It’s been a rough few years for Sega, largely due to COVID-19 forcing the closure of its already declining arcade businesses. Since last year, the company has been working on a change in strategy to help make its business more sustainable in the long term. The good news for fans of classic Sega games is that this means more remakes and remasters of older Sega IPs.
In its annual earnings presentation for investors, Sega outlined some of its plans for the current fiscal year, which runs from April 2022 to March 2023. One of those plans includes “multiple titles” that Sega considers “Remake/Remaster, Spin -Off /Change theme.”
Although the wording is a bit clunky there, Sega does give some useful examples from last year – think more games like Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania or Lost Judgment. The publisher expects to sell five million units in total in this category, up from four million last year.
Including new releases, Sega is aiming to publish 13 games during that same period, up from seven last year. We already know about Sonic Frontiers, Sonic Origins, Soul Hackers 2, Endless Dungeon, and Two Point Campus, and it’s possible that 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim’s Switch release last month will also be counted in that total. That would leave seven games we don’t know about yet, and possibly multiple remakes or remasters.
So what could we see redone? It’s hard to say, but a Sega presentation from a year ago has some clues. With the announcement of its new strategy, Sega listed a number of previous IPs as examples that it might consider for remasters, remakes, or reboots (including several that we’ve already seen remasters or remakes of). They are:
- Crazy Taxi
- jet set radio
- space channel 5
- Rez
- Panzer Dragon
- NIGHTS
- shinobi
- virtual fighter
- altered beast
- House of the Dead
- streets of rage
- soul hackers
There’s no guarantee that we’ll see specific games on that list reviewed; it’s just a bunch of ideas that Sega was exploring last year. But it’s good news nonetheless that Sega is willing to lavishly exploit its classic library as part of its growth plans in the coming years. Fingers crossed for more Space Channel 5, shall we?
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for Golden News. You can find her on Twitter @patovalentine.
