Its free weekend for Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed on Steam. Which sounds like a prime opportunity to host a community stream for this very occasion. Granted, its quite last minute, but then again, we had no clue this was going to happen until yesterday. Come join in the fun with us, and if you want to play with us, we’ll give you the information on the air, or check with the stream’s chat by going to the Vidya Retro channel on Twitch.
Its over, but we’ve recorded all four hours of the free racing action with our Retro crew talking about…something? Also in the meantime, we’ve streamed something earlier that may catch your attention: Fan Game Frenzy II, hot off of Sonic Doom II, we look at more Sonic fan games from the yesteryear.
The PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed had a surprising amount of additional characters exclusive to the platform with Team Fortress 2 characters, some guy from Total War: Shogun 2 and some guy from Football Manager. Now to celebrate the American holiday known as Independence Day, SEGA has decided to add in another character for free: some Russian General guy from Company of Heroes 2. To download this new character, just let Steam update the game.
If you don’t own ASRT on PC, you’re in luck. The full game can be played for free until Sunday 1pm PDT and is on sale for 75% off on Steam. All other Sonic games are priced off as well including Sonic Generations, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic 4 etc.
Sumo Digital has shown more support for the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed today by releasing a 370 MB update on Steam. This update addresses some big issues certain players had with the game. It includes an alternative INTZ Render for old cards that don’t support INTZ, bug and exploit fixes and VAC support. There’s a downside to this update as well though: because of the exploit fixes the leaderboards have now been wiped to get rid of suspicious times. You can read the full details about this update here.
An update for the console versions was also released last week, which fixed a bunch of stuff like a tuned down difficulty of Traffic Attack, Ring Race and certain Race events, exploit and bug fixes etc. A change log for that can be read here.
A new trailer for the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed was put up on Sega’s press site today showing that three playable characters previously found in the data of the console version will be playable only in the PC release. These include the guy on the cover of Football Managerwith a helmet on (aka the Tactician), The Deadly Assassin from Shogun: Total War and the Heavy, Pyro and Spy from Valve’s Team Fortress 2.
SEGA seemingly finally remembered that they hadn’t announced a specific release for The Cave yet even though they said that it’d be out this month, so now they have: it’ll be out January 22nd on Playstation Network and the Wii U eShop, January 23rd for Xbox Live Arcade and PC and Mac through Steam. It’ll cost $14.99 in the US, £9.99 in the UK and €12.99 in the rest of Europe.
What SEGA hasn’t mentioned in their PR is that it will also be available on Linux through Steamplay, making this the first game published by SEGA to be released on the OS.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, and by that I mean not go to Sonic-related websites in the past few days, you know that Eddie Lebron released his Sonic fan film last week. And if you’ve seen you’ll probably think that it’s impressive for a low-budget fan project or that it’s crap. Or you actually have a different opinion than the majority of the internet, but that’d just be silly. Anyway monday links.
Sonic Retro News
Missed the community stream we did last Friday? It’s fully archived on Youtube along with a first look stream we did a while back. [Youtube]
Dario released a new version of SonicGMI for Sonic Generations. [SonicGMI]
Something that I missed last week, Mercury is working on a Sonic engine for in Game Maker called AeStHete (An excellent Sonic the Hedgehog engine that’s editable). [AeStHete Engine Thread]
Sonic/SEGA News
The first details on the PC version of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed got revealed and the game is up for pre-purchased on services like Steam. [ASRT PC]
Planning on getting Aliens: Colonial Marines for PC? You’ll probably want to know the system requirements. Also like All-Stars Racing Transformed, it can now be pre-purchased from Steam. [AVPGalaxy]
SEGA also released a TV Commercial for Aliens: CM. [Youtube]
The Conduit is coming to Android and will be optimized for Nvidia’s Project Shield. [Polygon]
Other Stuff
Want another Jurassic Park movie? No? Well you’re probably going to watch this new sequel that’s in production anyway. [Coming Soon]
CD Projekt, makers of the The Witcher games showed the first teaser trailer for their upcoming game Cyberpunk 2077. [Youtube]
Finally some good news for those who were waiting for the PC release of Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed. The product page of the game has gone up on Steam, revealing that the release date is January 31st. Like Sonic Generations it also has a cheaper price than the console version: $29.99 in the US, €24.99 in Europe and £19.99 in the UK. However, if you pre-order the game 10% will be taken off the price and it can be bought in a 4-pack.
GreenManGaming also has it up for pre-order for the same price, but you can get it for another 25% off with this coupon code: GMG25-XTYYZ-POSL1. The product page also reveals the minimum requirements that you need to know if your PC can actually run this game:
CPU: 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo or equivalent
Ram: 1GB Ram (Windows XP), 2GB Ram (Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8)
UPDATE (AGAIN): It looks as if Amazon.com in the US is also providing a couple of collections for digital PC download for sale on Sega games. However only one of the packages activate on Steam. That being the Dreamcast Pack containing Dreamcast Collection Volume 1 (Which contains Sonic Adventure DX, Crazy Taxi, Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing) and Jet Set Radio for $4.99. The Genesis pack is still on sale for $4.99 as well, however those do not activate on Steam, but that’s still 50 Genesis games that also sell for $7.50 a pack currently.
While this is not really a deal, they also sell Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg for digital download PC. (This also does NOT activate on Steam) Still noteworthy.
SEGA and Double Fine just released a new trailer for The Cave. For those who don’t know what this game is, The Cave is an upcoming puzzle platformer by Ron Gilbert (The Secret of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion) and Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Brütal Legend) that’s being published by SEGA. It’s going to be a lot like those old point and click adventure games, except with a lot less pointing and clicking and more moving left and right and jumping. You have to choose from three of seven characters at the start of the game, all of which have their own quirks. This new trailer showcases four of these characters, and another upcoming trailer will showcase the rest of them. The game can also be played with up to three players in local co-op.
This is a seperate project from Double Fine’s upcoming crowd-funded point and click adventure game Double Fine Adventure, though Ron Gilbert is working on that game as well. The Cave comes out January 2013 on Xbox Live Arcade, Playstation Network, the Wii U eShop and Steam.
PC owners that absolutely NEED their Sonic Adventure 2 fix can finally begin throwing their money toward their local Steam client. No, it’s not time for the yearly flogging of the wallet from Steam sales so much as Sega has finally confirmed via Twitter that SA2 and its Battle DLC will be touching down on the client on Monday, Nov. 19.
While the game offers little change from its original presentations other than proper widescreen support and some touched up textures, that’s sure to keep some fans of the game quite happy. No word on the cost or what online functionality the PC version will have, but we’re hedging our bets on the usual $9.99 price for the game and $2.99 for Battle, with leaderboards only as the online functionality.
Be sure to check out our review to see if you want to go for the PC version or remain loyal to your Dreamcast or Gamecube discs.
