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The Next ‘SEGA Forever’ Game Release is Almost Certainly ‘Ristar’

SEGA Forever, SEGA’s new retro gaming initiative, has had a pretty rocky start since its launch a couple of months ago. Between severe emulation problems, bugs with purchase histories and saved games on certain games, and the somewhat underwhelming selection of launch titles, a lot of hopeful SEGA fans were let down. For their part, SEGA has been working pretty hard to address those problems. They’ve already updated the initial spate of titles to make some improvements to the emulator, the aforementioned save/purchase history bugs were squashed quickly, and the post-launch additions to the line-up have been better. This week sees the former industry titan doing even more to try to win back the trust of players.

First of all, the SEGA Forever Twitter account put out one of their usual teases for the next game.

All good little SEGA fans out there know whose hand that is. Ristar is an amazing game from the SEGA Genesis library with gorgeous graphics and some of the finest music on the platform. While it shares a genre and some team members with big brother Sonic the Hedgehog, Ristar is a slightly slower-paced affair that will probably take better to touch controls than some of the other action games SEGA has released. With the game’s music being a highlight, I was doing my regularly-scheduled Twitter griping about the state of the sound emulation in the previous SEGA Forever releases. The SEGA Forever account replied to my concerns with some interesting information.

As was the case with previous teases, the game the tease is referring to will release this week. More exciting is that it will come with an updated version of the emulator that has new features. I’m guessing that part of the update includes improvements to the sound emulation, since that was the specific issue SEGA was replying to. I’d imagine the framerate issues will also see some work, too. Not that it’s all that surprising, but SEGA will be pushing this improved emulator to the previously-released Genesis games as well.

It’s too early to throw a party yet, of course. I’ll be giving Ristar (probably) a thorough playthrough when it hits the App Store. For good or for ill, I’ll update you all with my impressions after I’ve done that. Ristar is a personal favorite of mine, so I’m going to cross my fingers that SEGA does it right. I’ll also be crossing another pair of fingers that SEGA sees fit to include Shining Force CD and Phantasy Star 1 in the line-up soon so that more of their classic hardware is represented. At any rate, it’s encouraging to see SEGA trying to do better. Let’s hope they keep at it.