Over at the PlatinumGames Blog, you’ll find a ton of content about our upcoming action game, Bayonetta. If you are salivating over the title and looking for all new info on the game, then the PG blog is an excellent source of insider info. The most recent update features a look at the weapons of Bayonetta.

The best part of the PlatinumGames blogs is that these updates are posted by the creators themselves, a perfect bit of insight into the creative minds behind the game. In this case, lovers of weapons should be sending all fan mail to Muneyuki “Johnny” Kotegawa. Head on over to the blog and read up on how these items came to be, and maybe pick up a bit more about what’s in store…

If you follow the trailers, of if you’ve had a chance to play the Demo at one of our recent events, you’ll have likely seen a few of the options already available to you in the game. In the newest PG blog, you’ll find some new screens of new weapons, as well as some familiar sets you’ll likely have already encountered.

We’re looking forward to seeing what types of new information comes from the PlatinumGames, crew, so keep an eye on the blog for more info.

As we get closer to the October 13th launch of Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games, we’ve got some more trailers for you! The first is a DS trailer showcasing the ice sports in the game.

If you’re more of a Wii fan, don’t worry. I’ve got an ice sports trailer for you, too!

You can become a fan on Facebook, or see all the art on our Flickr feed. Keep up with the latest news on Twitter, and visit Olympic Video Games for everything there is to see about Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games.

BLEACH: The 3rd Phantom is Available Now!

BLEACH: The 3rd Phantom is now out and available in stores and available for everyone to pick up and play. As you might not know, our newest BLEACH game contains an original storyline created specifically for the Nintendo DS, and follows two playable unique Soul Reapers in a turn based adventure. Why unique? You’ll have to play and see for yourself!

Along the way, you’ll encounter over 50 characters that can assist you in your travels, which covers both single and multiplayer modes. There is a lot in store for BLEACH fans and fans of the tactical turn based genre, one that we think everyone will enjoy.

Our BLEACH Contest is Complete!

Today is also the end of our Ready to Rock with BLEACH Contest to award one lucky entrant a very special Guitar! Over the past two weeks we’ve had well over 900 submissions, which is more than any contest we’ve run to date! We’re really excited to award the guitar and will be posting an update in the weeks to come. Thanks to everyone who submitted for the contest and best up luck in winning our big prize!

Listen as the drums of battle echo once more. Stand up, Gallia – defend all that you hold dear.

The year is 1937 EC.

Two years later, the ashes of the Second Europan war still glow in Gallia’s history. But even peace is a fragile happiness – and hearts that once fought side by side are not forever friends.

In the midst of this peace appears a group known as the Gallian Revolutionary Army, swearing to topple the current government – in a lightning fast coup, they arm themselves with the best of both Gallian technology and soldiers.

What was once a small but strong unified country is instantly plunged back onto the battlefield. But the day and age of the last war’s heros is already fading out – with families to protect and children to raise, they are the ones who must now be protected. While numbers split and tensions rise, the spotlight shines to a handful of up-and-coming students at a Gallian Military Academy.

As civil war begins to rage across the country, morality and war clash with passion and ideals. But this time the distinction between blue and red is not so simple – nor will it ever be. Gallia once stood as a defiant beacon of hope against a giant empire… but can the country now defend against it’s own?

As of today, SEGA is proud to announce Valkyria Chronicles II – the sequel to the legendary PS3 epic – is coming to the west exclusively on the PSP! Join the battle once more in the next addition to the Valkyria franchise – created by the same team behind the original.

Valkyria Chronicles II will be arriving Summer 2010 – until then, you can follow all news Valkyria on the official Facebook and Twitter pages!

Finally, we’d like to give a special shout out to all the fans – those who put a fantastic game back into the spotlight, and continue to show their dedication and support for the series. This one goes out to all of you.

It’s time for another Free Stuff Friday! We’ve got some great items from Japan and Canada, along with some shirts and more fun stuff! Check out all the items in our video.

On the Block

Everyone is eligible to win all prizes this week.

