Inquiring About The Public's Opinion Of SEGA (Part 2 With Sonic) ...

CLICK HERE TO READ PART ONE.

This is a part two of a rant about irrelevant and stupid Sega is.  I left off talking about how Sega and Sonic are one of the same.  If you're in doubt, the best example of Sonic's dominion over Sega is the Sumo Digital line of games.  First was "Sega Superstars Tennis," a game that, despite the nostalgia, was okay at best and didn't sell well.  Then comes "Sonic and Sega All-Stars Racing," a better game with more Sega nostalgia, but they put Sonic's name in the title for good measure because "Sega" is a dirty word that doesn't get the fans buzzing.  Finally, they release "Sonic All-Stars Racing: Transformed," the best of the three games but they completely removed Sega from the title altogether.

This is as embarrassing as having a Christmas display without the word "Christmas."  Casual fans mocked the game as being "another shitty sonic game" while Sonic fans (yes, the dreadful always-whining fanbase you love to hate) tried to assert dominion over it, even going as far as to complain "why is sanic driving a car???"  They all completely missed the point and that is this was a SEGA game, not a SONIC game, but people can't shut the fuck up about Sonic when it comes to Sega, can they?  Sonic already has three series of racing games dedicated to him (Sonic R, Sonic Drift, Sonic Riders) so why can't they go muck those up and leave All-Stars Racing to the Sega fans as a whole???  (yes, I did go on this spiel multiple times already, but it's one that needs to be drilled into your friggin heads).

SONIC FAN: SUMO PLEASE GIVE US MORE SONIC CHARA--

DARTHS0L: NO DAMMIT!!!

Now look.  I do like Sonic the Hedgehog though I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan of the franchise.  If Sonic keeled over and died, I'd fear more for Sega's well-being more than anything.  To me, Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure 2 will be the pinnacles of Sonic games in terms of fun and storytelling and they haven't been surpassed yet.  To me, those games were "cool."  The new Sonic games aren't and I'd probably feel embarrassed to tell my friends if I did play them.  Hell, the Internet loves to make a mockery of Sonic and I can't blame them.  Here's two reasons I came up with for Sonic's ineptitude.  They're rather common sense, but I'll explain it the best way I can.

1. There's no consistency left with these games.  Every single new title tries to reinvent the wheel.  Of the post-SA2 era, Sonic Generations seems to be the one people like the "most" but still, you get complainers anyway.  Case is, there will never be a "good" Sonic game for a long, long time.  And even if you get that "good" game of yours, Sega will mix things up again the next time!  It's like that Twitch Plays Pokemon experiment in which 60,000+ users are constantly kicking a ball around in the general vicinity of where it should go but in a manner that pisses everyone off.  The fans want way too much input and usually get it, even if it reveals new flaws in the process.  More 2D!  More 3D!  More speed sections!  More puzzles!  Only Sonic and Eggman!  More new characters!  More old characters!  Less melee sections!  Easier!  Harder!  Hand the game over to Nintendo!  Let Dimps do it!  Get Yuji Naka back!  It's like before every Sonic game, you must be given an index card with all the game's problems and nuances.  They don't call the Sonic fanbase the worst fanbase on the Internet for no good reason.  Then again, when your fanbase was exposed to the radioactive waste that was Sonic 06 and Shadow the Hedgehog, of course that's going to leave a permanent mark.

Also, who the hell is buying Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games?  The first one was intriguing--mini games featuring Mario and Sonic characters!  Cool, it's worth a shot!  Now we are on the FOURTH title???  Is this some psychological experiment to see how far Sonic fans will go to support the series???

2. I really don't know how to say this without ruffling a few feathers so here goes.  Post-SA2, the Sonic cast of characters has become entirely unlikable.  If SA2 was a movie, I could potentially sit down and watch it all the way through.  Sonic 06 and Shadow, as inept as they were, had okay stories that kept me interested enough to beat the game.  After that, sayonara Sonic, because your storytelling has degraded to shit.  The characters have become predictable: Sonic is a smartass who is never threatened by anything and always wins by himself, Tails is a useless nerd, Knuckles is braindead, Amy is a psychopath, and Robotnik is an idiot who's just a speedbump to Sonic's awesomeness.  It's so cheesy and incoherent it reaches to Zelda CD-i levels of bad.  I don't care if it's Sega of Japan or the tag-team duo of Warren Graff and Ken Pontac (of f**king Happy Tree Friends, for God's sake) writing the plots, they can't do this shit anymore.  I did watch part of that "Sonic Dissected" series again, especially the part on humor and Sonic Colors, and it's really eye opening how much potential they missed out on these games.

Of course, in the context of the "cool" theme I was going with before, these Sonic game cutscenes CAN be enjoyable...but from a storytelling perspective, does it even compare with the dialogue from more respected game franchises like Halo, Mass Effect, Fallout, etc.?  No.  If I told people I played Fallout recently, I'd get pats on the back.  On the other hand, if I told people I played Sonic Colors recently, I'd get my ass kicked.

Also I'll go ahead and say this.  Fuck Jason Griffith's voice.  I can't stand him as Sonic.  His voice is so damn boisterous it just accentuates all the things I dislike about this new Sonic.  There, I said it and I mean it.  I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in thinking this.

Two more links to click on that I read.  Here and here.  Now that Sonic is officially part of the Nintendo family, you get Sonic: Lost World which is basically Sonic with Nintendo's greasy fingers all over it.  The gameplay is "meh" all over again and it doesn't strike me as memorable or good like previous entries.  All I see is the Yoshi's Island DLC and that anti-climatic ending (compliments of geniuses Graff & Pontac), both of which make me want to punch a baby.  I think the less said about this game, the better.  Why Sega is still riding the sinking Nintendo fail-boat, I dunno.

So what's next for the blue blur?  Sonic Boom.

Oy vey, this is tricky.  Especially Knuckles, MAH GAWD, KNUCKLES, WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU???  Sega is on record saying the game is not canon, which is codeword for, "if this game sucks, we'll pretend it never existed."  While I do commend Sega for allowing Big Red Button Entertainment (a Western studio formed from some Naughty Dog guys) to come up with their own interpretation on the franchise, I'm afraid if this game/cartoon/toy combo (yes, Sega is going all in with this new style) is a success then hey, guess what--maybe Sonic Boom will be a permanent rebranding on the Sonic franchise for the new generation of gamers!  That...really doesn't make me happy considering how much squandered potential they had over the last 10 years of Sonic that they're sealing with concrete.  I mean I kinda liked Sonic with the Soap shoes and without the duct tape.  But hell, like I said, I don't give a damn what they do with Sonic, just as long as Sega gets money, right??? :D :D :D

UPDATE: So yeah, Sega released a behind-the-scenes for the game and TV show.  It looks nice (albeit somewhat generic) but the characters and plot sound cheesy...like a Westernized Sonic Heroes (bad) with juvenile Sonic Colors humor (terri-bad).  Sonic dresses like Nathan Drake because Naughty Dog devs think this is Sonic's ultimate "adventure," okay, because the last decade of games weren't adventures at all.  The VA's and jokes still piss me off.  I'm not too optimistic but it sounds like the game devs had a lick of sense to what they were saying and doing so I'm not going to denounce it just yet...



