It’s been a rough few years for Sega, in no small part due to COVID-19 forcing the shutdown of its already declining arcade businesses. Since last year, the company has been working on a strategy change to help its business become more sustainable long-term. The good news in this for fans of classic Sega games is that this means more remakes and remasters of older Sega IP.
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 of 2023. One of those plans includes “multiple titles” that Sega considers “Remake/Remaster, Spin-Off/Change of theme.”
Though the wording is a big clunky there, Sega gives a few helpful examples from this past year: think more games like Sonic Colors: Ultimate, Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, or Lost Judgment. The publisher is hoping to sell five million units total from this category, up from four million this past year.
Including brand new releases, Sega is aiming to publish 13 games during that same period, up from seven this past 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 is also being counted in that total. That would leave seven games we don’t know about yet, and possibly multiple remakes or remasters.
So what might we see remade? 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 past IP as examples it might look at for remasters, remakes or reboot (including several we’ve already seen remasters or remakes of). They are:
- Crazy Taxi
- Jet Set Radio
- Space Channel 5
- Rez
- Panzer Dragoon
- NiGHTS
- Shinobi
- Virtua Fighter
- Altered Beast
- House of the Dead
- Streets of Rage
- Soul Hackers
There are no guarantees that we’ll see any specific games from that list revisited — it’s just a bunch of ideas Sega was exploring as of last year. But it’s nonetheless good news that Sega is willing to liberally mine its classic library as a part of its plans to grow in the coming years. Fingers crossed for more Space Channel 5, right?
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. You can find her on Twitter @duckvalentine.
