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Gamasutra is reporting that following last week’s Easter Egg featuring Bug for the Sega Saturn, the 3D shooter series Panzer Dragoon will be coming to the GameTap subscription service; both Panzer Dragoon and Panzer Dragoon Zwei are listed as “coming soon.” While the original Panzer Dragoon appeared in a PC port, Gamasutra confirmed that the two games are the original Sega Saturn versions. The release of the shooters in the series gives hope that Panzer Dragoon Saga may also be coming.
Read More 
| Gamasutra
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The great retro gaming blog at Racketboy has a fairly in-depth round up of Sega classic franchises, past and present with short updates on their current status. Some of the inclusions might be kind of a stretch to label a “franchise” – there are a number of games on the list that have only had one release in their lifetimes. The list, however, is a good reminder of all the original IP that Sega has to mine for new offerings. Sega’s track record for updates hasn’t been that great lately, the next generation Sonic release on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 was notoriously bad, with some redemption coming with Sonic and The Secret Rings on the Wii. As the article mentions, Sega has become more and more risk averse due to the financial issues the company has faced, but it does seem like there is a lot of potential in Sega’s history. Certainly there seem to be a lot of RPG franchises that could stand to be revisited, including Beyond Oasis, Skies of Arcadia, and Shining Force, but there are also a bunch of great action games that would be great to see updated and released on any of the downloadable content platforms.
Read More | Racketboy
GameTap is apparently adding support for Sega Saturn games to its subscription-based service. Gamasutra is reporting that there is a current easter egg on the service that leads users to play the Saturn game Bug! for a limited time. This would be a great addition to the service, particularly since many of the Sega Saturn exclusive games have never been released as a part of any classics collections. Even if one had the actual hardware, many of the games are also collector’s items now, so having legitimate versions available for play via GameTap may be the only way to experience some of the gems on the console.
Sega Europe Offers NiGHTS Details
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Action, Nintendo, SEGA, Wii,
Sega of Europe offered some tantalizing new details about the upcoming NiGHTS: Journey Of Dreams earlier; the updates seem to have gone missing from Sega’s site, but Sega Nerds has a summary of the new features, including “Persona” masks that allow NiGHTS to morph into a dragon, dolphin or rocket, seven dream worlds, and utilization of the Wii Connect 24 service to exchange items and adjust the environment based on the Forecast channel. It definitely sounds like Sega is focusing on using the Wii featureset to the fullest; hopefully the game can live up to the nostalgic memories gamers have of the original.
Read More | Sega Nerds
Actual NiGHTS 2 Screens, Interview Online
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Screenshots, SEGA, Wii,
Game magazine Maxi Consolas has preview screens and an interview with designer Takeshi Iizuka about the upcoming sequel to the original NiGHTS Into Dreams on the Sega Saturn. The original game was a psychelic, “dream-like” game world that was introduced on the Saturn with the 3-D controller; it has been over ten years since the game’s original release, and NiGHTS fans still haven’t stopped clamoring for a sequel. NintendoGal has scans of the magazine, and a loose translation of the interview with Iizuka. From the interview, it sounds like NiGHTS and the Wii controller will be a good match, and hopefully Sonic Team can get back on track with this release.
Read More | Nintendo Gal
Mario And Sonic Finally Meet
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Culture, Nintendo, Nintendo DS, SEGA, Sports, Wii,
Nintendo and Sega today announced that two icons of past console wars, Mario and Sonic, will be teaming up for a licensed game set at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Titled Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, the new title will be available exclusively on the Nintendo Wii and the Nintendo DS. No official pricing or launch date was set for the titles, but additional details have been revealed in an interview held between Sega and Nintendo representatives and N’Gai Croal at the Level Up blog. While the interview tends to focus a little more on the rivalry between the two companies, a few nuggets of development information can be found. First, while Sega will apparently be handling the development of the game, Shigeru Miyamoto will be overseeing the development process to some degree. Also, Sega’s Sonic Team apparently will not be involved, which may be a good thing given the spectacularly bad reviews that Sonic on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 received. This mascot match-up has been a long time coming; here’s hoping it lives up to the hype.
