After years of rumors and a constant cycle of disappointment Sega has finally gone ahead and done the right thing. No, not produce more Space Channel 5. We’re talking about making an honest to goodness 2D Sonic plataformer. Yes, you read that right. Sonic is back and this time it’s the real Sonic, not some crappy fetish-catering monstrosity.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 will apparently be episodic and you can expect the first episode this summer on WiiWare, Xbox Live Arcade and PSN. It’s taken them 16 years to come up with this first episode, let’s just hope the next one comes out before that other long overdue episode. Yeah Valve, I’m looking at you! Where’s my episode 3, Valve?!

[HellForge]

Holy fucking shi… Ok, no. Before you get all excited and start making sweet love to your battered old Dreamcast let me tell you this is not what you think it is. Yes, it is a new Sega console, no it’s not really a Sega console.

This is the Sega Zone and it’s a hybrid halfway stuck between ‘crappy x-mas-gift from your aunt’ and ‘Must have retro device’. It’s a Sega licensed console preloaded with 50 classic Sega console games. It feels like a knockoff because the thing looks cheap and it comes with wireless controllers that look suspiciously similar to the Wiimote. It feels like a must have retro gadget because it has an actual cartridge slot, and you can pop in your old games.

[Pocket Lint]

It’s actually a pretty nice deal, though at over 50 pounds and only available in the UK, it starts too lose its shine. Perhaps your British aunt will give it to you this Christmas… then again their TVs are PAL. Oh god damn it, this has so many hurdles it really does feel like a Sega console.

TGS is gone but it left nice spoils like the overly dramatic FFXIII trailer. Well, it’s also left us a new Bayonetta trailer and boy is it a good one!

There’s so much going on in these 3 minutes of video that makes me believe this game will not only be hard but dense. First of all  we have Cereza, Bayonetta’s daughter, who’s come out of the blue but with that sweet face and addictively saccharine voice is sure to become a loved character in the game. Then there’s Bayonetta’s father who seems to be a power figure beyond good and evil whom you’ll no doubt have to kill at some point. And then there’s this blooming love affair going on with Luka. Oh god I think they are slipping us a family drama disguised as a hardcore action game.

Oh and did you catch Fly Me To The Moon used in the game’s soundtrack?

As a bonus here’s a couple of videos, first up 2 semi-live action tv ads for the game currently running in Japan. Gorgeous actress!

Read more!

Jet Set Radio has to be one of my all time favourite games. There was very little if anything wrong with it. Hot graphics, addictive gameplay, and one bad ass soundtrack. To say the music in Jet Set Radio was eclectic would be an understatement. J-Rock, J-Pop, House, Dance, Techno, Hip-Hop. Everything cool and credible for you to rock to whilst you skate around and deface public property in Shibuya.

One of my fave tracks was the song “Electric tooth brush” from Toronto. I’ve not always been a fan of dance music. I certainly wasn’t around the time I used to murder Jet Set Radio every weekend. But “Electric tooth brush” just did it for me. It’s all about that bass. It always got me working a shoulder and adopting a bit of a bounce.

Listen: Electric tooth brush

Performed by Toronto
Jet Set Radio OST
© 2000 Sega

For the mp3 players: Electric tooth brush

Streets of rage’s soundtrack was way ahead of its time. During a period when every other game was going for those pieces of music that could simply only be pigeon holed as a video game composition and nothing else, and in many cases exposed the limitations of the hardware at the time – the Streets of rage franchise pushed the boundaries. By going with a more mainstream musical styling, not unlike anything you’d hear in a club or on the radio: Streets of rage ushered in a new wave of video game soundtracks. And let gamers know that a video game soundtrack could be funky, could make you dance, could be hella cool and sound good enough that you could play it seperately from the game. I found the soundtrack so fresh when I first heard it, simply because I’d never heard music like it in a video game before. I didn’t know a video game could feature music so funky and dance oriented until Streets of rage came along.

The original Streets of rage’s very first stage had one of the most memorable pieces of music in the whole game, and possibly the series.  With it’s hot synth work, funky horns and a break down: there was nothing better for you to stab, bottle and pipe swing suckers to. “Fighting the the street” is a classic that never gets old. Not matter how many times I hear it, I love it, and come over all nostalgic in the process and just wanna switch the game on, pick Blaze and watch her lay the smackdown in a skirt that’s way too short and too shiny for a lady to wear on the streets at night unless she’s Beyoncé and she’s filming a music video.

