Hello all!

Well now, I'm back from vacation. Not much went on during the week of my absence. A good thing for me anyway...still fighting the effects of jet lag. On with the news:

A few new releases made their way out, and Sega of America announced that it will be moving its corporate headquarters from Redwood City to San Francisco. In terms of distance its not very far, but supposedly the rent is much cheaper at their future location. On January 4, 1999, SoA, SegaSoft Networks, and Sega Entertainment will have a new home at San Francisco's Townsend center. The center is also home to other companies such as Ziff-Davis. The area around the center is dubbed 'multimedia gulch' because of the large number of multimedia companies based in that particular area. Sega has taken a ten year lease on 160,000 square feet of office space, bringing about 800 jobs to the area. SF Mayor, Willie Brown made a big deal over the event blathering various comments. I have some pictures of Mr. Stolar and Mayor Brown at the announcement etc which I can post if anyone feels a need to see a big of Stolar...

In other news, it has been revealed that the global marketing budget for the Dreamcast launch is about $500 million. It was previously known that $100 million was to be used for the US launch of the console. Also, it has been disclosed that a 3D Sonic game would be available at the time of the US DC launch in 1999.

Well, not so surprisingly, the English release of Shining Force 3: Scenario I has yet again been delayed. Now its expected to appear in US and Europe in mid July. Maybe Sega is trying to compete with WD as the last Saturn release outside of Japan. Unfortunately SF3 may well be the last US Saturn release, as SoA has given no information on future titles for the year before the DC launch. Europeans have it a little better as SoE has a few extra games listed for release such as Sega's underwater game, Deep Fear.

Two new titles from Japan made their way to importers. First off was the latest game in the Langrisser series, Langrisser V: The End of Legend. The latest title from Masiya continues the long running series with further character and world development. Also out was Sega's World Cup Soccer game, World Cup '98: Road to Win. The title is based on the exceptional Worldwide Soccer engine so you know what to expect in terms of gameplay. Unfortunately it doesn't look as though the title will have any official release outside of Japan.

Hopefully, Dracula X will be shipping this week, slated for a release on the 25th. Also shipping that day is Capcom's Super Adventure Rockman....The VMS card system for the Dreamcast seems quite interesting. Though the idea of separate games for the cards while curious, might be very successful in competing with other cheap portables similar to those made by Tiger electronics. The first game specifically for the card is to be Godzilla...Sega of Japan has put up several screenshots of the game online at: http://www.sega.co.jp/dreamcast/software/godzilla/dcgod/. The page itself is all in Japanese so I cant give much detailed information on it. It is expected release is November 11 in Japan and should sell for about ¥2500 or about $18US.

Several newsletters ago, I hinted at some changes headed for dEX. Well, they are still in the preliminary stages. First off, the software area. Ok, this section has been essentially dead for a while. While not too much work to maintain, I've simply lost interest in maintaining that area. I've all the programs I want and therefore do not bother with software much anymore. Thus, this area will be replaced by something else...I'm not saying yet however. The links section needs some work too...sites moving, shutting down etc, have rendered about half of the links useless. I'll have to revamp that area with what I feel are the better, but lesser known sites. Now that I'm finally done with graduation and vacationing, I should have more time to concentrate on the site. Many thanks for supporting dEX! Cya in a week!

-Greg