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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.
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.
PSO has about as much to do with the rest of the PS series as any first person shooter with real time combat. Granted PSI did have first person dungeons, but the simularities end there. If you are basing your desire to play the rest of the PS series on your experiences with PSO, you might be in for a bit of a surprise (as were the rest of the fans the first time they played PSO).
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.