Strange Journey Redux will be released in North America on May 15th and Europe on May 18th, exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS. The game is said to be an update of the original featuring a new path, new story content and a brand new character.

You can pre-order the game from Amazon now.

PRESS RELEASE

IRVINE, Calif. – Jan. 17, 2018 – Calling all United Nations soldiers, a spatial distortion is expected to appear in Antarctica on 18^th May, 2018 when Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux releases for Nintendo 3DS! Featuring additional story content, new illustrations by Masayuki Doi, and a brand-new character, Alex, Strange Journey Redux is an ATLUS JRPG adventure fans of the series won’t want to miss!

The Story
A spatial distortion full of demons appeared in Antarctica, threatening to engulf the Earth in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey. The United Nations responded by tasking a team of highly advanced specialists with piercing the anomaly and figuring out how to stop it from the source. Well, get ready to don your Demonica once again in this new expanded port: Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux. Expect new story content, additional endings, a new dungeon to explore, and more in the return of this sci-fi tinged SMT adventure.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux features:

• A Stranger Journey Back – In Strange Journey Redux, you play as a brave United Nations soldier investigating a spatial anomaly called the Schwarzwelt-a dome of dark energy that threatens to consume the world. Inside, you’ll find it home to a nightmare mirror of our own Earth, populated with demons dying to meet you. The game touts brand-new illustrations by Masayuki Doi, updated visuals, UI tweaks, and more to make this journey back into the Schwarzwelt … even stranger.
• Additional Story Content and a Brand-new Character – You won’t be retreading the same nightmarish path as before because a brand-new character named Alex will play a major role in how the story unfolds. Much about her is a mystery, but there is one thing you know for sure: she’s got a bone to pick with you. Joining her are new demons you might recognize from other SMT entries, new endings, and a new dungeon to discover.

This one… This one hurts.

On Friday, SEGA fans all over the world mourned the loss of a time-honored SEGA icon, Danica Patrick.* Patrick had long, storied career with SEGA, making appearance in both Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed and the Sonic Universe comic tie-in for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed.

Danica Patrick will also be remembered for her contributions to the marketing world, revolutionizing commercials in sexy fashion for Internet hosting company, Go Daddy. She would also be remembered by SEGA fans for her knocking Toejam & Earl out of the roster for Sonic & SEGA All-Stars Racing Transformed, but she was roundly forgiven on account of her being smoking hot.

You may notice some diehard SEGA fans having a rough time dealing with this, so please be kind to those in the broader SEGA community who are coping with such a shocking, devastating loss. It’s never easy to say goodbye. Sometimes it’s even very, very hard. Like rock hard…

*UPDATE: Upon further research, it was actually announced Friday that Danica Patrick was, in fact, only retiring from NASCAR, not that she had died. At least now I can feel less like a necrophiliac when I pay tribute to all my screencaptured Go Daddy commercials. To the printer!

Source: The Washington Post

He did confirm that the amiibo of Corrin from Fire Emblem is still in development.

The interviewer pressed Sakurai as to whether he was concerned about fan backlash from not getting a full set, to which Sakurai replied, “Nah, f#%k ’em. Our fans are spending $70 on controllers right now. F#%k ’em right in the ear.”

You can read a full English translation of the Nante Ne! interview here.

Bayonetta was the last amiibo I planned to get, so this is disappointing news. Anyone else disappointed, or was it “too little, too late,” already anyway?

Here’s the official info: 

Story

Environmental destruction and ethnic conflict… on a future earth where various problems still haven’t been solved, it suddenly appeared.

Schwarzwelt, the ruined land that appeared in the Antarctic, continued to expand while swallowing everything on the earth into nonexistence. This appears to be how the history of mankind will meet its end…

Hoping for humanity’s survival, a Strike Team is sent to this mysterious land. However, the things they witness… will reveal the terrible truth of Schwarzwelt.

New Character: Alex (voiced by Megumi Han)

A mysterious girl who suddenly attacks the protagonist during exploration of Schwarzwelt. What is her goal in targeting the life of the protagonist with such open hostility?

Voice Actors

• Protagonist (voiced by Jun Hirose)
• Gore (voiced by Unsho Ishizuka)
• Jimenez (voiced by Takahiro Sakurai)
• Zelenin (voiced by Maaya Sakamoto)

etc.