Item 1: Sonic Heroes Notepad with SEGA and Tails pens

This notepad comes straight from Japan, and includes both a Tails pen and an SEGA pen. The SEGA pen projects the SEGA logo out the top when you press the magic button.

Congrats to our winner, @sakanakami!

Item 2: Knuckles Hat

Show your love for Knuckles everywhere you go.

Congrats to our winner, @thewiz43XX!

Item 3: GAMER shirt

Are you a SEGA Gamer? Then you need this shirt! Size Large.

Congrats to our winner, @JebusChristmas!

Item 4: Limited Edition OutRun shirt

If you can’t get enough of OutRun, then this shirt is for you. Also a size Large.

Congrats to our winner, @sonik_br!

Item 5: Sonic Keychain

Ruby also brought this keychain back from his trip to Toronto.

Congrats to our winner, @Cottees!

Item 6: Sonic Gloves

Experience the world with Sonic’s hands.

Congrats to our winner, @HaroSama!

How it Works

1. You must be following us on Twitter to be eligible. (If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can create one by going to http://www.twitter.com and click the green “get started — join!” button in the center of the page.)
2. At random times on Friday, we will announce the prize we are giving away, and what number of response you need to be to win. Send us a direct message (DM) via Twitter and be that number to win the prize. (@ replies do not count as entries!)
3. All followers are eligible to win all prizes, unless a restriction is noted. Restrictions are usually due to the prize being region-locked. For example, US games that won’t work on UK gaming systems. There may also be age restrictions due to the rating of the game.
4. We will announce the winner on our Twitter feed once eligibility is confirmed.

Make Sure We’re Following You on Twitter

If you are currently following us on Twitter, please be sure that we are following you as well. You can do this by making sure that SEGA is in your “followers” list, or by going to DoesFollow and typing SEGA in the first blank, your Twitter username in the second, and pressing the “check” button. You can reverse this to be sure that you are following us. If you are following us, but we’re not following you, please send a message to @SEGA and we will follow you. This is important, because only people we follow can send us direct messages (DMs), and DMs are the only way to enter the giveaways.

How to Send Direct Messages on Twitter

There are a few ways to send us a Direct Message on Twitter. The easiest way is to go to our Twitter page and select “message” under the “Actions” heading in the side bar. If you do not see “message”, this means that we are not following you. Please send a message to @sega to let us know, and we will follow you. When you click “message” you will be taken to a window where you can type a message and press send.

You may also select the “direct messages” tab from your Twitter homepage, and select SEGA from the drop-down menu at the top of the page. Again, if you don’t see our name there, it’s probably because we’re not following you. Let us know, and we’ll follow you.

There are also many Twitter clients that you can use instead of using the website. These include TweetDeck, Twitteriffic, Tweetie, and Twhirl. Each of these programs works differently, so you’ll want to figure out how to send a direct message on the program you use. If you want to send us a test message, we’ll let you know if we received it or not.

The internet truly is awesome sometimes.

This is especially the case on days like yesterday, when we took a look to see what you guys out there thought about the newly-revealed Project Needlemouse. Needlemouse is still just a code name, and even though there’s almost nothing known about the project yet, fans across the web took snapshots of the trailer’s silhoutte and matched it up with what they thought it might be.

Before…

“That doesn’t look like Sonic“, came a few comments on the SEGA forums and other gaming communities. Even though we hope that the majority of you have seen the actual resemblance to a certain classic game, message boards and blogs across the net decided to have a little fun with it – and they added their own images to see which ones ended up fitting. So, let’s take a look at some of the ones we here at SEGA of America found most hilarious/awesome!

Remember Princess Sally from the original Sonic Saturday morning cartoons? [Edit: And the comics too!] At least some people still do.

Points for creativity on this one! Seems like a little too much hair, though…

We laughed really hard at this one, before this blog author finally consoled himself that this will never be anywhere near Project Needlemouse. Whew.

After all the “that looks like a Sombrero” comments, you know someone was bound to do it…

Have you guys seen any awesome Needlemouse spoofs around? Feel free to share them with us here in the blog comments!

