Are you playing Spiral Knights? If not, you should be – this MMO PC game is free to play, and exciting times are ahead!

Today we’ve released a brand new set of Limited-time armor called the Rose Regalia armor.

From now until May 6th at 3PM PDT, knights who purchase at least $9.95 worth of Crystal Energy will receive a free piece of the Rose Regalia!

These brand new costume items are also well-suited to combining with the Flourish line of Piercing swords.
There are six pieces in all: three chapeaus and three tabards. Collect the whole set today!

You saw it above, but how does it look in-game? A little something like… this!

From left to right: Full Regalia of the White, Red, and Black Roses

The feathers in the chapeaus are also customized, based on the primary color you selected for your knight!

Looking for any excuse to hit up an arena, a few guildmates and I got together to grab some shots of the flourish swords in action:

Bottom Knight: “Because I know something you don’t know…”

Top knight: “And what is that?“

Bottom Knight (switching the blade) “I… am not left-handed!”

Middle Knight: “Oh, there’s something I ought to tell you…”

Right Knight: “Tell me.”

Middle Knight (also switching): “…I’m not left-handed either.”

See you on Spiral Knights this weekend! ( If you want to run, add me as a friend: Rubyeclipse)

The first person to post with the name of the movie referenced above, and also the first, second, and twentieth comments all get a free 2000 crowns from my personal stash. Have fun, and we’ll see you in-game!

Yakuza – one of SEGA’s crowning franchises in the last ten years. When the haters claim that SEGA doesn’t make good games anymore, this is one series we add right up there with Valkyria Chronicles and so many others to prove them wrong.

The latest entry in this franchise, Yakuza 4, is out now, and we’ve also just released a free DLC pack for the game – as soon as PSN is back up, we invite everyone with a copy to pick it up. This is on top of the free bonus content you’ll find within all US copies of Y4. Consider it our thanks for sticking with us and being a loyal member of the Yakuza fanbase.

Though the game may be out, our duty as fans to support these franchises and to help ensure their continuance here in the west remains as vital as ever. To start off our community campaign, we’ve teamed up with the fansite SEGA Bits, run by an awesome crew of hardcore SEGA fans, to give away all sorts of exclusive Yakuza merchandise!

Win free Yakuza Merch for a week at SEGABits!

We should also give SEGA Bits commendation for going an extra mile to support this series, too – they’ve completely re-skinned their site to feature Kazuma Kiryu and to help promote the game while their full week of giveaways continues.

So let’s do it, members of the Yakuza community: I challenge you all to find ways that you can lend your support to this series. Be it telling a friend, picking up a copy, or finding your own creative way to get it out there. And, in the meantime, get to SEGA Bits for free giveaways and merchandise, and a a new reason every day why Yakuza 4 is one SEGA game you absolutely need in your collection.

Special thanks once more to Sharky and the entire team over at SEGABits for doing their part to support this series!

Calling all crafty types and Conduit 2 fans! High Voltage Software has just released this awesome Conduit portal papercraft for you to print, cut, and assemble! You can download the PDF from their website.

I am not nearly crafty enough to build this myself, but we want to see your creations! If you build this, email us a photo to communityteam@sega.com (please put “Conduit 2 Papercraft” in the subject line) or post a link to a photo in the comments!

Hello, friends and fans of SEGA Play! Baseball – we have an update this week for our Facebook-based Baseball game, and more to the point, I’m here to talk about the game for those of you who may not be familiar with it.

First, the update – we have some grand new features as of today. Let’s take a look:

• Convert your players from one position to another – win or use points for a conversion ticket, and shape your team. Particularly useful when you draw an EX NPC player you can’t use!

• Item Exchange – now you can convert a surplus of one item into another. Have way too many rose bushes or flowering cacti? Just like the real MLB, you can trade these in for magic bats or gloves. In fact I think this is how the Giants won the World Series last season.

• New event “happenings” – as you can see from the images here, it is now possible for your field to be invaded by gophers; repelling them with a hammer will win you valuable prizes!

