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Sega's 3D Ages Confirmed For U.S. Release
Thanks to 1UP for its post confirming that Sega's 3D Ages series of classic remakes for PlayStation 2 will be released Stateside, courtesy of publisher Conspiracy Entertainment, who have announced a four-year deal to "manufacture, market, and distribute a total of 14 updated Sega titles." Slashdot has previously covered 1UP-sourced reviews for the first five volumes in the series, including Phantasy Star: Generation 1, Monaco GP, Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier and Golden Axe, all "revised versions of Sega arcade and Master System games with updated graphics, some of them in 3D", and all confirmed for a 2004 U.S. release. According to IGN PS2, later 3D Ages releases will include "Streets of Rage, Gain Ground, Bonanza Bros., Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Virtua Racing, Last Bronx, Phantasy Star II, [and] Phantasy Star: End of the Millennium", and Columns and Puzzle&Action are also listed on the Japanese 3D Ages site.
Considering the success of the Sonic Mega Collection on Gamecube, I'm surprised Sega isn't releasing this on a platform which has already proven it will buy classic Sega games...
I guess they saw how well the Sonic Mega Collection did on the GC and figured it would do five times better on a system with five times the installed user base.
This is awesome, I hope they are appropriately priced. They seem more like budget $10 or $15 games.
Don't have a ps2, but my gf does =)
oh man I'd get it for Phantasy Start alone. PSO on DC had me hooked when the servers were up.
The Phantasy Star series (especially 2 and 4) has always been one of my favorites. They introduced some truly unique ideas for the console RPG genre. At a time when most console RPGs were simple fantasy-oriented fare on the NES (games like Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, where characters were completely non-descript beings who simply occupied a space in your party), PS had characters with real personalities. This was heavily reinforced by the animated, 80's style portrait close-ups for important bits of dialogue and the occasional cut-scene that looked absolutely brilliant compared to anything else. The cool futuristic but still pseudo-fantasy setting helped immensely, as did the bright anime-style graphics.
The games also introduced (again, for the console world, don't go nitpicking some random Amiga RPG with this feature) Macro commands for the parties (introduced in part 2, I think), where you could select a single macro that would issue a given command to each party character. Especially cool was that particular spell, item, or ability combinations in those macros would combine to form more powerful spells and attacks. They mention generations, and for some reason that jumps into my head as the title for PS III, the weakest link in the series. It had some cool ideas (chief among them was the fact that characters would eventually marry, have children, and their kids would take up their place in the party), but it basically degenrated into a severely weak game with a bunch of generic fetch-quests. Although PSO is fun, it's a shame that the Phantasy Star series never got a proper revisiting in the true console RPG sense after the amazing PS IV. Please Sega, for the love of all that is holy, re-release PS IV.
Sorry, but by that logic, Sega would never have released the Sonic Collection on the Gamecube to begin with, since PS2 had and always will have a larger user base...
How bout the Shining in the Darkness / Shining Force games? Those are some classic sega games I lost many many hours to.
I started with nothing and have most of it left.
"They'll never release these stateside" I say to myself. So now that I've got a bid on a copy of Phantasy Star on eBay, they announce this.
Well, I don't know what the AC was thinking but..perhaps Sega's developers find that developing for the Gamecube has less overhead than developing for the PS2 and so the Sonic Collection was a proof of concept that people wanted classic games. Or maybe Nintendo gave them a break on the licensing to help Gamecube sales.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
Well, the Sonic Collection was a Sonic Team game, and Sonic Team preferred to do stuff only for the GC. Sega put the kibosh on that with Sonic Heroes (although Billy Hatcher was a GC exclusive, presumably because it wasn't anywhere near as big a title). I imagine if the Sonic Collection were released today it would be a multi-platform title.
"figured it would do five times better on a system with five times the installed user base."
You mean like SoulCalibur II?