A short and sweet video about six Sega Dreamcast facts you may or may not have been aware of. Watch it, you might learn something. We definitely did. Long live the Dreamcast!
source: Vsauce3
The Pop-Culture E-Zine
A short and sweet video about six Sega Dreamcast facts you may or may not have been aware of. Watch it, you might learn something. We definitely did. Long live the Dreamcast!
source: Vsauce3
Hands up who keeps their retail catalogues from years gone by? I see no hands. Well, I am glad that someone did. Take a trip down nostalgia lane and drool over the video gaming gear that was on sale at Toys ‘R’ Us (USA) during the 1996 holiday season.
Images sourced via: imgur
With the festive season fast approaching, we tend to reminisce about those Christmas mornings when we would get up at the crack of dawn and open our presents from under the Christmas tree. The excitement would always boil over if there was something video gaming related from Santa. This video is for anyone who ever had their Christmas made magical by Sega.
source: segamastersystem.com
It is the final few days on Kickstarter for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis art book as it announces new interviewees, artwork and more pages!
The funding campaign for Sega Mega Drive/Genesis: Collected Works will come to a close on Monday 9 December. The book – an unparalleled treasure of unseen archive material, interviews, development artwork, hardware manufacturing concepts and more – has exceeded its £30,000 (~$48,000 USD) target, and is delighted to announce the following additions:
• Exclusive and rare interviews with Hayao Nakayama (former Sega President) and Tom Kalinske (former Sega of America CEO)
• Interviews with legendary US developers Greg Johnson (ToeJam & Earl), Peter Morawiec (Comix Zone), Rich Karpp (Vectorman) and Michael Latham (Eternal Champions)
• An expanded page count, now totalling 340 pages
• New previously unseen artwork including:
– Concept art and level visualisations for Vectorman 2
– Early character sketches for ToeJam & Earl
– Detailed pencil-drawn level maps for Comix Zone
– Boss designs and attack pattern plans for Wonder Boy III
– Character development artwork and background plans for Eternal Champions
The book is fully licensed by Sega, and the new material will feature in this ultimate 25th anniversary retrospective alongside:
• Previously unseen concept artwork, design documents and sketches for a wealth of Sega’s 16-bit titles, including Bare Knuckle/Streets of Rage, Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe and ToeJam & Earl
• Hardware manufacturing plans and concept illustrations
• 20+ exclusive interviews with legendary Japanese Sega developers, including: Naoto Oshima (Sonic the Hedgehog), Yu Suzuki (Space Harrier) and Yuji Naka (Sonic the Hedgehog)
• 15,000-word essay by Guardian Games Editor Keith Stuart
• Foreword by Dave Perry (Earthworm Jim, Aladdin)
If you have not already done so, visit the project on Kickstarter and pledge away!
This could be the coolest use of old home computers and consoles. We all love playing video games on these nostalgic time pieces, but Glasgow filmmaker, James Houston decided to use these so-called outdated relics for something totally unique, creating music!
James uses Sega Mega Drives, an Atari 2600 Jr, Game Boys, disused floppy disk drives and even a Commodore 64 amongst the repertoire of old equipment. The acoustics within the dry swimming pool just add to the awesome sound. Turn it up and enjoy!
source: James Houston
Ever wanted to perform an autopsy on your precious retro gaming controllers? With the precision of a surgeon, Brandon Allen’s Deconstructed artwork series does exactly that – dissecting our favourite controllers to view what is inside of them. By the look of it, not much, but hey, they still did the trick.
If you like any of these photographs, head over to the Ballen Photography Print Shop and place your order. These are awesome and unique video gaming related artworks.
WARNING: Do not perform this on your working classic controllers!
All images sourced from: Brandon Allen – Ballen Photography
Back in the 16-bit war between Sega and Nintendo, it was Sega’s clever marketing department that released some great advertising campaigns. These campaigns were used to either discredit Nintendo’s offering or make you think twice about jumping over to the red side. Campaigns like “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” and “To be this good takes Ages” were memorable campaigns and are still being talked about to this day. Sega protected their (market) patch by firing these broad shots at Nintendo. It obviously worked, as the Genesis had a huge market share in North America. However, things did change once Sega started experimenting with add-ons and lost their way. To their credit, Nintendo built their reputation by consistently producing high quality products and eventually the SNES overcame the market deficit and made it to the top of the 16-bit ladder (in North America) by 1993. Once on top, Nintendo proclaimed “Nintendo Is What Genesisn’t” – a stroke of genius.
