Hi all,

This week has been fairly quiet overall. Sega of America has dropped Saturn hardware prices by $50 lowering the core system price down to $99 US. However, more US retailers have begun dropping prices on Saturn hardware and software. Electronics Boutique, a large chain of video and computer games retailers, has lowered Saturn console prices down to $70-80. There are also rumors that Toy's 'R' Us, another large games seller, may be dropping Saturn from their stocks. When large game specific chains start lowering Saturn prices we may eventually see a large lack of new titles available due to lack of large scale distribution. Future sales may depend on independent games retailers and mail-order/import shops such as NCSX, Tronix, and The Rage.

There were no new releases in the US, however another 'high capacity' backup RAM cart has appeared, this one claiming 64-megabit capacity. The cart also supports 'direct save' and works as an import adapter. I just wanted to warn people who may be considering buying this or any other third party cart that is not Sega approved. This cart, as most others have had reliability and compatibility problems with some games. They have also been known to cause some damage to the cartridge slot due to the cart being slightly too thick. If you are looking to get a backup memory cart, I can only recommend buying those made by Sega. They aren't very common in stores, so one may have to mail order it. The cart sells for around $50US and can be ordered from many places such as: www.ncsx.com, www.tronixweb.com, and www.therage.com The Rage offers complete (secure) online ordering, but has slightly higher prices than NCSX and Tronix.

In Japan, a few new games have been released. First off is another of the popular dating sim games, Sentimental Grafitti Limited Edition. In this version there are 12 girls in 12 different locations with which you can interact...another game is a game of world domination called Solo Crisis by Quintet. The game is similar to Populous in that it places you in the role of a god who must protect your people and defeat your enemies.

Azel Panzer Dragoon RPG should be available within a few days if not already. Sega lists it for a January 29th release, but several importers list the game as available. The game places the main character of the previous shooters into a full blown epic RPG. See last weeks newsletter on the site for details on the game.

The next big game for Sega is Sonic Team's Burning Rangers. Currently the game is scheduled for a Japanese release on February 26th. Before then, a few previews of the game in forms of screenshots, movie clips, and illustrations from the game will be gradually released. Its soundtrack will be out on the 21st of February as well. Look for lots of vocals in the music of the game....I've added many images from the game in the Screenshots area. I've put up a contact sheet of the images, and a Zip file of those images at full size (there are 24 images, all 235x176x16M.) They are from the first two levels revealed thus far: Round 1 - Fallen Memory, and Round 2 - Silent Blue. See the snapshots area for full details.

*A note to NetLink users: I'm sorry, but I had to include the 24 images in a Zip file due to limits on Web space storage which I have. I hope that the contact sheets will prove to be of high enough quality for you.

One last note, there's a week left to vote in Poll #11:

If the 4Meg cart were released in the US with games such as X-men v. Street Fighter and Vampire Saviour, would you buy it? Probable cost would be around $60US with the cart.

Vote At: http://dextremes.com/sega/poll.html

That's all this week, cya!

-Greg