This year marks the 30th anniversary of Sega Corporation, which started out as a video game software and hardware development company. As part of their ongoing commemoration of their milestone, Famitsu magazine spoke with Sega’s third CS Research and Development producer, Yosuke Okunari about his work.
In recent years, we’ve seen plenty classic remakes of Sega’s popular titles appear on various consoles. Famitsu began their interview by asking Okunari how he got working on the remakes.
“I started with Dragon Force of the Sega Ages 2500 series that was released on August of 2005,” says Okunari. “This series features remade titles from the past, but Virtua Fighter 2’s faithful remake that was released in 2004, was very well received.”
“From that, I was able to understand what it takes to make such a faithful remake, and it’s something I’ve put a lot of importance in, since I’ve started working on the series. So, we developed the Space Harrier Complete Collection, an entire compilation of the series, to go with the various generations of our customers.”
While Sega released numerous classic hits on the PlayStation 2 through the Sega Ages 2500 series, they’ve also been more recently releasing them as part of the Sega Ages Online, which consists of game collections made available on Xbox Live Arcade and the PlayStation Network, in addition to more on the Nintendo 3DS as part of their “3D Reproduction Project”.
“For the Virtual Console, the concept was to recreate the games exactly the way they were originally made,” Okunari shares. “Sega Ages Online presented new rules and functions, which brought a fresh new take on the way they’re played. However, the ‘3D Reproduction Project’ required further measures. That’s where we added a remake version exclusive ‘HAYA OH’ boss to 3D Space Harrier.”
While most of these classic remakes have consisted of arcade titles, they’ve also remade titles such as Sonic the Hedgehog as part of the 3D Reproduction Project.
“We wanted to go after a stereoscopic vision that was unimaginable,” Okunari explains. “For Sonic from the Sega Genesis, not only did we make it into 3D, but we also added the Spin Dash, which I believe made it easier to play. For 3D Galaxy Force II, the 3D added more depth to the screen, making it less common to get lost on the route. The things staff members wanted to express in the past but couldn’t, are now possible with today’s technology. And we’d like to share that joy. For our next lineup, it will depend on all of your voices, so please continue to support us.”
Sega’s 3D remakes for the Nintendo 3DS are headed to North America and Europe at some point, but thus far, Sega have not announced release dates for any of these titles.
Published: Oct 24, 2013 06:09 pm