Once upon a time, in the ancient year of 2000, Sega released a role-playing game called Skies of Arcadia for the ill-fated Dreamcast. I don’t remember there being much buzz for the game at the time, but I was intrigued by the images of colorful pirates and giant ship battles waged in open skies. I picked up a copy and was utterly enraptured. Deliberate or not, Skies of Arcadia called back to the era of the pulp adventure - charming rogues thrust into the unknown, grinning as they battle and stumble through danger after danger on their quest - and it became one of my favorite RPGs of all time. A few years later, a GameCube remaster brought some much-needed improvements, cementing Skies’ place among the genre’s greats. 

Imagine my glee, then, in 2008, when I arrived at Sega’s booth at the Penny Arcade Expo to find Skies of Arcadia director Shuntaro Tanaka’s new game, Valkyria Chronicles. Although there was a bit of a genre shift, from RPG to a hybrid of a shooter and a strategy RPG, Valkyria Chronicles retained many of the core tenets of Skies - a relentlessly charming core cast, an addictive depth to the core gameplay systems, and gorgeous art direction. It, too, became one of my favorite role-playing games.

Sega has just released a remastered upgrade of Valkyria Chronicles to the PlayStation 4, giving newcomers another chance to try the game (and giving me another chance to talk about a game I really dig).

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You know Sonic, right? Too fast for the naked eye? That’s Sonic the Hedgehog. He can really move? He’s got an attitude? He’s the fastest thing alive? 

Yeah, it is basically impossible to have played games and not have some clue who Sonic is. That character design is iconic and timeless, even if many of the actual games that he has starred in have varied in quality. Still, it is hard to deny that the early Sonic games are classics worth returning to from time to time. 

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is one of the most beloved games in the series, introducing a second playable character, multiplayer, and featuring impressively tight platforming and beautiful pixel art. It has been ported to a number of platforms over the years, and has recently launched on the Switch as part of M2′s SEGA AGES series. 

Read on for more.

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This is a great time to be a fan of the Yakuza series. After years of iffy sales and the series seemingly being left for dead, SEGA has released - in short order - a wildly successful prequel, a remake of the first game, and the latest installment in the series. 

Now, just a few months later, SEGA has released Yakuza Kiwami 2 - a remake of the second game in the series. Redesigned from the ground up in the new Yakuza 6 engine, Kiwami 2 presents one of the most popular games in the series through new technology and with massively refined gameplay. 

Like many, I am a recent convert to the religion of Yakuza. My first encounter with the series was Yakuza 0, and I was hooked within minutes by its unique flavor of melodramatic - and so, so Japanese - crime drama. I have been eagerly waiting for Kiwami 2. Read on to see what I thought.

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