Someone on NeoGAF said five Model 2 games (Model 2 x 5). The sound effects are from Virtua Fighter 2, Sonic The Fighters, Virtua Striker, Fighting Vipers and Virtual On. All games derived from the Model 2 arcade hardware. The guess they made was XBLA and PSN re-releases of those games. I'd say that's the most accurate educated guess at what Sega are teasing. I'd love for this to be something more exciting though. Sega are seriously whoring out their back catalogue for this new digital download strategy of theirs. It feels like everything they've done for months is constant re-releases.
I don't get the complaints about Sega whoring out their back catalog at all. For one thing, you don't have to buy it, and for another, these games were released in arcades and on hardware that sold terribly, so a lot of potential users never got to experience them in the first place. In addition, once these things are on XBLA and PSN, they never have to be ported again. I guarantee you that the next consoles from Microsoft and Sony will be backwards compatible with old digital release games. It'd be a major blunder on their part otherwise.
I got no problem with anyone "whoring" out their catalog as long as they do it right. Slapping ROMs inside of an emulator is not doing it right. Using old assets without refactoring them for HD resolutions is not doing it right. Gimping prominent features of classic games for licensing issues (read: cheap bastards) isn't doing it right.
Virtua Striker is an interesting choice. The 2nd one on the Dreamcast was clunky and awkward but fun in a weird kind of way. I assume these are all (excluding Fighters from gems Collection) all going to be based on the PS2 ports.
PSN will never get the collections as far as I understand. The games will be released individually on it instead (Like Shinobi) though as far as I can tell neither 1 or 3 is on PSN for some reason.
Gems Collection saw a PS2 release, so it could easily be a PS2-fest. But the original Virtua Striker has never seen a home port as far as I know. Almost seems like extra work when you consider Sega Rally, Last Bronx and the two Virtua Cops got converted to the PS2 (and Gunblade NY to the Wii). I'd say it was a good thing but the original Virtua Striker isn't exactly the best game ever made - it had its place in history, but I'm not convinced there's a "demand" for it. The problem, and it's a big one, is that Model 2 games will look horrible if they lazily stretch things to 720p. Sega Bass Fishing (which is a Model 3 game) looks bad enough - things will look even worse here. Though I guess there'll be fewer draw distance issues since none of these games have the player really move anywhere? Also I guess a bundle of five games beats our previous expectations of three. Still, Model 2 games range from about 30-80MB in size when uncompressed - there's room for more.
Oh, I assumed Virtua Striker had a Sega Ages release, guess not. Yeah, not really seeing where the demand for that one would be, but if this is going to be a 5-in-1 bundle that wouldn't be so bad. Barely anyone would buy it if separate though.
I do know that, after all I got RoS, MW and MWIV but I just can't fathom why they wouldn't release all 3 SoR games on the PSN. The SoR2 port we have on the PSN is still the lame version produced by Backbone so that doesn't count.
We also still want Guardian Heroes and Virtual On 2 on PSN. I know Treasure is latched on to XBLA but can they not get someone to port it? Mind you I bet the morons who voted for it not to be ported to PSN (just to spite people) on a Sega Facebook poll didn't help :S
http://amcvt.sega.jp/model2/ Releases are going to be individual. No word on overseas releases just yet. The ports are being done by AM Ishoku Team, which is a bunch of people from other Sega teams (Sonic Team, Ryu ga Gotoku Studio, etc.) that also did the XBLA/PSN version of Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter 5: Final Showdown.
Well of course they are coming overseas. No XBLA game has been Japan exclusive. America and Europe seems to be the only ones who do that.
Good to see Japanese Sega developers behind this one... though really, separate releases? 800 MS Points is far too much for any of these.
Yeah, about that... Basically while XBL users gotta drop $40 to own all of the games (Excluding any DLC that Sega might offer), PSN users get to own three games in the collection (Excluding Fighting Vipers since that might be released at a later date) for $20. I hope you PS3 owners are happy!
And how about the other hidden characters found by hacking? If Takashi Iizuka is playable I'm going to throw my money at the screen for years.