Main Points

• A must-see for every Shin Megami Tensei fan! It’s that popular title with new elements added and various elements brushed up for 3DS.
• Enjoy a dramatic story with new from-the-chest-up illustrations and full voice overs.
• About 350 demons will appear. A “DEEPer” demon experience.
• A new character named Alex will appear, as well as a new ending route.

Check out the trailer above and let us know what you think in the comments below!

Via Gematsu 

Originally released to the arcades in 1987,  Alien Syndrome was basically SEGA’s take on the top down shooter format,  with a little bit of Alien and Contra thrown in.  The point of the game was to rescue crew members out of an alien infested ship before a time bomb blows up, destroying it entirely.  The co-op was great,  and so was the gameplay itself.  From what we’re seeing in the Famitsu scans,  it looks to be an arcade perfect port.  Wonder how the 3D’s going to look with this one.  Also announced was the 1990 puzzle game Columns.  Similar to Tetris,  Columns was a basic puzzle game,  but with a twist.  Instead of just stacking random blocks,  you would stack multi-colored gems.  Stacking them in a way where three of them lined up together (either horizontally, vertically, or diagonally) would result in clearing those gems and making room for more.  Columns was a perfect example of easy to play,  hard to master gameplay,  as well as being very addictive.  Honestly,  these two games are pretty good decisions to add to the collection,  alongside the titles that everyone knows.  They just show a little more history of SEGA’s arcade titles,  and it is appreciated.

I was also informed that a special time attack mode would be added to Turbo OutRun.  Like certain racers in the 3D classics series,  this mode will let you pick any stage in the game,  and practice getting better times on each.  I don’t think much else is being added to Turbo OR,  minus the possibility of the 60 FPS mode that was included with the original 3D OutRun.  As of now,  I haven’t really heard or seen much about other extras added to the new games either.  There may be a possibility of just straight ports with 3D,  kind of like how 3D Archives 2 was. Currently 3D Archives 3 FINAL STAGE has a December release date,  with no word on a Western release.  Knowing the history of delayed 3D Classics games,  this may be one to wait out on,  or just import.

Anyway…

The problem now is that you’ve likely seen everything you need to know about whether Shattered Crystal is a good game for you to pick up. What else could I possibly add? Honestly, not a whole heck of a lot. So, instead of doing a full review of the game, I’ve decided to try my very first video review and get a completely fresh perspective on Shattered Crystal from someone whose voice is rarely heard in the gaming community.

And no, it’s not a woman’s perspective, or the black perspective, or the gay perspective. That’s right. It’s time for us all to experience… the blind perspective.†

I will list a few more of my own thoughts on Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal below the video.

Still with us?

With any luck, you enjoyed the video and I hope that we all learned from someone in our lesser-privileged, handicapable community. This was my first attempt at a video review, and I’d appreciate any constructive feedback.

My own thoughts?

I mentioned a few positive points in the video, so I won’t expound on them here. To make a few additional points, however, I found the character-swapping mechanic to be rather seamless, and being able to switch characters on the fly was a nice touch. Adding Sticks as a playable character also helped set this game apart from other Sonic titles, and her boomerang was a unique addition to the game.

There’s a bit of variation in the stages, too, which helped break up the action a bit. In addition to the standard side-scrolling levels, Sonic races against boss characters in an auto-running, behind-the-back parkour stages, which are all rather fun, though perhaps a bit on the easy side.

To add a couple of gripes, the stage backgrounds and settings aren’t very inspired. There’s not much life or charm to the stage designs, and that goes for many of the enemy designs, as well. This may not have been quite as noticeable if the stages weren’t so long, so painfully long, at times. Sure, you can cruise through many of them rather quickly, but did you collect everything necessary to progress to the next stage? If you didn’t, you have to go back, and hunting around for everything you missed gets to be a bit of a chore. Truth be told, I even got lost once or twice, spending nearly half an hour in one stage just trying to get back out. Maybe I’m old and confuse easily, or maybe each stage didn’t need to be its own mini-Metroid adventure.

Too little…?

