Sega before milking Sonic for everything he’s worth and releasing yet another new game based on him every six months over various platforms was known for making a multitude of games that were unique, innovative, interesting and above all, fun to play. So here is a list devoted to those franchises the fans (or rather I) would like to see Sega making again.

 

 

 

 

 

Before Guitar Hero, before your dance mats and your Singstar games people were quite content to buy games that just involved pressing buttons to a beat and when the lead game of the genre was a rapping dog you know that they weren’t going to be the most coherent games.

Space Channel 5 had you shake the booty of News Reporter Ulala as she hypnotizes invading aliens with dance moves and saves hostages all the while keeping in beat to the music. The player would have to then either shoot the aliens or save the hostages. Ulala manages to build quite a posse following her and helping her perform her bizarre musical routine.

The game paved the way for Samba De Amigo which in turn paved the way for novelty musical controllers. Think of that the next time you’re pretending to be Slash while pressing your guitar shaped Simon-says controller.

 

 

Low

The Music game market is saturated at the moment with Rock Band, Guitar Hero, Samba De Amigo, Wii Music, Singstar and any others you may know of. Although there isn’t a game that involves singing while shooting aliens yet, umm.

 

 

 

Before Sonic burst on the scene there was Alex Kidd and was seen as many as the mascot of Sega, with six games and later versions of the Master System having the game “Alex Kidd in Miracle World” built into the system meaning that anybody who owned a Sega system at the time was likely to own a Alex Kid game. One of the games was a spin off racing game which goes to show that Sega hasn’t changed too much over the last 20 odd years.

While Alex Kidd is just a basic platform game with three basic lives and no level password it did introduce the world to continues meaning provided you had the money you could start from the same level with three brand new lives.

 

                            Alex punches a bird.

 

 

Low

Alex Kidd as only appeared a handful of times since Sonic showed up but was a playable character in Sega Superstar Tennis. And you know what fans are like when you put an old character as a playable character in a spin-off series, I’m looking at you Pitt.

 

 

 

 

This game allowed the average Joe to live out his Diehard fantasies by taking control a cop and shooting the hell out of everything with the use of a light-gun. It originally started off as an arcade game it moved to the Saturn and had two sequels named Virtual Cop 2 & 3 respectively. It wasn’t only on the ill fated Saturn it was ported over to the PC and to the PS2 so somebody in Sega has heard of it.

At the time it was the first game that allowed you to shoot through glass and coupled with the fact that random innocent people popping up meant you couldn’t just shoot everything, shoot some more and then if in doubt, shoot. No you had to be careful not to kill innocents as that affected your score. Also without Virtual Cop the House of the Dead Series probably wouldn’t have been released as it used this game’s new polygonal graphics as the base instead of sprites of other games.

 

 

 

High

Sega have released a console version of Ghost Squad and a new game of the House of the Dead series both of which are shooter based games similar to Virtual Cop.

 

 

 

 

A little known game for the Dreamcast put us in the small shoes of a young boy playing with his toys. We controlled the good toys loyal to the boy against the evil red army horde controlled by Teddy. Featuring multiple vehicles such as trucks, tanks, boats, planes, cars and even bulldozers (all types of toy, duh) as you completed various missions in the rooms around the house. Each room housed a boss which after defeating we could use to fight the final boss.

Controls did take some getting used to especially as you rarely used the same vehicles again in missions meaning the game becomes frustrating and has quite a high difficulty curve but overall variety of ideas in the game was its ultimate charm. It released a spin-off game Toy Racer (only in Europe) for a very small price was basically only an online-game with single player consisting of time attack.

 

 

 

Low

Oh so low, the production team that made the game spilt up and gone their separate ways and since a Christmas special demo in 2000 nothing more has been made of the series.

 

 

 

 

Crazy Taxi kinda gives you all the information you need about the game in the title. You play as a cab driver who picks up fares and then gets them to their destination in the fastest possible time and while providing the biggest thrill to the passenger. Dodging traffic while on the wrong side of the road and then getting air while going over bumps were all encouraged and provided massive tips. This works in real life too but it’s more along the lines of “Take my money and let me out”.

Wait you’re probably saying, there is a Crazy Taxi game on the PSP. Ah but if you look closely you’ll notice it’s just Crazy Taxi 1 & 2 stapled together without the soundtrack, also it was released in 2007 so it’s been a couple of years now. I want a brand new Crazy Taxi.

Also its thanks mostly to this game Sega owns the rights for an arrow indicating system while driving. That’s right Sega has a Patent and is due rights to any game that does this.

 

         The latest solution to traffic congestion

 

High

Numerous references to the game in many Sega works, the third best selling Dreamcast game in the US, a port on a current system and provided the patent rights to a possibly highly profitable game mechanic, I think that means it’s likely to happen.

