The Game Gear TV Tuner: It's last day.

Today is the day the digital TV switchover happens in my area of the UK. This means all analog TV signal is being switched off for good. Because of this, all Sega Game Gear TV Tuners will not be able to tune in anything here anymore, deeming them as nothing but a static noise emulator for your Game Gear.

When I recorded this video this morning, I was expecting the thing to not pick up anything as my actual TV has lost all analog channels, yet it still managed to pick up ITV. Yes, that is about as good as a reception as you would get with this device anyway.

Still, sad to see one of Sega's old innovations (as daft looking as it was) come to an end, sort of like seeing the online servers of Dreamcast games go down, but not really.

Also Woody Pop is one of the best games on the Game Gear, haters get out.

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!

Japanese Sega Art Book of Sheer Beauty Part 2: Scans!

As I promised here are some full scale scans from that wonderful Sega game illustrations book.

Here's a scanned example of one of the pages, which not only contains all that lovely felt-tip pen colored art from Sonic 1, but also talks of the characters' "charming and saucy nature". Hmm. No doubt the PAL Sonic 1 box art was nicer, though. More scans after the jump.

Japanese Sega Art Book of Sheer Beauty

Now, video game art books are by no means a rare thing in Japan, but Sega ones seem to be few and far between. However, I manged to find this one on Ebay some time ago and won it for about £12. The book contains a variety of artwork from many Mega Drive and Game Gear games, starring the main front cover art as full page spends and littered with character art from the lovely full colour manuals they got over there. More after the jump.