Sega

As was noted in an earlier post by XBLA Fans, Sega’s After Burner Climax was scheduled to be de-listed and removed from Xbox Live Arcade on December 24, 2014. No …
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• After Burner Climax will be delisted from the Xbox Live Marketplace on December 24, 2014. A producer of After Burner Climax, Noriyuki Shimoda, confirms via Twitter the removal of the game from distribution. The PlayStation Network is currently seeing a sale for the title and it is unknown at this time whether or not the Xbox Live Marketplace will see an equivalent sale.
• Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Special Editions was quietly delisted from the Xbox Live Marketplace while Deep Silver had it listed for its Deal of the Week from December 2-9. While it was sad to see it removed before the sale officially ended, at least the publisher can say the game was put on sale before removal.
• JUJU launches on the Xbox Live Marketplace today, December 10. The game is already available now for $14.99 USD and the download size is 1.75GB. After the jump is a launch trailer for the title. Check it out to see JUJU in action.

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Publisher Sega has confirmed on its blog that Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse will be launching on Xbox Live Arcade on September 4 for 1200 Microsoft Points. This reimagining …
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XBLAFans stopped to chat with Sega Studios Australia’s Omar Woodley, producer on Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse during E3. We discovered that calling the new version of Castle of Illusion a “remake” or “rerelease” doesn’t do it justice. Unlike other modern ports of classic games, such as Ubisoft’s Prince of Persia Classic or Capcom’s soon-to-be-released Ducktales Remastered, Castle of Illusion was described to us by Woodley as “a full reimagining of the game.”

The biggest, most immediately noticeable change beyond updated graphics and sound (which includes a charming voiceover for Mickey during gameplay) is the addition of a hub world. In the original game, Mickey wandered the Castle of Illusion to introduce each new level. Here, the castle is envisioned along the lines of Super Mario 64, as a three-dimensional hub world by which all of the levels are accessed. It’s a fun change that makes the castle feel like an actual place, instead of merely a setpiece for the plot.

According to Woodley, Sega Studios Australia had lots of “creative freedom to redesign the levels… When we played the original and we tried translating that to the new 3D world, some of those levels weren’t as challenging as they were back in the day. They actually played out to be quite long in length to this contemporary feel so we had to compensate for that, and we also just wanted to challenge the player and keep that difficultly setting pretty high to what the classic was. So we added these various components and a few different puzzles and tricks here and there to keep the challenge intact.”

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SEGA of America has released the second installment of their behind-the-scenes glimpse at Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, a complete re-imagining of the beloved Genesis classic. The minimentary focuses …
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In March of this year rumors of an enhanced remake of the 1990 Sega/Disney sleeper hit Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse began to surface. A month later it …
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Sega of America has released new screenshots and an extended version of a trailer teased earlier this month for Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse.  The game, described as a “complete re-imagining” of the original released in 1990 on the Sega Genesis, will join the already announced Ducktales Remastered for a summer 2013 launch on digital platforms, including XBLA.  With any luck, this trend of Sega and Disney teaming up will continue and bring even more classics out of the vault.

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New assets have surfaced that all but confirm the upcoming XBLA release of classic platformer Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. As unearthed by tipster @lifelower, Sega of America has …
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The side-scrolling Sega Genesis classic Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse may be coming to XBLA if recent classification ratings are any indication.  Not to be confused …
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In a video interview posted over at the Sega blog, lead designer of The Cave, J.P. LeBreton, explains that devising the game’s puzzles presented a unique kind of challenge.

Double Fine’s LeBreton, who also worked on BioShock, explained that the trick is to find the good kind of “being stuck.” Providing just the right amount of information is paramount when designing any game’s puzzles. But he learned that a straight-up adventure game like The Cave presents additional hurdles at the user-testing stage.

“You don’t have clear metrics like you do with a game that’s based around combat, where you can say, ‘OK, they died this many times and they took this much damage, and we’d rather it be this way, so let’s put more health packs or whatever in the level,” he begins.

“With [The Cave], it was more just like, ‘Well, they were stuck in this area for a long time. A, are we OK with that? And B, what do we want to do about it? Do we want to give them a hint in this direction? No, that’s too much of a gimme; let’s figure out something else. Or let’s just leave it, because it’s actually good because it’s late in the game, or it’s the right kind of difficult puzzle for this kind of situation.'”

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