Nintendo offered the NES Classic in its day, Atari is working on a new console, and now it is none other than Sega that steps forward with a special announcement. Although we would love to see this company return to the hardware market, the new Sega Forever service is shaping up as a solid alternative. In essence, a large number of classics will be available for mobile devices at no cost at all, spanning every generation of systems Sega launched in the past.
Nostalgia seems to be an inexhaustible source of revenue, but anyone who decides to follow that path must tread very carefully. We have seen dozens of projects that promise to revive a specific console or computer, and the end result is always too expensive, or very different from what we remember of the original hardware. Beyond its success, today I can say with some certainty that the NES Classic was expensive at 60 dollars, but I don't know whether Nintendo did the right thing by discontinuing it. It is clear that there is significant demand for classic titles out there, or rather, for access to them without relying on emulation. That is the void Sega will try to fill with its new service for mobile devices, Sega Forever.
From the SG-1000 to the Dreamcast
From the SG-1000 to the Dreamcast, through the Game Gear and the Saturn, Sega Forever will offer the best games from those platforms free of charge. The first five are Sonic the Hedgehog, Phantasy Star II, Altered Beast, Comix Zone and Kid Chameleon. In theory there will be new titles every two weeks (I would like to imagine we will see the first Phantasy Star to begin the saga as it should be), but something tells me there are certain technical details left to resolve. Sega Forever includes global score tables and support for Bluetooth gamepads, essential no matter how you look at it.
What's the fine print?
So... what's the fine print? Basically, Sega Forever games will have advertising, and anyone who wants to remove it will have to pay two dollars per title. Sega will allow offline play even for the versions with ads, as well as saving games and seeing our names on the leaderboard. The official page indicates that the next game is Virtua Tennis Challenge, released in 2012 for iOS and Android. I figure Sega's plan is to take the games it already has available on those operating systems and add them to Forever, but our wish is to see real classics: all the Sonic games, Battletoads, the Double Dragon series, Earthworm Jim, Ecco the Dolphin, Golden Axe, Moonwalker, Out Run, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter II, Super Hang-On...
