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Several years ago, Sega announced a Playstation 2 sequel to its VectorMan games. Video was shown, and the game seemed on track for a 2004 release. Then, it was canceled without warning, and little was heard from it again. That all changed last month when the game’s former lead production designer released some concept art, and we just knew we had to talk to him.
Full-motion video games are something maost people think of whenever the Sega CD is mentioned. Love them or hate them, they had a major impact on the fate of the add-on, and Sega invested a ton of money into their development. Among the ranks of those behind the scenes was Christopher Bankston, a senior producer at Sega who had a hand in the creation of games like Ground Zero Texas and Double Switch. Before that, he worked at Accolade on games such as Onslaught and Super Off Road.
When the Genesis launched, it lacked something its rival, the NES, enjoyed in spades: third party software. Due to Nintendo’s strict licensing agreements, companies that published on the NES were forbidden to release games on competing hardware, and this left Sega’s new machine with a big problem. Thankfully, the U.S. court system put an end to this practice, and the support slowly began to pick up. During the dry period, however, a few small companies jumped at the chance to pick up the slack left by bigger publishers like Konami and Capcom. Among them was Kaneko, which was a staunch supporter of the little black box. Sega-16 spent some Q&A time with former Kaneko VP of marketing, Ellen Fuog, and she shared her insights on what it was like to be at a small publisher at the dawn of the 16-bit era.
In the last installment of MEGA Bites, we mentioned that the green light was given for a novelization of the Data East laser disc game (and Sega-16 favorite) Road Avenger. As major fans of the game, we weren’t content with mere news blurbs, and we managed to pry author Mary Margaret Park away from her writing long enough to get the lowdown on this interesting take on the property. Read our full interview for all the details, and no, the book won’t come with a copy of the theme song.
It seems odd that a company would develop a title almost to completion, only to shelve it at the eleventh hour. Yet such behavior is common in the game industry for a multitude of reasons, and many games are never released though being virtually completed. It Came from the Desert is an example of corporate decisions leaving development out in the cold. Sega-16 contributor Brandon Cobb recently spoke to Matt Harmon, the man behind the game, about its creation and subsequent termination.