***Poll

The new topic: Has Sega failed doing a good job promoting the Saturn as the console to use? Has their advertising so far been ineffective when compared to the Genesis campaigns?

My vote: Yes, when comparing the "Welcome to the Next Level" and "Nintendon't"campaigns to the recent "A little too real" ads, I miss the 16-bit days even more. Vote here: http://dextremes.com/sega/poll.html

This week has been an active one for Sega so here's a recap: In Japan, Hudson Soft is working on a new game called Virus. So have it has been hyped as _the_ game to buy later this year. The game will be spread across 3 cds and Sega has no plans of bringing it to the states, though no one can say whether it will live up to the hype. No new games are out in the US this week.

Manx TT also came out in Japan a few days ago, the graphics are about the same level as Sega Rally, and the game runs at 30fps. The control is analog which is great, as it helps greatly with the turns. Even better is the fact that with the analog controllers, the throttle is also analog which makes things even more realistic. The only negative comment so far is the lack of tracks: 2 (+mirror modes). I hope that it leaves Japan with a few more new tracks. An intriguing fact about the game: It was ported for Psygnosis (!) by 2 teams; Perfect and another team in Australia (forget the name at the moment). A PC version will also be released.

SOJ has also announced a software price cut down to 2800 Yen (~$23US) on selected titles. Just keeps getting better. They also expect to sell 1-1.5 million Saturn units in Japan this year. Next Generation has reported over the past few days that Sega's upgrade code named 'BlackBelt' will be powered by a PowerPC chip and contain NECs PowerVR PX2 chip. They claim Sega is aiming for a late 1998 release in Japan, and a US release in 1999. I believe that this report is more speculation at this time, as I don't think Sega will delay VF3 Saturn another year, since the title is very much needed for the holiday season. More info when it comes....Sega is also working with Microsoft to gain rights to use MSes arcade operating system. Its reported that Yu Suzuki has made several trips over to Redmond.........

In the software area I've added and updated a few programs...that's all I have to say this week, also, on the site if you see any room for improvement let me know!

-Greg