#Sega Forever

[7marichan7]

🌙Happy anniversary, Nights into Dreams🌙

MY COMMISSIONS INFO

[doamarierose-honoka]

Back in June 2017, SEGA announced its SEGA Forever initiative to bring its classic games to iOS and Android as free to start games with a no ads IAP. Each game was to be adapted for mobile while remaining faithful to the originals. We saw the service launch with five games with more coming every few weeks. As recently as this week, select SEGA Forever games have been delisted on iOS and Android. Shaun has most of them installed and spotted some of them getting updates recently with new notifications in-game alerting users that the support for the specific game has ended, with a link to find more info on other platforms to play it on. Currently, that link opens SEGA’s home page. Check out the warning screenshot from Shaun below:

SEGA Forever games launched with cloud saves, controller support, and more. Shaun’s covered many of them over the years, but it seems like the program is currently on hold or over. SEGA is yet to announce anything, but if we do get any official news around it, we will post about it. If you missed the original launch, watch the unlisted trailer for it below:

As of now, it is unclear when many of these were delisted, but some were done as recently as this week. The delisted games are: Comix Zone, Altered Beast, Phantasy Star Classics, Revenge of Shinobi, Vectorman, Decap Attack, Eswat, Ristar, Space Harrier 2, Beyond Oasis, Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and After Burner Climax. There are still some games available to play and buy if you didn’t own them before, but the ones above have been delisted. It is unclear if they will return. Check out the official SEGA Forever website here. Did you play any of the delisted games before and what would you like to see SEGA bring to the his program if they are continuing it?

[segadriven]

SEGA Forever Release High Quality Screenshots of Cancelled Sonic X-Treme Game

[archonedd]

A journey through Sega's marketing machine with the power of the cassette

I know, I know, a bit of a wild stretch to start this blog off without some proper introduction. Hi. I'm archonedd / Nobusuke, and I'm an avid (at the time of publication) 23 year old Sega (and Sonic) nut.

After mercilessly mocking cassettes as some old fad throughout the elementary and high school years as the world started gravitating more and more towards online streaming, I picked up a cassette player in early 2017 no doubt due to the hype surrounding a cassette that Star-Lord was seen playing on repeat on one of the Guardians of the Galaxy movies. Along with said cassette player, came a Type 1 cassette tape to play. It changed my music experience in ways I'd never imagined, and I even tried substituting my CD-based boombox with one of these and needless to say the equipment left a lot to be desired.

It turns out that modern cassette players just don't have the quality mechanisms that legacy cassette decks used to have, and the number of new cassette-enabled devices seem to be dwindling globally as time goes on. Not to mention, most people's recollections of cassettes seems to border towards "listening to a crappy stream from the car's radio" to "only listening to a film's vision of what cassettes or any other vintage audio format used to sound like".

It sure took a YouTube channel like Techmoan and Retro Core AV as well as several others where my outlook on cassettes (and several vintage audio formats) began to change a little as I learned more about the different types of cassettes, and how cassettes can sound a lot like or even close to a properly mastered CD if given the right budget and expectations. So imagine my surprise when I heard almost 5 years later that Sega even started using distributing cassettes dubbed "Sega Forever Volume 1". My initial reaction was - "Wait a minute. What??"

What is this tape about?

Basically the idea of this was to serve as a promotional item sent out to various YouTubers and Sega-centric content creators prior to the launch of the "SEGA Forever" service on mobile devices. The tracks on these are basically taken from popular arcade and Mega Drive/Genesis titles, some of which are still remembered to this day.

The most remembered ones include the arcade BGM to Space Harrier and Outrun, as well as those from Mega Drive standout classics like Phantasy Star 2, Shining Force 2, and even Vectorman (a Blue Sky Software effort) gets a special shoutout though only Terraport from that game gets represented. Overall, there are 12 songs spread into two sides of six.

The strange thing is some of the Sega arcade titles even got console ports on non-Sega systems usually through third parties like Sunsoft and NEC Avenue.

Here is the complete tracklist in case you may not remember.

