The removed tracks have now returned to the service – along with some new additions, including Phantasy Star Zero, Roommania and Ollie King soundtracks. Much like the last time happened, it seems the downtime had something to do with expanding to other services, as SEGA has added their music library to new services such as Rakuten and LINE Music over the past day or two.
ORIGINAL STORY
And now for some not-so-good SEGA music news – SEGA’s back catalogue on Spotify has suddenly dwindled from the comprehensive selection it offered, virtually overnight – with a seemingly random selection of the company’s beloved music being pulled from the service.
Right now, it’s probably easier to list what is still there than what isn’t; most Sonic soundtracks have survived the cull, as well as soundtracks for Yakuza, Chain Chronicle, Border Break, Rhythm Thief, Jet Set Radio, Super Monkey Ball: Banana Blitz HD, NiGHTS Journey of Dreams and IDOLA Phantasy Star Saga. Even Rent a Hero’s soundtrack release is still up!
…however, that leaves a lot on the cutting room floor. The original NiGHTS into Dreams soundtracks, for example, are now nowhere to be found. Music from SEGA’s arcade lineage, including Power Drift, Space Harrier, OutRun and others have also been axed from the service. Other soundtracks removed include Virtua Fighter, Puyo Puyo, and even the SEGA Sound Team [.H]’s rearrangement album (although Takenobu Mitsuyoshi’s album From Loud 2 Low is still up, somehow).
Even Sonic wasn’t completely safe – in addition to part of Sonic Generations’ and Sonic Rush’s soundtrack being AWOL for a long time now, Team Sonic Racing’s soundtrack has now also vanished – kind of a confusing removal, given how recent it was.
However, this exodus may not relate to SEGA directly; as noted by several users, albums from EXIT TUNES, a Japanese label responsible for many Vocaloid album releases, have also gone. Could it be a legal thing holding these soundtracks back from the service? The main point of confusion is why certain albums are affected, while others remain up.
When Tracker isn’t playing SEGA games, he’s talking about SEGA games. Or drawing about SEGA games. Or all of the above. You can also catch him over on Twitter.
Tags: music, sega, Spotify Posted in News | Comments Off on Numerous SEGA Soundtracks Vanish from Spotify overnight, including Virtua Fighter, Puyo Puyo, and Team Sonic Racing OSTs
Somewhat out of the blue, SEGA has launched a mysterious new teaser site, with nothing but what appears to be a heart rate monitor and “HMKD” in its name. There’s no other details on the site on in the tweet, just an option to sign up to a mailing list so you can “be the first to know.”
When Tracker isn’t playing SEGA games, he’s talking about SEGA games. Or drawing about SEGA games. Or all of the above. You can also catch him over on Twitter.
The final batch of games available on the Mega Drive Mini have been announced. Also announced were some accessories, including a downright incredible Mega Drive Tower Mini,which includes a tiny Mega CD1, 32X, Sonic & Knuckles cart, and Sonic 1 cart, to build The Tower of Power as you truly imagined it. The last batch of games are as follows:
JAPAN:
Columns
Monster World IV
Dynamite Headdy
Assault Suit Leynos
Langrisser II
Alisia Dragoon
Road Rash II
Slap Fight MD
Snow Bros
Lord Monarch
Darius (A new port for the Mega Drive!)
SEGA TETRIS (The rarest Mega Drive game ever made!)
Check the full list of games for each region after the jump.
When Tracker isn’t playing SEGA games, he’s talking about SEGA games. Or drawing about SEGA games. Or all of the above. You can also catch him over on Twitter.
EGX Rezzed returned to the Tobacco Docks in London on the 4th to the 6th of April 2019, and as SEGA were an official partner at the event, we went along to see what SEGA stuff we could discover. Watch the video below to see what we found:
The US branch of SEGA have unveiled a new survey which asks fans to determine the next steps for the Sonic The Hedgehog, Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles and Phantasy Star franchises.
The survey takes 10 to 15 minutes to complete and every entry enters you into a prize draw to win up to $500 in gift certificates. You can complete the survey and enter the prize draw by clicking here.
If you’re a SEGA fan based in the US with a passion for any of the franchises listed, this is an important opportunity to share your love for them and get SEGA to act on that passion. SEGA have been making big steps in terms of quality in recent years and that’s been down to a renewed focus on their legacy franchises. If you want to see the company do more with Super Monkey Ball, Gunstar Heroes, Shinobi, Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star, Sakura Wars, Altered Beast, Virtua Fighter, Streets of Rage, Puyo Puyo, Shenmue, Golden Axe, House of the Dead, Virtua Tennis and Crazy Taxi then this is the way to let them know.
Hot on the heels of Read-Only Memory’s Mega Drive/Genesis and Dreamcast Collected Works books, the company are now running a Kickstarter to fund a pop-up book featuring SEGA arcade cabinets. Called SEGA Arcade: Pop-Up History, this new book promises 5 pop-up cardboard sculptures of famous SEGA arcade games and their cabinets, with additional notes that chart the history of each machine.
The Kickstarter version of the book will feature an exclusive foil, embossed cover that will be replaced with a printed cover design if the book makes it to later editions.
If you’re interested in securing a copy of this rather unique little piece of SEGA merchandise then you can by backing the Kickstarter which will run from now until August 9th 2018. The book is currently scheduled to ship in April 2019.
Sam Dyer and Bitmap Books have returned to Kickstarter to crowdfund a new visual compendium, but this time around it’s the publisher’s first foray into a SEGA system. Bitmap Books are now seeking funding to help create SEGA Master System: A Visual Compendium. The book will be officially licensed by SEGA.
As with previous books in the series, the SEGA Master System compendium will feature large features and interviews with a range of developers and artists, as well as double-page spreads on specific games with accompanying text.
Bitmap Books are looking to crowdfund £50,000 to create and produce the SEGA Master System compendium, and the Kickstarter campaign will be running until the 31st of July. There are various bonus items you can get in the various Kickstarter tiers, so why not head over the Kickstarter page right now and have a look?
Each physical book also comes with a custom bookmark and a set of anaglyph 3D glasses which can be used in conjunction with certain pages that are printed to make use of the 3D glasses; a nice little nod to the Master System’s own 3-D Glasses.
We’ve made some new additions to the Music section of our website’s Merchandise section! There are now 5 new releases to explore and learn about, and for this update I’ve selected some of the more obscure and unique SEGA releases out there.
See below for links to the full list of additions:
Fresh off the back of his Game Play talk in London this month, Hirokazu Yasuhara is joining Naoto Oshima (center, above) at this year’s Game Developers Conference to do a postmortem talk on the original Sonic the Hedgehog. The hour-long talk with Yasuhara and Oshima will detail the design and development of Sonic the Hedgehog and feature, “frank anecdotes from their Sonic development days”.
While no specific time and date has been set at this time, the talk will take place at some point during this year’s GDC which runs from March 19th to the 23rd 2018.
Yuji Naka, the former head of Sonic Team and famed lead programmer on the original Sonic the Hedgehog game for Mega Drive has joined Square Enix’s game development staff. Naka’s own announcement reveals that he aims “to develop an enjoyable game” but there is currently no word on what project Naka will be working on.
Naka had previously left SEGA in 2006 to found his own games studio called Prope. It is currently unknown if Prope will continue to develop games without Naka. The studio’s social media pages haven’t updated since June 2017 so it could be the case that Prope have also closed their doors, however we have no solid information at this time.
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