Sega Amusements Europe becomes Sega Amusements International, a subdivision of Sega Interactive. This name change is only the facade of a major reorganization at Sega Sammy Holdings. Sega Japan will now focus on the Japanese and Asian markets, offering greater autonomy to Sega Amusements for the development of the brand across the world. Practically, arcade games for the European and American markets will be developed by teams based in England and in the United States. They will be headed by Shinichi Ogasawara (Rail Chase 2, Gunblade NY, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, The Maze of the Kings, Let's Go Jungle and Transformers Human Alliance) who will reside in the UK. Although autonomous, Sega Amusements International can count on the full support of Sega Japan. The headquarters of the company remains based in London and Paul Williams, the current COO of Sega Amusements, becomes CEO of the new entity. If we can now forget about official European release of games like Initial D Arcade Stage 8 Infinity and maimai ORANGE PLUS, we can trust them to develop titles that will make good income in our region. As a reminder, Sega games are distributed in Belgium by Red Sun Systems.

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Get ready for the next battle! Bandai Namco announced the Tekken 7 World Arcade Championship EU Qualifiers that will take place on October 29 at Paris Games Week (the French video game convention that will be held at Paris Expo - Porte de Versailles from October 28th to November 1st). There will be a €1500 cash prize to share among winners as well as tickets for the Tekken World Tournament in Japan in December! Best Tekken players will compete to try to win 10 million Yen and the World Champion title. Qualifications will take place at the ESL Arena stand, there are 4 entries left, 12 finalists are already qualified. Those are the 5 European top players and 7 players qualified through several European tournaments (Tekken World in Spain, Ultimate Tournament in France, Red Fight District in the Netherlands and Poznan Arena in Poland). The tournament will be played on the arcade verison of Tekken 7 with the ability to use MadCatz fightsticks. The finals will be broadcast live on Twitch.

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The shmup.com community organizes a big shoot'em up festival on October 10th! The event takes place at the Coin-op Legacy associative arcade in Vitry-sur-Seine, France. Participants will have access to more than 50 arcade machines set to freeplay including 25 shoot'em ups such as Sagaia and Xevious but also 3D shoots like After Burner II, Space Harrier and Thunder Blade. And of course, impossible to talk about shmups without mentioning the masters of the genre and they are featured in the event name; Cave Carnival! As such, fifteen games by the developer will be featured including Dondonpachi Saidaioujou, Mushihimesama Futari Black Label, Akai Katana, Ibara Kuro, Muchi Muchi Pork, Guwange Blue Label and Dangun Feveron. There will also be live superplays of ESP Ra.De. and Progear no Arashi by Mld and Yami9999 as well as a competition on a Cave shmup with prizes to boot. The evening starts at 6pm and ends at 2am. Nobody will starve during the evening thanks to homemade snacks prepared by Kitchen Sucré Salé that will be sold on site. Registration is done via the form available on the Coin-op Legacy website, the entry fee is €15,00 in presale and €20,00 at the door. Attention: access is limited to 90 people! You can win a free entry ticket by taking part in the undergoing Dangun Feveron contest organised by shmup.com.

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Good news! A new arcade has just opened its doors in the heart of London! It must be said that the English capital had become a little bleak since the closure of the Funland. The Vega joins Namco Funscape and Las Vegas as places to visit for arcade game fans (not mentioning The Heart Of Gaming which is a bit away from the city centre). The offer is composed of mostly rhythm and fighting games with the following titles: beatmania IIDX 18 Resort Anthem, BlazBlue Continuum Shift, DanceDanceRevolution X3 VS 2ndMIX, pop'n music 20 fantasia, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Tekken 6 Bloodline Rebellion and Tetris The Grand Master 3 - Terror Instinct. Managed by fans of arcade games, the Vega aspires to become the new gathering place for the London Bemani community. Daily meetups of music game players are organized for this purpose from November 19th to 22nd (1pm-4pm). The Vega arcade is installed in the basement of the Vegas casino, located at number 9 on Islington High Street, less than 50m from Angel tube station (Northern line). The concept seems very similar to what happens in the basement of Las Vegas in Soho. Anyway, it's all profit for players who are offered a wider choice of games! Hopefully that unlike Las Vegas, they resist the temptation of hosting console games on timer in arcade cabinets. Vega is open on weekdays from 9.30am to 11.30pm and on weekends from 10am to 11.30pm. We wish much success to the Vega team. Be sure to visit the place if you go to London!

