We’ve got multiple exciting announcements for you!

First, as you know Sonic Adventure releases today (as in, right now!) on XBox Live Arcade! We’ve only just passed the 11th Anniversary of the 9/9/1999 release of the Dreamcast, and Sonic Adventure was the first Sonic game to release for the Dreamcast and was the first Sonic game in 3D. All of those milestones are befitting a game that is presented with a grand and epic sense of “adventure”, exploration, and fun, and this is definitely a game to revisit, or to check out if you’ve somehow missed out on it all these years.

Second, if you’re waiting to get the game on PlayStation Network, you don’t need to wait long — it’s releasing next week, on the 21st in North America (22nd in Europe), on PSN!

Actually, it’s confession time, and I never really played Sonic Adventure until just this past year or so, when I snagged a Dreamcast from our incredible game room and brushed up on some of the classics. There’s a certain grandeur and sense of excitement when a definitive flagship title shows up for a new system, and Sonic Adventure definitely helped fill those shoes for the Dreamcast.

The game actually even has a bit of old-school adventure game to in (fitting enough considering the name), in that there’s an open world to explore and not always a ton of direction in how to proceed: you explore areas on your own, find ways to proceed, and gradually uncover how the multiple characters have interlocking stories.

Of course, the adventure stages are just one part of the game, and they invariably give way to action stages built around pure speed. The Sonic stages work most like the classic ones, as you battle your way through a level collecting rings, whereas the Tails stages that follow have their own unique twist, as you race against Sonic to be the first to catch Chaos Emeralds.

My favorite stages are probably the Knuckles ones — he retains his gliding and climbing abilities from the original Sonic & Knuckles game, and the first Knuckles stage in Sonic Adventure smartly takes place in a city environment. It feels, to be honest, like one of the Spider Man games, as you race around an open level looking for Chaos Emeralds. Flinging yourself from building to building and avoiding cars has a great innate appeal to it.

Final piece of news: there is also a DLC pack available for the game — if you wish, you can download it and convert this original Dreamcast version of Sonic Adventure into the “Director’s Cut” version, Sonic Adventure DX! Sonic Adventure DX was the enhanced version released on the Nintendo GameCube, and includes 60 additional missions as well as Metal Sonic as a playable character.

There’s a lot to explore and discover in the game — I haven’t even touched on the Chao (not to be confused with the boss enemy Chaos from the game, or the Chaos Emeralds), the pet “minigame” which has attained a special cult following among some SEGA fans. To this day we still receive drawings in the mail of Chao designed by fans, and it’s awesome seeing this portion of the game getting a new release & new exposure.

Stay tuned for more — with the PlayStation Network release on the 21st and more Crazy Taxi news coming soon, and still more to come, there’s lot’s to look forward to with digital Dreamcast titles.

If you’ve been deliberating on whether or not you should take to the skies in one of the most awesome aircraft action games ever to come out of the arcade, can we entice you by making After Burner Climax the Xbox Live Arcade Deal of the Week?

That means that one of the most visually stunning games (in my humble opinion) ever to hit the arcades drops in cost for this week only (July 5th – 11th), from 800 MSP to the practically nonexistent cost of 400 MSP.

There’s a lot of things to like about After Burner Climax. While you can dive right in and start doing barrel rolls and blasting enemies in one of three officially licensed fighters, there’s also a high degree of difficulty, and mastering the games many modes and unlockable features and options takes skill, precision, and patience.

In the arcade, this was a quarter-hungry beast of full-on action; at home, you can sit back and get ready to take off into the wild blue yonder, now for half price!

Attention, SEGA Fans!

It’s summertime, it’s Sonic’s Birthday, and we’re celebrating all week long with sales on select SEGA games on three different platforms: PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and the iPhone!

The sales below all have special dates, so be sure to check these for reference:

PlayStation Network: Tuesday June 22^nd to Tuesday July 6^th
iTunes AppStore: Wed June 23^rd to Wed June 30^th
Xbox LIVE Marketplace: Thursday June 24^th, one day only!

A ton of Sonic titles are going on sale, as well as some SEGA classics for the iPhone.

Check out the schedule for the sale below — these price drops are applicable in North America, Europe, and Japan!

Tuesday, June 22nd – PlayStation Network and PlayStation Portable over PSN

Its Sony Tuesday, with tons of Sonic and Sonic DLC available over PlayStation Network.

Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing: Metal Sonic Death Egg       $7.99 $5.49
Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing: Ryo with Forklift Character       $4.99 $3.49
Sonic Unleashed Apatos & Shamar Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic Unleashed Chun-nan Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic Unleashed Empire City & Adabat Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic Unleashed Holoska Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic Unleashed Mazuri Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic Unleashed Spagonia Adventure Pack       $2.99 $1.99
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006: Very Hard Shadow Missions       $2.49 $1.49
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006: Very Hard Silver Missions       $2.49 $1.49
Sonic the Hedgehog 2006: Very Hard Sonic Missions       $2.49 $1.49
Sonic Unleashed Add On Bundle       $17.94 $8.99
Sonic Racing Add On Bundle       $12.98 $6.49
Sonic Rivals 2 (PlayStation Portable over PSN)       $19.99 $13.99
Sonic Rivals (PlayStation Portable over PSN)       $15.99 $10.99
Sonic Rivals 1 & 2 Bundle (PlayStation Portable over PSN)       $35.98 $17.99

Wednesday, June 23rd – iPhone
Celebrate Sonic’s birthday on the go with these iPhone games on sale this Wednesday:

Super Monkey Ball       $4.99 $2.99
Sonic the Hedgehog       $5.99 $3.99
Super Monkey Ball 2        $5.99 $3.99
Sonic the Hedgehog 2       $5.99 $3.99
Streets of Rage       $2.99 $0.99
Golden Axe       $2.99 $0.99
Super Monkey Ball 2: Sakura Ed.    $7.99 $4.99

Thursday, June 24th – Xbox Live Arcade

And then on Thursday we have great Sonic titles going on sale, over Xbox Live Arcade — all featuring the Lock-On Technology of the Genesis originals!

Sonic the Hedgehog 2       $5.00 $3.00
Sonic the Hedgehog 3       $5.00 $3.00
Sonic the Hedgehog       $5.00 $3.00
Sonic & Knuckles       $5.00 $3.00

It’s still thinking: Two of the games released on SEGA’s last home console system, the Dreamcast, are making a triumphant return to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network! Coming later this year, the debut digital release will be Sonic Adventure, followed by the wild-driving zaniness of Crazy Taxi.

If you lived & loved Dreamcast a decade ago, now is your chance to relive some of your favorites — and if you never owned one, you can now dive right in and experience some of the most creative and compelling games to show up on the system.

Sonic Adventure will arrive in the Fall of 2010. This game marked Sonic’s debut on a sixth generation console system, and features multiple playable characters in a 3D world, super-fast Sonic gameplay, and of course, the ever-popular Chao Gardens. Sonic Adventure‘s release on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network will mark the 11th anniversary of the Dreamcast’s release.

Crazy Taxi, meanwhile, provides the kind of wild arcade-powered fun that felt perfectly at home on the Dreamcast: the game’s title is as apt as can be, as the player pilots a taxi cab around a fully-realized city modeled after San Francisco, complete with plenty of steep hills to send your taxi airborn as you cart terrified passengers to their destination (or wherever you feel like taking them).

But maybe a bigger story than these two games coming out is just the fact that Dreamcast is here again. While SEGA has brought back and highlighted some of the amazing games from its Master System and Genesis era, this is the first time in years that the Dreamcast era of SEGA history has been brought to the forefront.

“The Dreamcast is fondly remembered by a large community of dedicated fans as a console that was ahead of its time in terms of graphics, quality and online gaming” commented Haruki Satomi, VP of Digital Business at SEGA of America and SEGA Europe. “There are few things that are more requested from us than making Dreamcast classics available for download in today’s digital market place. We’re very excited to begin offering gamers our beloved Dreamcast titles again on the current console systems.”

Each game is based on the original Dreamcast incarnation, featuring all of the gameplay that older players fell in love with. The games incorporate all-new enhancements and features such as high resolution visuals and surround sound.  There will also be online leader boards, allowing players to compare their skills with friends across the world!  In addition to this, all-new Achievement and Trophy integration will be available for each game released.

Launched on September 9, 1999, the SEGA Dreamcast was ahead of its time — critically acclaimed and still loved by fans, the system featured such innovations as being the first console to have online gaming, and even had the capability to run a web browser.

Both Sonic Adventure and Crazy Taxi will be playable at this year’s E3 as well, so check them out there or stay tuned for more news — and give a big ‘welcome back’ the Dreamcast!

Now that After Burner Climax is out for both Xbox 360 and Playstation 3, hopefully a lot of you have had a chance to experience it. First though, we have an awesome “launch” trailer for the game:

Second, if you haven’t played the game on a console yet, it has a feature called “EX Mode”. Basically this is a set of options that adds both a ton of replayability to the game, as well as lets you customize the difficulty level. You unlock the various EX mode options through gameplay, and they include things such as toggling “autofire” for your main guns and the number of lives and continues you have available. It’s also worth noting that while simply completing the game is not terribly difficult — especially once you’ve unlocked the additional continues options — mastering the game, and achieving a superior ranking, is another proposition entirely.

