Retro Gaming Australia

Amazing Island is one of many attempts by Sega to emulate the success of Animal Crossing and/or Pokemon. The project was developed by Yuzo Koshiro’s studio Ancient and Sega subsidiary Hitmaker. Koshiro also provided the game’s soundtrack. Players create their own monsters and use them to compete in events across the island.

Ecco: The Tides of Time is the second game to feature Ecco the Dolphin. It picks up right where the first game left off, but it turns out that the Vortex Queen wasn’t vanished, and she’s travelled to Earth to build a new home for herself – hoping to sell Ecco to John West in the process.

I was just fishing around the GameGadget site, since I had remebered it was meant to be out on Friday, but hadn’t heard anything about it. Turns out it has been delayed until April 6. For the last week running up the release of the system, there’s a £20 discount and 30 free games if you use the code “gamegadget20” (sans the inverted commas) at the checkout.

Little had been said about what games would be available for the system, but they’ve announced at least those 30 that they’ll have on day one, which are Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Alien Storm, Altered Beast, Bio-hazard Battle, Bonanza Bros., Columns III, Columns, Comix Zone, Crack Down, Decap Attack, Ecco the Dolphin, Ecco II: Tides of Time, Ecco Jr., ESWAT: City Under Siege, Eternal Champions, Fatal Labyrinth, Flicky, Gain Ground, Galaxy Force II, Golden Axe, Golden Axe II, Kid Chameleon, Ristar, Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, Space Harrier II, Super Thunder Blade, Sword of Vermillion, Vectorman, Virtua Fighter 2, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi, Sonic Spinball, Sonic 3D Blast and Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine.

What do these titles all have in common? They’re all Sega published Mega Drive games.

And the price? £4.99 a pop. Think of that what you will.

Dynamite Headdy is a platformer developed by Treasure and published by Sega. Headdy is a puppet with a detachable head that can be fired in eight directions. The game was a relatively late release on the Mega Drive, and thus wasn’t quite as popular as Sega had hoped. A 32X release was planned but cancelled.

Hot on the heels of the Monster Land Collection, Sega has announced that M2 will also be developing another 3 in 1 release called Alex Kidd & Co.

The collection will include Alex Kidd in Miracle World, The Revenge of Shinobi and Super Hang-On.

No release date or pricing details at this stage, but expect to hear about it soon.

Online magazine Gamerzines has reported that a source close to Sega has suggested that the company has been working on HD ports of Shenmue and Shenmue II for quite some time.

Not only that, but both games are finished and Sega has been sitting on them until they have a clearer picture of the future of the Shenmue series – which probably means whether or not the company is willing to do Shenmue III.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Remember the Sega Vintage Collection on Xbox Live Arcade? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, they’re relaunching it, starting with Monster World Collection, a three in one collection that includes Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World and the previously Japan-only Monster World IV.

On top of that, the collection is being done by Japanese studio M2, a developer known for producing painstakingly accurate ports of old games to new systems. For those unfamiliar with M2, they were responsible for a lot of the emulation technology behind Virtual Console, and produced the lion’s share of the second half of the Sega Ages 2500 collection – which included Monster World Collection (but that version had Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, which is not in this collection – Oh Sega!?!).

The collection is launching on April 25th, and will boast a few neat little extras.

With Sega acknowledging that Wonder Boy exists, could a revival happen in the future?

Sonic the Hedgehog Chaos is the third game in the 8-bit Sonic series. It’s the first Sonic game to allow players to control Tails’ ability to fly – which was kind of a big deal back then. It’s substantially better than its immediate predecessor, the 8-bit Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 has a lot of detractors whom Sega is hoping to convert to believers with Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 later this year, but this entry looks like it will be Sonic 4‘s final stand, according to producer Takashi Iizuka.

In a recent interview, Iizuka stated “We are looking forward to hearing the feedback from the users for Episode 2, but we are currently not planning to release another episode. We just want to see how the users accept this episode.”

Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 will hit Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS devices, Windows Phones and Android devices later this year.

For many years, clone systems have provided an opportunity for players to relive their gaming memories without having to hunt down the original hardware. Usually these systems are unauthorised efforts, but that’s not the case with the Blaze Mega Drive, which bears the official endorsement of Sega.

The Blaze Mega Drive is hardly new, with the first models hitting in early 2009. It’s actually a rebranded version of the ATGames Firecore. The only difference between the two machines is that the Firecore has more games built in. Blaze has a tendency to switch the games so as to have multiple models on store shelves.

For $AU49.95, you get a small console with AV-Out, two 6-button pads and 15 built-in games Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Alien Storm, Altered Beast, Arrow Flash, Bonanza Bros., Columns, Crack Down, Decap Attack, ESWAT, Fatal Labyrinth, Flicky, Gain Ground, Golden Axe, Shadow Dancer (i.e. the usual suspects Sega digs up for collections) and Sonic & Knuckles. (continue reading…)