Earlier this month, Japan
saw the arrival of SEGA’s first set of 3DS Classic remakes of four key titles from their Mega Drive and arcade library. Sonic The Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Super Hang-On, and Space Harrier all received a 3D-depth face lift and plenty of other features, but SEGA remained quiet as to if these titles would make their way to western 3DS systems.
Enter the Australian Classifications Board, which posted up ratings results for 3DS versions of Sonic and Altered Beast. In the past, every time the ACB has released ratings for games, the titles sooner or later swept across other regions, so the fact SEGA’s 3DS Classics library is likely going global shouldn’t surprise anyone.
It’s not quite the Christian “Taxman” Whitehead and Head Cannon release of Sonic 1 that iOS and Android platforms saw, but it’s still a Sonic 1 for those that want yet another copy of the game.
[Via Joystiq]
Shattering any sort of barrier from the 1990s, SEGA of America, SEGA Europe, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe GmbH have announced that they will be partnering up to bring some major Sonic love to the Wii U and Nintendo 3DS over the coming years.
What does this mean overall? Nintendo is set to get three big Sonic titles exclusively to themselves, with two confirmed as the recently announced Sonic Lost World and Mario and Sonic at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games. The third title has yet to be announced, but it would be hardly surprising if it was next year’s yearly big title.
This doesn’t mean non-Nintendo gamers are out of luck. Sonic will continue to appear on these, though it may only be through smaller digital titles, such as the recently released remastered Sonic 1 on iOS and Android.
Sega Sammy released their financial reports for the company today, and it turns out the company did rather well. Of note, the company posted a net profit of ¥33.5 billion, or about $331 million, which is an annual growth of 53.3 percent. However, Sega Sammy’s operating profit decreased year-on-year by 67.3 percent, down to ¥19.1 billion ($189 million). Majority of this was through the sales of “investment securities” and transfers of employees’ pension benefits.
That’s all well and good if you’re financially oriented and looking to invest in Sega, but you’re here for game sales number to shamelessly slap people on message boards with! While physical retail game sales were down, causing the company to consider refocusing efforts more toward smartphone and digital titles, Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed zoomed across the finish line with 1.36 million units sold globally. No platform-by-platform break down was provided, but that’s still a rather strong number for the shape-shifting kart racer.
On top of that, Sega broke down plans for the 2014 fiscal year, saying that they plan to ship 11 games on PC, 7 on Wii U, 7 on PS3, 6 on 3DS, 5 on Vita, 4 on Xbox 360, and 2 on PSP.
While no doubt at least one of those will be a Sonic title of some sort on nearly every platform, what surprises us more is the PSP still getting some love. Keep on trucking, little guy!
For a more thorough breakdown, hit up our sister site SEGAbits. She’s just as pretty as we are, promise.
Another year, another insatiable urge for Sega to release a brand new iteration of Sonic 1. Launching May 15 in Japan, Sonic 1 joins Super Hang-On and Space Harrier as the first three 3D Classic Mega Drive remakes for the Nintendo 3DS. This is to commemorate the Mega Drive’s 25th Anniversary in Japan.
While this isn’t particularly thrilling news, and especially on the toes that Christian “The Taxman” Whitehead is at work on a Sonic 1 remake for Sega along with the Sonic Scene enigmatic man known as Stealth, the game will follow the line of other 3D Classic series titles on the 3DS that uses the system’s 3D features to add depth to the the game’s background.
Sonic 1 hacks are a dime-a-dozen these days. This makes getting excited about them a little difficult if nothing more than a few palettes are edited and zones are sloppily renamed to fit their new color schemes. That said, it’s never a dull day when someone steps up and delivers a new Sonic 1 experience with new boss enemies, moves for Sonic, and more.
Enter Russian Sonic hacker vladikcomper and his project Sonic Winter Adventures. In similar stead to Sonic 1 Megamix, Adventures enables Sonic to enable the full power of blast processing with the addition of light speed dash, super peel out, the spin dash, and even the homing attack. Let’s give the purists a little time to seethe. … All right then!
While the level variety isn’t very boastful, vladikcomper laments, the amount of work put in so far is a very commendable effort and definitely worth playing though. Some of his bosses make specific use of Sonic’s new age moves meaning you can’t just throw Sonic’s body into Eggman eight times and waltz over to the Egg Prisonpod so easily.
So what are you waiting for? Download this bad boy and give it a spin yourself! And don’t think that beating the game means it’s over. vladik teases that more playthroughs unlock more things.
We all remember Sonic 2 HD and how it regrettably met its end not long after releasing a playable demo of Emerald Hill Zone due to internal controversy. Just because the door on that project closed though doesn’t mean that this was the end for them. Some of the team, now working under PagodaWest Games, put their talents toward a brand new IP for iOS systems called Major Magnet.
Retro Engine creator and the man behind the 2011 digital port of Sonic CD Christian “Taxman” Whitehead confirmed as much in a tweet to his followers earlier today congratulating the group on the successes the dev’s title has met, including an Editor’s Choice award from Apple itself.
While Sonic 2 HD may be resting eternally, definitely give these guys some love and pick up the game on your iOS device and hope that they can bring the game over to other platforms. Good job, PagodaWest!
When it comes to games involving Sega in some capacity, it almost seems like the game itself isn’t the only thing players are paying for, but a whole new meta-game called, “Let’s improve the game through hacking through the game’s data.”
This new style of gameplay, which from here on we’ll call Tactical Debugging Action/Adventure™, has already drawn some talented programmers to sift through the game’s code on the PC version in an effort to enhance the game graphically and could potentially lead to repairing other issues such as enemy A.I. and other parameters.