Tidbits from Sega’s Private Summer Show – Ringedge 2, Pengo, Initial D7

arcadehero July 7, 2012 9
Tidbits from Sega’s Private Summer Show – Ringedge 2, Pengo, Initial D7

Every year Sega holds an invitation-only event in Japan to show off the games they plan on releasing to the market there in the Fall. As you might expect, the chances of seeing this stuff getting support outside of Asian markets is slim but you never know with imports. I’ll cover some of the more interesting items here, as shown on 4Gamer.net.

Ringedge 2 still has no specs announced for it but what games it will be supporting has increased. I still think that it’s going to be the platform for Sega’s online download service for arcades (ALL.NET Plus-Multi) but at the moment that’s just a guess. In addition to Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, it was also unveiled that another 2D HD fighter, Under Night In Birth will be using the hardware as well. UNIB is done by the same guys that did the Melty Blood Actress series of fighters. Both titles come out in September, which is the same time for the launch of the new ALL.NET service. Here is some direct footage of UNIB taken a while back.

Also launching in September through the new service is Love Arcade or Game Center Love. It’s a multi-game pack of various simple shooting/STG games as well as something that is apparently a sequel to Trizeal, called CombatZeal. Another surprise is that it appears that Sega has decided to save Pengo for this multi-game pack as it will be included in the selection but might have been pared down from eight players to four (click here for previous coverage on the new Pengo). What baffles me about Pengo is why haven’t they designed a special 8-player or even 4-player cabinet for it, something like Indy 800 or Tank 8 as I think that would draw plenty of attention. It was obviously made as an idea to compete with Pac-Man Battle Royale and while Pengo is no where near as recognizable, an 8-player single cabinet game will draw some good attention to it.

Here is a video of Pengo from two years ago, no word on whether they’ve changed the graphics or not

Initial D Arcade Stage 7 AA was also there. This series was given full support by Sega out West up until 4 and I don’t know of anything changing in that regard. It sounds like they are trying to please both core and beginner players with the title, time will be the judge as to how successful they are at achieving that. This will be released in November 2012. Here is some footage of the game in action from a location test taken back in May. Graphically its top notch although on this track I imagine an Initial D noob like myself would not fly along those curves so smoothly. I did get a chance to play a game like ID last year in Florida called Speed Driver 4, which I really liked as for anyone beyond a casual gamer it gives you plenty to come back to.

That’s it aside from some card and medal games, including their long-running soccer series WCCF 2011-2012 (although they only showed off the new cards and not the game) . If you want the full rundown, check out 4Gamer. For Western Sega games, I imagine we will be finding out before too long what their next project is, something they have been teasing on Facebook and Twitter. Next month is the AAMA Distributor Gala in Chicago, IL where I expect to see at least one new game from Namco and one from Raw Thrills so perhaps one from Sega too.

9 Comments »

  1. ECM July 7, 2012 at 11:24 pm - Reply

    Hooray! More games we won’t be able to play without hopping a plane to the Far East! Huzzah!

    /dies inside
    /again

  2. editor July 8, 2012 at 9:31 am - Reply

    Serious concerns from those that attended that there was nothing ‘ground breaking’ at what was meant to be the launch of the production versions (even though a number of these games will not be sold till November!)

    For the Western teams as ECM stated there was nothing – even requests for WCCF to be given a second US/UK outing have been rejected as the game now fully depends on the AiME network system!

    This is a reason why the Western operation is developing their own games, awaiting that secret release that SEGA Amusement has been leaking on Facebook.

  3. twinturbo2 July 9, 2012 at 3:59 pm - Reply

    I just hope that secret suprise is a Western release of the new Inital D game.

  4. monkeybroly July 10, 2012 at 9:58 am - Reply

    UNiB looks soooooooo good!

  5. VLACHOS KOSTAS October 23, 2012 at 3:23 am - Reply

    i hope initial d comes to europe
    we need to have modern games
    that can make people
    come to arcade centers and play

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