You know, back to what my original point about Sega being cool, here's what I'd do about it.  And frankly, it's not going to work without talented, dedicated individuals, but here goes!  My bullet points:

> DO SOME HOUSE CLEANING!!!  I have a hunch Sega is swimming with inept employees.  Get 'em out of here.  I want to see skilled employees at Sega who are emotionally invested in the company and actually like the games they make.  Employees who are willing to take a bullet for Sega.  Okay, maybe not that far but you get the message.

> START ADVERTISING BLUE-SKY GAMES AS COOL AGAIN!  Grow some balls.  As a gamer, I'm sick and tired of being trampled by the grey-sky, realistic, doom & gloom games.  Start making colors fashionable again.  Come out and say, "so-and-so game is cool" and actually mean it.  Aim for that 18-35 year demographic.  Steal the cool baton back!

> STOP DROPPING THE SONIC FRANCHISE ON ITS HEAD!  Again, Sega lives or dies by the Sonic franchise.  What can be done about it?  Well, find that niche again between speed and platforming.  Cut down on the bland storytelling and bad jokes.  Bring in other characters that actually serve roles rather than stand there and act stupid/clueless.  And most importantly, give Sonic WEAKNESSES because an invincible protagonist is BORING.  Again, read the thousands of other Sonic articles out there for hints on how to improve Sonic! :)

> STOP PUBLISHING BAD GAMES!  Stick with Football Manager and Total War.  Kill the Aliens franchise, I don't want Gearbox taking any more of your money.  Speaking of which, stop using publishing as a crutch.  You should do this...

> START PROTOTYPING GAMES AGAIN!  What's beautiful about a lot of Sega arcade games is that they're small yet concentrated experiences.  Daytona USA only had two cars and three tracks but it's one of the most memorable racing games ever.  Sega needs to start churning out small in-house games, maybe posting them as online arcade or mobile titles, see what works, and then expand upon them if they are successful.  This allows you to get publicity, revive old IPs, and experiment with things that work.  Genius, right?

> RELEASE SHENMUE 3!  Oh, what's that?  You might've lost the Shenmue trademark because of inactivity?  Well get it back and make it anyway!  Help old man Yu Suzuki out!!!  He's the man that made Sega the ex-superpower that it was, you should return the favor to him and the stalwart Sega fans! Cheers!

Come on Sega, I know you can do it.

E3 Drivel, Sony, Racing Games

Guys, I have a confession to make.  I haven't been keeping up on E3.  I do not care about 99.9999% of the games they talk about.  I know about how everyone is taking a dump on Microsoft whom is trying to spin-doctor their way out of the fact their console sucks. Microsoft blows now, Sony all the way, even though I have little incentive to buy any next-gen consoles.  But I will tell you what I know.

This is the best thing that Sony has done since Kevin Butler.

Yeehaw, watch this burn on nine different screens for nine times the sizzle.
Also the PS4 is region-free, Xbox One isn't, oh happy days are here again.

See you in Hell, Microsoft.  Where you'll be forced to play sub-par Kinect games for eternity, the same exact games you forced your pitiful developers to make.  Really, they have a patent on viewing/counting the number of people the Kinect picks up on, NO SERIOUSLY, READ THIS.  Didn't get this from from /r/gaming either.  See you in hell too with your little 2-second satisfaction posts for LE SWEET, SWEET KARMA.

As for Pokemon, you now have Fairy type Pokemon.  Boy I'd never see the day, rofl!!  As for Smash Bros, you have Mega Man and Wii Fit Trainer.  Hooray Nintendo.  Let's hope that Sonic makes a return especially to return the favor that Sonic games are going Nintendo-exclusive.  Speaking of Sonic and Sega, well, there's really nothing I give a crap about.  There's new Sonic games, including another Sonic & Mario Olympics game (WHO KEEPS BUYING THESE????), Bayonetta 2, and some Mickey Mouse game I don't care about (I'm trying to get the fuck out of Orlando, remember?) but that's it.  Hey Sumo, where is that elusive DLC character for Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed?  Where's Ryo Hazuki?  Where's Segata Sanshiro?  Where's Yu Suzuki with the Shenmue 3 announcement?  And that's how the world turns for a Sega fan--get your hopes up, wait, wait, wait, wait, get old, wait, wait, wait, wait, muse about how good you thought Sega was, wait, wait, wait, wait, then get a life or die of heartache.

Now about racing games.  Nope, nothing I care about.  Forza and Driveclub are bleh--too much realism, not enough emphasis on having fun.  Well, how about Need for Speed: Rivals?  Surely this game would induce vomiting but hold up a sec--just watch the gameplay footage.  It's a bit weird cause there's multiple screens going on.  Basically, it's simultaneous gameplay from the points of view from the evader and the cop.

  

Now this game isn't made by Black Box, responsible for the atrocity that is NFS: The Runs, or Criterion with their overrated crash-gasm games.  This is from Ghost Games, a new EA studio out of Gothemburg, Sweden.  And overall, looking at this game, it doesn't look TOO bad.  Basically, it feels kinda like the old NFS games--you drive around, cops are behind you with the radio chatter, you weave around ever-changing landscapes, and there's no stupid bonuses for doing stunts, shunting and using EMPs to make your rivals crash and die.  Here's footage from NFS 4: High Stakes on the PS1.

Looks familiar, don't it?  Plus Rivals has Ferraris in it.  Hey, if Ferrari endorses something (*coughoutrun2cough*), you know it's gotta be good stuff.  But I'm not getting my hopes up cause this is still a NFS game that has EA's greasy fingerprints all over it so I'm still a no-buy for me.  But it's worth giving props where it's due.

Other racing games...well, there's also Mario Kart 8.  Their new feature this time around is driving up on the ceiling and walls, kinda like in Super Mario Galaxy, to create more dynamic looking tracks.  They also seems to have tightened up the handling a bit cause I bet you they saw Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed and thought "oh shit we're gonna get our asses kicked here" even though they have yet to introduce boats or planes into their game--rather they stuck with hang-gliders and driving on the bottom of the lakes.  Sumo, you got Nintendo where you want 'em.

One more thing.  Dead Rising 3 sucks ass.  What made the first two cool were the colorful mall/casino backdrops.  Here's it's a crappy-ass town loaded with gritty shaders.  Oh, and I don't give a damn about The Last of Us either.  I know that's not E3-related but I'm tired of hearing about that damn game.  Again, where's Shenmue 3.  Later guys.

And Another (Good) Announcement About This Blog

Well guys, I should say that the last post I made about the blog closing down is simply not true.  It was a horrendous April Fool's joke I didn't take much pleasure out of and sorry if anyone was hurt by reading that.  I didn't do this to get pity out of you guys or to really bail cause I was on the fence or some nonsense like that--it was a joke from beginning to end.

Unfortunately, though it was a joke, there were some things that were true about it.  The reason it seemed so genuine is because those things I mentioned are true fears of mine--that you'll show up to work at Sumo Digital or wherever and suddenly go stupid and get fired, that your favorite game company or companies will stop making good games, that the things you used to love you won't anymore, and so on and so forth.  I've been in a funk for the last few months, that's obvious.  But this blog will always have a purpose and I won't ever shut it down unless it's for some really good reason, better than "I feel bad, I don't want to post anymore" or some crap like that.

