142 - Manuel Garcia Melgar

Greetings, friends! Welcome to this week's episode of The SEGA Lounge. I hope you've all been doing well and enjoying some games. Persona 5 Strikers is out in the West and so is the PS5 version of Yakuza: Like a Dragon. While I can't vouch for the former, I can definitely recommend the latter so do try it out if you can regardless of which system you choose to play it on. Maybe I should check out P5S at some point as well? Maybe...

Anyway, I wanted to take the time today to plug a couple of other podcasts I've been a part of recently. First up, and keeping things Yakuza-themed, I was invited to be on The Saturn Junkyard's TitanCast for a round table episode discussing Like a Dragon. I had a great time talking about our boy Ichiban and I want to thank Brian from the Junkyard for inviting me and putting together such a special team of people.

Another bit of podcast news is I've recently started a new show in Portuguese with fellow RadioSEGA show host, Ravsieg. It's called "SEGAzices" and it's our first time doing something like this in our native language. I know this will only be of interest to those out there who are Portuguese speakers, but I see you there raising your hands, I know you're out there. So if you feel like it, check out our recently released first episode.

This week, it's a pleasure and a privilege to welcome my friend and long time collaborator Manuel García Melgar to The SEGA Lounge. I first got in touch with Manuel, formerly known as Kopke, when he was associated with the SEGA Nerds. I knew he was an extremely talented man and asked him to work on some RadioSEGA projects. That was the beginning of a long and still standing collaboration not just between the two of us, but between Manuel and the station. He designed all art assets for The SEGA Lounge, including the infamous Seal of Approval. But most importantly, I think, he is a massive SEGA fan whose story you'll want to get to know.

• Check out Manuel on Behance: https://www.behance.net/manuelgarciamelgar
• Here's his Redbubble shop: https://www.redbubble.com/people/kopke/shop
• Manuel's ArtStation profile: https://www.artstation.com/manuel_garcia_melgar

Just in case you somehow missed it, and because it's important, I wanted to quickly mention last week's show with Becky Frost and Mark Saville of SpecialEffect. SpecialEffect do an amazing job helping people to play video games so if you missed our chat, please go back and listen to it and learn more about this amazing charity. On a related note, last week's GameBlast 21 event was a success with everyone involved raising over £220,000 for SpecialEvent. That includes over £1,700 raised by Team RadioSEGA, of which I was a part of. Amazing! Even though the event is over you can still donate at http://thesegalounge.com/gameblast

If you enjoyed the show and aren't subscribed to the podcast yet, please do so using your usual podcast service. You can also leave us a positive review. One way you can do that is by going to http://thesegalounge.com/rate . Another way you can help us out is by spreading the word and telling other SEGA-minded people about how great (I hope) the show is.

This week's show was "sponsored" by BIRD BIRD.

• Theme song of The SEGA Lounge by OSC. You can buy it at 'name your price' by going to https://opussciencecollective.bandcamp.com/album/megane-hatsune-miku-project-diva
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