Oh snap, legal emulation on the iPhone from Sega. This looks like Sega pulled a play from C64's book http://gizmodo.com/5452354/ultimate-genesis-the-iphones-first-official-console-emulator
So segas releasing an emulator, which you probably have to pay for, with no games included and only like 4-5 games to download? Pass
its free with in app purchasing and comes with a game.. i think the c64 emulators like 4.99 US and comes with 2-4 games.. seems pretty reasonable to me..
Instant buy for me if they bring dragon's fury (devil's crush I think in US) or any of the Shinobi games
They should do that Sonic CD game thing we saw a few months ago. Apart from a free Space Harrier and reducing icon clutter, no one else will buy this. Those who want must've already bought the game long time ago. Those who haven't aren't more likely to buy it now. I mean, they're exactly the same games run on poor emulator with zero effort put into it. Sega is just plain stupid. I can't believe they're the game company I loved most as a kid. I still love them, but they're just retarded thesedays.
I'm not sure why this is a bad move? They're releasing a free emulator with dlc...sounds better than releasing all the games separately. Plus, any controls update or any update at all would be much easier on their part. Pretty smart way to bring more games to the platform I'd say.
I'm a SEGA lover, but I have three HUGE problems with Genesis games on AppStore: 1. The emulator itself isn't fully optimised for iDevices. I mean, Genesis is 20+ years old and I had an emulator running Genesis flawlessly 10 years ago, so there's no reason iDevices can't handle those old games. Yet we still get choppy framerate on 2nd gen devices. 2. The games are very basic, too basic. There's no bonus content or save slots or anything. The controls are not tweaked, they just put virtual buttons lazily. See how much effort idsoftware put into the controls when they make Wolfenstein and Doom for iPhone. They didn't just put a virtual d-pad there and be done with it. It makes a huge difference! Then look at how Taito give us bonus content of original sketches of Space Invaders. It's not super-wow, but still a nice touch. At the very least they can give us save slots! 3. You can get 29 best Genesis games running perfectly at 60fps with save slots and bonus content for $15-20 on other platforms like PS2, PSN and Xbox 360.
I'm going to hold out hope that you can somehow import the existing games into the emulator. I have Sonic, Golden Axe, and SoR. They're still listed under "Sega" in the app store. I just want to save some room on my phone, I'm obviously not going to rebuy something.
Totally agreed. The existing Sega releases were horribly rushed. What should have been amazing ports of amazing games turned into terrible ports of amazing games. If they want anyone to take the emulator seriously they're gonna have to put some actual effort into it.
Hm... Shining Force is one of those famous Japanese SRPGs I keep hearing about. I may get it, just to see what the people are talking about. Did Sega make any other RPGs for Genesis?
From reading the main page article this app is going to be free, include space harrier II as a bonus and then charge you for any games on top of that, that is quite a nice package. You can get these games cheaper on other consoles but my touch lives in my pocket, I can take it with me and play it anywhere I want, a bit impossible to carry my pc, 360 or megadrive around, no? I will grab shining force at least, that sort of game will be great to play on the move and they are selling it at a fair price too, the game might be old and have clones but it's still a worthwhile title to own and play. Fingers crossed they release phantasy star IV at some point.
Do you have this "official" Ultimate Genesis emulator app? As far as I can tell, it's not yet available. Or are you judging based on previously-available ported games? I think the article said this emu was optimized for idevices, so there is some reason to believe that the games made available for the emu app may well perform differently than the ported versions. Of course, the big question remains whether people will be willing to pay the cash in order to find out if that's actually the case. The other question is whether Sega will be able to make third-party games available for this thing. A lot of the best Genesis games were not produced by Sega.
It's the latter one, of course. I sure hope you're right that they have optimised the emulator and tweaked the controls, but my gut feeling tells me they're simply too lazy for that. And if they indeed do that, I sure hope they care to update all their Genesis games so far with the new emulator as otherwise old customers would be ripped off. Re third party license, Sega might have it. Afterall, they've released their Sega Mega Drive/ Genesis Collection on PS2, PSN and XBox 360. So why not AppStore?