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Crazy Taxi: City Rush is a new mobile game that's free-to-hey-hey-hey
Sega announced Crazy Taxi: City Rush this morning, a new free-to-play entry that's being developed exclusively for mobiles. Kenji Kanno, the man who created the original 1999 arcade game, is back as an exec producer on the series' first new entry in seven years. The dev behind the steering wheel is Hardlight Studios, the mobile specialist team that recently delivered Sonic Dash. Hardlight is going with one-touch controls like swiping to switch between lanes, but the aim of City Rush remains the same: grab some unsuspecting passenger and deliver them to their destination as quickly and recklessly as possible. Looking at the nitty-gritty features, in City Rush you can cab Facebook friends around the city, and there's support for both portrait and landscape play. Most important of all, you select your own music to drive to; we've already got the four Offspring and Bad Religion songs we need lined up and ready to cycle endlessly. Also, Sega is marking today's announcement by making the original Crazy Taxi free on iOS and Android for a limited time. Meanwhile, City Rush is due to screech onto our sidewalks later this year. [Image: Sega]
Sonic Dash gets first-ever boss battle to celebrate Sonic: Lost World
Sonic Dash, the endless runner app for iOS devices, is currently featuring a guest appearance by Zazz, an enemy from Sonic: Lost World. Zazz is one of the members of anti-Sonic brigade The Deadly Six, and uses a flying mech. Players will need to swipe left and right to avoid his projectiles, or swipe up to jump over them. The update that enables Sonic Dash's first boss fight also introduces the Deadly Six Card Collection Challenge. In this challenge, players collect unique cards that will unlock special Lost World-themed prizes when enough have been collected by the community. The card challenge and boss fight against Zazz are only available for a limited time, though the press release announcing the events did not specify at what date the events would end.
Sonic's still a big winner on mobile
Built-for-mobile games Sonic Jump and Sonic Dash are spiking big download numbers, and UK Sega dev Hardlight Studios believes they can still rise significantly. Chief Technical Officer Chris Southall told Joystiq vertical platormer Jump is up to 8 million downloads, while endless runner Dash is at a whopping 20 million. Furthermore, each day sees 1 million active Dash-ers, as well as 100,000 new users jog onto the game, some several months after it was released. Jump, released last October, is a paid download, while Dash is free-to-play after initially requiring a purchase when it raced out in March of this year. Southall said Dash offered a more "natural" fit for the speedy IP than Jump, and he feels there's plenty of scope for growth with the 3D runner, including bringing it to Japan where it remains unreleased. "You can just see that Sonic is such a big IP; we haven't actually done any advertising or user acquisition yet on Sonic Dash," Southall told us. "We're doing updates through the year, we're going to to keep doing that, and using the learning we've gained as a studio. And [we're going to] start to actually advertise the game and push it more. So hopefully where we are now with Sonic Dash is kind of the beginning rather than the end." Hardlight recently internally signed off on its next mobile game, Southall told us, before adding that this one won't be a Sonic adventure, but something for another "big Sega IP." He wouldn't be budged on anything more specific than an ETA for open beta, which is early 2014, and the possible option to play it in landscape mode as well as in portrait. "With the next game we want to facilitate a little bit more ability to move it to other platforms, so one of the things that we're looking at right now is allowing the player to play in landscape mode as well as portrait mode," Southall noted. "As well as the some obvious choices with consoles, there are also some of the newer Android-based consoles, and maybe stuff that Apple's doing would be more amenable to controllers and landscape mode rather than portrait mode, maybe bigger displays. So we're definitely thinking about all that stuff."
Sonic Dash goes free on the App Store, adds daily challenges
Hardlight Studio's endless runner Sonic Dash is now free on the App Store, a significant price cut from its $1.99 price when it launched March 7. According to the developer's Twitter account, those that already bought the game will receive 10 revive tokens for free to make up for the price change.Sonic Dash also received an update recently that added daily challenges to the game, which will reward players with content such as Red Star Rings and new characters. The game was also tweaked to fix balance issues with some obstacles and improve its performance on iPhone 4 and 4th generation iPod touch devices.
Sonic Dash set to speed onto the App Store 'midnight tonight'
Developer Hardlight Studios let slip via quickly deleted tweets - which Sega Driven also spotted before they ran off - Sega's iOS endless runner Sonic Dash is making a midnight sprint for the App Store tonight. According to those deleted tweets, the game is priced $1.99 in the US, and £1.49 in the UK. That's backed up by Sonic Dash already being out in New Zealand, which traditionally gets App Store content hours ahead of other regions because of wibbly-wobbly time zone differentiation.As the App Store gallery and description indicates, Sonic Dash is a fair bit reminiscent of the Temple Run formula, which to us seems fair enough since the blue hedgehog was doing the Temple Run thing as far back as Sonic Adventure. The description also reveals that, for those that can't get enough of the hog's critter chums, Sonic Dash lets you play as Tails, Amy, and Knuckles McGee (Knuckles for short).
Sega announces Sonic Dash, an iOS endless runner
Sega officially revealed Sonic Dash this week, an endless runner "coming soon" to iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. It's being developed by Hardlight Studio, the team behind Sonic Jump. Presumably Dash is the next entry in a series covering all the basic Sonic actions, so we look forward to Sonic Roll, Sonic Smug Finger-Wag, and Sonic Talk and Ruin Everything.Sonic Dash hasn't exactly been a well kept secret, but this week's official announcement did spill that the game is based in 3D, and will include leaderboards. Standard stuff, you may feel, but a paucity of details isn't too concerning. After all, if there's one series that's suited for endless running, it has to be Sonic.
Sega's new UK studio is 'Hardlight'
The UK games industry is going through a bit of a rough patch, but Sega will hopefully slow the brain drain by opening Hardlight, a new studio located in the West Midlands. The "boutique" developer will work on "high quality, innovative game experiences for both current and future platforms," with its first project, a Vita title, due in late 2012.As Eurogamer points out, Hardlight is likely the new studio mentioned by a Sega exec last June, formed by folks from the defunct Sega Racing team.The UK could use all the major publisher support it can get at the moment. The past couple years have not been kind.