The blog is the only place left I have to vent about games.  It's the only place where I can still remember the Sega racers.  Hey, on the flip side of the coin, Sega, as stupid as they are, has made great strides in the last decade!  Who would've thought that in the last 6 or 7 years, we'd get mounds of new Sega racing footage in the form of pictures, videos, and player testimonials, we'd get Daytona 1 and 2 emulators, that Daytona would get a home port, that OutRun 2, Crazy Taxi, and Sega Rally 3 would get on XBL/PSN, that we'd get not one but two Sega All-Stars Racing games, that the Hornet would appear in two new racing games (Ridge Racer and Sega All-Stars Racing), and that we'd get a serious fan-made racing game called "The 90's Arcade Racer"!!!

The way I see it, this is an American Football game and Sega is advancing the ball down the field.  He's running down the field as his teammates throw blocks to help him advance.  Well he's down to the 10 or 5 yard line and he's still got one more man to beat.  Who's going to block that guy???  I would certainly like to be that guy who throws the block and gets jacked up (but helps Sega reach the end zone).

The main two problems I'm facing right now is that I'm preoccupied with other things and that I need to get motivated once again.  I need to go back to a NASCAR race or an actual arcade again.  I need to get excited again about driving!!!  And I don't give a damn what's going on with the game industry or websites cause I sure as hell am not going to let "evil forces" like Electronic Arts, Activision, Microsoft, etc. try to persuade me otherwise.

Besides, let's face it.  If I were to suddenly quit on Sega and this blog, what else would I be doing with my life?  Where would I go?  Would I be content working at the same job being a "yes-man programmer" my entire life?  Hell no.  And if I get fired for some controversial things I said on this blog, well...good, who wants to work there anyway.

Unfortunately, I will probably not be posting as much as I did before but I will be saying good things about Sega and racing games some more.  I can't let that passion get away from me because without it, I'm a corpse who's assumed room temperature--I'm done for--so it's Sega or bust, dammit. Leave comments, I read every one of 'em, guaranteed, even if I have posted in a while.

Bye guys.  *hops in conveniently placed Ferrari and drives off*

Happy Easter Driving Updates

Alright, so...we're back.  Happy Easter and have a great day.

Let's cut to the chase--there's a couple of reasons why I've been posting less.  The main thing I've been at work for a month already.  It's a 9-hour workday (includes the 1-hour lunch) in a office with a bunch of nerds floating about.  I'm adding new features to the game but just last week, I've had to play the role of that guy who needs to find the needle in a haystack--basically, solve an easy chicken-shit problem that takes days worth of trial and error to crack and every passing hour puts your job security even more in jeopardy.  I'm kinda bummed out about work now but I'm hanging in there.  Only a matter of time before I get the experience to work at Sumo Digital, I pray to God...

And even worse is that there's really nothing going on Sega-wise...  We got The 90's Arcade Racer plugging along without me.  I'm still bitter about that.  Then there's Sega All-Stars Racing which is getting a patch to fix all the bugs and the difficulty issues but that doesn't change the fact the game has devolved into talking about two things--glitches (they're still at 'em) and tier lists.  The mystery DLC character hasn't been revealed yet and still, if that's the only extra character we'll ever get, that's a bit of a letdown IMO.  Then there's the Supermodel emulator which has basically stalled (Bart's getting a Doctorate, give him a break).  And, well...it's up to me to pull things outta my ass now.

There was also a rainstorm in Orlando which was a 30-minute hurricane that descended upon my house...really strange cause there was a very tiny red blip over where I was.  Huh, okay so it's worth posting about.

But anyway, it's really the little things now that get me by these days.  Like driving to the airport to pick up a friend while accelerating around the terminal blasting AC/DC and Metallica.  God forbid I drive 10 MPH over the speed limit but it was good fun to pretend to be a NASCAR driver.  Then there was this--on a simple trip up the road to a Checkers drive-thru, I drove through a verdant wavy part of International Drive by the convention center, near the Dave & Buster's I visited twice already.  And what I experienced was rather wonderful...

I wish I saw more happy things like this in my racing games.  More trees, more colors, more fancy architecture, more blinking signs (like those in Scud Race and Daytona 2 that flash "3 LAPS TO GO"...why don't they have those anymore???).  And how funny is it that I'm near the place that inspired the Sega-AM2 crew to make Daytona 2 as colorful as it is.  Check out the Saturn Magazine Interview with Makoto Osaki and how he mentions going to Daytona International Speedway and then Disney World & Universal Studios (on this page).  I'm so close to where this magic happened and yet I feel like all these game designers are trying to beat me down.  It's like...people don't even try to make their racing games feel good anymore--it's basically "let's make it as gritty realistic as we can and drown out all the fun."  Boo, hiss, go away bad game designers...

On the other hand, Eutechnyx may not be as bad as we thought...

But one more thing, I was on my way to work one day when I found this fun-tastic van next to me.  Tell that Aggressive Appliances of Orlando didn't take AGES to get that good, did it...???

Want to talk about the NASCAR stuff going on (like Joey Logano who "killed" Denny Hamlin) and other garbage later.  Like THIS:

SEGA NEEEEEEEWWWZZZZZZ

Now, about old-ass Sega news that I didn't bring up until now, rofl.

First of all, The 90's Arcade Racer has met its goal of £10,000 ($15,521)!!!  WE DID IT!!!  The Kickstarter raised a grand total of £16,309 ($25313).  By its release in Dec. 2013, it should have:

* A total of eight cars--2 stock cars, 2 F1 cars, 2 McLarens, and 2 "bonus cars".
* Three tracks each with two different layout variations, forward/reverse, and day/night features.
* A drift scoring system.
* Arcade and championship modes for each car type.
* Leaderboards.
* Available on PC, Linux, iOS, Android, and Wii U.
* Possibly more features to be announced in the future...

This list was "confirmed" by an e-mail update I got for donating the £90 ($140) to the project.

Now, when I made whatever limited communication with the guy, I brought up a few things.  I inquired about manual transmission.  I really hope he's able to get that in but with the 6-gear shifter, it might be particularly hard (Daytona USA and Scud Race both used 4-gears).  And then there's the car audio which I think he needs to kick up the bass volume if he can.  Also have the car lean more in the turns and emit more tire smoke.  Basically stuff from Need for the Sense of Speed post...how to get great sense of speed in your game.  And no, I didn't link him to this blog, that would just be stupid of me.

Also I might add that today I'm a lot poorer.  And a lot more depressed because woe is me, all I can do is sit here and watch everyone make Sega racing games besides me.

But I got interesting news...if you happen to be a real-life race car driver AND a playable character in Sega All-Stars Racing (I'm talking about Danica Patrick), then you're happy dancin today.  Cause you qualified on the pole (1st place) for the first time in the history of ANY NASCAR Cup Race (the Daytona 500).

Well, shit.  If Danica actually wins this race and/or many others, I'm going to be kicking my own ass all the way back to Florida knowing that if Danica had only gotten better JUST A BIT SOONER, she could've won the Texas Nationwide race in the Sega Sonic car.  I have nothing against Danica and I actually kind of like her (as a driver, idiots) but her suddenly becoming good post-Sega is just one big WHY???

EDIT: Well to go over more Danica stuff.  Yes, she still has a "Sonic" sticker on her GoDaddy car.  Yes, she just appeared in another Sega All-Stars Racing commercial.  Yes, I would be "happy" for her if she won (though I don't think she will...starting position means next to nothing in NASCAR besides to intimidate the competition).  But talking before about the difference between racing aficionados and gamers who simply like racing games, I don't think Danica (or any real life driver, really) would do a good job promoting Sega All-Stars Racing.  So if she won in the GoDaddy car, well...I don't think Sega has much to gain anyway.

