More retail hostage-taking! Normally the reserve of smaller publishers and/or Capcom, this time it’s Sega, with Thunderforce VI director Tez Okana telling Edge:
This week in Nintendo Wii downloadables, two classic franchises make their triumphant return, and if neither tickles your fancy you can always take a crash course in interior design. That’s right, in addition to good old Space Harrier for the Sega Master System (500 points) and Hudson’s classic pinball title reborn in Alien Crush Returns for WiiWare (800 points), Big Blue Bubble releases Home Sweet Home (1,000 points), a WiiWare title that promises all the fun of designing a home interior that you’d get in The Sims without all those pesky Sims running about. Sure to make an excellent stocking stuffer. The most interesting of the three to me is of course Alien Crush Returns. I am a certified video game pinball junkie, and the option to play online against three completely anonymous players only sweetens the deal.
The hopes of a Yu Suzuki led Shenmue III have just become ground into ever finer particles, as Sega of America president Simon Jeffery tells Gamasutra in a new interview that the legendary developer is no longer at the company.
Jeffery says of Suzuki’s status that “Last I heard, he was doing some online stuff in China”, saying that the Space Harrier and Virtua Fighter creator is “kind of his own man right now”. Suzuki’s recent projects, the arcade game Psy Phi and MMO Shenmue Online never made it to final production stages.
There’s obviously much more to the Jeffery Q&A and, as you may be aware, we’re fans of the frank Sega exec — and not just because he kept hope alive for a System 16 compilation. The entirety of the interview is worth your while.
The Evolution Of Sega: A Conversation With Simon Jeffery [Gamasutra - thanks, Jay!]
