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WaPo Shuji Utsumi interview: Sega returning to its rebellious era spirit, Original JSR devs back, VF being worked on

ManaByte

Gold Member

“We really want to show edginess and a rebellious mind-set,” said Utsumi, recalling Sega’s cultural impact as the “alternative” game console.

“The concept of games like ‘Jet Set Radio’ is advanced. The original creators are involved again, and its time is now,” he said. “It’s a good time where people can appreciate all kinds of concepts.”

Utsumi credited three ongoing Sega franchises for holding up the company in recent years: Sonic the Hedgehog, which has now released two blockbuster Hollywood films; Yakuza, the crime drama that’s grown a large U.S. following; and Persona, the role-playing series about mystery-solving teens.
“We’ve been investing into these three titles the last three years, making these pillars grow, and they grew very well,” he said.

“We are evaluating right now. Virtua Fighter doesn’t use so many tricks, special moves like in Street Fighter, it’s very realistic,” Utsumi said. “How can we make it more dramatic? It’s something we’re working on.”

That announcement was the greatest gaming announcement in probably the last decade.

 

Punished Miku

Gold Member
Couldn't be happier. Sega has always been one of my favorites.

Greenlight Panzer Dragoon Saga 2 before you guys change your mind.

Virtua Fighter is an instant day 1 for me. Literally the only fighting games worth anything in my eyes are Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter. They shouldn't be looking to copy any other fighters honestly. They should be looking at how to make it more 3 dimensional in combat, and make the martial arts more realistic and complex. Most fighters these days fucking suck in comparison. 2D crap. Hold back to block and juggle endlessly with dumb combos.
 
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Killer8

Member
“We are evaluating right now. Virtua Fighter doesn’t use so many tricks, special moves like in Street Fighter, it’s very realistic,” Utsumi said. “How can we make it more dramatic? It’s something we’re working on.”

Graphics.
 

OrtizTwelve

Member
That announcement was the greatest gaming announcement in probably the last decade.

thin











That announcement was the greatest gaming announcement in probably the last decade.



I think the best thing to come out of last night's game awards show was SEGA. Everything else was dull and mediocre.

SEGA is smart, they're going back into their classics catalog and bringing them back into the modern era. This is a smart thing to do, the market is hungry for good quality games and SEGA can tap into that. No GAAS, NO MICROTRANS, NO BS - Just good games!

From the clip we all saw, everything looked great in that trailer.
 
The problem with Sega was never guts, it was sales. People claim they want this but don't buy. Sega was always pushing into uncharted territory and trying crazy shit. People need to back them up.
You're absolutely right. Sega fans, you know what to do:

giphy.gif


Spread the word about Sega's return to form.
 

NT80

Member
They got the original JSR developers back? If Virtua Fighter is being worked on they might need some of those AM2 guys back. I think competitive fighting games are really hard to make without the experience. The other ones I'd really like to see come back are Virtua Tennis (hardly any tennis games out there for some reason) and a true successor to Dreamcast Phantasy Star Online.
 
Couldn't be happier. Sega has always been one of my favorites.

Greenlight Panzer Dragoon Saga 2 before you guys change your mind.

Virtua Fighter is an instant day 1 for me. Literally the only fighting games worth anything in my eyes are Soul Calibur and Virtua Fighter. They shouldn't be looking to copy any other fighters honestly. They should be looking at how to make it more 3 dimensional in combat, and make the martial arts more realistic and complex. Most fighters these days fucking suck in comparison. 2D crap. Hold back to block and juggle endlessly with dumb combos.

They should at least move the Panzer Dragoon Saga remake in-house, as they supposedly have the source code. They could expand on it and add additional content, too. A sequel would have to take place during one of the other Panzer games or after Orta, though, story-wise.

If Sega bring back VF they should pattern it after VF3 with the uneven ring surfaces, and also dial up the realism while increasing flashiness in appropriate areas. Maybe they could make Virtua Fighter the 3D fighting game equivalent of Gran Turismo in terms of being a "serious" simulator, only in VF's case for martial arts.

Some obscure fighters like Fighter's Destiny had interesting ideas for modes simulating martial arts tournaments; combine that with VF's physics and realistic simulation (with a decent amount of flashiness) and they could really have something special.

The problem with Sega was never guts, it was sales. People claim they want this but don't buy. Sega was always pushing into uncharted territory and trying crazy shit. People need to back them up.

Sega have had historically bad advertising tho outside of the Genesis/MegaDrive era and early part of the Dreamcast era. At least for Western territories.

I like that Sega’s doing what looks to be AA games. Leave the blockbuster budgets to the bigger publishers, and just focus on making attractive games with solid mechanics.

Pretty much like Nintendo.

