The other day I got a chance to play some Samba De Amigo. I’ll be honest, I felt a little bit silly moving my arms around shaking the Wii remote and nunchuck by myself. One of the walls of the room I was playing in is just a giant window so everyone in the office could see me. The real fun began when some folks from the web team walked by and decided to join me.

As soon as they walked in it felt more like a party. We turned the TV’s volume up louder and got to some good old fashioned maraca shakin’. Everyone had a blast dancing to the music and laughing at each other. The most fun was when we played a mode called Hustle where we had to do some dance moves in between maraca shakes. The more exaggerated your movements are, the more fun it becomes for everyone. You might even break a sweat. I found that using two remotes or having a wireless nunchuck is a lot easier than using the wired remote/nunchuck combination because your hands won’t have restricted movement when trying to do some of the poses. Just make sure you use that wrist strap just in case you go too crazy.

I think this game would be excellent for parties. Even if you aren’t having a party, you can get a party started when you put this game in your Wii. That’s what happened here at the SEGA office. I just turned it on and people just got sucked into the room when they saw it. We even took some pictures so you all can see how much fun we had.

I am interested in how you all get your parties started. How about a list of your 5 favorite party games of all time? (they don’t all have to be videogames)

Yesterday I got my hands on Valkyria Chronicles. To be honest, I haven’t been following this game too closely and from what I did see I wasn’t too excited about it. When I watched trailers and saw screenshots, I didn’t think it would be my kind of game. But actually getting a chance to play it has changed my mind about it.

The look of the game is one of the things I enjoyed most about this game. Seeing it in motion is really something new for me and probably most other gamers as well. The way the story is presented is through cutscenes and sometimes a little of more of a comic book style where they show still pictures and have some dialogue with them. There wasn’t really much difference in the look of the game between cutscenes and gameplay besides the HUD and the camera angles. I felt that it was good to keep it consistent like that so it doesn’t take away from feeling like you are in this world.

The gameplay is what got me hooked to this game. Not really knowing much about it, I thought it was going to be just like a shooter. But it is a lot more about strategy as it is turn based. I usually don’t like turn-based action but it keeps some real time elements as the enemies can still attack while you are getting into position for your attack. So if you get your characters into good positions during the battle they can attack the enemies during their turn as well. You need to think about where you are and what weapons you have to be successful. I liked that the objectives of each battle were different. It kept me from sticking to the same strategy every battle.

Having not really known anything about this game I wasn’t really too excited to be able to play it. But once it actually was in my hands I didn’t want to put it down. During my time playing it, the fire alarm went off and I was mad that I had to stop for a little bit. That made me realize how much I was getting into it. Now I can only wait for it to be finished and released so I can play it more at home. I think it will be a great gaming experience for PS3 owners. What kinds of things are you all excited about for this game? Is there anything you are skeptical about?

Just announced, Sonic and the Black Knight is coming to the Wii platform! Info is light on this title, but that’s soon to change with an article in the September Nintendo Power. If you can’t wait and want to read all there is to currently see, check out our own Product Page and examine every detail in the Nintendo Power cover (click in to flickr to see the full resolution image!), seen below.

http://www.sega.com/games/?g=483

As you might have read in my profile, I am an intern here at Sega for the summer.  I am excited to learn as much as I can during my stay here and I am glad that I get to share my experience here with people who are interested.  Working at Sega is a little change of pace from working at GameStop where I would be helping customers, gutting games, and alphabetizing the walls all day.  Here at Sega I have a desk with a computer where most of my work is done.

When thinking of a topic for my first blog I was having a little trouble.  Luckily Clumsyorchid, my office neighbor, pointed out to me the most obvious thing to write about this week: E3.  This year the big three seem to be changing their focus to a more casual one.  Here’s a little bit of what I thought.

Microsoft

Microsoft’s conference I thought was the best of the three.  They had the most balance of casual and hardcore games to show.  I think it was a good idea to try and draw a new audience to the 360 without forgetting about the true fans.  I think it was a mistake for them to completely change the dashboard.  Looks familiar…PS3 cross media bar perhaps?  Wait…haven’t I seen these “avatars” somewhere before too?

Nintendo

Nintendo’s conference was probably the one I was the least thrilled about.  Everything shown was casual games to draw in that casual gaming crowd.  And I doubt that any of those people were following E3 as closely as us gamers that have been playing their games for so many years.  So why would they want to disappoint all of us who actually watched the conference?  MadWorld FTW!

Sony

I thought Sony had a pretty solid conference.  They showcased games like Resistance for the PSP, Resistance 2, God of War 3, and even Little Big Planet while they were showing their numbers which I thought was really creative.  Their lineup for the next year looks promising.  The thing I didn’t really care for was how much time they took talking about the PS2.  Yakuza 2 was the only game out of those that I think I would want to get.  The mention of movies for download was good if you don’t have a 360.  Still no date for Home?

