Posted on : 25-06-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Posted on : 01-06-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Posted on : 26-05-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News
Posted on : 13-05-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : News

To commemorate the year since the XBLA port of Oratan 5.66 was released, Yamashita-san has posted a somewhat vague but interesting entry to the official blog. Now, we already know that the port did very well but it turns out that the sales figures also exceeded SEGA’s own internal expectations (though actual concrete sales figures weren’t specified unfortunately). Couple this with the various online questionnaires over future Virtual On ports as well as newer entries into the series and this starts to make more sense. The most obvious follow on from Oratan is a home port of Force, something that Marz tried rather dismally to cater for. Despite SEGA not supporting Force in terms of updates, the arcade community is still very active across Japan so a proper home version (with online multiplayer) would make a lot of sense. It would also help justify the crazy price tag of the limited edition HORI twinsticks that were released not that long ago. Considering that After Burner Climax is also doing quite well, a game that Yamashita-san’s team also worked on, there’s probably an understandable amount of chin stroking going on within SEGA when it comes to their pretty epic arcade gaming back catalogue. Apparently, there will be one more final Oratan 5.66 column quite soon and with any luck some more overt announcements might surface. We’re hoping for an all new game, as that’s what most fans actually wanted (scroll down to see the questionnaire results).
Updated: Turns out SEGA are already planning a Force port for the 360. Thanks to Excellen Browning for the heads up.


Posted on : 08-05-2010 | By : Cacophanus | In : Videos

As we previously reported, a location test for Gundam Extreme Versus is currently underway in two Japanese arcades this weekend. Naturally, a bunch of videos have sprouted up online to cover this. Despite looking very shiny, it’s clear that the team behind the games hasn’t dropped the ball in a functional sense. In that, those that have enjoyed the recent delights of Gundam vs Gundam Next Plus will see that much of the core combat is remarkably familiar.
As for the hardware itself, as we’ve said before the System 357 board that’s being used for the game is basically a PS3 in a box. In many ways, this appraisal is actually quite literal as this video shows the PS3’s XMB in action prior to the game booting up. Put simply, a PS3 port is a clear given at some point in the semi-near future.
The line-up of suits in the videos is suitably varied too, from the lovely V2 Gundam and its Assault Buster variant (which recently received an excellent Robot Damashii toy), to the new Crossbone Gundam units and finally the 00 Gundam. The latter has sensibly separated out the 00 Raiser setup, as it was hugely uber on the recent PSP iteration. In any case, enjoy the videos below.

