SEGA Forever is up to their old tricks again and it seems they’re teasing some upcoming releases on Twitter. First let’s dial way, way back to the summer of 2010 when the App Store was still in its infancy and SEGA had in the previous year or so dabbled with releasing some classic Genesis games like Sonic The Hedgehog and Streets of Rage for iOS. You may recall that those releases were simply the original ROMs wrapped up in a fairly janky emulator, and they didn’t work all that well on the touchscreen. Then they released Phantasy Star 2 and, due to the slower pace and turn-based nature, it actually worked well even in that janky old emulator. Fast forward to June of 2017 when SEGA rolled out their SEGA Forever initiative and Phantasy Star 2 was in that initial lineup of revamped, re-released classics for mobile. Now, according to the SEGA Forever Twitter account we should be seeing the third and fourth entries in the Phantasy Star series soon.
The passageways between the Layan worlds and the Orakian world were sealed.
In time, people forgot there were other worlds besides Landen.#SEGAForever pic.twitter.com/1YzRyaZJJU
— SEGA Forever (@SEGAForever) February 18, 2019
#SEGAForever pic.twitter.com/xxRAylfS7s
— SEGA Forever (@SEGAForever) February 19, 2019
Now you might remember that last month SEGA Forever went and teased Golden Axe 2 on Twitter, and then teased Golden Axe 3 on Twitter, and then the very next day they updated the existing Golden Axe SEGA Forever title to become Golden Axe Classics, encompassing all three games into a single app. They also did something similar when they released Shining Force Classics last fall which was three classic games in the Shining Force series bundled into one app. Might we see the existing Phantasy Star 2 Classic become Phantasy Star Classics and have all three games in one package? My money is on “yes." As cool as that sounds, it also brings up the question of the original Phantasy Star. SEGA is currently selling the SEGA AGES version of Phantasy Star on the Nintendo Switch for eight bucks, so I’m not sure if they’d be keen on turning around and just giving that same game away for free on mobile. This might just become a collection of 2, 3, and 4. Whatever the case we’ll likely find out later this week as SEGA Forever tends to release games pretty quickly after teasing something about them.
as Kool-Aid Main said, OHHH YEAHHHHH
The SEGA AGES version(s), from what I’ve gathered from Shaun’s articles, is a much greater emulation effort than Sega Forever which seems to be just placing v-stick controls on a rom with less accurate audio. I would definitely pay more for greater effort but I’m probably alone in that. Still love classic Sega so I will definitely pick up SF Phantasy Star even if part 1 is not included.
Never got to play Phantasy Star series on the genesis unfortunately since part IV was going for around $100 when I was a child at my local Toys R’ Us so this will be my first time playing this classic series.