Sega Classics Collection – Preview

Due for release on 03/02/2006, this is an interesting retro-remake collection of games. In Japan they were originally released individually at a budget price, so to have them all bundled onto one disc here in the UK seems like quite a bargain, doesn’t it?

On paper the listing sounds pretty impressive, OUTRUN – GOLDEN AXE – VIRTUA RACING – MONACO GP – SPACE HARRIER – COLUMNS – FANTASY ZONE – TANT R & BONANZA BROS. But don’t forget these are remakes, not the original arcade versions. This is only a preview so I’ll comment only on the games I have tried from their Japanese release:

• Virtua Racing – superb arcade conversion that doesn’t seem to have much altered at all.
• Outrun – remade in 3D, the game looks somehow worse than the arcade original, but it plays pretty well and retains all the split routes of the original. Looks poor (PS1 quality) compared to the recent conversions of Outrun 2.
• Golden Axe – also now in 3D, it plays pretty much the same but the developer somehow dropped some of the level cutscenes, so it feels a bit sloppily made. Also a lot of the art is just above PS1 quality.

Regarding the rest: Columns should be a safe bet as a simple tetris-style game; I hear Space Harrier and Fantasy Zone are really fun to play like their originals; Monaco GP is played top down so don’t go expecting a conversion of Super Monaco GP.

It’s a pretty mixed bag all in all. On the one hand, hats off to SEGA for spending a bit of money on updating old classics rather than just releasing the same old games just as they were, but on the other hand fans of those games might prefer the originals (especially when some are better than the remakes).

For a penny under £15 (online price) theres a lot of fun to be had here, but it would have been even better if they had included the arcade originals as well.