Games like TOTK are AAA. They may not cost as much to make as HFW or GOW Ragnarok, or even stuff like that upcoming Blade game, but they are definitely not AA games.

They generally have more resources and funding available to them than vast majority of AA titles, and the level of dev talent they have is comparable to AAA devs like Rockstar or SSM.

Sega reinvesting in the franchises that killed them in the first place.

Bold strategy.

These franchises didn't kill Sega. Bad management and accounting practices of their finances killed them. You don't flood a market with millions of consoles for Christmas season that go unsold, that you then have to buy back, and do nonconsolidated accounting to hide the numbers until it's too late. That would screw up any company; I'm surprised Sega never got sued by shareholders over it TBH.

The other problem was poor advertising. Sega marketed their brand more than their games, unless the game was Sonic. It got especially bad in the Saturn era, to the point they'd even tease would-be customers not able to buy games due to limited print runs (Panzer Dragoon Saga face cut-out advert in gaming magazines).

If anything, them not continuing IP like Streets of Rage on the Saturn (or paying companies to advertise in Crazy Taxi) are what screwed them over with a lot of their core fans. Or other boneheaded decisions like pissing off retailers so they refused to carry Saturn systems altogether.
 

SkylineRKR

Member
The problem with Sega was never guts, it was sales. People claim they want this but don't buy. Sega was always pushing into uncharted territory and trying crazy shit. People need to back them up.

Yep. Its not their fault nobody bought legit classics like JSRF and PD Orta. Sega did try, ofcourse they usually mismanaged release timing, promotion etc. They had a habit of spending promotion budget on the wrong kind of games. But their portfolio was brilliant. Rez, Panzer, Shinobi, JSR... all masterclass.
 

Red5

Member
Wish they could've just handed everything to Dotemu and Lizardcube, they did Streets of Rage and Wonderboy justice and would've loved to see more of their style in sequels and other games like Golden Axe and Shinobi.
 

Solidus_T

Member
A new Virtua Fighter has me so excited! Jet Set Radio is amazing of course, but I am also so happy that Tekken will stop copying V trigger and 2D fighting games to compete. I am pumped for this game.
 

Kruza

Member
It's absolutely great news for me to read comments from a high rank Sega executive who actually confirms that the next Virtua Fighter game is in development phase! Bring it on!

Hell, I still religiously play VF5 Final Showdown like it came out last week!

It would be nice to hear about a new Panzer Dragoon game at some point as well! I would prefer a shooter-oriented Panzer Dragoon game along the lines of Orta or Zwei. But I certainly wouldn't turn down an RPG-oriented game that resembles Saga.

I'm also a big fan of Gun Valkyrie! Would be open for a sequel to this title as well.
 
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MiguelItUp

Member
Finally giving love to those Sega IPs that have just been left in the closet. Such awesome news. I hope everything comes out wonderfully.
 
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Part of me feels compelled to purchase any new entry of an old Sega IP just to show them that people still care. Everything they announced last night is definitely a day one buy for me. Plus VF and hopefully Altered Beast and more Panzer Dragoon in the future. Sega has so many underrated series with a lot of charm
 
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I think the best thing to come out of last night's game awards show was SEGA. Everything else was dull and mediocre.

SEGA is smart, they're going back into their classics catalog and bringing them back into the modern era. This is a smart thing to do, the market is hungry for good quality games and SEGA can tap into that. No GAAS, NO MICROTRANS, NO BS - Just good games!

From the clip we all saw, everything looked great in that trailer.
We have no idea whether or not these games will have GAAS or microtransactions. I’m interested, but let’s see where they fuck up in execution.
 

bender

What time is it?
“We are evaluating right now. Virtua Fighter doesn’t use so many tricks, special moves like in Street Fighter, it’s very realistic,” Utsumi said. “How can we make it more dramatic? It’s something we’re working on.”

What's that line from that Pearl Jam song? I changed by not changing at all. I'd love to see another VF but I'd to see it use meters and other flashy nonsense.

A new JSR warms my cold, dead heart.
 

Crayon

Member
Okay I'll buy a new vf. I wasn't that impressed by the thing at the show but hearing about a new vf is making me think.

I don't know how committed they are to this message. It looked like memberberries. I did like jet set, though. I should say that. I found the rest meh so I didn't necessarily get the impression of a commitment to a new direction. A dump of announcements resurrecting the old ip's doesn't convincingly predict that.

But if they are finding their balls and making a new vf, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Sega really can make some excellent games. The thought of a future Sega kicking ass is nice.

Don't show a warmed-over vf5. Let's see a real vision for VF6!
 

bender

What time is it?
I don't know how committed they are to this message.

At the very least, it will be interesting to see what the asking price for the titles are as well as the budget and what SEGA would consider a success.
 