I loved “Fighting the street” so much, that I decided to re-do the song from scratch myself a couple of years ago – purely because I wanted a version of it that had more kick and didn’t sound so 16-bit like. So this version is my own re-do if you will. It’s exactly the same as the original. Only less MIDI-fied and with a bit more of a punch in the beat.

Listen: Fighting in the street (Random J’s re-do)

Original composition by Yuzo Koshiro
Re-done by Random J
Streets of rage / Bare knuckle OST
© 1991, 2007 Sega

For the mp3 players: Fighting in the street (Random J’s re-do)

This is a game that got greatly overlooked at this year’s Tokyo game show, but has recently been getting a fair bit of attention due to it having received a perfect score from Famitsu.

Famitsu’s perfect scores are somewhat questionable, given some of the games they’ve dished out perfect scores to in the past. But regardless, the game looks interesting. Even though the video shed little light on how the game will play, I still like the look of it. Plus I’m a J-drama addict, so the live action featuring Japanese actors caught my attention from the word go.

The game gives off a The world ends with you vibe; due to the title of the game and the adventure being set in Shibuya, Japan.

Sega have an official website of the game up and running. Or course it’s all in Japanese. There’s quite a bit to click around and check, but unless you’re able to read Japanese the site will do little to enlighten you on what the game is about. But you do get to hear the cool theme song performed by J-rock loving Aya Kamiki. So be sure to turn your speakers up or down accordingly before you enter the site. Hopefully this game will get translated, have some subtitles slapped on it and get a Western release – but it probably won’t happen. One can hope though. God knows I need a game to look forward to on Wii. I haven’t touched the thing in months.

Take a look around: 428’s official Japanese website

Garbage is one of many words I’d use to describe how this looks and will end up being. It may be forward of me to jump the gun considering I haven’t played the game, but can you blame me!? Sega have been churning out shitty Sonic games on consoles for 10 years and they don’t look like they’re any closer to getting a game right now than there were back in 1999. It’s beyond a joke. Sega can’t even get a game right where all Sonic has to do is curl into a ball and collect rings really fast, yet they feel they’re adept enough to throw sword fighting into the mix. They should’ve called this game Sonic & the recipe for disaster, because that’s what this game is. Sonic should never be given a sword. EVER!

The game looks bland. The only cool aspects of the trailer was the FMV sequences shown, the way the trailer was edited and the cool music which reminded me of the old Pokémon cartoon theme song. Other than that, it looked like garbage.

Let’s how this recipe for disaster all pans out when the game releases next year.

This game couldn’t look any more like Devil may cry if it tried. Fair do’s though: the guy responsible for Devil may cry did create it. And hey, if the formula works…

Bayonetta is a witch who is on a mission to slay monsters masquerading as angels. That’s all that’s known in terms of the story. It wasn’t easy to make out in the trailer (this post will be updated when the direct stream trailer hits), but Bayonetta’s outfit is made up of her hair, which she can unleash for deadly attacks. This gives the developers an excuse to have the leading lady show some skin and be pretty much naked during attacks, as the trailer showed. Weird, but a cool idea. Dante sure as hell couldn’t do that. He was too much of a little bitch when it came to his hair.

Bayonetta is getting a lot of attention and love from gamers (I’m sure the extreme close-up under the crotch sweeping shot has a fair bit to do with it), so it will be interesting to see how well this game sells when it releases. It looks to do a good job of filling the stylish slash, hack and gun’ em void until the inevitable Devil may cry 5 comes along.

Bayonetta is being developed by Platinum games (the lovely people who will bring us MadWorld for the Wii) and will be published by Sega. The game is slated for a September 2009 release for both Xbox 360 and PS3.

“They’ve come for brains. You’ll give them bullets.” A sly sense of humor and a 70’s exploitation film-influenced vibe drives this entertaining trailer for the upcoming Wii game House of the Dead: Overkill, developed by Sega’s “Headstrong” team.

We don’t get to see a whole lot of gameplay here, but none of the details will surprise you so far: average graphics, on-rail shooting (not necessarily a bad thing), and hordes of zombies are all on display. Other than that, all we know is that it stars a “hard-boiled cop” and a government agent, and it comes out some time next year.

[1up.com]

It seems the intent of this trailer is to remind us that this is a Sonic Team game. There’s no new gameplay footage, but it seems to be setting a tone much different from previous trailers.

Sonic Unleashed will be released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, and Wii in November.