Browsing Tag

Sega Retro

Game News, Miscellaneous

SEGA Sunday Roundup – Project Anime Edition

So SEGA has been announcing a lot of games lately, and last week they decided to announce one more. And if you’re wondering just how anime it is:

Miracle-Girls-Fest_Fami-shot_03-18-15_004

It’s pretty goddamn anime. This anime game is called Miracle Girls Festival, and it features various anime characters from anime like YuruYuriWake Up, Girls!Vividred Operation, and a bunch of other anime that my friends who are into anime will probably try to get me to watch. And as you can see by the UI, this game is gonna be a lot like the Project Diva games except will less vocaloids and more anime schoolgirls.
Featured SEGA Retro Articles of the Week

  • Look, a new thing that I added to the list! Here I’ll link to an article from SEGA Retro that’s pretty neat or possibly needs more work. First off, to keep up with the anime theme of this week’s article [Astro Boy]
  • Also, that Astro Boy game kinda sucks so here’s an article about a good one [Astro Boy: Omega Factor]

SEGAbits Features

SEGA News

Fan Works, Game News, Miscellaneous, Sega Retro

Monday Links: RULES OF NATURE Edition

While I usually wouldn’t link to petitions for video games on Monday Links, this one has actually been acknowledged by SEGA and has a chance of resulting in something happening, so I’ll let this one slide. If you want to let SEGA know that you want games like Bayonetta, Vanquish, Virtua Fighter 5: Final ShowdownValkyria Chronicles and other such games on PC, go support it. In other news: enough stuff happened in the past week for me to do a Monday Links. So here goes:

Retro/Bits Stuff

Sonic/SEGA Stuff

Community, Hacking, Sega Retro

Aliens: Colonial Marines Polished Up By Fans

Aliens4

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.

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Community, Sega Retro

Help Retro: Scan Your US/Canadian Genesis Cartridges

Most people are at least vaguely aware  that Sonic Retro also runs a companion website, Sega Retro, to document all Sega-related history that isn’t explicitly Sonic-y in nature. As part of that documentation, there’s a lot of very basic tasks that haven’t been done that we’re trying to accomplish for the basic good of video game research.

One of those is to get pictures of every single video game made for a Sega system. This seems like it should be an easy task–after all,somebody must have done this before–but it turns out that it takes a lot more time and effort than anyone would have realized. And no, no one else has bothered to try to get good photos of everything.

This is where you come in, dear reader! Each week, we’re going to highlight various items we need scans donated for in hopes that we can build the world’s biggest database of Sega knowledge together. One region, one system, one thing, and a list of what we need. 😉

How can I help?

We ask that volunteers go through their collections of Sega games and see if they have what we are looking for. This week, we’re focusing on Sega Genesis cartridges from the US or Canada. If you live in Europe or Brazil or South Korea or Japan, don’t worry! We’ll be highlighting things we need from those regions, too–we just don’t want to overwhelm people. A cartridge that is a good candidate to scan will be free of any stickers (such as from a rental place or a price tag) with a clear label that has no scratches or tears on it. This picture of Asterix and the Great Rescue is a great example of a cart scan. If you’re new to scanning, check out our guides on Sega Retro, but if you’re used to scanning, know we prefer 600DPI images digitally downsampled to 300DPI using Photoshop or another high-quality image editor. You can upload the image yourself on Sega Retro if you’re comfortable, or else post in the Sega Retro forum or leave a comment wherever you read this story (front page, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest.)  You may also e-mail us scans at [email protected].

So, without further ado, the list of Sega Genesis cartridges we currently need scans of!

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Game News, Sega Retro

The Japanese Sure Have A Way With Super Monkey Ball

Marketing is one of those strange concepts. No matter what sort of product you have, be it good or bad, there are people who are tasked with the job of making someone want to buy it. There are a million different ways to do this, especially with video games. I’m sure we’ve all watched Andy Dick pretend to be a woman to market Sonic, or seen the strangest pair of kids ever rap about The Legend of Zelda. With the explosion of new age media, however, advertising is a far wilder beast to tame. You have to compete with a million and one distractions to convince people to watch your movie, listen to your music, or play your game. For a recent example, everyone here on Sonic Retro is intimately aware with the ways Sega of America has been utilizing social media to push Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2, a trickle of concept art and the odd screenshot, along with wild beards and teasing trailers to gain the public’s interest.

But what about Japan? How does the marketing department in the Land of the Rising Sun choose to market their latest titles with the help of viral Internet marketing?

Caution: the video you are about to watch is mostly safe for work, though you might be wary just who you play this near as it does feature an Asian woman in a red bikini.

Oh, did I forget to mention she ends up playing Super Monkey Ball?
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Site News

Sega and Sonic Retro Annual Fundraiser

Click here to donate now!