WitchHunter

Banned









That announcement was the greatest gaming announcement in probably the last decade.


These fighting games need a big shakeup and lots of innovation. Fuck the basic premise of the, here is two monkeys, they fight in the same space all the time. The same shit is sold for 30+ years. Bland, soulless, the base game touched up a bit year after year, just like FIFA. The last thing that was good in this regard was Mother Russia Bleeds. Where is a Target Renegade remake? Or Bop n Rumble? I'd like to hurt people, real bad ; DDD. Get into a mass brawl between two competing football team fans, like a cannonball and smash up everyone, use bats, crowbars, anything to gain some advantage, bring innocent people into the chaos of street fight, get wounds, broken ribs, swollen face, bone fractures etc. that heal over time, use the environment to your advantage, kick down people from their motorcycles, pull their hair, kick people through windows, put weakos in the trash bin to avoid a repetitive fight, ambush loan sharks to finance your roids, get beaten while you are asleep in revenge, whatever just not these fucking empty shell games. As an added plus the best feature would be to use generative AI to bring people (or celebs) you hate into the game, smash them up real bad, give them some good bruises and post it online : DD.
 
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Crayon

Member
At the very least, it will be interesting to see what the asking price for the titles are as well as the budget and what SEGA would consider a success.

I think this vf will say a lot when it's shown. Maybe the new vf is a full-effort $70 production, or maybe it's a less ambitious revival for the fans ex-layer style. I'm buying it either way, but which way they go will set a tone.

What we saw of Shinobi raised an eyebrow for me. It looks a little cheap for what I think of the name. There's no way I can't compare that to Shinobi 3 and it's not much of a progression for 30 years. I would have liked to see them go a little bigger with it. The production level they chose would fit better with one of their b-stringers like kid chameleon.
 

ungalo

Member
They're making remakes, so edgy !

Although yeah announcing 5 real games in one shit trailer is kind of edgy.
 
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PanzerCute

Member
I think this vf will say a lot when it's shown. Maybe the new vf is a full-effort $70 production, or maybe it's a less ambitious revival for the fans ex-layer style. I'm buying it either way, but which way they go will set a tone.

What we saw of Shinobi raised an eyebrow for me. It looks a little cheap for what I think of the name. There's no way I can't compare that to Shinobi 3 and it's not much of a progression for 30 years. I would have liked to see them go a little bigger with it. The production level they chose would fit better with one of their b-stringers like kid chameleon.
Shinobi is made by the guys who did Streets Of Rage 4, so it will be amazing don't worry.
All the games shown are clearly in early stages, especially the Streets Of Rage one, but I am confident they will be good.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
The problem with Sega was never guts, it was sales. People claim they want this but don't buy. Sega was always pushing into uncharted territory and trying crazy shit. People need to back them up.
I'll buy if it's good, most of it doesn't interest me or spark the feelings the classic games did. I feel like JSR only looks like it has a higher budget/effort to it but maybe not even that, we've seen too little to really tell. Shinobi I like the art style but the gameplay looks whatever. Maybe me not being into them means they'll be more successful, lol. Still, they're obviously gonna hype up everything they do regardless to help maximize its potential, whether that's 1 or 99 based on what's being put into it. They're not gonna go well, yeah, we have all this IP, we thought we'd churn out some cheap games out of em, see what sticks. Hopefully they turn out better than HOTD or Panzer Dragoon and being in house and by some of the original developers certainly gives more hope for it but that doesn't mean they're really given the necessary resources to get it right, or that the stars will align and they will get it right regardless. I don't understand why Golden Axe returns even. It was fun but very much a product of its time. There were way better hack and slah games soon after and later titles in the series didn't do much to give it some unique gameplay spin or lore I wanna revisit or anything. Hopefully they cook up something interesting this time but visually at least they don't seem to be doing anything to give it some unique spin hence my thinking of their PS3 attempt. Maybe a more brutal Conan-esque aesthetic and style so it's more like a Rastan sequel or something would fit well.
 
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ungalo

Member
None of this looks like a remake though, what, just because they don't have a number attached?
True, don't know why i abusively called those remakes, i feel it's because i read it several times before.

It's just a revival but my point still stands. Better this than nothing i guess but a revival of Golden Axe or SoR in 3D (with probably low budget and made externally probably by western studios) doesn't look very rebellious unfortunately.
 

ManaByte

Gold Member
True, don't know why i abusively called those remakes, i feel it's because i read it several times before.

It's just a revival but my point still stands. Better this than nothing i guess but a revival of Golden Axe or SoR in 3D (with probably low budget and made externally probably by western studios) doesn't look very rebellious unfortunately.

They're spending nearly $1 billion on these games. They're not low budget.

 
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