I’m sorry to say that E3 didn’t get me as pumped for anything as I thought it would.  I didn’t think it could get worse than when they simplified it to being “just about the games”.  E3 used to get people super excited.  This year just didn’t do it for me.

Next week I should be getting some hands on time with some of the games Sega showed at E3.  And I wouldn’t be writing this on here if I wasn’t going to post about it.  So stop by next week and check it out!

We have a special website update for Sonic fans craving new Sonic Chronicles info. Let’s see a show of hands… so as I suspected, that’s about everyone! The site, which I’ve already expressed my deep love and respect for, is rolling out all new information about our little blue friend and the world he explores.

What should you expect to see in the new update? At a glance you can meet some new characters, check out new locations, read about the elusive Chao, and hunt even more rings for an unlockable surprise!

http://www.sega.com/sonicchronicles/us/index.php 

The site is currently only open to the US, apologies to other countries, we’ll have these up shortly!

I mentioned last week in one of our blogs that we were moving to a new building, just up the way from our old home on 8^th and Townsend. The past week since our arrival has had most of us getting our desks in order, wrapping up old deadlines, starting new projects; you know, the basic work stuff. I’m happy to report that we all made the move safely and are back up and running, minus a few hitches.

One bigger hitch is our email, which has been down all morning and up sporadically over the past few days. For our community and web producing roles, we pretty much work in email all day long, which puts a significant drain on our ability to work. So since email was completely gone, we made the rounds in the office and took photos of the set up aftermath, the building itself, and a special treat: the SEGA archive.

First up, our building is directly across from the Culinary Academy, which is pretty cool. The chefs in training have been very generous and delivered tasty cupcakes to everyone in the building. Recently we’ve found they offer a multi-course meal a few days a month that’s 75% off the normal price! If you are in the SF area, we all highly recommend you check this lunch out, it is delicious.  Big thanks to our new neighbors; we love your food and hospitality!

Inside the new building, everyone is getting used to the new spaces by unpacking their trinkets and toys. Working with games, you come to expect that everyone has a quirky side, and usually you can see it displayed in their desks. Eggshen and I walked around and picked up some images of what we thought were the more interesting set ups.

As a bonus for us, while we were exploring the product development side of the office we came across a very special room we did not know existed. Apparently, there is a library of games, the SEGA archive, which contains every game that appeared on a SEGA console! We were able to sneak in some photos while they were setting up the room, and I plan on heading back over to see if we can get some hands on time with some older gems.

So that’s pretty much it from the new SEGA move, I hope you enjoyed the photos and the small insight into our offices.

Deep inside every household lurks an unseen terror preparing to unleash its destructive power upon the online world. A force so sinister it waits for the perfect moment to strike, cunningly tricking its victims into a false sense of security over a period of many years. Then, just when the moment is right – it attacks.

Ladies and gentlemen of the online MMO/Forum scene – I present to you the most evil of all evils among the internet:

The Little Brother.

Notice the wide, gleaming grin, the tilted hat (representing anti-lawful behavior), and the outright absence of a nose – all common signs that your little brother might be preparing to steal your online characters.

Here in Phantasy Star Universe, we at the support section deal with a lot of problematic players. Thieves, liars, scammers, phishers – the list goes on. When confronted, however, many of these obviously honest and angelic at heart users are quick to inform us that, in fact, it was not their fault that such words were said or that said items were stolen – nothing could be further from the truth! It was, they tell us as they plead for forgiveness: their little brother.

Don’t be too surprised – this is hardly a new occurrence. In fact, little brothers have apparently been plaguing the worlds of online communities since the birth of the internet – and causing trouble in real life far before that. Item thievery, character deletion, expletives of such magnitude that said little brother’s Grandma would probably disown him for; here in the world of MMOs and Message Boards, little brothers channel all that is evil into decimating the reputation of those players who would otherwise be normal, law-abiding, and perfectly respectable denizens of the online world. Worst of all, they can apparently do it without the original account owner ever having known it happened.

I have a little brother, so it must be admitted that I have seen the amazing potential for evil that exists deep within the souls of those second-born – or further – children, and as much as I don’t doubt that enough years of pent up anger stemming solely from not being born first could obviously drive a person to hijack someone’s online accounts, I do have to stop sometimes and wonder – how is it that simple order of birth could create such malice – and more specifically, in the online world?

—

An example of a little brother’s actions in PSU.

—

The answers here may never be clear, but after much deliberation I decided to do some research on the topic. I took a look through all the recent cases of little brothers scamming, harassing players, etc, and ironed out what I believe to be the three main points that best sum up what happens when a little brother hijacks an online game account:

1: Scam? N-no! I didn’t do it, I wasn’t even here! It must have been my little brother!