Really, you should donate

Rather than harassing people every month about the cost of Sega/Sonic Retro, I figure it’d be far nicer to just ask once a year for you to donate—it’s far less annoying for all parties. Given that most of you seem to have a few extra bucks in the summertime, I figure there’s no better time than now.

We here at Sonic Retro try our best to provide you with information and entertainment on a number of different mediums, from our front page news updates to our extensive archives of knowledge to the forums, IRC and podcasts. Considering that we do not put advertising on any of these products nor does anyone on staff get paid to produce these things, we’re offering you a lot for free both in terms of resources and labor. In exchange, all we ask is that you chip in to help us pay to bring these services to you.

Our current costs per operating year are:

  • $600 – Retro Server: This covers the electricity and bandwidth costs (currently 1.5TB at 100Mbps) for our main server, which hosts the website.
  • $240 – Badnik Server: This covers the entirety of BadnikNET IRC, as well as support functions for the Retro server
  • $50 – IPB license: This keeps our board software license in good standing and keeps us eligible for patches and upgrades
  • $50 – Domains: This covers our renewals for the domains we have, as well as an extra domain that may be purchased next year

That brings us to $940 a year. Normally, I just grab the Badnik costs out of pocket, so that brings the bill to $700. If you could help by sending us money to cover these costs, it would be greatly appreciated.

When we occasionally have more funds than our operating costs, we use the excess money to purchase goods and services that help the Retro community. Some of the many things I have paid for this last year include shipping foreign goods to members in other countries so they can produce scans and photos, paying international library fees, and buying products to scan. Many of these items tend to pop up on a random basis on auction sites and it always handy to have money to cover these costs. The only thing I know right now that I do want is a 50-page Sega slot machine service manual to scan and distribute, which runs around $25.

In addition to the server expenses I mentioned earlier, I am interested in purchasing some t-shirts to sell for fundraising in the future (most likely a brown/black/blue run of shirts with the Retro star logo and/or a blue shirt with the 1960s-style Sega logo on it.) However, I would need to know if you guys are interested in buying such shirts (which would be between $12 and $15 plus shipping depending on how many I could order at one time.) I’m friends with a company that does professional merchandise for many well-known bands, so this isn’t shoddy shit—these are nice, high-quality American Apparel or Alternative Apparel shirts.

What’s in it for me?

If you donate between now and July 15, you will receive:

  • “Best Member Ever” achievement, if you do not already have it
  • A special achievement for the donation drive
  • Three Retro 1″ pins (if you donate $10 or more)
  • A prize from our prize pool of t-shirts, games, books and more (if you donate over a certain amount to be determined—probably $25-30)
  • Two extra-special prizes for the top two donators

You can donate by using my PayPal address of [email protected] or using this donation page to donate by credit/debit card or bank account. Thank you for donating to support Retro! Your donations are the fuel that powers our Speedboat of Awesome.

Hardware, Humor, Sega Retro

Sega Boozometer: Possibly the greatest Sega-related thing ever

As the webmaster of a video game website, I tend to get a variety of real-life mail related to the site, but most of it is incredibly boring: server bills, webhosting quarterlies, boring books of documentation. However, once in a very rare while I will receive something so incredibly amazing my sheer joy can’t be held back. So wonderful that I feel I must tell the entire Internet. And today, my friends, I received something just that wonderful.

(Click for full size)

The Sega Boozometer is a bar game to “test sobriety”–the player inserts a nickel and attempts to move a ring on a handle along a curved rail without the ring actually touching the rail. If the player succeeds, they get their nickel back. It’s a simple enough game, but it doesn’t appear to have been a popular one–in all the research I have done online and off (including quite a few snoozefests of old books and magazines), I have never come across this machine before now. I’d probably place the machine as having been manufactured somewhere in the mid-60s, possibly as late as 1969-70, though I would think the vaguely racist drawing in the top-left corner would have been removed if it were later than that. Bear in mind that such illustrations were par for the course for the industry back then (Seeburg in particular had some very offensive stuff in the 40s), so this is no cause to run around and call Sega racist.

In any case, it’s a neat bit of Sega history that had been forgotten before now; if on the off-chance you own one of these machines (or do a Google search and find this page years later), contact this site, as I’m eager for actual photos of the machine. Until then, I’m definitely framing this ad and keeping it above my liquor cabinet.

Miscellaneous, Sega Retro

Early women of Sega: Kazuko Matsubara

From July 1970.  Matsubara was not only the first route girl but the first female employed by Sega, as far as I know. Route workers during this time went around to the areas where Sega slot machines, electro-mechanical games and Rock-Ola jukeboxes were installed, collecting money from the machines and updating records in the jukeboxes for the latest songs.

Who knows? Maybe she did become a fully qualified mechanic. In any case, hats off to you, Ms. Matsubara!