 entries which is both surprising and disappointing*. Still, let’s take a look at the individual charts which aren’t so bleak:
*Mario and Sonic at the Olympics moves up two places in the Wii chart from #6 to #4.
*Football Manager 2009 remains at #1 in the PC chart and moves up one place in the PSP chart to #3.
On budget:
*SEGA Superstars Tennis remains at #4 in the XBOX 360 chart.
*Sonic Unleashed remains at #2 in the PS2 chart. (only beaten by Singstar: Abba of all games)
*ELSPA has three individual all-format charts; A full chart including both budget and full price games and both a chart for Full price and Budget games. The weekly all-format chart seen here on SEGA News is the full chart including both the budget and full price games. SEGA news will be featuring a full overview of the charts from 2009 on. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics still claimed a top-10 spot for the Full price games at #10.
[SEGA News will return December 27. Happy Holidays!]
*American Wii gamers will be able to enjoy the delights of Phantasy Star IV from now on. The game will be available via the Wii store and will cost 800 points. Japanese gamers are now able to download Super Wonderboy in Monster World.
*Fancy some hardcore programming? Like the Sega Saturn? Take a look at the upcoming Saturn Coding Contest at SegaXtreme!
*A Segadatabase network update: Segacollection.com was updated with a review of the recently released Megadrive Portable by AT Games.
..with new screenshots of OutRun Online Arcade. Last week some ‘new’ screenshots of SEGA Megadrive Ultimate Collection were also added.
IGN uploaded two new videos of Headstrong Games’s upcoming Wii blaster. You gotta love that corny style.
Check them out HERE.
*One new SEGA game was rated by Famitsu Weekly: Phantasy Star Zero (NDS) scored 8/8/9/8. Source: Gamefront. A commercial can be seen HERE
*It’s been a while since new info or media on 7th Dragon was released. Well, the official site was updated with a short new trailer. Some quality music as well, so turn those speakers on.
*SEGA released three new Yakuza 3 videos. Check them out at GameKyo: Here, here and here.
A new OutRun game was already rumoured a month back but today SEGA confirmed that a game by the name ‘OutRun Online Arcade’ is in development. The game will be developed by Sumo Digital (who also did the console ports of OutRun 2 and the Coast to Coast update) and will feature 15 tracks and ten licensed Ferrari’s.
OutRun Online Arcade will hit XBOX Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network early 2009.
No all-format entries yet but -again- plenty of titles in the individual charts. Mario & Sonic at the Olympics moves up one place to #6 in the Wii chart, while Sonic Unleashed enters at #9. Football Manager 2009 still performs great; #1 in the PC chart, #4 in PSP chart.
On budget; Virtua Fighter remains at #2 in the PC chart, SEGA superstars Tennis remains at #4 in the XBOX 360 chart and Sonic Unleahed climbs a further two places to #2 in the PS2 chart.
Next week’s pre Christmas sales should be interesting..
The project with the coolest sounding name, Creative Assembly’s Stormrise, now has its own website. There’s two trailers, multiple screenshots, concept art and plenty of information on the game and playable factions.
Stormrise Official site
We didn’t feature anything on this Wii title yet (rated 31/40 by Famitsu last week) so check out this new video. Bleach: Versus Crusade will be released
in Japan this thursday.
*In France the Wii games SEGA Bass Fishing (including rod, known as the ‘FISH’N Pack’) and The House of Dead 2&3 (including the Squad gun) are now on sale for just 30 euro. It’s unknown if the same price tag will be used in other European countries. Source
*It might have scored with the press, but Valkyria Chronicles only sold 33,000 units in the USA so far, which is rather disappointing. Thankfully, sales in Japan are a little better; with roughly 130,000 units it’s the best selling PS3 RPG so far.
*One of the best SEGA emulators around, KEGA Fusion, was updated. Loads of new features were added like the ability to save in Mega-CD/Sega-CD games, preliminary Pico support, support for the SVP processor (i.e;Virtua Racing is go!), AVI logging etc. etc. etc. You can download it here.