We’re so excited to see the outpouring of love and memories about the Dreamcast on the web today. To help you celebrate the 10th anniversary, here are some Dreamcast retrospectives and related links from around the web.

Please note that none of these articles or events are written, planned, or endorsed by SEGA.

Events

Party in NYC Area (Facebook link)

Wikipedia

Dreamcast

History of the Dreamcast

Dreamcast Games

Around the Web

Destructoid

Peter Moore Pays Homage to the Dreamcast

Dreamcast Week on Destructoid

Destructoid Celebrates 10 Years of the SEGA Dreamcast

Play.tm

Dreamcast Marks 10 Years today

Videogamer.com

Videogamer.com Remembers the Dreamcast

Gamespy

The SEGA Dreamcast is 10 Today

Engadget

SEGA Dreamcast Turns 10 Today, Inspires Us to Find that VMU and Finish Shenmue

GameSetWatch

Dreamcast Time with Mr. Raroo: Looking Back, Looking Ahead

ScrewAttack (via GameTrailers)

Top 10 Dreamcast Games (ScrewAttack via GameTrailers)

IGN

Top 25 Dreamcast Games (IGN)

IGN Presents the History of the Dreamcast

We’ll be adding more as we find them. Add your links in the comments!

Project Needlemouse

In case you missed it, here’s the trailer we put out earlier today:

WizardUniverse.com has been running a fanart contest for our upcoming game Bayonetta. Following a month of submissions and over 100 entries, we are happy to share some of the images with everyone in the community. If you like what you see, you should head on over to wizarduniverse.com and vote for which piece of art is your favorite!

There are 35 images in total, all of which look incredible.  Head over to wizarduniverse.com and vote for your favorite image!

I have to say that I really enjoyed the trip to Seattle. We had nice weather, met cool people, got to eat great food – and, on Sunday morning, we were treated to some awesome (and free) doughnuts!

Here are the last pictures from Day 3 of PAX – and our last day in Seattle!

The morning started off with free ‘hand-forged’ doughnuts, courtesy of SEGA mod S-T-H. Thanks again S-T-H!

The crowds for Bayonetta continued to grow, especially when people saw the finisher moves on the top screens.

SEGA Trivia begins! We had a massive crowd drop by for our trivia contest, and a number of hardcore SEGA fans who battled it out for first place.

The winners! Congrats to all of the fans who scored themselves free rappies, wristbands, stickers, and the NiGHTS PaPetch figurine, which went to first place.

This Shadow fan came by the booth – and made sure to pull down her hat a bit for extra style points in the pic.

Valkyria Chronicles Trivia winners! The winner, on the right, scored himself a Valkyria Figurine, a limited edition artbook, and a special Grenade that was given away only at the original Valkyria pre-launch event!

We saw this guy the first day and found that he’d come all the way from the UK (he was even at Summer of Sonic!) down to check out the show. On Sunday he was back, and this time rocking some Portal cosplay – quite a triumph.

We left during late afternoon to head to the airport and get through security a little early, just in case of a rush. (It being Labor Day weekend and all.) Security wasn’t too bad when we arrived, and once in we swung by Bigfoot’s Restaurant to get some dinner. I got the Monster Dog, and Clumsy grabbed a classic all-American Hamburger.

My new tradition: have cheesecake at least once on every trip! After NY and Toronto, I added Seattle to the list of places I’ve tried delicious cheesecake at. I’m really thinking this is a tradition more people should get into.

We hopped our evening flight and got back into San Francisco near 10 PM. Thankfully, the next day was Labor Day, so we got a bit of time to recover before coming back in to work bright and early this morning.

Our thanks go out once more to all the cosplayers and the fans who came out to see us at the show! Enjoy the swag, guys – you earned it! The full list of pictures can be found here on Flickr.

So then, I guess we’ll go ahead and announce the next big show we’ll have SOA presence at: Later this month, check back here for even more SEGA community blogs from one of biggest gaming shows in Japan – The Tokyo Game Show!

Until next time – I need to start catching up on my Japanese!