"Power The Next Level": SEGA To Revive Classic IP

It's hard to believe others have spent precious seconds on this forum mucking around with discussion on topics like "Monster Hunter" and "Christmas" instead of revelling in the glory of SEGA's Games Awards show announcement:



New Jet Set Radio, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi games are in development.

INJECT THIS INTO MY BAWS, THE 1990S ARE FUCKIN BACK

Apparently there's more to come too, and not long after Samba de Amigo, House of the Dead and Panzer Dragoon returned as well.

What might you hope to see from SEGA in the future?

Although most of those games aren't among my favourites, I'm really glad that Sega's looking at their older properties and revamping them for 2023 (and I would look forward to playing a new Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi definitely).

Stupid and probably flawed hot take incoming: there are a load of big "new" IPs in the last few years which end up being identikit games, and aren't remembered 3 months later (what the fuck was that one with space wizards that was basically still just a generic FPS in the end). I'm all for developers looking at the 80s and 90s, when there were a lot of wacky ideas coming out, and perhaps developing a game with modern sensibilities around those concepts. I don't have a specific Sega-answer to that question*, but I'm glad it's happening.



*No wait, Pengo

This was absolutely the announcement of the night, all big surprises and all looking pretty neat from the brief glimpses. I am there! No idea what the "and more" could be though, Space Harrier, Comix Zone, Alterted Beast, that kind of shite.

@Jimbob Immortals of Aveum, which is great.

I think they've mentioned since Virtua Fighter being looked at. The worry for these new games is they've said somewhere about copying Fortnite, so can't wait for the Crazy Pass for a new Taxi.

Just give me a Saga remake, so can I play it.

I've no nostalgia for SEGA or the line-up they were talking about beyond Streets of Rage and Crazy Taxi, but fair play to them for remembering they've got a wealth of IP beyond Sonic that they've been doing nothing with. I'd imagine most of these are a fair way out - I don't think we'll see any of them until 2025, to be honest.

Aye, this was definitely one of the best things announced at TGA.

The Shinobi game is by lizardcube (the folk that done SoR4) apparently so that's in very good hands, also Jay is probably right that most will be out 2025 but I can see a few maybe sneaking into the end of next year.

The_Jaster wrote:

The Shinobi game is by lizardcube (the folk that done SoR4) apparently so that's in very good hands

That's good to hear, it looked a bit like The Messenger and that Chinese Game Pass game The Legend of Tianding. Streets of Rage 4 is one of the greatest videogames, so this could be special.

I'm pretty disconnected from whatever The Game Awards is, but seeing "Crazy Taxi" trending on UK Twitter made me smile last week. Being chased by police in Crazy Taxi seemed a bit odd, and made me wonder if this was part of a wider open-world game. SEGA had mentioned before about making some super game that included all sorts of IPs, so I thought it looked like part of a bigger game. A standalone Crazy Taxi 4 would be brilliant, but would that work in 2024? It's been so long since the last one, it could go all a bit Shenmue. I'm holding my erection down for now, until I know more about what this will be.

Golden Axe in 3D looked a bit wank. Would have loved to see a Golden Axe 4 done the same as Streets of Rage 4, given those series are pretty similar. Jet Set Radio looks like a reboot of the original, if I'm not mistaken? Definitely up for that. Not really sure what the Streets of Rage footage was - are we still trying to make 3D brawlers work? I mean, I'll buy it, but not sure if this is Streets of Rage 5 or part of this super game.

In summary, I'm excited to see SEGA bring back these series, particularly Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio. Related to this, SEGA also announced that Virtua Fighter 3tb, SEGA Bass Fishing and SpikeOut are in Yakuza 8, all Model 3 arcade games. Exciting times...

I'm bang up for a Crazy Taxi, Shinobi looked excellent and I'm up for that Golden Axe actually, looked right up my street.

Overall, I'm not a big Sega fan but the 90s-ness of that trailer was top, especially the deranged "SEGA" to camera at the end.

The reservation I had before reading this thread was that SEGA would partner with studios such as Forever Entertainment who, as they showed with the flawed Panzer Dragoon and House of the Dead remakes, maybe don’t do the source material total justice. It didn’t cross my mind that they’d turn it any of these games into something alike Fortnite. That said, quickly looking at the statistics through a Google Search I’d be well up for a big 1,603,416 player game of Golden Axe.

I didn't know that about Yakuza 8 either. Can you unlock/get to the old arcade games quickly in Yakuza?

Aye, usually there's a maybe a half hour to an hour introduction where the story kicks off and you run through tutorials for the game before it throws you out to explore the city, but once you're given free reign of things you can head off to the arcade to your heart's content. No idea if that's changed in the newer ones - Andy will know - but that's how it was in the first few Yakuza games.

On LAD, I'm waiting for them to put Yakuza (PS2) in the game.

It's pretty much always play the first few hours and then at some point the city will open up and you're free. I'd say if you were ever to try one make it 0 though as it has a decent selection of the retro ones and isn't the terrible turn based system.

It's not much but a little more info for these games popped up on my twitter feed yesterday.

https://www.gematsu.com/2023/12/crazy-taxi-golden-axe-jet-set-radio-shinobi-and-streets-of-rage-revivals-new-information-and-images

Crumpy Andy wrote:

It's pretty much always play the first few hours and then at some point the city will open up and you're free. I'd say if you were ever to try one make it 0 though as it has a decent selection of the retro ones and isn't the terrible turn based system.

Cheers for advising. I think I'd have tried Yakuza if it were on a Nintendo console, I like the sound of it. There's nothing stopping me from getting them on PlayStation but I play that a fraction of the amount of time I do my Switch, or even my 3DS and Wii U.

What would have been best for all concerned was that if SEGA re-released these old games like Daytona USA 2 and Fighting Vipers 2 and made these Yakuza spin-offs the hidden-away bonus games. I know the Yakuza games are heavily resourced, widely marketed and cost tens of millions of dollars to make, but name one person who wouldn't walk into an Electronics Boutique, see Daytona USA 2 and scream 'fuckin' yaldy!'.

The_Jaster wrote:

It's not much but a little more info for these games popped up on my twitter feed yesterday.

https://www.gematsu.com/2023/12/crazy-taxi-golden-axe-jet-set-radio-shinobi-and-streets-of-rage-revivals-new-information-and-images

I'll be monitoring the progress of all of those projects and I'm confident that they'll be at least good