I'm a terrible man

Long time, no post, I know. I've actually been back from Japan now for nearly two months, and I still haven't really got off my arse to sort out my article about the surprising prevelance of SEGA within Japan. What can I say, I am a tad lazy. It may be a little while yet before you see said article, but in the mean time, let me update you on the awesomeness that is Samba De Amigo for the Wii.



It has Sonic in it. That's a pretty groovy addition. Furthermore, Ulala of Space Channel 5 fame is included. I am really enjoying SEGA's recent trend of pretending the Dreamcast was the most succesful console in existence, and including references to it in its newest games. First we had SEGA Superstars Tennis, which was filled with fan service, left, right and possibly even centre, and now we have Ulala in the new Samba De Amigo game. It's like it's all coming together (just pretend Sonic & The Black Knight doesn't exist).

Okay, I realise this entire post is a big cop out on my part, but it is basically to inform you that I have intentions to make an article at some point. In the mean time, here is a small teaser image;


You saw it here first, Sonic is encouraging middle aged Japanese men to spend their hard earned yen in a very noisy gambling arcade, whilst he rocks out on a guitar and so on.

A change of ownership of MarioSonicGames.com...

MarioSonicGames.com is undergoing a change of ownership at the moment, which will result in a new and much improved site early next year (the current site is still working fine though, with its 150+ games all still present and correct, just in case you are wondering).

As a result of that, this companion blog will be "on hold" for a short while, until things are "properly re-aligned". But fear not, normal service will be resumed in the near future. In the meantime, why not visit the current site and play some of the Mario and Sonic games. Or you could read back through all the previous posts in this blog by going to the Home Page... there's bound to be something of interest to you if you're a Mario and/or Sonic fan. :-)

A change of ownership of MarioSonicGames.com...

MarioSonicGames.com is undergoing a change of ownership at the moment, which will result in a new and much improved site early next year (the current site is still working fine though, with its 150+ games all still present and correct, just in case you are wondering).

As a result of that, this companion blog will be "on hold" for a short while, until things are "properly re-aligned". But fear not, normal service will be resumed in the near future. In the meantime, why not visit the current site and play some of the Mario and Sonic games. Or you could read back through all the previous posts in this blog by going to the Home Page... there's bound to be something of interest to you if you're a Mario and/or Sonic fan. :-)

Sega of Americas Holy Grail

I'm sure if you browse gaming blogs you will have already seen this by now (most likely at Kotaku where they made up some rubbish about Sega forgetting all about it, either from mis-reading or an excuse to take a pop at Sega AKA gaming's whipping boy), but I can't NOT post about this archive of Sega's back catalog that they store at the American offices. Apparently it holds just about every game Sega has ever made or published, as well as all their consoles and peripherals. It truly is a beautiful sight to behold, and they have even more games stacked behind the ones shown in the photos!

A whole draw full of what look like Dreamcast GD-Rs. They even have a list for them all.

More after the jump!

Darn, even more GD-Rs, although according to the writer of the Flickr page they could very well be early builds or prototypes. You whats to guess they have some copies of Propeller Arena and maybe some betas in there?



Goddam that's a lot of Saturn games! The rest are PS2, Xbox and Gamecube games, and when looking quite close up it seems they've kept a bunch of games that were not produced by Sega too.



This appears to be where they keep all their PC releases, of which they seem to have a lot of copies of. There appears to be at least six piles of Sonic 3D there alone, and what do you know: I didn't know they ported Virtual On to the PC.



Even more Saturn games and shelfs full of Japanese and PAL Dreamcast games. Someone wipe the drool from my gob please..



There's a Dreamcast award of some sort her that in the full size photos reads "Sega Dreamcast: 1 million units sold, November 25 1999". Also a bunch of master System games, loads of PS2 and even more of those big PC boxes.



A whole slew of Mega CD games here, many of which I've honestly never even heard of (Bouncers? Wild Woody?). The 2nd shelf seems to be a Nintendo stash, and who knows whats in those hundreds of CD spinals at the bottom. One can hope it's original source codes that they could use to port classics to modern systems. If you find Chu Chu Rocket in there can you port it to Wiiware please?



A tall pile of PAL Dreamcast and on quote "some burns". Having a closer look at these burns shows they they have a propeller Arena demo, a whole bunch of E3 anf TGS demos and even some betas and alphas! Right near the bottom of the pile is "Dee Dee Planet Final". FINAL? Holy shit. If you haven't heard of Dee Dee Planet, it was a Death tank style Dreamcast game that never got released. All we ever saw of it was this video.



Piles and piles of peripherals and consoles, all of them never opened from their boxes. Oh how i would love to have a supermarket sweep through this room..



Finally a photo of an entire wall of shelfs. In the bottom corner they have every Pico game, a bunch of Japanese mega CD and Saturn games, GBA games, even more "burns" and much, much more. It's just so much to take in. Incredible.

Tiny Sega keychains of awesome

As you may of noticed, I have managed to stumble upon quite a few bits of Japanese Sega junk in recent months, from Gashapon Sega gal toys to that art book and the little NiGHTS pre-order bonus. A little while ago (the last few posts have mostly been backlog) I also got my hands on this set of Japanese Sega keychains. They were quite cheap and there was two sets all selaed up amongst them, although one of the designs shown on the card (a white Sega Saturn) was missing. Even though they're keychains you could easily take the chain part off and keep them as little figures, which I've done by sitting them along my Dreamcast game shelfs. They're rather neat, I must say. Photos after the jump!

The whole set (except the Saturn) are based on some of Sega's biggest stars from the 80s. Would have been nice if a Alex Kidd or Wonder Boy was thrown in for good measure. They were made in 1997 so maybe they were made to advertise the Sega Ages Saturn releases. While we only got the one disc with three games on it, in Japan they released a whole bunch of Sega Ages discs, much like they do now for the Playstation 2.

The Opa-Opa of the set is fantastic. It looks just like it does in the games. Now if only it had a 500 Ton weight accessory to go with it.

I don't know how they managed to make a cute toy out of the biker from Super Hang-On, but they achieved it somehow by turning him into a kid sized biker with equally tiny bike and ballooned head. They've even managed to get a teeny Sega logo on his helmet.

Much like the Hang-On bike, they've given Mr.Space Harrier guy (does he have a name?) the super deformed treatment as well. However, the poor little bugger has had a Sega copyright cut into the full length of one of his legs. Both this and the hang-On toy do look remarkably like the in-game characters though, especially when seen from the back like they were in said games. Balloon sized head with standing, of course.

Finally, a toy of Pengo, the penguin that must of dipped into some tie dye to become those odd colours. Again a nice rendition of the character, although personally not one that means a great deal to me. The other three made the set well worth it though, as they were cheaper than most of the other Japanese toys I've picked up recently.