Many fans of SEGA’s 3D Classic’s Collection praise the attention to detail and love that was put into these projects. Following the release of these 2D classics, SEGA fans are salivating at the thought of 3D classics from the SEGA Saturn and Dreamcast eras. Sega’s Yosuke Okunari gives an interesting response as to why we have not gotten these 3D classics yet.
“This has more to do with how the teams are divided amongst Sega as a company,” he notes. “Up until now, M2 has been focused on 8-bit and 16-bit ports, whereas Dreamcast and Saturn titles were done by staff that were assigned to those games from teams like AM2 or Sega of China. The idea behind that was to make these porting lines run as efficiently as possible, with the teams learning the know-how behind specific systems.”
“At the time, if M2 had researched porting Model 2 or 3 on their own and come to Sega for that, we’d have told them we already had teams assigned to it, or the market isn’t right at the time. That said, that sort of corporate direction has ended recently, and M2’s is the only port line that really exists anymore. There’s a possibility that ports for Model 3 could continue on their side.”
Naoki Horii, president of M2 (developers behind SEGA’s 3D Classics Collection), has stated that they are “definitely interested” in creating ports of the various Saturn and Dreamcast classics. At this point, it is up to SEGA to pull the trigger.
“Model 3 might actually be easier than Model 2,” says Horii. “We’re obviously interested, but Sega would have to make the business call there. We’ve mostly been focusing on getting Game Gear and 3D Classics working, so there hasn’t really been any time to research much outside of that. If the opportunity presented itself, I’d certainly consider it.”
Okunari echoed Horii’s statement by saying that since M2 has slowly been learning each system, it would be logical “continue along that route” and head into Saturn and Dreamcast territory.
“Over the past 11 years of the Sega Archive Project, M2 has slowly crept its way through SEGA hardware history, learning each system one by one,” says Okunari. “As the hardware evolves, external chips get brought in, and the boards themselves get powered up – but a lot of the core programming is the same. Their studies are evolving along with the hardware itself. They’ve entered the 1990s, so perhaps we’ll continue along that route.”
The thoughts of playing 3D classics from the SEGA Saturn and Dreamcast days certainly has me excited. What games from those eras would you like to see? Sound off in the comments below!
Via Gamasutra