Get ready! The wait is over, and one of the most indelible arcade experiences of the past decade is now available for download, in glorious HD: After Burner Climax has taken off, releasing today for Xbox Live Arcade and tomorrow, April 22nd, for PlayStation 3 over PlayStation Network.

Additionally, we can now announce that there’s some great extras also available with the game — including premium themes for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Additionally, the Xbox 360 version will have two exclusive gamer icons, and two avatar awards — a slick looking t-shirt with the distinctive After Burner logo, and a solid gold helmet. That last part is italicized for awesomeness — here, check out a picture, along with the other avatar award item:

I’ve already rhapsodized quite a bit about this title, but just to rehash: After Burner Climax was released in 2006 on the high-powered “Lindbergh” arcade hardware. With 20 stages and fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants branching missions, this is what an arcade game is meant to be like — I keep saying, as good as the screenshots look, the game looks even better at full throttle. For me, the After Burner series has always balanced the extreme difficulty of quarter-hungry arcade-bred beasts, and the intuitive straight-ahead fun of really good air combat games.

After Burner Climax also features three flyable fighter planes, all officially licensed: Pick from the Northrop Grummand F-14D Super Tomcat, or the Boeing-manufactured F-15E Strike Eagle or F/A-18E Super Hornet. The different fighters do have different balances in-game, and that combined with the branching mission adds a hearty amount of replayability to the title.

After Burner has a feel all its own, and while the best of today’s home computers may be capable of better graphics, there is a fluid grace to how excruciatingly gorgeous this game looks in HD. It’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever played and the thrill of accelerating through a narrow canyon is something that I indelibly think of when I think of “arcade action” games. Home gaming has of course become far more popular over the years, and we’re seeing fewer and fewer real life arcades — After Burner Climax really is a slice of that old arcade experience though, and it fits perfectly on the consoles.

After Burner Climax is available for Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS Points, or via the PlayStation store for $9.99. Additionally, check out these awesome premium themes available for both consoles. The Xbox 360 theme is available now and the PSN theme should be available in early May:

Lastly — my lead-in line for this blog, “Get Ready” was actually a reference to the first After Burner game I played, and the first of the series to appear on a console — After Burner, on the SEGA Master System. One of my favorite games from the era, it’s worth linking to a video of the first stage (complete with the digitized instruction to “get ready!”). Enjoy this nostalgic reminder of After Burner’s origins.

I’m very excited to see this game show up on consoles. Take the the skies and enjoy this unique and awesome arcade experience!

There are arcade games and then there are arcade games: the former of these, you can ignore row after row of, while the later hold a kind of regal place in the arcade, with attention-grabbing cabinets, lines waiting to play, and graphics and sound that draw you in from halfway across the room. With a lineage dating back to SEGA’s golden age of arcade games, the 2006 game After Burner Climax can safely be called an arcade game, the sort of game that made going to the arcade an indelible experience, even as the arcade itself has become more and more of a scarce creature.

All of this is to say, you can start getting excited, because After Burner Climax is heading to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network this Spring! In After Burner Climax you take to the skies in one of three officially licensed fighter planes (the F-14 Tomcat, F-15 Eagle, and FA-18 Hornet — all with customizable paint jobs) and do battle with hordes of enemies in a series of fast-moving stages; the player picks the course of the game on-the-fly, choosing which path to take at the end of missions, and depending on those selections and player performance the game will unfold differently.

With HD graphics this is a mind-bogglingly gorgeous game: the stages and aircraft look at once photo-realistic and stylized, with incredibly bright colors and, in particular, a stunning use of light: flying into the sun on some stages, it is almost painfully easy to be distracted by the nuanced way that light reflects off of a crisply detailed ocean. Likewise, the aurora borealis in one stage is mesmerizing, and flying through canyons has exactly the sort of exhilarating feel that a top-notch air combat game should have.

The game comes from SEGA’s AM-2 studios — the same arcade developers who crafted Out Run, Hang-On, Virtua Cop, and even the original Space Harrier. Actually, this jet-fighter game has a lot in common with games like Out Run — it isn’t just a fast-paced arcade action game, but a full immersion in beautiful settings and top-notch arcade graphics with sound & music to match; a tour of every conceivable vista in which you could do battle. Also like the recent Out Run arcade games released on Xbox Live Arcade, this is a game that may look great in stills, but the screen shots don’t really do justice to how good the game looks when playing.