Now for news actually pertaining to Sega.

The big story for all Sega fans...Microsoft admits not buying out Sega post-Dreamcast era due to "lack of muscle."  Okay, I'm not really surprised or offended by this.  Am I supposed to be mad that Microsoft didn't deem Sega worthy of being bought and basically left them to die in the post-Dreamcast era?  Basically, Microsoft got what they wanted out of their Sega partnership and that is the launching of their own console (the Xbox).  Plus they got ex-Sega of America CEO Scumbag Peter Moore (who now works for EA Sports).  Sega has some of the greatest IPs under their belt (Sonic, arcade racers, Genesis/Saturn/Dreamcast stars, etc.) but why Microsoft passed up on them, I don't know.  Because they're not gritty FPSes like Halo, yeah that makes sense.  Besides, judging from where MS is now, was that really a good thing?  Look at Rare, a smaller company bought out by MS but aside from Viva Pinata, they've just sucked recently.  Good riddance, Microsoft.

Speaking of company cannibalism, I remember a while back how Kotaku said that Sega planned to buy out Disney.  DISNEY.  Quick lookup on Wikipedia and right now, Disney's assets equal $75 billion.  I really don't know what Sega's are but after this whole 2012 restructuring, I bet it's less than 10% of that.  What was Kotaku smoking...

And then there's Aliens: Colonial Marines!  Gearbox, what...a...disgrace.  Frankly, I don't give a crap about the game at all--it looks like another linear sci-fi shooter, I'm not too keen on the Aliens franchise, and it doesn't have ANYTHING to do with traditional "Sega-go-lucky-blue-skies" theme (other than the Sega logo on the box).  The only reason I really care is because this is supposed to be one of Sega's big moneymakers for the year and now I hear the game is so bad that people are canceling preorders by the thousands!  Anytime Sega fails, I die a little on the inside.

Right now, there's rumors being spread about how Gearbox dropped the ball on Aliens and this is the best TLDR version I got.  If I'm wrong on some things, feel free to correct me since the situation is rather nonsensical:

* Sega and Gearbox agree to a new Aliens game starting in 2006.
* Gearbox works on Aliens (under the project name "Pecan") for four years.  Game looks "good" but Gearbox is working on other projects at the time such as Borderlands so there's a lot of feet-dragging going on (list of Gearbox games by year here).  Sega is obviously annoyed.
* Gearbox, now preoccupied by the GOTY Borderlands 2, outsources parts of the game to smaller studios, most notably TimeGate which'll handle the game's campaign mode.
* However, TimeGate falls way behind and even removes a bunch of features that Gearbox added previously.  The s*** hits the fan for Gearbox.
* Sega, pissed off that the game has taken over 5+ years, demands it be finished soon.  Gearbox then hastily spits out a final product held together by duct tape and Elmer's glue.
* Reviewers bash Aliens: Colonial Marines to no end.
* Gearbox developer goes on defensive explaining what we know here.  Sega employee teases a lawsuit against Gearbox because they "spent" all the money on Borderlands 1/2 development.

I don't hold Sega culpable for this mess.  Gearbox butchers Duke Nukem Forever, let it slide, now they butcher Aliens: Colonial Marines and that's strikes two & three, you're out.  But Sega IMO really has to cut out these movie IP games.  First it was Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, now Aliens.  None of these games were that good in the first place.  STOP IT SEGA, GO BACK TO DOING WHAT YOU DO BEST AND CHANNEL YOUR OLD CONSOLE-ERA SELVES.  SUPPORT UNIQUE VIDEO GAMES BESIDES THESE GRITTY FPSES THAT DON'T STAND A CHANCE TO THE TEN-TON PURPLE GORILLAS IN THE ROOM.  End of this nonsense.

Was going to talk a bit more about the new video game consoles but this post has gone on long enough.  More pettiness coming your way in about five days, sixteen hours, forty-five minutes, and two seconds (get a stopwatch, I might be off by a few days tho).

Sega All-Stars Racing Has Its Bugs...

Look, let's get this topic over with.  Sega All-Stars Racing is fun.  Quite possibly the best racing game not to originate in arcades for years.  But it has its flaws.  The cheap AI is one (I guess so, everyone complains to this day).  The on-disc pre-order DLC for Metal Sonic & OutRun Bay is another (no way the DLC is 700 KB in size, it's already on the disc).  The online collisions are a BIG one (once got knocked the wrong way at the VERY START of a Sunshine Tour race...still came back and won).  But track glitches that affect lap times?  Yeah, the worst.  90% probably won't care because you'll play the game normally and be happy.  But if you have OCD and don't want this to turn into another Mario Kart glitch-fest, well, you're gonna have a bad time.

A common theme of these glitches is getting airborne and then crossing some plane (the "finish line") or just warping through the level boundaries.  This seems to happen in plenty of the courses as you'll see here.  I don't know how hard it is to execute each of these glitches (or if they can still be done at the time you're reading this) but this is just me posting after some mild research.

Sky Sanctuary: Halfway through the land portion of the track, just turn hard right into the abyss.  You'll clip the finish line and end the lap having only traversed about 30% of it.

Temple Trouble: Same concept as above but now you can skip about 95% of the track if you dive-bomb hard right on the water ramp at the very start of the course.   Also, DarkspinesSonic, you have the best YouTube intro ever.  Tired of these long-ass intros with the Zelda/Smash Bros/Resident Evil clips set to obnoxious music, I mean JUST POST YOUR USERNAME AND START WITH THE FEATURED PRESENTATION ALREADY.  Stay classy, my friends.

Shibuya Downtown: On the third & final jump, the finish line plane can be crossed if you turn hard left and fall off the course.  The result of the play is a TOUCHDOWN (someone explain the Dallas Cowboys stars in the JSR levels, really people).

Carrier Zone: Once you turn into a plane, start barrel-rolling into the carrier and you'll break out of the playable zone.  Then you can fly over the finish line three times and finish in record time.  Against regular AI opponents, DarkSpineSonic is able to come in 1st-2nd-3rd-4th with four human players but only one controller.  ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED!!!

Galactic Parade: Same song & dance as previous vid.  Break out of the level in the plane section using barrel rolls.  Then do a little circle around the finish line to get a sub-10-second lap.  The game will actually tell you "New World Record," nice.

Various Tracks: For a change if pace, this glitch had nothing to do with shortcuts. In any standard arcade racer, if you stall/stop moving for a few seconds, the game will teleport you back on course and help you on your merry way (San Francisco Rush is a good example of this).  Yet when Sega All-Stars Racing teleports you forward, it may take you past a transformation game without transforming you...it means driving a car on water, a a boat on an air section, just screwed up things so check it out.

Seasonal Shrines: Another useless yet fun glitch. In the boat cave jump part, if you barrel roll into the wall, you may actually clip the wall and propel the boat onto a land section. The only way to move the boat on land is to roll sideways...  I had something sort like this sort of happen on Chilly Castle...hit the left part of that ramp in the boat section and floated through the ceiling for a few seconds...thankfully I landed back in the water again like there was no roof in the first place.  LOL

Dream Valley: Skip to 3:15 in the video. In a 3-lap Dream Valley race, early in Lap 2, if you take a hard right instead of a hard left coming out of the first little tunnel, you may get credit for finishing Lap 2.  Somehow the game assumes you traveled through the whole course at LUDICROUS SPEED in a single frame.  This is just one big WTF especially since, unlike the other glitches, you're not even close to the finish line!