2: You wouldn’t ban me for something my little brother did, right? I mean, it wasn’t even me!

One week later, after the behavior happens again and action is taken:

3:SEGA I HATE U WHY DID U BAN ME U CAN GO TO(Insert long list of capital letter cursing, grammar/syntax genocide, and personal attacks here.)

Obviously, the little brother must have also hijacked the player’s help.sega.com account,as the expletives and gratuitous cursing in the third part are often curiously similar to the language the player was reported for originally…

So be wary, be warned, and be watchful – that innocent little brother of yours, smiling blissfully as you play, is likely just waiting for the right moment to hop onto your PSU account and commit deeds you wouldn’t even think him capable of.

(In fact, and in all honesty, the truth is: he’s not actually capable of them at all.)

Disclaimer: Before hate mail arrives from little brothers worldwide, a reminder that this is (mostly) satire and that I think little brothers are awesome – including my own (Hi, bro!) …Besides, someone has to play Tails, right?

So it’s been a little while since we had our last little nerd-out blogging session over our recent gaming obsessions. I’ve been a ‘casual gaming’ fan for ages — not so much because I don’t like hardcore games with depth (I cut my teeth on RPGs and RTS titles, so ive paid my dues) but rather because when my life has gotten especially busy at various different points, ive found these to fill the void quite nicely and offer a bit of a different experience than my usual fare. That being said, I guess this month’s theme is more on the games that I play that are a bit more outside the box. So without further ado, I give you EggShen’s personal addictions, romances, and Wiinjury updates.

Boom Blox (Wii)

One of my good friends moved into the empty room in my apartment back in May and along with him he brought his Wii. We didn’t have a Wii in the house prior to his recent residency, so I was subjected to mooching Wii time at friends houses or sneaking some time in at work when the opportunity arose. Shortly after his arrival, he asked me if I knew of any cool Wii games — since I had been playing a bit of Mario Galaxies over at my friend’s house I suggested he pick that up at Best Buy and that we could bring some games home from work (he also works with me here at SEGA). It just so happened that he made his trip down to the store the same week that Boom Blox had come out,  and since it had pretty good buzz surrounding it, he snagged a copy of that as well as Galaxies. I had only a brief background of what Boom Blox was all about, but once he fired it up, it seemed simple enough. We both jumped right into chucking baseballs and bowling balls at a plethora of various block formations. Essentially there are a few different game modes to choose from all surrounding the same gameplay but with slightly different strategies or objectives — think Jenga-meets-Kupie-carnival-games with freaky little square cows, pigs and bears dancing around in the background. It’s the kind of game you can get sucked into pretty easily as the levels go pretty quick and you can repeat them for higher scores which unlock new levels. One of the cooler features I really enjoyed was the throwback-to-Excitebike “Build Your Own Level” feature. Throughout the course of the game you can unlock new items and blocks with which to construct your own Boom Blox mousetrap or Rubix Cube level for yourself or your friends to play. It’s cool to incentivize high scores on the single player levels and also allows you to tap into your creativity — see: spending hours trying to build the ultimate Boom Blox Rube Goldberg Machine. Make sure to stretch though if you plan on putting some time into this one though as after our first night of intense competition I woke up with my first official Wiinjury manifesting itself as a sore right elbow. Never underestimate the intense power of wanting to harm annoying little square farm animals and always carry tube of icy-hot with you.

Mob Wars (Facebook)

Now I’m not one of those Facebook people that downloads every application known to man and sends out incessant invites to everyone on their list while they’re bored at work or in class (i swear if i receive one more Little Green Patch invite i am going to scream) I fell across this application when one of my co-workers told me there was a game on Facebook that was like Drugwars (which helped me make it through high school math class back in the day of the trusty TI-82 calculator). For those of you familiar with the old Drugwars game, Mob Wars is essentially an upgraded, more encompassing version of that concept. You are  mob boss with money to buy weapons and vehicles and property. You can carry out various crimes to earn experience and money to help you advance and buy more items that will help attack and defend against other mobsters. One of the cool features is that now that this game has come online, youre actually competing against real people, friends and strangers, across the world trying to kill or be killed while racking up as many monetary assets as possible along the way. I’ve found a strategies that work for me and have a pretty solid flow of cash coming through (to be laundered of course). It doesn’t take a ton of time to get the hang of things, but is generally pretty rewarding and entertaining which is how i think these Facebook apps/games are supposed to be. All in all i havent gotten bored with it yet, so thats definitely a good sign — right? If you havent already become Made yourself, you are more than welcome to join my Mob — the more the merrier, right?