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Thanks to the announcement of Shenmue III, YÅ« Suzuki is back under the spotlight in recent months. This is the perfect time to get back on the career of this exceptional video game visionary. This is done in the book titled YÅ« Suzuki - Le Maître de Sega (De l'arcade à la révolution Shenmue) which will be released on September 25th. This book aims to present YÅ« Suzuki, through his childhood and adolescence, his game philosophy, his visions, his cult titles (Hang On, Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner, Virtua Fighter, Shenmue,...) and his unreleased projects (Propeller Arena, Shenmue Online, Psy-Phi). The book is divided into 6 chapters browsing milestones in the career of YÅ« Suzuki, from his first steps in Hard Rock to the making of Shenmue III. Of course all his arcade and console successes will be presented and as a bonus, an interview of YÅ« Suzuki will be included as well as an interview of Shenmue Master, the referential French website about everything Shenmue since 2001! The author, Benjamin Berget, holds a philosophy master's from the University of Bourgogne. He's the author of a book series entitled L'Histoire des jeux vidéo polémiques and regularly writes articles for specialized websites such as Grospixels.com and Jeuxvideo.com. YÅ« Suzuki - Le Maître de Sega (De l'arcade à la révolution Shenmue) will be released in a 148x210mm format and will be composed of 528 pages including 32 colour pages. This book is published by Geeks-Line, a specialist in publishing books about video games. You can order your copy here. Apparently, Geeks-Line is currently working on an English version of the book that would come out next year.

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Get ready for Friday, October 9th! Because it's the day the God Save The 90's party returns to Brussels in an original location! This time, the fluorescent colours and crazy atmosphere of the '90s will invest the Brussels Event Brewery, an old bottling plant of the Belle-Vue brewery located on Delaunoy street in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean/Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. Once again, we will go all out with twenty freeplay arcade machines. Of course, the game selection will differ for the most part of what had been proposed at Tour & Taxis in April. Tickets are available at the official website (there is also a Facebook page dedicated to the event). You have to hurry because half of the tickets were sold in one hour! Too late? Don't panic! The God Save The 90's party to be held in Liège on September 25th is not sold out yet! Weather forecast predicts a rain of foam at the Fonck barracks that night! Don't miss this crazy atmosphere! Brussels or Liège? You choose!

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Square Enix starts operation of School of Ragnarok today. This new game is an online 1vs1 tactical "5D" action game. It's a kind of combination of fighting and RPG game. Players compete each other and they can customise their character appearance, costumes, weapons and statistics (they can level up). The "5D" feature is a mix of 2D and 3D perspectives during the fight. School of Ragnarok staff is very impressive: Takamasa Shiba (Lord of Vermillion, Drakengard) is the producer, Kazutaka Kodaka (Danganronpa) is in charge of the world setting and scenario, the character design is from Kimihiko Fujisaka (Drakengard, Terra Battle) and the music is composed by Keiichi Okabe (Nier). The winner of the official School of Ragnarok tournament will win 1 million Yens! You can watch the latest trailer here.

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Arc System Works releases a new Guilty Gear game today: Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-. There are three new characters for a total of 20 playable characters. Johnny, Jack-O and Jam Kuradoberi are the new fighters. Johnny and Jam are returning characters from the XX series and Jack-O is a new one. There are some changes to the gameplay and a new mode for beginners: the Stylish Type. The players can also choose a new stage. Finally, players who finish the game can vote for the next characters which will be added to the game. Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR- features an animated opening movie. You can watch it here.

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Six months after the last night at Le Cadran, God Save The 90's is back in Liège on Friday, September 25th! The opportunity to dive back again into the cheerful and colorful astmosphere of the '90s. Attention; for this eighth Liège edition, the concept leaves Le Cadran for an equally unique location: the Fonck barracks, a building built in 1837! It is located on Ransonnet street. For the occasion, we will bring 20 arcade machines set on freeplay (same number as at the Mons party). We will not disclose the line-up in advance, but expect a bunch of '90s classics in original versions and games themed after cartoons of the time. The presales launch will take place tomorrow at noon. Watch the party's Facebook page to avoid missing this strategic moment: https://www.facebook.com/Godsavethe90s. You will need to be fast as it is rumored that there are only 2,500 tickets available. And usually for each new edition, all tickets are gone on day one! Do not miss this special night! The next event is already planned, it will be big and will be held in a very unique location... But shhhht, we've already said too much!

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The Pixels movie opens today in Belgian cinemas (in both 2D and 3D)! The plot: In 1982, the NASA sends a time capsule into space containing data about human culture. Some pictures show the popular arcade games of the moment. 33 years later, the message is intercepted by aliens who interpret it as a declaration of war. So they send an appropriate response to the threat they have before them in the form of giant video game characters (such as Pac-Man and Donkey Kong) to destroy us. Powerless, the US President calls his friends who were arcade game champions in their youth to help him fight these creatures more efficiently than the army. The team calls itself the Arcaders (their suit is available at the official store). You can watch the trailer on YouTube. The cast of this film directed by Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Harry Potter, ...) includes among others Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Michelle Monaghan and Peter Dinklage. This feature film is inspired by a short film made in 2010 by French director Patrick Jean that showed the New York invasion by characters from old arcade games. In the original short (visible on Vimeo), creatures were not coming from space but instead escaped a TV abandonned on the pavement. Thanks to his enthusiasm, Adam Sandler convinced Patrick Jean to sell the rights to Sony Pictures. Here is the result; a movie bashed by critics. Is it really bad? There's only way to find out... Go watch it!

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