Japanese Magazine Weekly Famitsu Goes SEGA Crazy

Weekly Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu is giving SEGA an awesome cover spread and 88 pages of coverage! Check out all the characters crammed on that cover! I see Ryo, Beat, Ristar, Waldo...

The issue is said to be chock full of interviews and new bits of info regarding future releases. Tsuyoshi Sawada, the man behind the Shining Force games, hints at a new title that is said to contain elements from the originals. The new Platinum Games title, Binary Domain, is also going to get a good deal of coverage. The issue will also contain a Yakuza series retrospective, featuring interviews with the development team. Of course, all of this will be in Japanese, so the best non-Japanese speakers/readers can hope for is a lot of pretty pictures.

UPDATE: The magazine was available to by at Play-Asia, but it appears to be sold out because I bought the last copy. Sorry!

The Sonic 1994 Panini Sticker Album

You may recall me bringing up the 1993 Sonic sticker album when a new album was released some time last year. In that article I talked briefly about it but recently I've gone on a bit of a mission. You see as a kid I never managed to complete the album. I could of saved up to just order the  numbers I was missing back then but I guess I was putting my pocket money elsewhere. Either way I did get a good majority stuck in there.

A friend of mine had got much further along with only a select few (about 16) left to go. He had the shiny sticker poster pull out on his wall for some time so it got a bit torn in places, but after a while he didn't want the album anymore so gave it to me. Then just recently for a few quid a bought a third album from ebay which is in the best condition of the three but also had the least stickers, about half complete, maybe more.

Now I was determined to finish at least one of these albums off, so I got looking for the stickers themselves, which are obviously not as easy to get a hold of now. See how I did after the jump..

Sonic Generations gameplay and fan art

I know this blog isn't really all about the new games as such but this new Sonic trailer is just too good to not post here. Compared to how Nintendo celebrated Mario's 25th Anniversary (by er..re-releasing a SNES ROM on a Wii disc) this sure does get me excited and looks like it may even make up for the horrific 15th anniversary that consisted of the two worst releases in the franchises history. After the teaser revealed to us that classic Sonic will be running side by side with the current Sonic design, now we have gameplay of both running through a beautifully rendered Green hill.

Why they even made Sonic 4 the way they did at this point I don't know as unlike that game this has really nailed the look, and it looks mega fun to play too, much closer to the originals, plus as a compromise to the newer fans you get Colours style gameplay too (which I also enjoyed). Really looking forward to this, and so are many others as ever since the first trailer I have been flooded with fan art relating to the game, here are just a few of them..

Old VS New by EvilQueenie

Sonic 20th - The Union by Elesis-Knight

Sonic Generations by Fantasiia

Sonic: Generations by MOG17

Ebay Hunt: Sonic & Knuckles Camera

Just a quick post about something I stumbled across on Ebay. I didn't buy it as it went a bit high for my liking but it did bring a small dose of nostalgia flooding back as i had forgotten all about this little disposable camera I once had. The seller says they reckon it was given away as prizes and I'm pretty sure Sonic the Comic gave these away but I recall my one being bought from a shop.

I obviously now don't own it now due to it being a disposable camera and being a kid at the time but I do recall hoping to get my hands on a second one when mine ran out only for them to have already vanished from shops. i think it came from somewhere like Boots and was released in 1994 or 95, when Sonic & Knuckles was being plugged.

Got a longer and more interesting article on the way!

Explore the World of Jet Set Radio Future!

Here at SEGA Memories we're all about anything outside the games (as detailed way back in the very first post), but sometimes there is something game related that is just too cool not to share. In my regular internet browsing, I came across a blog entitled JSRF Inside. The blog is dedicated to ripping models, textures and environments from the XBOX classic Jet Set Radio Future. What is so insanely cool about the blog is that the owner and model ripper provides a number of amazing images and files detailing every character, NPC, animal and piece of graffiti that litters the world of Tokyo-to.

So, that new Sonic trailer on Sega's Facebook..

 Nuff.

Said.

EDIT: Trailer is now on Youtube:

Kotaku: Meet The Four Americans Who Built Sega

From Kataku comes a short but informative write up of the founding and forming of SEGA, originally known as Standard Games. While many hardcore SEGA fans know the history, and it is readily available on Wikipedia, it's nice to read it all in a well written article.

Check out Kotaku's article here and in the comments section, feel free to share your thoughts on SEGA's founding. I'll kick it off with a topic for discussion: SEGA or STGA? SEGA pros: more readable, it's the one we're used to. STGA pros: reminds me of a stegosaurus, dinosaurs are cool.