Fifa ’08 (Xbox 360)

Although I never followed much soccer — growing up in the US soccer isnt generally promoted on SportsChannel or the front page of the Sports section of the newspaper very often, I did play a bit when I was younger and understood the sport. Baseball games pretty much dominated my gamer life from Bases Loaded for the NES to MLB The Show on PS3 today. However, I have quite a few friends that are all big soccer fans and really only a handful that even follow baseball in the slightest. It seems with the excitement of the recent EuroCup 2008 that my friends and I have found a renewed interest in Soccer games like Fifa. Most often sports games are more fun when you can compete with your friends and can smack talk each other throughout the course of a match or series of matches. So it seems it hass become quite a tradition at my house that late at night, when everyone comes back from an evening on the town that the smack talk begins — with the only way to settle it has become a good competitive match of Fifa ’08. The game is a bit more of the Arcade style with a fairly complex set of controls (if you become advanced enough to master them) as well as the ability for noobs to button-mash their way to near victory. All in all the game and the (most of the time) friendly competition has definitely resparked my interest in the sport of Soccer. I’m still no master of Fifa however, as I’ve only been able to eek out a few victories (in sudden death goal kicks) but I still enjoy some good competition.

Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball (PC)

My newest and most horrendous addition — Fantasy Sports. Well, its baseball season(actually halfway through baseball season already even). I got suckered into playing fantasy basketball through a friend a couple years back and it was truly the gateway drug to one of the most intense text-based competitions ive ever had the please of being involved. Essentially the concept behind fantasy sports is that you are the manager of your own ‘fantasy team’ of whatever sport you choose (they even have fantasy bass fishing — wtf!?!). You have a draft day in which you select your players from a pool within a randomized draft order with the other teams in your league. Once your team has been selected you are free to totally ruin any chance you had manage your team as you desire adding, dropping and trading players. Mind you, all of the points you will earn in fantasy sports come from the very real performances of your players throughout the year. So basically fantasy sports is one part scouting, one part guts, and one part complete and utter luck — much like real sports i imagine. the scoring is pretty straightforward for the most part — you put your players into your starting lineup every day, they play the game that day, and you accumulate your team stats from their performances in the predetermined categories (Hits, Runs, RBIs, HRs, etc.). Each week you are matched up with one of the other teams from your league and you essentially get wins and losses based on your team’s performance as compared to the team you are matched up with that week.

Obviously the main strategy comes into play by each manager depending on your opponent each week, how your individual players are doing, etc. and trying to rack up the most wins that you can each week. The season lasts around 21 weeks or so (depending on your customized league rules) and has a playoff at the end with the top 6 teams (as determined by wins-losses in head-to-head categories each week.) You can invest as much or as little time into your team as you want, scouting new rookies, checking the split match-ups to have a better guess as to who will perform better on any given day, or just kind of let your team do their thing and hope that luck ends up on your side. It can be one of the most frustrating and rewarding experiences ever. I’ve also found that as a lapsed baseball fan (becoming very discouraged and jaded after the strikes of the mid-90s) it has gotten back into the loop of what is going on with the sport. It has also renewed my interest in sports video games as I am more involved in keeping track of the season, the players, and the stats. It may not seem like the most action-packed way to spend your evening before bed, but until you’ve gloated your credibility away with a 1st round pick who gets a season-ending injury two weeks deep in the season and then pick up a random rookie your buddy gave up on who somehow manages to be the best performing all-around hitter that season you’ll understand (Thank you Ryan Braun for cleaning up my messes in 2007).

So we all have our ‘guilty pleasures’ if you will. We cant always be plugged into our 360, and sometimes online multiplayer death matches arent what the doctor ordered. So what weird games are keeping you guys busy?

-EggShen

iPhone software version 2.0 is out with the new 3G iphone release.  I’m on the fence for the phone, I guess the phone itself is cheaper, but the costs in monthly fees goes up enough to actually increase the price.  I think that’s almost a discussion for another blog, probably for another site… Anyway, those who have iPhone’s and iPod touch can check out the new software update with the long overdue applications, available through iTunes.  And within the Applications is a pretty faithful release of Monkeyball, which is damn fun and incredibly intuitive.

Been waiting on some games for my iPhone and Monkeyball has been pretty satisfying, if not a little frustrating, but hey, this is Monkeyball afterall. Controls are great, the sensitivity is comfortable and the graphics look nice and crisp on the iPhone screen.  Apple has a short video on their website that shows off the game, but it’s not the same as playing it. I wish there was a demo that you could check out to see it in all it’s glory, but if you search through youtube a bit, you should be able to pull up some user crafted videos of the game in action.

Fun to see SEGA games on a new platform, especially when it works so well with the tilting control scheme.  I’m pretty skeptical of other titles making the jump and being fully playable without some control issues, but there’s always hope that we’ll see some other releases.  Personally, I’d love to see a Chu Chu version with local multiplayer, but not entirely sure if that would be possible. Maybe a Seaman release too, that seems incredibly perfect for the platform…

awesometown.

-EggShen