Dragon Canyon: I think this one only works online.  In the plane section on Lap 3, if you fly over the bridge where the finish line is, you can get credit for finishing the lap RIGHT THERE.  Like the Shibuya Downtown glitch, just crossing the plane, regardless of how many other "checkpoints" you drove through, gives you the lap.

........

So what do the glitches mean?  Well, Sumo Digital has to release a patch.  But guess what?  Each patch on Xbox Live costs $40,000 (at least it was a few years ago).  I mean, think about it.  First, you have to reproduce the glitch.  Then you have to fix it.  Then you have to playtest it to make sure it stops the leaky faucet.  Then you have to hand it to Microsoft who has to playtest it too to make sure it doesn't break the game completely.  Then MS puts it on the server and forces every person who signs in to download it, taking up more bandwidth & stuff.  And this is just for one console--who knows what it's like for Sony or Nintendo.  The process of merely patching a game is a tedious one that can take months so I'm not surprised if Sumo is waiting to fix as many bugs as possible for releasing a patch.  Hopefully, they can fix these stupid shortcuts because they seem like low-hanging fruit that a couple of rubbish programmers forgot to pick up on.  "To err is human," OH WELL.

But it's not just fixing the glitches that ends it.  It's also about blowing up the leaderboards.  Anyone who posted a time that exploits the glitch will be removed.  Sounds fair, but odds are a bunch of good times that didn't use shortcuts will be erased too.  This also doesn't include the Grand Prix records I posted about before (basically four 3-lap races where no ghosts are provided so you really can't tell if the user glitched or not) so those'll have to be blown up too.  It really sucks and I'm not knocking on people for using glitches cause people do them ALL THE TIME in speedrunning and they do take skill to use even if they are cheesy and break the spirit of the game.  Call me old-school but I like racing games to be about racing, not jumping outside the level and being teleported ahead of the finish line and other nonsense.

By the way, our precious little Mario Kart is not immune as well.  Check it out:

Mario Kart 64: Record-setting gameplay can be broken down like this--pick Toad/Peach/Yoshi and jump over barriers and teleport outside level only to have Lakitu drop you off a lap ahead.  I know it's an old-ass game that can't be patched (cartridges, remember) but yeah, here's an example of a game where all the rules are broken.  Have fun, kids.  EDIT: I'm really pissed that the previous video was deleted by the owner.  As you can guess, I'm livid over this since that video was cool and this one is not.

Mario Kart Wii: Even new MK games are vulnerable.  The infamous Grumble Volcano shortcut--at the start line, boost onto a rock to the left of the finish line.  Drive around in a circle on that rock and the game'll assume you traversed the whole course and will credit you a lap each time.  Brilliant work, Nintendo.  But I don't think there's many glitches like this in MKWii altogether so suffice to say Sega All-Stars Racing is probably worse.


That's just a tip of the iceberg for glitches--do some research on your own if you like and discover a treasure trove of programming follies.  And now you know the rest of the story.  GOOD DAY.

Sega All-Stars Racing: You Mad?

Hey kids, I'm back after watching the Forty-Whiners beatdown on Sunday night!  So Sumo Digital just announced a new playable character coming to Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed.  And guess what--being the Sega Racing Fan that I am, I have the inside scoop on who this character is.

It's none other than everyone's favorite NASCAR driver, Dale Earnhardt Junior!!!  That's right, Sumo Digital is now 2 for 2 when picking the most overrated drivers to become playable characters in their game.  Too bad he drives the stupid Avatar car...and has the stupid Avatar voice.  Price for this DLC character?  Seven dollars.  What a piece of s***.

Well, we now know one thing about Danica.  Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. called Danica's cell and they're goin steady.  Danica chose to divorce her husband of seven years for RICKY STENHOUSE, JR, a villain of Sega who put a stop the Sega Sonic car's victory.  Frickin Ms. Benedict Arnold here, Danica is a SEGA TRAITOR and a filthy whore!  Speaking of Ricky...

Me: OMG guys, Junior won a race!!!

You Gais: NO WAY!!!!!!!!! *thinking it's Dale Jr.*

Me: Nope, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.

You Gais: FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUU...!!!!!!

Also, Danica has set a world record for being in the most commercials for one company (Go-Daddy).  12 Go-Daddy commercials and I don't even know if that includes banned ones.  Yeah, that SB commercial where she stood there and watched the babe and the nerd make out (with the grotesque sound of moving a spoon through a bowl of macaroni & cheese), yeah WTG Danica, you're doing a damn fine job I might add.  At least you're not the one doing the kissing...

But that's beside the point cause I've been playing Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed some more and I'm going into EPIC BEAST SWAG mode.  Look, I leveled up all the characters.

Hmm, let's count, shall we?  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five.  Twenty-five characters, all mods unlocked.

I did a lot of leveling up in the Grand Prix modes.  The goal--to play the Expert Grand Prixes (???) and get the lowest combined times.  And what has went down is a thing of beauty.

I'm only the #2 Hornet in the world, lost by .07 seconds, smh.

#4 in the world...as Pudding.

!!!!!

OH YEAH, look at these times.  NUMBER ONE in the WORLD on Dragon Cup Mirrored.  I'm the best Sega All-Stars Racing player there ever was.  "One v. one me, you piece of s***, uhhh..."  Tell em why you MAD son???  Sure, send the ten plagues of Egypt after me...swarms, drones, tornadoes, ice cubes.  I love the irony of the Hornet dodging a swarm of actual hornets.

Lucky for you guys, during the time I was writing this article, my online ranking went down 200 points because of BS glitches and general abuse. Oh, and my batteries went out THREE times on Galactic Parade so Merry Christmas, f***ers.  So I got s*** on today but I'll be back!

A common sight on Sega All-Stars Racing Day.

Hey, you know the drone (red shells) you send out are really mini-versions of the car you're driving?  Look at the mini Hornet.  "Go get him son."  "BUT DADDY I DON'T WANT TO DIE!!!"

I'll have you know this is against Expert CPUs (watch out we got a badass here).

Now, about the drone (AI) cars.  We had a long talk earlier about the drones being no-good cheating bastards.  Well, it turns out that I DO think the drones cheat.  It seems as I pushed the cup times lower and lower, the AI was still able to keep it close and maybe put me 2nd in a few races.  That didn't bother me since I was going for time, not for the win.  Truth is the AI doesn't cheat THAT bad.  Some things people come up with like "The AI shot a rocket backwards at me and I got hit, bawwww," are just ridiculous.  If there's a driver ahead or behind you carrying an item, then rub two brain cells together and KEEP OUT OF THE LINE OF FIRE.  Problem solved.

Besides, I recall not too long ago playing one of the World Tour missions on C class.  The reason why was to unlock some stickers by playing on the easiest difficult.  And I gotta say playing on C class is SUPER F'N SLOW.  Like those of you who can't even break out of B-class, you're only experiencing a fraction of the fun that you would at S-class.  Seriously, when you're playing on S-class and haulin' ass, it's so much fun.

