Declan Downs

SEGA in recent years has focused on providing their players the ability to enjoy the latest titles at the same time and date as other regions, to a degree that a worldwide simultaneous release is critical to their plans in the company's strategy, however, there are franchises that haven't crossed to the west. One of the biggest examples is AM2's Border Break. Border Break is a third-person mech combat game with shooting gameplay, with some elements being a spiritual successor to the Virtua On franchise. The original title released in 2009, with it being updated several times throughout the 2010's, including Union in 2012, Scramble in 2015 and X in 2017. It would jump to console on PlayStation 4 in 2018. The game is 14 years old, and cemented itself as a major success story for the legacy studio. So, let's briefly go over Border Break, AM2's Japan Exclusive Mega Hit.  Born Out Of Competition Border Break origins date back to the development of Virtua Fighter 5. T...

SEGA has been around for almost 65 years, with it’s video game history dating back to the 1980’s with the SG-1000. Alongside their extended experience within the hardware business, they’ve attempted to push the limits of technology with add-ons that tested concepts years before they would catch on by the rest of the industry. From the SEGA Modem allowing online gaming on the SEGA Mega Drive in 1990, to SEGA Channel which allowed players to download exclusive titles for a monthly fee back in 1994. However, some of these concepts never made it to market, the most interesting being an accessory for the Mega Drive, which tried to bring a piece of technology to consumers well before the mainstream book of the early 2010’s. One that still struggles to find wide-scale success today: VR. From hardware in the home and arcades, to revivals and original titles, I’ll be exploring (briefly) the history of SEGA and VR. SEGA VR (1991 – 1994) (SEGA VR IDEO Concept Design) SEGA’s history with VR ...

  During a special Sonic Fan Meet Event in Indonesia, members of Sonic Team were present to chat to friends, including Kazuyuki Hoshino, Katsuyuki Shigihara, and importantly, Shun Nakamura. Shun Nakamura has been at SEGA since 1997, working on several titles tied to Sonic Team, and is a key member of franchises like Samba Da Amigo, Rhythm Thief and Billy Hatcher. However, his most famous, and infamous role was the Director of Sonic The Hedgehog 2006. This game left a major mark on the status of Sonic Team and SEGA and is still talked about today. Since then, 06 has been explored in games, shows and official artwork, with Iblis appearing in the Knuckles Show, to artwork of Princess Elise skating with Silver and Crisis City remade in Generations, and this also appears today, as Kingdom Valley and Mephiles appeared in Sonic X Shadow Generations. Why do I bring this up? Well, the team was asked at the event what games they’d like to remade or remastered. In a post regarding the que...

When people talk about video games, there’s one aspect that will always go unnoticed that’s been becoming less and less relevant to the discussion of a game’s development, or in many cases, taken for granted, and that is concept art. Concept art is the work created to help design, develop and finalize locations, props, visual styles and characters for developers to use in the process of game development. Something as small as a plant will go through many variations, and after 10 ideas are sketched out and designed, only one will be further developed. It's easy to take for granted the talent and effort put into a game’s identity, especially when the work is never exposed to outside eyes. However, in some cases, that work does get the spotlight it deserves, and in turn, can inspire a player to pick up a pencil or stylus, and design their own worlds. That’s the topic of today’s blog, because we’ll be going over the galleries and artbooks featured in several titles across the Sonic s...