Sega Forever, mobile re-releases

I would never argue against dreaming big. Hey, I went into E3 hoping against hope they might announce OG Xbox backward compatibility - and they did!

So yeah, maybe this is down the road on their map. But initially at least, looks like Genesis stuff.

Oh wait a minute, did I say tomorrow? Apparently that means today. Just downloaded Phantasy Star II, give it a go as soon as I get some spare time.

Ok lets see what the trailer says is coming.

Sonic, Revenge of Shinobi, Altered Beast, Comix Zone, Crazy Taxi, Phantasy Star 2, Vectorman (?), Sonic CD, Streets of Rage (?), Golden Axe, Ecco the Dolphin, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle

Those are what I can make out from the icon list.

I also see in the bin Wonder Boy, Sonic Adventure, Jet Grind Radio, and one more box that looks like it may be the back of Gunstar Heroes.

Will all those make it? who knows but Sega. But I can reasonably state all make an appearance in the trailer.

@divedivedive I’d also note that there are several Dreamcast game boxes featured prominently. There is also an icon for Sonic CD, indicating that games will not be strictly limited to Genesis, well the baseline Genesis. Would you classify Sega CD as it’s own thing, or merely a Genesis subtype?

A Dreamcast game. Suck it, @divedivedive.

I want to be very clear! They did not feature any of the Dreamcast games other than Crazy Taxi in the icon blitz at the end. The only other non Genesis game I see is Sonic CD. So while it heavily implies non Genesis games, I can’t be certain they ever materialize.

Also notably absent is Kid Chameleon, which we know is coming out, so by no means conclusive. But Ecco, Vectorman seem like sure bets, since they are part of the 6 prominent icons at the end.

Sucking it!

http://i.imgur.com/0w5UAMX.gif

Crazy Taxi has been on mobile for a while.

Huh, didn’t know that. Ok then.

There’s also a clicker version which was just released. Don’t bother with that one.

I’ve found that a lot of these games just aren’t a tremendous amount of fun with touchscreen controls. Some of them are fine, but shit—Jet Grind Radio? That game was hard as hell with the gamepad it was designed for. Trying to play it on a touchscreen would be torturous.

I will say that the mobile port of Virtual Tennis turned out really well, and the Christian Whitehead ports of the classic Sonic games are great also.

I personally don’t care for 3D games on mobile touch interfaces, it’s just difficult. Even my 5 year old son manages better than I do, I’m impressed with how he zips around in Minecraft.

What, no Warrior of the Eternal Sun or Shining Forces? Well, I guess I can wait.

Wow, that takes me back - a friend of mine in college had that and I think we spent an entire lazy Saturday playing that game. I remember when I could do stuff like that.

I didn’t know that either. How is it with a touch screen?

Bad news from Eurogamer, sounds like the Unity-based emulator is garbage:

That’s only the tip of the iceberg, however, as there’s a much bigger problem with this Sega Forever line-up: these ports offer significantly worse performance than that of their older versions, even on more modern hardware.

Allegedly this is because these retro classics were ported over in Unity. Our Digital Foundry tech aficionado John Linneman said “Do not touch those Sega Forever games,” noting that they’re “lousy emulation in a Unity wrapper.”

Emphasis mine. 😥

We’ll see in time, but I played a bit of Sonic, and it worked fine. Seemed smooth, crisp, and controlled well. I dunno, maybe the others are terrible, I’ll give Phantasy Star a look see later.

Phantasy Star seems fine to me, but then it was never really about performance either.

For the record, since it may be relevant, I am using an iPhone 6s.

Kid Chameleon seems fine, though the ads are a bit more prominent (there is a required ad watch to save, but I didn’t pay so can’t complain). It’s a bit trickier to control because the game is a little more complex, but the setup seems fine.

Phantasy Star seems to have the same emulation as Kid Chameleon, and same ad system. Which are notably distinct from Sonic. It also, at first glance, seems smooth and playable.

Not going to argue about performance, I wasn’t tracking framerate, but it seems good. And a word of note the article seems to source those complaints from an alternative engine developer, one whom it seems had a negative experience with Sega. So how much is them being sore about being asked to switch from a GPL license to MIT, which they have every reason to take issue with if they feel it important, and how much is widespread performance issues, I can not say.

But other Qt3ers I wouldn’t let it steer you away if you have the itch! Give it a try.

I will probably get Phantasy Star 2 - I have played that at least a half dozen times over the years but never finished it.

Mind boggling that Sega doesn’t release Phantasy Star 5. At the very least, they should port PS 4 to phones as it aged the best of those games.