Thanks to VBT at SegaXtreme for the news.
Prope’s Let’s Tap only just made it to the Japanese stores but already they have another ‘Let’s..’ game lined up; Let’s Catch. This time around the Wiimote is used to catch (and throw) baseball balls. The screenshots can be checked out HERE, a new trailer can be found at the official site.
Let’s Catch will be released next tuesday. (December 16th)
*One of the more obscure XBOX games you probably forgot about was SEGA Soccer Slam. Microsoft now announced that they’ll offer the game for download via XBOX live (under the ‘XBOX originals’ tag).
*A couple of SEGA games were reviewed by Famitsu Weekly: Sonic World Adventure (Wii) was rated 29/40, Let’s Tap! 31/40 and Bleach: Versus Crusade (Wii) scored 31/40. Source: Gamefront
*SEGA opened the site for their upcoming Wii game Madworld.
Christmas is coming up and software developers are making a killing. Let’s see what SEGA games qualified for a chart position.
No all-format entries this week, but with Sonic Unleashed that could easily change next week. The commercial re-runs seem to have paid off: Mario and Sonic at the Olympics remains in the Wii chart at #7 and makes a big jump in the DS chart from #16 to #10. Football Manager 2009 still sells like hotcakes and retains its position in both the PC and PSP charts (at #1 and #4 respectively).
On budget: Virtua Fighter (!?) enters the PC chart at #2, SEGA Superstars Tennis remains at #4 in the XBOX 360 chart and Sonic Unleashed moves up two places in the PS2 chart to claim the #4 spot.
A good week, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see even better results next week..
*A 187MB demo of Sonic Unleashed is now available via XBOX live. It offers roughly 15 minutes of gameplay. To further promote the game a TV commercial is also running across the world.
*Shining Force feather (for Nintendo DS) is due for February 2009 (in Japan, that is) and SEGA Japan released a new trailer.
*The IGN Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009 review saga continues. A ‘not so well-informed’ IGN reviewer originally rated Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009 (known as Football Manager 2009 in Europe) a 2 out of 10 claiming it didn’t came close to PES2009 or FIFA2009. IGN now realised their mistake, removed the review and posted the following statement;
“After seeing the community feedback and having more editors look at the title, we agree with the readers that our original review didn’t give Worldwide Soccer Manager 2009 a fair shake. Unfortunately, our critical analysis of WWSM ‘09 focused more on what the author wanted it to be rather than what the product actually was. We review games at IGN based on their own merits, and agree that it was unreasonable to compare WWSM ‘09 with action-oriented sports titles like FIFA or Pro Evolution Soccer. Because of the unfair comparison, we have deemed the review unacceptable and have removed it from the site.
We extend our sincerest apologies to both SEGA and our readers for the mistake and confusion. Look for an updated and more accurate relation of IGN’s view of WWSM ‘09 sometime in the near future.
Jeremy Dunham
Games Editorial Manager, IGN.com”
Yeah, yeah, who gives a dog? Because of the lack ‘decent’ news we were hard pushed to bring you the news about this new ‘game’ based on the pet dog toys by SEGA Toys. It’s called Ochaken no Daibouken 2: Yume Ippai no Omocha Hako (quite a mouthful) and its out December 18.
Yuan Works (developers of the recently released DC game ‘Wind and Water‘) have started a new platform game called Little Ninja. Considering the quality of their last release this could be a game to look forward to!
The Wii game by Yuji Naka’s team Prope was released in Japan today. There’s another commercial to see at the official site.
Get tappin’!
*US gamers can now also look fortward to order the special limited edition of The House of the Dead: Overkill; SEGA USA confirmed that the limited edition will make its way to the USA.
*Phantasy Star Portable still is rather popular; the recently released mission-pack was downloaded over 2 million times, reports SEGA Japan.
*Japanese PS3 and XBOX 360 owners have yet a while to wait if they were planning on buying Sonic World Adventure; SEGA Japan have the game planned for February (!) 19, 2009.