It’s been a few months since Sega Console Classics Vol. 1 came out, so let’s talk about it for a bit!
We started our current line of books way back in 2012 with Sega Arcade Classics Vol. 1, focusing on most of their more prominent 1980s titles, and followed it up in 2016 with Vol. 2, covering their slightly more obscure output. With most of the decade covered, we move to the 1990s, where the Genesis rose to prominence, and Sega began concentrating more on their console output. So, we decided at this point it would be best to reorient the coverage to their console library. (We’ll be covering plenty of arcade-only games too, so please don’t take this label too strictly.)
Ever since we started publishing these books, people have been asking me, “Where’s Sonic!?!” (Perhaps with quite not so much punctuation, but you get the gist.) Of course, Sega is much more than Sonic, but he is their mascot. We cheated a bit with Sega Arcade Classics Vol. 2 by covering the SegaSonic the Hedgehog arcade game, so we were able to feature him on the cover. But Sega Console Classics Vol. 1 goes full hog (of the hedge variety) on the series, covering all of the mainline games (including Sonic 4 and Sonic Mania), all of the 8-bit Master System / Game Gear games, and a few other spinoffs like Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic Spinball. Some of these lesser-known titles have lived on via assorted compilations, where they’re always treated like afterthoughts, but many of them are legitimately excellent games that are worth playing, even if they’re not quite as robust as their 16-bit counterparts.
We’re also digging into Sega’s RPG output, as this book also shares coverage with both Phantasy Star and Shining Force. The Phantasy Star feature has been part of the site for several years, but the Shining Force coverage is brand new, and covers the classic series, including Shining Force I – III, the Game Gear games (and its associated Sega CD remakes), and both of the dungeon crawlers, Shining in the Darkness and Shining the Holy Ark. We also have reviews of Shining Soul, Crusader of Centy, and Landstalker, since they’re all related in various ways.
Also, since we love the Sega Master System, there’s plenty of 8-bit Sega games here too, including from Black Belt (and its Japanese Hokuto no Ken counterpart), Kenseiden, Ghost House, Cyborg Hunter, Pit-Pot, Zillion, and more. Along with these are Miracle Warriors and Golvellius, which are ports of two earlier computer RPGs, but they’re closely tied with Sega so I decided they qualified. There’s also a feature on Sega mecha games like Orguss and Transbot, the assorted Rambo games, the SG-1000 title Girl’s Garden, and plenty of others.
We also commissioned several artists to provide some of their takes on classic Master System franchises:
Check out the full gallery here!
So what’s next for the Sega Console Classics line? We’ll definitely be doing more Sonic, including the GBA/DS era (look for that posted on the site in the upcoming year), as well as some other retro-themed Sonic games like Sonic Generations and Sonic Superstars, which we couldn’t fit in this volume. There’s definitely some more Master System and Genesis games planned, particularly more RPGs like Legend of Oasis (which was planned from Vol. 1 but cut for space), and other popular but not quite AAA level franchises/games like Toejam & Earl, Ecco the Dolphin, Comix Zone, Ristar, and others. Plus there’s a whole ton of excellent Disney related titles across both 8/16-bit platforms, so expect more there too. And while surely the world may not be clamoring for more coverage of titles like, say, The Hybrid Front, but you’ll get it anyway, because that’s the HG101 way! (It’s a futuristic strategy game with an outstanding soundtrack!)
After this, for Vol. 3 we’d be looking into Saturn and Dreamcast territories, as well as beginning the Model 1/2/3 era of 3D arcade games. Honestly we could be pretty busy focusing entirely on Sega stuff for quite some time, considering series like Puyo Puyo, Yakuza, Valkyria Chronicles, Sakura Wars, the rest of the Sonic games, and many, many titles. But we usually change up topics for a bit to keep from burning out, so it would probably be quite some time before we return to focus on Sega.
However, we love to hear from you! Twitter has become completely unusable in the past few months so I’ve set up shop on BlueSky, so please feel free to contact me there, or even just through regular e-mail. There’s no actual marketing research for what kind of retro game books people like to buy outside of my own whims, so I’m really just following my own interests as to what I think people would like. Sales of the books have been down lately, which probably has to do with rising prices and general purse tightening thanks to *gestures at the entire worldwide economic situation for the past five years* but if you like a topic, please consider purchasing one of our books. Or, pledge to our Patreon, which includes several free digital books (depending on your pledge level) and gets you access to tons of exclusive episodes of our podcast, the Top 47,858 Games of All Time. Also, definitely please consider leaving an Amazon review, even if it’s just a star rating, because it does really help the algorithm recommend us with other video game-related titles.
On that note, Sega Console Classics Vol. 1 is actually the second book we published this year. Earlier on we published Arcade Cult Classics, covering a wide variety of relatively obscure titles across the 1980s and 1990s. Many of these have been resurrected for modern distribution as part of Hamster’s Arcade Archives or the Evercade retro console line, so this book is a good guide for many of these titles, as well as if you’re just looking for something new and unusual to play in MAME, since some of these are unlikely to ever be resurrected elsewhere.
Enjoy the new year!
