News
Fearless: Year Of Shadow Campaign Launch
Announced on the 9th April, SEGA revealed a brand new campaign dedicated to Shadow The Hedgehog. Being a successor from last year's Fast Friends Forever campaign, this will focus entirely on the character and projects related to him. The reveal also came with a promotional live-action trailer and website launch. It also came with some new information regarding projects this year.
Sonic Symphony will be seeing new Shadow centric tracks added onto the list of music played at events. The only Shadow song played before was I Am All Of Me, the theme song to 2005's Shadow The Hedgehog Game. Sonic Mobile titles like Sonic Dash and Sonic Forces will be holding a special Year Of Shadow event which will allow players to unlock past Shadow costumes and more.
The most surprising reveal was that SEGA officially made a motorcycle based on Shadow's own bike, the Dark Rider. The bike began it's tour at MotoGP Red Bull Grand Prix in Austin, TX between April 12th till April 14th. For UK readers, you can catch Shadow's iconic bike at Silverstone in August.
Sonic The Hedgehog 3 @ CinemaCon 2024
At Cinemacon 2024, Paramount did a panel featuring details and first look at Sonic The Hedgehog 3. The trailer wasn't fully revealed to the public, but people provided descriptions of what was shown. Here's the detailed description.
"The brief teaser showed Jim Carry’s Dr. Robotnik in his lab, but he’s gained weight and has let the place go to the dumps with it being full of junk. He’s let his hair go crazy and now has a noticeable belly. Robotnik jokingly says that he’s been binging “carbohydrates.” His assistant, Agent Stone (Lee Majdoub), comes in and says, “We found him.” Stone presents Robotnik with one of Sonic’s blue electric quills, and, as he’s done before, Robotnik licks it and tweaks out. He yells, “Let’s do this!” to Stone’s face, which then cuts to a montage of Robotnik getting his hair cut by Stone and getting a fresh look with his game-accurate mustache, bald head, and depraved-looking eyes."
"The Sonic the Hedgehog 3 footage then cuts to Robotnik and an entire gang of henchmen, all armoured with laser guns, waking up Shadow the Hedgehog in a cryotube. Shadow opens his eyes, which are bursting with red electric energy. We then cut to Sonic (Ben Schwartz), Tails (Colleen O’Shaughnessey), and Knuckles (Idris Elba) facing off against Shadow in the middle of a huge city street at night. Shadow is noticeably dead silent as it’s still not revealed who the voice actor is. Knuckles jokes that this new Hedgehog is much stronger than the last one he faced, to which Sonic hilariously replies with, “You Mean me?”
"The real money shot of the footage is Shadow the Hedgehog riding a motorcycle in the night sky over some skyscrapers and then using it to bounce himself towards Sonic, who is flying upwards at him at full speed. We see Sonic’s bright blue power clash with Shadow’s bright red energy in the night sky, looking like it’s straight out of an anime. The final shot of the exclusive footage showed Robotnik and Sonic away from a ring portal on an empty road. They both look grumpy and like they can’t stand each other’s company — implying that they’re going to have to work together to defeat Shadow."
Description Provided By Discussing Film
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble Rolls With A New Trailer!
On the 10th April, SEGA & RGG Studio released a new trailer of Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble, featuring a new look at the story mode and 4 player co-op! The game features fully animated cutscenes, which were noticeably absent from Banana Mania, which sheds some light on the scope of development, seeming to reveal that this title has a bigger budget compared to the recent entries in the series. We also got a peek at some brand new characters, which while also including Palette, who was revealed in the initial trailer, features three new characters.
Some gameplay features were also brought to light, including -
· Rewind to a previous point of a stage and attempt a tricky area once more.
· Ghost Guide adds a transparent racer alongside the player, demonstrating the key methods needed to reach the goal.
· Checkpoints inside stages, and more!
Super Monkey Ball: Banana Rumble releases on 25th June 2024 exclusively for Nintendo Switch. Pre-Orders are open now!.