 

 

 

 

The Panzer Dragoon series focuses on, well Dragons to put it bluntly, which are by-products of an ancient war that destroyed the planet leaving humanity but a shell of its former self. The series has a total of 6 games, four of which can be classed as main games, three of which are linear on rail shooters and one which is a massive RPG spanning four Saturn disks.

Now while I’m not too interested in the on-rail shooter games I really loved the RPG despite the fact I only managed to get disk one of the set. While the on-rail games are by no means bad (and the latest one of the Xbox provided hordes of extras) the RPG allowed the player to explore a highly detailed world where all the games are set. Also let’s face it, who doesn’t want to control a 10 foot dragon that can transform and fire homing missiles. The fact that at the moment the cheapest Panzer Dragoon Saga game on e-bay is selling at £85 goes to say a lot about the appeal of this game.

 

                                  Phallic much?

High

Panzer Dragoon Orta the last in the series was well received but alas the idea of them making another RPG style game seems highly unlikely.

 

 

 

 

Bare with me on this one, Burning Rangers is set in the future where firefighters are equipped with jetpacks allowing some pretty nifty flying/jumping. They also have shields that are powered by crystals; you gain these crystals by shooting fires with your hi-tech fire extinguisher. Thankfully this gun is also harmful to the various robots and aliens that attack you while you attempt to fight the blaze and save people in the levels via a transporter.

The game was bloody brilliant with the controls perfectly done, the levels varied vastly (they also changed slightly every time you replayed a level) although there was only four, and the bosses really shook up the firefighters life. After saving people you then got mail and hidden extras from meaning you cared about finding that last person in the level which lead to multiple play throughs. Originally to be called Burning Angels because of the jetpack design gives you a clue to how stylish the game was back when it was released.

 

 

 

Medium

Sega has numerously referenced the game in other games and it’s a cult classic hit on the Saturn much like KNiGHTs was. Other than that it’s all quiet on the Sega front.

 

 

 

 

Focusing on a group of rebellious teenagers with weird fashion sense in the near future as they rolled around on jet powered roller-skates while “tagging” the city with spray paint. They fight against rival gangs and (in the first one at least) they manage to prevent the Devil being summoned via a demonic LP disk.

It featured ground breaking Cel-shaded graphics gaining a lot of praise, of also equal note is the soundtrack which is so good I still listen to it today. The Xbox game Jet Set Radio Future added onto the series with better Cel-shading and new remixes of some of the songs in the previous game, I also listen to that soundtrack too.

 

           In the future spray cans will be super-sized

 

 

High

In fact a new game was going to be made for the Wii but Sega decided against the new concept saying it “did not take”. Also Sega has renewed the Jet Set Radio trademark in the US along with the ChuChu Rocket trademark, another Sega game that almost made this list.

 

 

 

 

Shenmue attempted something many games since have tried to adopt and that’s a truly realistic game world where people walk around, talk, go to work and go to sleep at night. The day chances in real time and the weather is variable. You know what, I think Shenmue and Shenmue II does it the best and the fact that this type of detail in a game was completely unprecedented when made makes it that more impressive.

Aside from giving us a changing world environment, that the GTA series (among others) would copy, it also popularized the Quick Time Event. Fail to press a button during a cutscene and you would end up getting beaten up or worse but generally unless you get killed the game keeps playing just with a slightly different storyline. Add to this random events and you never play the same game twice.

Above all the reason why I want a sequel is painfully clear; they left it at a cliffhanger. God I want to know what happens next.

 

                                Ryo fights an old man

 

 

Low

The amount of money to make this massive world was equally large and despite Shenmue being the fourth best selling title on the Dreamcast it clearly wasn’t enough to Sega to continue after leaving the hardware market. Also the lack of a fan base on the Xbox means that many people just have never heard of it. Shenmue III has been announced twice, both times being canceled and the spin-off Shenmue Online has been in limbo since legal issues affected production in 2005.

 

 

 

 

Ever since the release of Final Fantasy VII (and some would argue before that) RPGs became dark and full of angst with main characters trying a mix between moody, mysterious and cool. Skies of Arcadia came along with a bright new world with likeable characters that actually liked each other and was crammed full of classic clichés which ironically gave the game a fresh feel.

The game gave an interesting storyline, a solid combat system and a rather unique idea of flying ships and floating islands in the sky instead of landmasses and water seas. It was later had a port with extras on the GameCube. While in no way groundbreaking the interesting characters, the feel of the game and the fact the game was fun means that it’s worthy of the top spot in this list.

 

            Flying Pirates, oh yeah this game was cool

 

 

Medium

It remains a very popular game with many fans and the main characters had a cameo-role in Valkyria Chronicles. However since the canceled PS2 port no word has been made on a sequel.