Now I'm just playing as AGES.  All other characters are irrelevant.  I do look at the GameFAQs boards on occasion and all the topics are now about people bitching about glitches and game design choices.  Some people are even complaining about AGES's inclusion, saying he's "out of character."  You kiddin' me?  The Hornet is a LEGEND.  The F-14 Tomcat is a LEGEND.  The Dreamcast controller is a LEGEND.  AGES is the best thing to happen to the Sega All-Stars Racing franchise.  People don't know what they want with this game.  On one hand, people complain about Sonic being in a car.  On the other hand, they want to axe all non-Sonic characters and replace 'em with Sonic ones.  I don't get it.

So Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed is now out on PC.  Go get it if you like and play the game at 60 FPS (although I don't feel like reunlocking AGES's console mod).  Next post will probably go over this game some more.  Bye guys.

Have I Made A Difference?

One of the things I aim to do in this blog is to keep from turning it into a journal. It's great to talk about how I feel or what I've done lately. But the last thing I want to do is turn this into a LiveJournal where I talk about my reoccuring depression every other post. No one's into that, we're here to talk about the games. But I have to bring this up.

From the announcement post of The 90's Arcade Racer, John Marine leaves a comment:

You (and/or the developer(s) of this project) would reach hero status if this project ever materialized. I certainly applaud your desires for this one. SEGA Super GT/SCUD Race sucked my coin wallet dry. I've played that more than Daytona USA, and MANY more than Indy 500. I like Daytona USA though I've played Super GT more than Daytona USA and Indy 500 combined. Best of luck to you with this deal.

Truthfully, I don't feel I deserve credit for the creation and persistence of The 90's Arcade Racer.  I upped the donation to 90 quid ($143) which gets me a logo on one of the cars.  Yet there are at least two people who donated 750 quid ($1189) which is a hell of a lot more than I did so if we're assigning a person's value by how much they donated to the project, then I'm not terribly important.

So how about working on the game?  Well, I got in touch with the guy, exchanged a few words and I threw out some ideas.  I also offered to help work on the game, even for free.  Yet the guy politely said no.  Money-wise, he's going to get the 10K pounds he needs.  He's currently in touch with a publisher and the game has a great chance of being on PC and Wii U (Unity engine is now Wii U compatible, oh joy).  It's understandable because A. it's his baby and I don't think he wants someone else messing up what he's done so far and B. he lives in Greece, I live in the USA...kind of hard to coordinate game development with people on the other side of the globe.  So The 90's Arcade Racer is out of my hands, even though it never was in my hands...you just hope for the game's best now.

It's just discouraging to me to see all this Sega racer stuff fly by me...  Look, they ported Daytona USA to XBL/PSN.  Look, El Semi and Bart made Model 2/3 emulators.  Look, Sumo Digital makes two Sega All-Stars Racing games (puts the Hornet in the second one).  Look someone made The 90's Arcade Racer.  But all I could do was play cheerleader in a small Blogspot and say "yeah that's awesome, I'm stoked."  But I had no say in any of these things.  The fact I became a fan of this Sega "franchise" so late and how it suddenly flourished in the last few years really is pure coincidence.  At least I think so.

Geez, I wanted to help Sega but most every time I tried to make a move, I miss my chance or I get shut out.  The only things that come to mind were the Daytona USA 2 image compilation on Photobucket and first soundtrack uploads to YouTube.  The Daytona 2 Forza 4 cars were great but were practically busts in terms of actual downloads.  Back then, these things were exclusive, now it's common knowledge amongst Sega fans.  Maybe these things were part of a Butterfly Effect but I'm not sure.

Then I moved on to this blog which I thought would be a great venue to get ideas about Sega racers and game design on paper.  Over the past three years, I don't know how many regulars I really get because my stats are so botched from these Google spambots and image searches.  But there have been a couple of times in past few months that I looked at the blog and thought "Damn, this is really stupid."  Am I posting things that move Sega racers in a POSITIVE direction and not just preaching to the choir?  Doesn't help that the one racing game I worked on so much in the last year was not even a Sega racer...it was Super Sprint and even still, it wasn't THAT well-received and I still hover in and out of wanting to work on it again.

I feel like I was born at the wrong time.  I also feel I wasted so much energy on frivolous things that don't mean anything now or in the near future, like Counter-Strike maps, Rock Band, and Xbox Live achievement points.  There's no telling if I did a good job trying to promote Sega racers.  I hope I did.  I'm not asking for pity messages but that's what I've been thinking the last few days and I'll move on to more fun-tastic racing game posts.  I'm trying guys...until then, now you know how I feel and I'll be back real soon.

Sega All-Stars Racing Winning On...GameFAQs???

Go to GameFAQs and vote for Sega All-Stars Racing, you don't need an account to do so.

This is just the first few minutes of voting...and it looks promising.

I recently saw an Animal Planet special on "Animals of the Arctic."  And there were two starving arctic wolves and a huge pack of arctic ox.  But they couldn't possibly kill the large oxen so they singled out one of the smaller oxen and took it down ((un)fortunately, the wolves failed since the other oxen came to the victim's aid).  It's damn dirty but this is guerilla warfare--you do whatever s*** you can to improve your position.  Like spawn killing people in Perfect Dark/Call of Duty/Halo.  You go for points whenever you can.

And this GameFAQs poll is that baby ox...go vote for Sonic All-Stars Racing and kick the crap out of the competition.  It's not the Spike VGAs (the large ox) so it's doable.  I know on GFAQs, sports & racing games not affiliated with any major gaming mascot (I'm talking Mario Kart to the oblivious) usually fail to get any traction there.  But regardless, I want Sega All-Stars Racing to whip NFS/Forza's ass somewhere and I don't care if it's low-hanging fruit.  Remember, this is the same GameFAQs site that in November, forgot to include Sega All-Stars Racing in the poll, choosing LittleBigPlanet Racing over it so now I'm twice as pissed as before.

A win is a win so GO FOR THE WIN PEOPLE and vote for Sega Racing just to beat the doubters' sorry asses.  In this situation, we are the pack of hungry arctic wolves...we are small but can get s*** done. >:)

On the hunt for stupid Internet polls to dominate for false satisfaction of "sticking it to evildoers."  EA rings a bell?

Also great supplemental reading on GameFAQs...Top 10 Games for Shenmue Fans.  Finally, another Top 10 that doesn't suck.  You can't play Shenmue 3 but at least you can play these games.  Nice to see Shenmue get some props again.

EDIT: Poll is over, good job everyone, here are the results:

Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed - 16.94% 

Need for Speed: Most Wanted - 13.01% 

FIFA Soccer 13 - 12.54% 

Forza Horizon - 10.38%

NBA 2K13 - 10.04% 

Mario Tennis Open - 9.39% 

SSX - 8.47% 

Trials Evolution - 7.77% 

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater HD - 5.98% 

Wipeout 2048 - 5.48% 

TOTAL VOTES - 20716

I don't know how the voting would've gone had it just been racing games (I assume that FIFA voters would've gone for Forza/NFS) but I'll take it.  If you look at the total number of votes per poll, the sports/racing one is dead last while the FPS poll was first.  You can get an idea of where GFAQs voters' priorities lie:

Best First-Person Shooter - 34436
Best Role-Playing (Japanese) - 33809 [was there any doubt on GameFAQs???]
Best Role-Playing (Western) - 30868
Best Action/Adventure - 28211
Best Fighting - 26828
Best Strategy - 23549
Best Adventure/Puzzle - 23272
Best Action - 21105
Best Sports/Racing - 20716

Clearly gamers are least interested in racers.  But what do I care, tonight we celebrate because we finally got one...

Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed = best sports/racing game of 2012 according to GameFAQs!!!

Oh, as if GameFAQs was trying to get the last laugh, they put Sega All-Stars Racing in a "Best of 2012" poll a day after and as luck would have it, apparently sits in dead last at a resounding 2.2% (Borderlands 2 is clear leader with 22.47%).  Sure, go ahead and vote for Sega All-Stars Racing but it ain't cracking 3%.  This is an example of trying to kill the entire herd of oxen--just give up, that's not our battle to win.  Let GameFAQs piss themselves over the same games we've seen before like New Super Mario Bros Wii U.

Mission accomplished, funny animal nickname squadron.  Return to base where we party with Tom Cruise.

EDIT AGAIN: I suppose to some it's hypocritical that I make a big deal out of a poll because when my favorite game loses, it's "stupid" or "nobody cares." Right now, it's notsomuch trying to win the favor of the gaming public (do we REALLY care what GameFAQs thinks?) as it is trying to get the games' names out there. Sales of Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed have been underwhelming thus far and the fact that this "underrated little gem" is able to win a poll on these sites is good news. Especially if you consider this silent group of Sega fans out there who helped prop up the game so I can't help but feel a little encouraged by the poll results. That's all.

Questions For DarthS0L (Again)

Wow, we're back to Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed talk.  You know, you have to admire the patience & fortitude of someone like Sumo Digital PR Guy DarthS0L who goes through thousands of questions & complaints from the fans.

When I think of game design, I like the idea of communicating with the fans about the game design process.  Usually when a AAA-studio works on a game, they're the lords of the county--you never speak to them, you have no input, they are cold and distant.  But some good devs want to be among the plebeians, let them know they are appreciated, and seek their input.  I hope as a game designer, I get the opportunity to do this as well.  To give the fan base some voice and make them feel involved & valuable.

Problem is if you give a mouse a cookie, they're gonna ask for milk and much more...  Steve AKA DarthS0L answered more than enough questions (and complaints) in this one Sega forum thread, plus many more across numerous websites like Sonic Stadium.  It's one thing to be a cool guy--it's another to be a cool guy who has to deal with a ravenous fanbase with tons of questions like "please put characters X, Y, Z" in the game" and "why is this game so hard," among other hard-to-answer questions.

Worst of all, remember the Golden Rule of the Internet--everything you say will be sealed in stone forever.  So Steve can say one stupid thing or spoil one spoiler and he's done.  Like here's Steve critiquing the poor reviews of the SART Wii version.  Also, Steve "leaked" that the PC version wouldn't be out until next year and everyone went nuts over it.  They also went nuts over the "no more Sonic characters" comment.  People are just putting so much pressure on one guy.  So think about that the next time you wanna get pissed and run to the Sega forums to complain about Ryo Hazuki not being a playable character and why you're having so much trouble beating Traffic Attack on A-class.

I did burden Steve with a few questions in that thread but they're good questions.  The posts he responded to are here and here.  These were asked a few months ago but for archive purposes, I'm posting them here to be saved FOREVER.  No pressure or anything, Steve!  Italics is my question, bold is his question.

Pertaining to the Hornet again. I really like the character. I read your previous response for the roster selection but what was the reason behind the Hornet in specific? Where did this begin--did Sega approach you with this? Or was it something Sumo came up with themselves? Or were fans requesting the Hornet in large numbers? I know the Daytona USA port was release not long ago but I never thought the Hornet would appear in a different type of racing game altogether (a kart racer).

Speaking of which, the Hornet is going to be DLC for Ridge Racer Vita. You heard of that? Hornet's in Fighters Megamix, Ridge Racer Vita, and Sonic & All-Stars Racing. I'm impresed.

I suggested the idea of a multiple SEGA vehicle character as we always get requests in for the Hornet, AfterBurner jet, Hang On bike etc etc etc. Originally we planned to do multiple vehicles per surface and pick one at random, but we had to restrict it to 3 due to memory. The VMU as a driver was put forward by SEGA QA incidentally, as soon as I saw that I get Rex to make it happen :P


This has bugged me a bit although it barely detracts from the game. Why is there no speedometer in the game? Did you consider one and was it cut at some point?

We don't show a speedo as we have plenty going off on screen as it is, you care about your position, lap, weapons, overall position with other players and all the scoring going off. Besides, we'd have to fake the speed on a speedo as you're actually travelling at over 180mph. Real world scales don't mean much in this game :P

So this one is more off-topic. I'm talking about Sumo Digital themselves. You answered a previous question about artists so here's a programmer question. I know it's probably not your area of expertise but I want to know a little more about what goes on there pertaining to programmers. Are there certain things you're looking for in potential programmers? And is there anything in particular that they all are working on or know about or so forth? I'm sorry if the question & answer is so vague. I'm a budding game programmer myself and I want to know more about what the game industry is like, especially Sumo since I'm interested in the games you all are working on.

Typically the games are written in C++, though that's not the only language we use. Games coders have to write fast effecient code as it's all about the speed of operation. It's more and more unusual that we'll take on self taught people unless they're industry vets. Best advice I can give is look at a suitable games course, or get involved with a mod or indie game group. Just as artists need a portfolio, being able to point to software you've developed is equally important for a programmer. It could equally be a dissertation you did in a given field too. Programmers like artists can specialise, so rendering, networking, audio, animation, tools and more. You don't have to be able to everything :P

Did you ever consider the idea of 10 different colored Hornets: the AT (red-blue-white), MT (red-yellow-black), and Players 1 thru 8 (Red, Blue, Green, Yellow, Black, Pink, Light Blue, Orange)? Ten Hornets online...I think that would be the second best thing to a new Daytona USA game

Without getting too spoilery - this wasn't on the cards. You've probably noticed once one person picks a characters someone else can't select it. So it's sort of ruled out on those grounds. Plus we don't do different paint jobs - mostly as they wouldn't work for all characters. I can see where you're going with it though!


Did you ever visit Sega of Japan? Did you meet Toshihiro Nagoshi, Yu Suzuki, or any Sega legends?

Yes, I've been over to see SEGA of Japan a number of times on this project (in fact most of the production crew have). As such I've had the pleasure of meeting many of original creators. I won't name drop, but at least a few you've mentioned and more!

Also, did you ever think about stopping by the old OutRun Online Arcade board at GameFAQs just to say hi? I remember when you posted there and I know you're busy but you're a cool dude--we'd love to hear from you again. Once you're done answering the thousands of questions, that is.

I do think about it! One of the things I've had to pull back on though is how many forums I attempt to cover. I check here, SSMB and NeoGAF daily - plus a few forums I look at outside of the world of SEGA. On previous games I was spending wayyyy too long on different forums - I do miss the GameFAQ's chat mind :P

Yeah that's all.  He's still around, doing a post-mortem on TSSZ News, giving a GREAT interview on the state of arcade racers on EuroGamer (I should comment on this one later), so go track him down if you like but give him a break.  Until next time...

damn I wish I had fans flocking to me over Super Sprint but no dice

Our Third Festivus Airing Of Grievances!