That’s the new stuff. Let’s talk about the game, though. Maybe you haven’t seen it yet; maybe Facebook games aren’t your thing. I’ve finally had the chance to spend some more time with it now … I’ll be honest—this is not a game I thought I’d end up playing much. First, I’m not intrinsically a fan of Facebook games; second, if we’re talking baseball games, I prefer a more “hard core” managerial sim.

There’s something charming about this game though. It has not only grown on me but become oddly delightful and charming – there is absolutely room for whimsy and fancifulness in baseball, and that’s what this game has going for it. Also, all your players weave and bob on the field like something from a 1930s cartoon. It’s hypnotic.

There’s actually a baseball game here too, is the thing. There’s a simple pleasure in building your team, especially if you can rope a few of your friends into the game with you as you can then be added to each other’s squads. This gives you a distinct advantage, since you can train & improve your friends but not regular NPC players; either way there’s enough baseball strategy here to give backbone to all the silly fun.

Also, you can give your players hats made out of skulls. I’ve never actually managed in the Big Leagues but I think any team that took to the field wearing a literal skull cap would offer a distinct advantage. The guy in the below screenshot wearing the skull is actually my manager here at SEGA.

When you’re not busying decorating your players with skeletal adornments you can actually customize your stadium to what I would call a staggering degree. Decorating your stadium has no in-game impact that I am aware of, and yet, it’s addictive: my stadium has a giant panda – wearing what appears to be a Chairman Mao hat (!) – clutching a gigantic dice (I know the singular is die but … it just feels weird to type).

I’ve elected him as my Third Base coach (there are no base coaches in this game, so I guess it’s an honorary title, but still). I think he uses the die/dice to decide if he should send the runner or not. I took first in the league this past season so I assume he knows what he’s doing.

Here, have a quick gander at my stadium. And to think Ebert said video games couldn’t be art:

Look, I’m not a Facebook games person. I’ve played my share – it’s hard to not touch them at all while working at any game company (and we’re right next door to Zynga) – but I’ve never really been “into” one. Yet I’ve found myself charmed by Play! Baseball.

Charmed is definitely the right word, too; it won me over and lo & behold, just as I found myself constantly checking on my much more serious MLBMO team, I found myself logging in to spend training points and decide if I had room in the skyline behind my stadium for a roller-coaster and a Ferris Wheel (the answer: Not yet. The panda is a distinguished choice but for now, a roller coaster would just be gaudy).

If you’re looking for the game, just type SEGA Play! Baseball into Facebook’s search, or click this link.

Today we’re very excited to bring you a new trailer from SEGA and Creative Assembly’s critically-acclaimed PC strategy game Total War: Shogun 2. This is a follow-up to the first multiplayer trailer and serves as a tutorial for even more of the game’s multiplayer components. It focuses on customizable and upgradable avatars and units, navigating and battling across the online campaign map in real time and features an in-depth look at clan competitions across the online world of Shogun 2.

Total War: Shogun 2 pushes forward the hugely successful Total War series by perfecting the features from previous games such as full 3D land and naval battles and a detailed campaign map, whilst adding this exciting new online multiplayer experience. Total War: Shogun 2 is available now on PC.

We’ve got lots of great stuff for you this week!

We are still doing our epic eBay auction with Play for Japan to benefit the Red Cross. We have raised more than $20,000 to help with relief efforts in Japan. Check out what’s up for bid — we hope you’ll see something you love and bid on it!

On the Block

1. Samba Samba Maracas for Wii

These maracas fit over your Wii remotes, so you can play Samba de Amigo with authenticity! We hear they also improve your accuracy when playing the game.

Congrats to our winner, @jevans!

2. The Conduit T-Shirt

This is an original Conduit shirt, with the design on the front and the logo on the back. The size is not marked, but we think it’s a Large.

Congrats to our winner, @CyrusBlue!

3. Sonic Pack

Rock out with your Sonic t-shirt (size Large) and old school Sonic lanyard!

Congrats to our winner, @PG_Rhydderch!

4. Sonic Free Riders Soundtrack

This is a still-sealed copy of the Sonic Free Riders soundtrack from Japan! It has 12 tracks in total, including one from Crush 40.

