SEGA Forever

Today, SEGA officially annouced SEGA Forever, a "free classic games collection" for mobile with offline play, controller support and suspended saves.

There's a bit more about it on the website: http://forever.sega.com/ . It promises to include games from the SG-1000 to the Dreamcast, so the hope is that we'll see some stuff that's a bit different from the SEGA re-release norm. Tomorrow, it kicks off with five Mega Drive games: Sonic The Hedgehog, Kid Chameleon, Altered Beast, Comix Zone and Phantasy Star II. In a fortnight, it looks like Virtua Tennis is being added.

I'll be keeping an eye on this. How about youse? Does anybody have any thoughts other than 'this should be on console'?

This should - awww.

It'll be nice to raid the SEGA back catalogue, particularly if, as you say, some of the more unusual stuff makes it out. I'd be looking to play on a tablet, if at all possible, to negate the 'button controls on mobiles' issue as much as possible.

Touch screens for button games always physically hurt my soul, but Sega are among the best. And who's to say it won't come to Switch? That'd really mug off the ol' Virtual Console . . .

This looks too good to be true. Free? Or is it "free to play" as in you get to play the first level...

I'll probably sign up for this though. Especially if Dreamcast is touted.

Games are free but have adverts, but you can choose to buy each title for £1.99 play it ad-free

In till it comes to console with sounds like it might as it is all Unity based as a middleware (I've heard this isn't a good thing running the games though), then I really don't care and aren't some of these games already on mobile like the Sonics.

SEGA say they're listening, if they are then it will be on console sooner then later.

Recently heard that the emulation of the games is really not good. Not sure how this is possible, given that there were reasonable versions of them on the Wii.

The emulation and performance is pish. Though they're not any good anyway, Altered Beast and Kid Chameleon have arguably never been worse than they are here, on Android. They're just really sluggish altogether. I'm sure there's a big boring explanation as to why they play so sloppily, but, aye, this stuff's been done much better elsewhere for years. Really disappointing.

From what I've read about this, it seems as though the new ports are done on the cheap without the care of previous mobile ports, resulting in a pretty bloated game file that feels miserable to play. Disappointing to hear.

Yet again, SEGA throw away a great opportunity. I've lost all hope for SEGA in 2017 - they have so many great properties they are sitting on.

gjones wrote:

Yet again, SEGA throws away a great opportunity. I've lost all hope for SEGA in 2017 - they have so many great properties they are sitting on.

It took you this long to lose hope

SEGA actually may have decent 2017 maybe as good as Nintendo or Sony, if you look at them as a whole with Persona 5, The PC ports, Sonics etc

Progress has been slow here, as since the last post there's only been three new games added to the library. They're absolute crackers on paper mind: Virtua Tennis, The Revenge of Shinobi and Ristar are all among SEGA's best.

Or at least they were elsewhere. Virtua Tennis is just that mobile version from the start of the decade, and that wasn't as good as the version on the Dreamcast. Shinobi is a crime against gming unfortunately, chugging along at 0.00001fps. Ristar fairs much better though, and the emulation isn't that bad. Yet it suffers with the touch controls, as it's a game that needs fast inputs and precision with the D-Pad.

I've seen adverts on facebook and that for little joysticks you stick to the touchscreen for games like this. I wonder if that'd make a big difference to these?

This what really upsets me about the (still not quite realised threat) of mobile being the default choice for portable gaming. If you have to consider buying a 3rd party peripheral (which can potentially arse up your phone) to make a game serviceable, then this can't be the right way.

Whatever happens, SEGA are going to have to sort something out: the continued bad press about Forever is not doing them any favours, particularly when games like Ristar deserve a wider audience.