For the lucky 512 or so content creators lucky enough to receive this retro blast, the package even included a biro pen just in case your cassette player somehow "ate the tape" and you're on the task to spool the tape back in. You, know, like the old days where cassette enjoyers did it. I personally do not have such a strong nostalgic connection, but I just found it interesting to mention.

What are the technical specifications?

There are four types of cassettes sold throughout the market during the continuing lifespan of these audio wonders.

Type 1 refers to a general cassette you are most likely to buy today. This is known as a "Ferric" tape.

Type 2 known as "Chrome" is a step up from Type 1. While it is a general step up from Type 1 tapes, in the end, quality Type I cassettes have higher midrange MOL than most Type II tapes, slow and gentle MOL roll-off at low frequencies, but less treble headroom than Type II.

Type 3 "Ferrichrome" doesn't really exist anymore as far as I can tell.

Type 4 is the supreme stuff. These are called "Metal" tapes. To play such a high-class tape, your deck or player would have to be rated for metal tape playback. Something that today's modern tapes aren't quite capable of playing now, or at least I don't think so.

It seems more likely that Sega Forever Volume 1 cassette is a Type 1 metal tape with no noise reduction to speak of. These days, Dolby noise reduction may be no more, but substitutes such as DDi Codec will be able to alleviate that.

Sega Forever....

Let's talk about Sega Forever. Sega Forever was a then-new initiative to get its best retro games available for a mobile audience that's still going today. Very similar to what they are already doing with Sega Mega Drive Classics on multiplatform experiences via PC, PS4 and XBOX. This cassette was to coincide with the launch of the Sega Forever platform on smartphone on 21 June 2017, with the initial lineup being Altered Beast/Jyuohki, Comix Zone, Chameleon Kid, Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and Phantasy Star II.

Unfortunately it had a somewhat rocky launch. With the exception of the rebooted Sega Forever Sonic the Hedgehog mobile conversion handled by Stealth (the same guy that demoed what Sonic could look like on the GBA compared to the half-baked effort Sega of America pumped out in 2006), almost the entirety of the selection ran poorly despite modern hardware enhancements. It seemed to be a middleware problem as Sega reportedly failed to reach an agreement with the people behind the Retroarch project, instead settling for a Unity-based emulation solution.

Since then, Sega have upped the quality of the emulation for the smartphones of our time.

[nintendumpster]

[grave-ng]

he sucks so much

[fruitymarcy]

THE OK KO CREATOR MADE AN OFFICIAL SONIC COMIC

[theactioneer]

Double Dragon (Technōs, 1988)

[tailschannel]

With the launch of the "Fast Friends Forever" promotion from SEGA of America, check out these renders of Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles.

[7marichan7]

💎Shadow redraw challenge hosted by GamesCage_ (twittah)💎

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[dark-falz]

[segadriven]

SEGAWorld London Sonic Statue Found and Restored

[lyn-ne]

Still waiting for my vbs beach event sega

[sonknuxadow]

okay im watching the new trailer again now that im actually able to take in all the details and also post more than just a couple screenshots with me screaming underneath them. im just gonna dump a bunch of my thoughts in one post instead of spamming your dash

ngl when they said "3 hedgehogs" i momentarily forgot classic sonic existed and was disappointed when i realized thats what they meant by that . surely that doesnt actually count as 3 hedgehogs if 2 of them are the same guy

SONIC UNLEASHED MENTIONED ‼️‼️‼️ it was a stage that was already in the original generations but still

SONIC 06 MENTIONED ‼️‼️‼️ a new stage though not one that was already in the game . not surprising considering that was one of shadow's major appearances . i wonder if theyll find a way to work in mephiles.. that would probably be hard to do that in a way that makes sense but it would be cool ..

shadow with wings is so sick also i didnt realize there was any voice acting in that moment because i didnt heart it the first time but thast not the point right now . theyre giving him actual black arms powers which is something ive wanted to see for so unbelievably long. Tjrows up everywhere.

really annoyed that people who get the digital deluxe edition get to play it several days early because i like having physical copies of my games and thats just gonna make the wait more torturous but whateverrrrr

[luescris]

I'm actually fucking crying right now you guys holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck

[fleetways]

sonic allowed to feel emotions?? consequences for his actions, even??!! characters having actual conversations with each other???? women that DO THINGS??!!!