Sega’s campaigns were great; however, the boldest examples came from SNK. Their advertising was based around the 24-bit power of their Neo Geo AES (Advanced Entertainment System), and they were shameless and aggressive. The advertising was clearly aimed at male gamers – with ads like “If you’re still playing Sega, NEC or Nintendo you’re nothing but a weenie! If you’re playing the incredibly high powered Neo Geo system you’re a real hot dog!” and the menacing pitbull mascot proclaiming that the Neo Geo was “Bigger, Badder, Better”. However, my favourite Neo Geo advertisement was the raunchy “I Remember When He Couldn’t Keep His Hands Off Me!” – perhaps the ad should have come with a warning.
SNK were going after every player in the market, not just the big boys Sega and Nintendo. Even poor old NEC (TurboGrafx-16) was being attacked. With the premium price of the AES system and games, SNK had to do whatever they could to snag some market share, even if it meant fighting dirty.
Being the king of the hill makes you a target, so it would have been no surprise to Nintendo to be in the crosshairs of every competitor’s marketing department. Not only were they being attacked on the console front, Nintendo was also fighting the handheld war with Atari (Lynx) with their “Lynx Eats Boy’s Lunch” ad blitz and Sega (Game Gear) with their “Separate The Men From The Boys” campaigns. It is safe to say, we all know how that battle ended.
They say that imitation is the best form of flattery. I hope to see more of this old school mud-slinging marketing for the new generation gaming systems.
‘Thunder Blade’ or ‘Blades of Steel’ – what’s in a name? Hang on; are we talking about helicopter gunships, ice hockey or a samurai sword fighting game here? Don’t you just love mysterious titles?
Of course you know these games have nothing more in common than the reference to ‘Blade’ in their titles.
‘Thunder Blade’, possibly borrowing from the movie, Blue Thunder (Ed: not confirmed!), is about a high-tech attack helicopter trying to save mankind from some evil-doers. Sega’s 1987 arcade shooter was housed in two arcade guises: a stand-up cabinet with a force feedback joystick; and the awesomely cool sit-down cockpit version with the seat moving in tandem with joystick movements. The conversions sadly lacked this aspect. On the other hand, Konami’s 1987 ice-hockey game, ‘Blades of Steel’ is about dudes trying to play a game of ice hockey while breaking out into a bare-knuckle interlude (or should that be the other way around?). The arcade controls were unique for this game – a back-lit optical trackball to control players and three buttons, one dedicated for punching! Apart from both games being released in 1987, they could not be any more different from one another.
So there you have it, confusion clarified (Ed: really?) – Two very different games with very similar titles. You are more than welcome. Now go and play some video games!
March 1996 saw the release of the brilliant Coen brothers movie, Fargo. In the same month, we were bopping away to Take That’s “How deep is your love” (we did?!) and the Prodigy’s “Firestarter” (that’s more like it!).
The Sega Mega Drive and Saturn were embroiled in their own 16-bit vs 32-bit war, while Nintendo’s SNES was being stretched to it’s maximum capability.
These were the top games that had us glued to our consoles in March 1996:
1) Donkey Kong Country 2 (Nintendo) | |
2) Yoshi’s Island (Nintendo) | |
3) Killer Instinct (Nintendo) | |
4) FIFA Soccer ’96 (EA) | |
5) Street Racer (Ubisoft) |
1) FIFA Soccer ’96 (EA) | |
2) Premier Manager (Sega) | |
3) Sonic & Knuckles (Sega) | |
4) Micro Machines ’96 (Codemasters) | |
5) Mickey Mania (Sony) |
1) Virtua Fighter 2 (Sega) | |
2) FIFA Soccer ’96 | |
3) Firestorm: Thunderhawk 2 (Core Design) | |
4) Virtua Cop (Sega) | |
5) Daytona USA (Sega) |
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