Yeah, this review probably comes far too late for anyone looking for help in making the decision to buy Shattered Crystal, but I do think it was a fun primer setting up the release of Fire & Ice later in September. Honestly, the reception of Shattered Crystal was probably hurt by its simultaneous release with the more highly-derided Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric on Wii U.

The foundations for a successful, new take on Sonic are present in Shattered Crystal, and with just a little more time and tweaking, Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice could very well be a solid game to tide us all over before Sonic Mania is released in 2017.

PROS:

+ Nice unlockables
+ Funny, well-written interludes
+ Seamless character swapping
+ Stage variety

CONS:

– Bland tunes
– Collect-a-thon progression
– Uninspired art design
– You can get lost

*Disclosure: I don’t actually have a way to capture 3DS gameplay, so the gameplay in the video review comes from official SEGA promotional materials.

†Note: It has come to my attention that the term “perspective” is triggering to the vision impaired. That is all. I just thought I would mention that it had come to my attention.

ATLUS immediately issued an apology and explained the reason for the error.

First, we’re human. This is important, so before you start writing that angry comment down below, please remember this point.

“Second, and this is the funny part, it turns out our QA department is actually too good. The two instances of Japanese text left in the game happen during a boss battle near the end of the game. As you may know, SMTIV:A has partners that are permanently with you throughout the game, and you can select the partner based on what abilities they have that complement your play style. (No more worrying about a randomly chosen Walter casting Agi on demons that resist fire. WALTEERRRRRR!)

Anyhow, just like in SMTIV, partners can get attacked and knocked out. In this particular battle, partners will return after 3 turns, and the errant Japanese text only shows up if you get to a point where the boss gives you a dialogue option WHILE your partner is KO’d. Our testers, who have been with the company for quite awhile, and who are well-versed in all things SMT (I think a few of them also were QA for the original SMTIV) were so good, they never ran into the situation of having an unconscious partner during the fight, and henceforth the dialogue in question.

We never realized that there was a specific set of circumstances for the text to appear in-game, and so it never got localized. And unfortunately, it will still be in there by the time the game hits shelves tomorrow. BUT! As our QA testers and reviewers in the media have shown, it’s a relatively rare set of circumstances that will lead players to encounter the aberrant text, and hopefully won’t even be discovered by the vast majority of players. (Of course, now that I told you how to find it, you’re probably all going to go out and test it, aren’t you?)”

While it might be too late to do any sort of fix for SMT IV, ATLUS has stated that they are going over Persona 5‘s English localization to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen again.

Daan Koopman from Nintendo World Report recently uploaded some brand new footage of Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, which you could check out above. Are you planning on picking up Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice when it comes out September 27th ? Let us know in the comments below!

Some screenshots of the 3DS version of Turbo OutRun have surfaced online along with this announcement.  From what it looks like,  not much has changed in this version minus the player’s Ferrari F40,  and your opponent’s Porsche 959.  Otherwise it looks to be an arcade perfect port just as planned.

SEGA 3D Fukkoku Archives 3 FINAL STAGE has a planned release date of December 22nd for Japan,  as well as the triple pack being released the same day.  The Triple Pack currently has a price listed of around 8900 yen.  No news yet on a Western release.

Known to Japan as  SEGA 3D Fukkoku Archives Volume 3 FINAL STAGE,  this will be a packaging of all the missing games left in the 3D Classics series,  including Super Hang-On, After Burner II, Bare Knuckle II, Gunstar Heroes, and Sonic the Hedgehog 2.  Also announced,  was that one extra game will be included,  one that was “decided by the fans”.  There was a survey about most wanted 3D Classics releases a while back,  and that chosen game will be released with Fukkoku Archives 3.  No word as of yet which SEGA classic it is,  but the results for four out of the top 5 have been released,  in order.

#2 Virtua Racing (1992)

#3 OutRunners  (1993)

#4 Gain Ground (1988)

#5 Wing War (1994)

The release for Fukkoku Volume 3 has been slated for December 22 in Japan. No word on a US release yet,  but I’m sure it depends on how good 3D Classics Collection sold,  which was the US version of Fukkoku Volume 2.  Personally,  I’m hoping the other two volumes get releases here,  it would be nice to have all three volumes in the US,  kind of bums me out that Virtua Racing or OutRunners won’t be getting the 3D Classics treatment, at least for now…