I feel compelled to mention some more of After Burner’s lineage, too: even the Master System port of the original arcade game (with its tiny voice compelling you to “Get Ready!” as you rocketed off the aircraft carrier) was incredible, with amazing action and exceptional difficulty (I only beat the game a few times, which is saying something considering how often I played it). But the original arcade game itself was designed by SEGA legend Yu Suzuki, who’s creation Virtua Fighter has the distinction of being the first Japanese game ever to be housed in the Smithsonian.

Need more proof of the game’s pedigree? Among its biggest fans are Hideki Kamiya — creator of none other than Bayonetta — who lists After Burner Climax as one of his favorite games, with references to its titular (and titillating) subtitle scattered throughout Bayonetta.

Stay tuned for more on this terrific arcade game!

Now and then our fans will send us something that makes us all stop for a moment, stare at the screen in disbelief, and then finally mutter out a soft: “… wow.” Right now, It’s time for another one of those moments.

Behold what may very well be some of the most low budget Custom Twin Sticks we have ever seen in our lives – and they’re made using cookingware.

Aaron C. sent us these pictures and some short details about how he crafted his very own set of Twin Sticks with only his knowledge and a whole lot of passion. You can try this at home if you want – just don’t blame us if Mom gets mad at you for using her finest baking pan. Here’s what he sent us:

How to make your own Custom Virtual On Twin Sticks with cookingware

“Here is a few pics of the contruction of the sticks.

I made them using a cake pan, two old NES Quick Shots controllers, and Old Performance Sega Saturn pad.

Step 1: Get a pan

Step 2: Destroy all commercial value

Step 3: Pick up two of these

Step 4: Find yourself a Saturn Controller

Aaron C.’s Note: I chose Sega saturn because I would be able to use the sticks for both Saturn and Dreamcast through the use of an adapter.

Step 5: (The hard part) Figure out which wire does what

Step 6: It should look something like this…

Step 7: WIN! Play Virtual On in style.

Finally, writes Aaron:

I was thinking about making an saturn to xbox 360 adapter so I could use the stick with the xbla game.

If you need/want to know anything else just ask!”

Awesome job Aaron – we think some custom sticks for the XBOX 360 version would be pretty awesome, too!

If you guys have created or seen some awesome SEGA related items lately, be sure to send them our way and we’ll feature the best here on the Blog. Until next time – let the pan destruction begin!

Special thanks to Tim E. for the tip!

To help celebrate that Sonic 2 is the Xbox Live Arcade deal of the week for this week, we’re giving away free download codes for Sonic & Knuckles!

Aside from the fact that Sonic & Knuckles is one of the most amazing games from the Genesis era, and one of the most intricate and challenging of the original Sonic games, the “lock-on” compatibility of the original Sonic games has been translated to the XBLA games: that means that having Sonic & Knuckles “unlocks” additional features in other XBLA Sonic games, including Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 2, Sonic 3. You can play as Knuckles in Sonic 3 and Sonic 2, or access the special Chaos Emerald mini-game “Blue Sphere” through Sonic 2!

Starting today and continuing through Friday, December 3rd, we will be giving away codes at the following places/times (all times PDT):

Sonic Facebook: 12:00 Noon, 3:00 PM

SEGA Twitter: 1:00 PM, 4:00 PM

Good luck! You can also follow these links to purchase the games directly on Xbox Live Arcade, including the discout on Sonic 2 for Xbox Live Gold Members:

Sonic & Knuckles

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (40% Off starting November 30th)

Sonic the Hedgehog 3

Sonic 2 is now available as the Xbox Live Arcade Deal of the Week!

Available for a staggeringly low 240 points, Sonic 2 will have its price cut from now through December 4th. The discount is available for all Xbox Live members who are signed into their Gold Accounts, and is a 40% drop from the normal game price of 400 points!

The download of Sonic 2 emulates the “lock-on” technology of the Genesis Sonic games — that means that if you have the original Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic 3, or Sonic & Knuckles the games will detect each other and work together, unlocking special bonuses, including the ability to play as Knuckles in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3.

Sonic 2 introduced the spin-dash and Super Sonic to the Sonic the Hedgehog mythology. This is your chance to own one of the premier titles in console gaming history for virtually nothing!

The Deal of the Week is available only to Xbox Live Gold members.

Also, stay tuned to the Sonic Facebook and SEGA Twitter feeds for giveaways of Xbox Live Arcade game codes all this week!

Check these links to purchase the games on XBLA:

Sonic & Knuckles

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (40% Off starting November 30th)

Sonic the Hedgehog 3