We do this every year.  We gather everyone around the table and let them know how much they have disappointed us this year!  Whatever, this is late, un-proof-read, horribly biased, and already discussed in previous posts but let's do it.  This'll be the best Festivus yet!!!

Sega: I know you've been on hard times and we love you.  Even the Level 5 lawsuit may be on your side after all.  But what's with the piss-poor advertising campaign for Binary Domain and Sega All-Stars Racing: Transformed?  I don't watch a lot of TV but I do watch Speed Channel.  And I've seen hundreds of World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria and Halo 4 Mountain Dew commercials but only ONE DANICA PATRICK in Sega All-Stars Racing commercial???  I hope you're doing a better job on other channels cause I've had friends who've said they only heard about these two games through my blog, sheesus..

Sumo Digital: Where's Ryo Hazuki and Segata Sanshiro as playable characters in Sega All-Stars Racing 2, noooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Electronic Arts: Taking pot shots at you is way too easy and everyone's done it (see the Worst Company in America contest).  But I will bring up something new.  I've been playing SimCity Social on Facebook for a little bit (my previous employer worked on Facebook games, after all) and I must say the abrasiveness of the game's in-game advertising is too much to bear.  From the "Spin City" slot machine that pops up from start up (that uses diamonds paid for with real money...it's borderline gambling) to Burt in the U-Haul truck trying to sell you keys to get the crappy contents inside (stupid trucks drive around town with the arrows everywhere) to the constant friend message spam (you have to enter the game to answer messages...a pain in your friends' asses), all of this s*** that pops up on the screen that harangues me to death makes me want to light your game on fire and go throw crap all over my living room and pick it up since it's a lot more enjoyable than dragging my mouse pointer to pick up "doobers" in your "interactive Flash movie" that barely counts as a game (wow that was a long sentence).

Need for Speed/Forza Horizon: Do I really need to explain?

Microsoft/Activision/Blizzard/Ubisoft/Bungie/Rockstar/Bioware/Bethesda/Just About Every AAA Studio: Can't really pin this down on any particular person, thing, or franchise but here goes.  Noticing a trend of games of turning games into movies...usually violent movies.  And dumbing them down to casuals.  And enhancing the "social" experience by trying to shoehorn Facebook-like features into games that I'll never use.  And the Kinect which I will never like.  Sorry if I sound like an ornery old gamer (24 years old, hooboy) but geez, you know what I'm getting at here.  Getting old fast.

Harmonix: Well, I like your Rock Band DLC.  But over the last year, your DLC stream has become weaker than an old man's prostate.  Averages three new songs a week.  And then last week was Elton John.  This should be a GREAT week for keyboards.  But they release a three-pack!  Only two of the songs are new, the third one is already available in Rock Band Blitz (HMX did it again next week with a My Chemical Romance pack).  Trust me, the two new ones are good but it's still a blown opportunity.  The last chance Harmonix will ever browse Elton's library and they don't include Rocket Man, Tiny Dancer, Bennie and the Jets, or Beyond the Yellow Brick Road???  Rock Band Blitz was good, the half-off all pre-RB3 DLC sale was good, but at this point, Rock Band DLC has gotten really weak, possibly in anxious anticipation of the series' slow death.  But still, why no Rocket Man???

GameFAQs/Reddit/Kotaku: I don't always want to light a match in a pool of gasoline, but when I do, it's from reading your comments/message boards.  And when you do your little "Sega sucks" and "Valve rules" hit pieces.

Kevin Butler: RIP, Kevin.  You blew it now, buddy.  You had to dabble with Mario Kart Wii in those Bridgestone commercials.  Now the last likable character from Sony is gone.  And yes, I don't find characters like Kratos or Sackboy likeable, shame on me.  Who's gonna be my main in Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale???  D'OH, THANKS!!!

Danica Patrick & Dale Earnhardt Jr: For letting down the fans!!! Two most overrated drivers ever!!!  WIN A RACE FOR ONCE!!!  WIN A RACE IN THE SEGA CAR, DANICA!!!  BUT NOOOO, THEY NEVER WIN!!!  Seriously, I was the only one who got stoked for Danica's Sega car debut and she placed 14th which is mega underwhelming.  Only good news is that she didn't wreck the car.  What a piece of crap.  Juniyah, have another Diet Mountain Dew.

Spike & G4TV: You done, son!!!  Adios, TKOed, historical.  G4TV is done and Spike (with its God awful VGA's) will be too with their imbecilic macho gamer programming!  MANswers--do I need to be lectured about beer, boobs, boners, guns, and flatulence?  Well I like guns so I can't complain.  EDIT: That sounded kinda gay...I like women but when you deliberately stick boobs on TV, it's just dumb.  When you go, take YOLO, Mountain Dew, and dubstep with you.

NFL/Roger Goodell/ESPN: Now the Saints have been mathematically eliminated from the playoffs.  Good riddance, this season can't end soon enough.  Commissioner Roger Goodell is full of himself.  Citing phony evidence of pay-to-injure bounties and slandering players who profess it never existed.  Bans Sean Peyton and several players and takes away draft picks, a punishment unprecedented in the NFL.  ESPN hypes up the issue and cheers as our world collapses on the year we have a chance at winning the Superbowl in our home stadium.  And yet, Roger, taking the side of "player safety," is encouraging an 18-game season and Thursday Night Football games which means less time for players to rest, exacerbating injuries in general.  And a team in London--could you imagine the jet lag of a team traveling from London to California/Seattle (8 hour difference???).  Plus he's trying to dumb down defense as best as he can and pimp offensive stats to cater to the fantasy football types.  This guy is a loathsome fool.  Now NFL players, announcers, and sports pundits alike are starting to side with the Saints but it's too late...we missed a shot at the Superdome Lombardi and a year of Drew Brees' prime is wasted.  Screw 'em, everyone one of 'em.

EDIT: I know this is old but how about this.  What's with ESPN's rumors on Sean Peyton going to Dallas?  And Mickey Loomis (Saints GM) "Wiretapgate", trying to dump on the Saints even more when there's NO PROOF that it's true?  ESPN isn't in the biz of reporting news, they're in the biz of reporting made-up news for ratings.  Again, screw that channel.

Speed Channel: Now I like Speed, it's the only thing I can tolerate on TV anymore (ESPN sucks ass now).  But there's a few things to mention...do you guys have anything better to play in primetime besides My Ride Rules and Dumbest Stuff on Wheels reruns?  And why did you cancel 101 Cars You Must Drive after one season?  Alonzo Bodden only got to drive 50 cars, what a shame.  And you also lost exclusive Formula 1 coverage which sucks but that's the biz.  Hopefully you don't turn into Fox Sports any time soon (which explains why random UFC crap appears at midnight-3 am).

All My Web Browsers: Why is it when I browse ANY webpage on both my laptops, all the animated gifs DON'T play until I move the cursor or highlight over them?  Is my Internet broken or something?  This has been happening for months.  WHAT'S HAPPENING TO MY COMPUTAH!!!

Myself: For not working as much on Super Sprint as I should have.  And for not updating the blog as much.  And for getting fired from my job...

And now for the Feats of Strength but that's impossible to do over the Internet...perhaps a round or two of Virtua Fighter or Fighting Vipers instead???