This post is about greeting cards game companies sent to the press, most are from many years ago. Unfortunately, I only have a few so I wasn't sure if I should share them. In fact, I skipped writing a post about them the last two Decembers before finally deciding to post them this year because even if they aren't too interesting where else would anyone really get to see them, you know, on the off chance someone wants to. Back in the early 2000s my employer received many cards but most were eventually thrown in the trash by my co-workers. I was able to hold onto a few and while we're still in business, nobody sends us physical cards these days. Once in a while a company does send a link to a digital card like this year's from Capcom: Happy Holidays featuring Monster Hunter. Not sure how long that link will be active so I grabbed a screenshot which fails to display that the snowflakes are dropping down the screen. Digital cards are easy to share so I expect this one and others are posted to social media for the public as well.
First up is Sammy Studios which has the most boring card because it is just a regular greeting card. It does look nice and at least some folks signed it but an original card with game-related art would have been more fun.
The second card is from former publisher Southpeak and defunct developer Renegade Kid. While the other cards are probably all from around 2000-03 (none are actually dated), this one is likely from 2010 based on the game being promoted.
Next up is one from Sony Computer Entertainment America with the PlayStation controller button icons representing snowflakes. It's a very shiny card that looks quite nice in person but not too good when scanned. That very blue image is the scan where the gray parts should actually be white and the blue is silver when it's not reflecting other colors. I'm adding a couple photos to try and give a more accurate look at it. I do like the appearance of this card quite a bit but nobody signed it! What's up with that, Sony?
Last is a long foldout card with four panels on each side.This one isn't gaming specific as it represents the many divisions of George Lucas' companies back whenever this card was made: Lucasfilm Ltd., Lucasfilm Animation Ltd., Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts, Lucas Online, and Lucas Licensing. It is signed by six people who I will assume were all public relations representatives at LucasArts.
Before ending this post I decided to see if any old holiday card links are still active and I found Atlus' 2016 and 2017 digital cards. Both feature a few rotating photos of the Atlus (and Sega in 2017) sales and marketing team. Here are a couple screen grabs of just a single photo from each and, like the Capcom card above, the snow does move if you visit the links.
Star Wars Galaxy Trading Card #289
(Artist: Bunny Carter)
April -- and really this year -- seems to be moving along rather quickly. The weather still feels like winter sometimes but spring is pushing through next week, hopefully to stay. Earlier this month I did a week of Sega content and unfortunately, nobody commented! Okay, nobody ever comments on the blog so that's not exactly unusual (actually, I get a lot of spam comments). The post/video that I really expected to get attention was Letters From Sega. It's something that's at least a little unique and I actually Tweeted that one at Sega so it was quite disappointing to not get a like or re-Tweet (from Sega; user BackLoggedGamer liked it, thanks!). Normally I don't Tweet at companies, however, I see re-Tweets from companies all the time for what I consider to be pointless things so I figured why not, and really thought Sega would enjoy seeing the old letters. Oh well. I'll mention something again that I stated in the Sega ads post since I've not seen it covered by any major gaming sites. Atlus U.S.A. is no more; Sega has completely absorbed it and in North America the Atlus name is now just a Sega brand.
As I write this I've not played any games is six days which is a decent stretch though I hope to do a Let's Play video tomorrow. Most recently I got the platinum trophy on the PlayStation 4 version of Persona 4: Dancing All Night; my first platinum was for the Vita version of that game which I played on PlayStation TV. I've played Minecraft a bit as well and despite its age and popularity, it's a game I had only tried once before on the Xbox 360. My nephew has gotten me into that along with Human: Fall Flat which is a game he loves that I don't find to be much fun. In Minecraft I built my childhood home and an AT-AT in my world and a centipede head (based on the arcade game) in my nephew's world. Of course, being Minecraft you can only be so detailed and they might not look great in the screenshots. I also put a hatch on the top of the AT-AT and it's possible to walk into the head that has windows on the front.
Before I took a game break I was playing Tropico 6 too. It's a series I've enjoyed since the first game (never played the second one) and the new one isn't bad though it does have a different developer than the past few and I've not done very well on the missions I've played. There has been some relatively big game news since my last update. Sega announced the official Genesis Mini plug 'n' play console that will have 40 built-in games of which only 20 have been announced. It's releasing September 19th which I assume is to maybe look similar to the Dreamcast's 9/9/99 date; this would be 9/19/19 and that's only 10 days after the Dreamcast's U.S. 20th anniversary. In other console news, Sony started talking about the next PlayStation system (Wired exclusive) and Microsoft unveiled the long rumored and now official Xbox One with no disc drive. Next generation's consoles will still use physical media but there will likely be options to go digital only. By the way, the former Xbox exclusive Cuphead is now available on the Switch.
The other big game news came from the Star Wars Celebration that took place in Chicago. Respawn Entertainment was on hand to talk about Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order; it announced the release date (11/15/19) and showed a trailer that didn't have any gameplay in it. I'm not a big fan of characters looking like the actors that voice them and that's what we have in this new game, and is something we saw in Star Wars: Force Unleashed. I'm still very much looking foward to it as I always want more single-player Star Wars games. There is likely a new LEGO game coming from Warner Bros. Interactive though nothing has been officially announced. This year marks the 20th anniversary of LEGO making Star Wars toys and it has a handful of sets to mark that occasion: Slave I, Snowspeeder, Imperial Dropship, Anakin's Podracer, and Clone Scout Walker. They're a bit expensive as usual but each one has some nice mini-figures plus a bonus mini-figure. Aside from the anniversary sets there is a new Tantive IV set too.
Hasbro unveiled a bunch of new Star Wars toys that you can read about here: StarWars.com. Lastly, if you somehow missed it, a teaser trailer was shown for the next movie titled The Rise of Skywalker.
Atlus Co., Ltd. is a Japanese developer and publisher founded in 1986. Its North American branch opened in 1991 and today is known as Atlus U.S.A.* but it was originally called Asuka Technologies, Inc. The history of the company gets a bit complicated in 2010 when it was merged with Index Holdings and more or less ceased to exist as each Atlus location was renamed. Atlus the corporation was no more but Atlus the game publishing brand was still used for a while. In 2013 things took yet another turn as Index Holdings faced bankruptcy. Sega Sammy Holdings acquired Index which led to a return of Atlus that now operates under Sega.
The U.S. division localizes games from Japan and is best known for role-playing games having most recently released Persona 5. Persona is part of the Shin Megami Tensei franchise that also includes Nocturne and Digital Devil Saga. Although I played some Japanese role-playing games (JRPG) on Sega consoles and the first PlayStation, I don't play many these days so I've not experienced a lot of Atlus' recent games. However, early this year I borrowed a PlayStation TV device and started trying out a bunch of Vita games. I don't play handheld games very often (another reason I've missed many of Atlus' games) but Persona 4: Dancing All Night, which despite being a combination of two genres -- visual novel and rhythm -- I don't typically enjoy, hooked me. The characters and music are so good that I couldn't stop playing until I earned my first platinum trophy.
Unfortunately, I didn't come across any Persona ads in my magazines. There are a variety of types of games in the ads though with most of the games being for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or the PlayStation.
