Happy Halloween! Sonic the Hedgehog is ready to get dressed up for the occasion with a new, exclusive Halloween Sonic digital trading card for your official collection!  It’s time to TRICK-OR-TREAT!

Want to know how to get your Halloween Sonic card? Then follow ALL the instructions!

1)     Register on Stampii and activate your Sonic the Hedgehog™ digital card collection!

2)     Join the Stampii Swap Network on Facebook and select the Sonic the Hedgehog collection or move to the Swap section of any of your desktop or mobile Stampii devices.

3)     Find the user SonicHalloween on the SEARCHER and open a single trade with him. Now you can offer him any card to start your “TREAT”… and if he accepts you will get your Sonic Halloween card! Don’t make him unhappy or he will just “TRICK” you!

4)     Learn how to trade your cards with Stampii.

THIS OFFER IS FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY AND CAN ONLY BE REDEEMED ONCE PER USER!

Stampii are running a spooktacular competition so head on over to their Facebook page for more details!

Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz is out worldwide for the PlayStation Vita! The game is a return to form, offering a much increased challenge for all areas of the game – something fans of the series have been asking for since the Gamecube releases! Banana Splitz also features an extensive level creator for those that want to devise some devilish levels for friends, and our DLC updates gives you new tools to help realize those insane creations.

The Downloadable Content Packs

The DLC updates are broken out into packs with different tools, props, and textures to help make your levels all your own. Find the pack that best suits your needs!

SEGA Grey Pack – Include the SEGA Saturn system and Logo in your designs!
SEGA Black Pack – Include the SEGA MegaDrive / Genesis system and logo in your designs!
SEGA White Pack – Include the SEGA Dreamcast system and logo in your designs!
Sonic Pack – Update your levels to include a Sonic the Hedgehog statue!

Hard Pack - Tons of new slimmer elements, including L, T, and + (plus) shapes.
Professional Pack -All new elements, that are even more challenging than the Hard Pack, can be found in this Professional Pack!
Variety Pack – Update your levels with pyramids, bumps, cones and more!
Puyo Puyo Pack – The update adds a tile containing PuyoPuyos that are hard to navigate across!

DLC Pack Availability in North America

All packs will be available on October 30th in the PlayStation Network store for the low low price of $1.99! PlayStation Plus users can pick them up at 80% off! What a deal!

DLC Pack Availability in Europe

The DLC Packs will be available across the PlayStation Network store in weekly releases. All updates will be completely free in the weekly releases and available at a later date in a bundle pack for purchase, so don’t miss out! Check back each week for two new packs!

October 31st: SEGA Grey Pack & SEGA Black Pack

November 7th: SEGA White Pack & Sonic Pack

November 14th: Hard Pack & Professional Pack

November 21st: Variety Pack & Puyo Puyo Pack

For more information on Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz, visit http://www.sega.com/supermonkeyball/

In honor of the upcoming Halloween festivities, we’ve got an Un-BOO-lievable sale coming your way for iOS & Android platforms!  Don’t be scared, we’ve got a lot of good games to pick up and play – the sale runs until October 31st, so don’t delay!

This week’s Free Stuff Friday features Jet Set Radio Soundtracks! In honor of the physical CD release, we’re got 3 soundtracks to give away, yay!

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!) We only accept one direct message per person per prize!

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.

Other Assorted Information:

• Free Stuff Friday duties alternate between the London and San Francisco offices and are done during business hours (usually mid-morning) in our respective time zones.
• No, you can’t know what number message you were – so please don’t ask! We will tell you that the information is classified!
• If you have questions during the giveaway, please contact us with an @reply. As you can imagine, we get a whole lot of direct messages during the contests and there is a very good chance we will miss your question if it is sent as a DM.

How to Send Direct Messages on Twitter

Due to a change in our account status with Twitter, you should be able to send us direct messages without us following you if you are using the Twitter website. However, third-party applications may not allow you to.

There are a few ways to send us a Direct Message on Twitter. The easiest way is:

1. Log in to your Twitter account.
2. Click on the person icon and select Direct messages from the drop down menu.
3. You’ll see a pop up showing your Direct message history. Click the New message button, highlighted below.
4. In the address box, type the name or username (SEGA) of the person you wish to send a message to.
5. Enter your message and click Send message.

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. If you still have questions on sending direct messages, please visit Twitter’s Help Section.

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. Please make sure your message says “test” somewhere.

Owlchemy Labs has released an update for Jack Lumber! SEGA Alliance’s first title is now optimized for the iPhone 5 and compatible with iOS 6. Cool new items have also been added to Granny’s Cupboard so wood can be chopped in style! Jack Lumber is available now on the iTunes App Store for the special price of $0.99 for a limited time. http://bit.ly/TreesSuck

Now check out this great new video featuring Owlchemy Lab’s Design Scientist, Kate and her trip to the World Lumberjack Championships:

Hey Ash fans! Starting today, you can get  downloadable content for Hell Yeah! Wrath of the Dead Rabbit! on XBLA, PSN, and PC Digital Download.