Unicorn Overlord Has Surpassed 500k Units Sold!
Announced on 8th April, ATLUS & SEGA revealed that Vanillaware's latest title surpassed 500.000 units sold worldwide across Xbox, PlayStation and Nintendo Switch. For a point of comparison, Vanillaware's last title, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, managed to sell the same amount 2 years after release, which is an amazing increase jump in a shorter time span, and is entirely possible for the title to sell a solid 1 Million units if ATLUS commits to sales and promotions. Congratulations to everyone involved with the game!
Total War: Warhammer 3 The Thrones Of Decay DLC Announced
SEGA & Creative Assembly have announced the latest DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3, The Thrones Of Decay. This DLC adds three legendary lords based on each race and new units for the Nurgle, Dwarfs and The Empire factions. The DLC is planning to release 30th April 2024, and will be released in two formats. The first will include all content together which will be priced at £19.10, and the second is three separate packs, which will be priced at £7.49 per pack.
Takashi Ilzuka Reflects On SEGA Dreamcast & Career
On April 8th, Game Informer released a 8 minute interview with Takashi Ilzuka recorded in summer 2023. The interview covers Ilzuka's early life, with his ambition to become a manga artist, his work on titles like Devi & Pii, Golden Axe 3 and Sonic The Hedgehog 3. The most notable part was his reaction to SEGA leaving the console market, and mentioned that he had full confidence that Sonic Adventure 2, which was currently in development at the time, could have turned the console's fortunes around for the better, saying "I was hoping for more effort, honestly."
You can find the full interview here.
https://youtu.be/zKgfzcghU0M?si=9mcd1gztNtKlEBPI
Smaller Stories
Let's do a quick round of news released this past week!
4 SEGA/ATLUS titles, including Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Sonic Superstars, Persona 3 Reload and Unicorn Overlord, are available to be voted for as 2024 "Work Of The Year" for the Japan Game Awards!
Paramount Producer, Toby Ascher, shed some light on the internal view of the Sonic Cinematic Universe, with TV Shows, like the upcoming Knuckles Show, being exploration stories of characters, while major movies will be "Avenger-level events. The full comment can be read above, provided by Sonic Stadium.
That wraps up today’s news, and since no current sales are active, let's jump right into some behind the curtain information.
Behind The Curtain
Not all information is official until announced by the company, but if you want some new information on yet to be announced information, Let's begin. All information in this segment is provided by Midori, who you can follow on Twitter with this handle - @MbKKssTBhz5
Persona 6 & More Remakes
Midori has shared some info on Persona 6, so let's run it down. Persona 6 began development in 2019, alongside the already released Persona 3 Reload and Persona 5 Tactica. The colour scheme of the game, and one of the more striking parts of Persona, will be green, which has long been speculated since teased in anniversary art above. When asked about this, Midori mentioned that "this shade of green" was the one used for the game.
Midori also talked about remakes beyond Persona 3 Reload. Persona 4 from what we know is getting a similar remake to Persona 3, including from the ground-up visuals, and other quality of life features, and while this is exciting, it's the other two games that are much more interesting.
Persona 1 and Persona 2 are titles that, while represented in art, usually are forgotten by ATLUS. Persona 1 has it only slightly better, appearing alongside other titles on Sony's ill-fated PlayStation Classic Mini Console, while Persona 2 hasn't had any major new content or releases since the remake of Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for the PSP in 2012, exclusively in Japan. Midori responded to a statement on how it'd be more important for P1 & P2
to be remade over P4, and Midori responded, saying "Yes. P1 and P2 are going to receive remakes too." She then got a reply hoping she meant remakes and not remasters, and Midori responded again, saying "To be safe, I will call it updated form for right now".
I'll keep an eye on any other information provided by Midori regarding these supposed titles.
That wraps up this week’s round-up! To keep up to date with the latest news and unreported news, make sure to follow the SEGA Informant Twitter account. Thank you for reading, and have a great rest of you day!
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