Nintendo and Sega’s press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Mario And Sonic Finally Meet
Read More | Level Up
This Week’s Virtual Console Titles
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, SEGA, Wii,
Nintendo continues to drop additional Virtual Console titles for the Wii; this week three new titles are available, one each for the NES, SNES, and Genesis. The biggest title this week would probably be Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts for the SNES at 800 Points. The game is one of the classic platformers for the SNES and was known for its graphical excellence on the console as well as its strong difficulty.
Sword of Vermillion at 800 Points for the Genesis is worth more as a novelty than anything else. The game is an early RPG, developed by AM2. AM2 is probably more well known for their arcade efforts, including Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter, but Sword of Vermillion does little but give some insight into the development team’s history. There are some interesting action-RPG type elements in the game, but otherwise, the title isn’t really that interesting.
Elevator Action for the NES at 500 Points steps back in time to early arcade-style gameplay. There’s not a lot of depth here, and it might be worth tracking down the original arcade version rather than playing the NES port, but there are worse games than this for the NES.
Nintendo’s full press release continues below.
Click to continue reading This Week’s Virtual Console Titles
Sega Brings Four New Virtual Console Titles
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Retro, SEGA, Virtual Console, Wii,
Destructoid has a Sega press release indicating Beyond Oasis, Vectorman, Sonic Spinball, and Sword of Vermillion are soon to be hitting Nintendo’s Virtual Console service. There isn’t an official release date, other than “soon” from Sega PR, but there are a couple of standout titles in the list, and some from gaming history. Sword of Vermillion isn’t a great RPG by today’s standards, but it does offer an early look at some of Yu Suzuki’s work. Beyond Oasis, though, is a strong action-RPG that saw a follow-up on the Sega Saturn in Legend of Oasis. Vectorman was strong platformer using pre-rendered 3-d graphics, and was generally seen as a response to the release of Donkey Kong Country on the SNES, so its only a little ironic that the game is coming to the Virtual Console after this week’s Nintendo releases.
Read More | Destructoid
Donkey Kong Country, Three Others Hit Virtual Console
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: Nintendo, Retro, SEGA, Virtual Console, Wii,
Nintendo posted four new games to the Virtual Console for the Wii today representing the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, NES, and Turbografx-16. The biggest title would probably be Donkey Kong Country. Originally published on the Super Nintendo, the game had a re-release on the Gameboy Advance, and represents a time when Rare was entering the collective consciousness of gamers with pre-rendered 3D graphics and decent gameplay. Donkey Kong Country sells for 800 Wii Points. The Virtual Console also gets the side-scrolling beat-em-up, Streets of Rage for the Sega Genesis at 800 points and the platformer New Adventure Island for the Turbografx-16 at 600 points. Rounding up this week’s releases is The Legend of Kage for the NES at 500 points.
The full press release continues after the jump.
Click to continue reading Donkey Kong Country, Three Others Hit Virtual Console
Virtua Tennis Goes 1080P On Xbox 360
Posted by Christopher Sasaki Categories: PlayStation 3, SEGA, Sports, Xbox 360,
Sega updated gamers on Virtua Tennis 3 today, according to a report on Gamasutra. While the game was previously shown running at 1080P on the Playstation 3, it now appears that the Xbox 360 version will be the first game for that platform to run at full 1080P resolution. If that weren’t enough to take the shine off of the Playstation 3 version, Sega also promises exclusive online support for the Xbox 360 version as well. In trade, Playstation 3 owners get support for SIXAXIS tilt support. Still, the dual-platform release may be more interesting than just for the feature differentiation; the Playstation 3 version is being developed by Sega’s AM3 division, while the Xbox 360 version has been outsourced to Sumo Digital.
Read More | Gamasutra
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