Play as Ash, the Prince of Hell, in style by downloading the Pimp My Rabbit pack for 50 new masks, 11 driller skins for Ash’s deadly jet pack driller, and classic SEGA franchise and character skins for $2.99 / £1.99 / €2.49 / 240MSP / AUD$4.25. You can also improve your shooting and speed-running skills in over 50 challenges with The Virtual Rabbit Missions for $4.99 / £3.69 / €4.49 / 400MSP / AUD$7.75.

SEGA is proud to announce the launch of the ballistic Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz is arriving exclusively on the PlayStation Vita! In North America Banana Splitz is available today, while in Europe, fans can pick up the game on October 26th!

Players will join AiAi, MeeMee, GonGon and Baby on another grand adventure through time, space and texture! Over 100 levels of bumpers, jumps and humps will test your skills with the sphere.

Fan favorite party mode games like Monkey Target and Monkey Bowling round out an impressive collection of competitive multiplayer challenges! Taking full advantage of the unique PS VITA features like the rear touchpad, camera, accelerometer and more, Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz is the ultimate puzzle experience for Sony’s handheld device.

The Super Monkey Ball Musical Begins Today!

We’re toe-tapping-ly excited for the release of Super Monkey Ball, so toe-tapping-ly excited we’re throwing down the musical gauntlet and singing our hearts out! See the first episode in a three part trilogy in Super Monkey Ball – The Musical!

For more information on Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz, visit http://www.sega.com/supermonkeyball/

Ten years — was there even an internet ten years ago? Computers? The wheel? Cars? It is literally too long ago for anyone alive today to remember, a time lost to myth, and internet access that was charged on an hourly basis. We don’t know what it was like back then in the Long Before, but we do know one thing.

There were boats.

Not just any boats, mind. Boats governed by pirates — pirates with predilections for puzzles.

Precisely.

“Yarrr”, you might say. “Get to the point or taste the steel o’me cutlass!” And right you’d be to say that, even though the blog headline … I mean, it’s right up there!

Okay, here we go: Congratulations to our partners at Three Rings for celebrating the 10-year Anniversary of ‘Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates‘!

As a feat of magnificent derring-do, this probably can’t be understated. How many games — particularly an online game created by an independent start-up right at the crush of the dot-com boom – can say they’ve made it ten years? And yet here we are, talking with piratey swagger about an online game that has existed since — and I haven’t researched this but I am sure I’m right — before telephones.

It helps that the game is infectiously fun — the appeal of both puzzles and pirates, after all, is forever. It helps that a dedicated team of workers effectively said “yes, let’s stake our livelihood on the success of this video game about ships and puzzles.” Puzzle Pirates: I beam with pride at you, and raise a glass of hearty grog in your direction:

If you can coax an MMORPG through a decade of ups and downs, including a shift from subscription to free-to-play way before that was something all the cool kids started doing, then I think that’s some significant booty.

But don’t take my word for it. Here — er, I mean, Avast! Click here to read the official Puzzle Pirates blog, where Daniel James, co-founder/Captain of Three Rings, shares some of his thoughts on this milestone.

Finally, let’s close with a video taken from a recent party at the Three Rings headquarters — a pirate-themed party, naturally (it is possible they dress this way normally, I’m not sure, it’s a pretty awesome office, which, yes, that’s a model of the TARDIS. I think it is fully functional, too).

Anyway, this was to celebrate the decade anniversary of the game — what else is there to say after ten years? Well, why don’t you watch and see …

<a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/8114433557/” title=”Zaxxon Escape by SEGA of America, on Flickr”><img src=”http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8324/8114433557_6e0374738b.jpg” width=”500″ height=”244″ alt=”Zaxxon Escape”></a>

Good news, Escape artists: Following the successful launch of Zaxxon Escape onto iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, an update has been released for all devices.

The update optimizes game performance across the board for all supported devices, fixing issues that prevented the game from running on some Android devices, and adds support for the larger screen of the iPhone 5.

If you’d like to check the game out, here are links to the store pages:

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sega.zaxxonescape&hl=en
iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zaxxon-escape/id559568792?mt=8

And, here’s a full rundown of the updates:

iOS Updates:

• Improves iOS6 compatibility
• See more of Zaxxon on your iPhone 5 with full screen resolution support!
• Game performance has been optimized across the board for all supported devices

Android Updates

• Android ‘back button’ functionality fixed to have same function as on-screen ‘back button’
• Galaxy Note devices: Fixed issues with accelerometer sometimes getting stuck
• Nexus S running ICS: Fixed issue with game crashing at loading screen.
• EVO 4G: fixed a number of performance issues — game runs smoothly now!
• Nexus 7 device: Fixed issues with accelerometer.