Retro Gaming Australia

A number of games based on the popular Batman animated series from the early 90s were published in 1994 and 1995. The Game Gear version was developed by Novotrade, best remembered for Ecco the Dolphin, and is a fairly straight forward jump and run game.

Thunder Blade is a reasonably popular arcade game from Sega. The Master System port is pretty heavily compromised, but still somewhat enjoyable. This ad is from the brief period of time where Tonka handled Sega’s distribution and marketing in North America.

We’ve seen the evidence on the Classification Board, but Sega has finally confirmed that their 3D Classics range will be heading to the eShop in Australia, Europe and North America before the end of 2013.

The releases are being staggered over a period of four weeks:

November 28: 3D Space Harrier, 3D Super Hang-On
December 5: 3D Sonic The Hedgehog, 3D Altered Beast
December 12: 3D Ecco the Dolphin, 3D Galaxy Force II
December 19: 3D Shinobi III, 3D Streets of Rage

These games will set you back $US5.99/€4.99/£4.49 a piece. Australian prices have not been confirmed but sources expect them to be around $AU8.

Source: Vooks

It is widely held that Sega’s early Disney games for the Mega Drive and Genesis were all good. Fantasia is the exception to the rule. That’s probably because it was actually developed by Infogrames, whose track record at that point hardly inspired confidence. It looks pretty, but it plays like garbage.

Pix’n Love Publishing has set a rather high standard with their first two English books – the History of Nintendo series, so when I found out they were preparing a book on the history of Sonic the Hedgehog, I was pretty damn excited. That excitement increased further when it was revealed that Sega had endorsed the book.

The History of Sonic the Hedgehog promises an in-depth look at Sega’s most famous character and all of the games he has featured in, with plenty of choice pieces of concept art, colour pictures and factoids you may not know. (continue reading…)

Sonic Adventure marked the long awaited return of Sega’s mascot and the franchise’s first foray into full 3D. Widely praised at the time, and one of the most successful games on the Dreamcast, critics have been less friendly to the game over time, given that it was the first game to introduce a large number of playable characters who weren’t Sonic.

Today marks 14 years since the Dreamcast launched in North America. The 9.9.99 release date is one that will stick with Sega fans forever – it was a pretty damn magical day. The Dreamcast launch was more successful than many had believed, even with a really hot showing at E3 1999. We all know how the story ends, but it’s nice to remember the times when the Dreamcast was on fire.

Blue Stinger is quite an oddball survival horror game that was released as part of the Dreamcast launch lineup in North America and Europe. Originally released by Sega in Japan, it was picked up by Activision for its western release. Said non-Japanese release changed the game’s camera to a more standard 3rd person camera, which some felt removed some of the dramatic tension of the original version.

Sega Studios Australia is currently putting the final touches on what will be their final game – Castle of Illusion HD, but it was revealed earlier in the week that the studio tried to pitch Sega on making them into a full blown retro revival studio.

The pitch video, which you can watch below, was for a remake of Golden Axe, to be released under a label called Sega Reborn. The crazier part of the idea was that all of the games would take place in the one universe, effectively meaning Streets of Rage would theoretically be set hundreds of years after the events of Golden Axe.

Of course, the last time Sega tried making 3D versions of their classic games, we got the first dozen or so 3D AGES releases, and those were…not so good. Being pre-alpha, this Golden Axe footage looks pretty rough, but there was some promise in there.

Via Segabits

After Burner was a smash hit in the arcades, prompting Sega to license and/or port it to every format under the sun. This flyer is from the release of the Mark III/Sega Master System version. While technically deficient, the SMS version of the game does have some rather neat boss fights.