Congrats to our winner, @SuperPsyguy!

5. Yakuza 4

Get the game for PS3. We’ll even have Yas, the Sega of America producer, sign it for you if you’d like!

Congrats to our winner @mmc67!

6. Skies of Arcadia Legends

One of our last copies! This is a brand-new, still-wrapped copy of the game for Nintendo GameCube.

Congrats to our winner, @Jonnymovgamer!

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, a word or phrase, 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!)

Example:

We tweet “GIVEAWAY: Sonic T-shirt, size L. Be the 15th person to DM “Sonic Adventure” to win!”

You see this, and want to win it, so you send us a direct message that says “Sonic Adventure”. If you are the 15th person to do so, you are the winner!

Quotation marks do not matter, capitalization does not matter, but spelling does matter!

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.

Important Note: Twitter limits us to following 1,000 new people per day. This is a limit imposed by Twitter and is not something we can control, change, or get around. We do our best to follow everyone back in time for the giveaway, but this is becoming increasingly difficult as our Free Stuff Fridays become more popular. Because we must be following you in order for you to send us a direct message, if we cannot follow you due to this limit, you will be unable to enter the giveaway. We do our contests by direct message to avoid having everyone spam their followers with giveaway entries. Please be patient, and we will follow you as soon as we’re able.

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.

Throughout the month, SEGA has been listing items on eBay to help with the Japanese relief efforts. The items have ranged from signed games and gear, to extremely rare bits of swag, to even rarer internal prints of advertisements. The response has been overwhelming; we’ve already raised over $20,000 and still have several auctions up with ultra-rare items! A very big thank you from all of us at SEGA to you, the fans, who have helped us raise this money for all of Japan.

The Dreamcast PlayStation 3 Theme

To help celebrate this effort, we are offering a download for a special Dreamcast styled PlayStation3 theme. The theme was created by Maher and Souha Al-Samkari of modus Productions and I’m absolutely in love with the results. Featuring the icons from the original Dreamcast system and a Good Luck Japan (Ganbare!) sentiment – the theme is a perfect thank you to everyone who helped out. The themes are available in both European Dreamcast Blue and North America Dreamcast Orange, please click the preferred image below to download the theme!

Download the European Theme here! (Updated: Now includes both!)

Download the North American Theme here! (Updated: Now includes both!)

Like what you see? modus Productions have a thread over at NeoGaf showing off all of their SEGA themes and discussing their projects. We encourage everyone to drop by and say hello!

Install Your New Theme!

You can install from external media, such as a flash drive, but it has to be in a specific folder, follow the steps below:

1. Change the files you download to add a .p3t extension. To do this, click the filename to highlight the name of the file, then add the .p3t to the end. The themes WILL NOT WORK without the p3t Extension! More info on changing file extensions within windows can be found here.

2. Create a directory within a flash drive with the following in UPPERCASE

PS3\THEME\(themefile)

3. Pop this into your PlayStation3, copy to the system, and there you have it – a really cool new theme!

Ongoing eBay Auctions

If you’ve not had a chance to participate in the auction, please do head over to our eBay listings and take a look at what is available. Right now we have a very special Shenmue game signed by Yu Suzuki, and a SEGA themed Employee mug – the official You-Just-Got-Hired-at-SEGA mug.

Also, if you love the theme and want to contribute, please visit the Red Cross website for ways to donate towards the Relief Efforts. Thank you for your support during this difficult time, we send our best to everyone affected by this terrible tragedy.

4/26 Update: We’ve made an adjustment to the files which should help anyone who was unable to grab them before. You can now find a zip file with both themes in the links above, or right here!

Of all the Sonic remixes we’ve had the pleasure of hearing, there are a handful that stand out as truly impressive works of art. One of those artists can be found on YouTube by the name of Ubergrau.

As we all head home for the holiday weekend, we’d like to share with you some of our favorite remixes from his collection. Take a listen below, and if you like what you hear, you can find his full set here!

Have an excellent, chocolate-egg-filled Easter weekend, everyone!