Sega’s idea to re-release some Dreamcast games as downloadable titles and on Disc has been quite a success. The collection isn’t only interesting for all those who love the Dreamcast already, but also those who missed out on it when it still was around and now want to have a taste of the awesome games that were available on the platform. Since the two other games featuring on the disc will have a download release pretty soon, it’s finally time to think about which games should be on a hypothetic second volume of the collection. Hit the jump to read about my Top-10 suggestions!
10. Space Channel 5
The inclusion of the second part of Space Channel 5 in the first Dreamcast collection always has confused me a bit. Why choose the second entry to start with? Anyway, it would be really neat to see the second game being included in the next volume. Why? Because more Ulala is always a great thing, that’s why. The game was innovative and had style, two things that are still quite important today and since the PS2 port is somewhat hard to find, the inclusion of this part in the next volume would be great!
9. Sonic Adventure 2
While I’m not a huge fan of the Adventures series, I can easily see why it should be included: It is almost guaranteed to sell well, since the name ‘Sonic’ is included. On the other hand, I also think that the second game was a vast improvement upon the first one, both in terms of gameplay and annoyingness. This game has only been available on the Dreamcast and the Gamecube so far, so not too many people have experienced it up until now.
8. ChuChu Rocket
While it already has been re-released for the iPhone, this game pretty much is the quintessential downloadable experience: I’s easy to learn, but hard to master and overall fun gameplay paired with great puzzle designs and good controls. It was perfect back then and it still is perfect today!
7. Phantasy Star Online Episode 1 and 2
Phantasy Star Online is one of those games that single-handedly defined the Dreamcast. It was the first MMORPG on a console, but unfortunately, unless you use private servers, you can’t play it online anymore. That Gamecube port certainly didn’t help, since not too many people have the online adapter for that console. So, the sensible thing to do would be to port the game over and make it use the Xbox-Live and PlayStation Network services. Since it’s 4 players at a time, that could be easily done!
6. Virtua Fighter 3TB
The Virtua Fighter series has always been quite renowned in the fighting game community, but never really took off in terms of sales. Since there is a new Virtua Fighter coming to the downloadable platforms, it would only make sense to release one of the older games on a collection, in order to raise some awareness. Actually, this was one of the very first games I ever played on a Dreamcast and I was immediately impressed by graphics and gameplay. A slight bump via HD-resolution would help, of course.
5. House of the Dead 2
I already have written quite a lot about this game, but let me recap it a bit: It’s the best Lightgun shooter out there! Even if the usual lightguns don’t do the job, Kinect and Move would make these games playable without any problem. I like the House of the dead collection on the Wii, but I think there is a market on the other console for this too. It would help selling those peripherals, you know?
4. Typing of the Dead
Legendary, but severely overlooked thanks to the somewhat limiting keyboard peripheral. Since USB-Keyboards should be easy to integrate, this brilliant game could finally find a whole new audience. And while you’re playing it, you get better at typing! That’s what I would call Edutainment done right! I mean, what could be better than typing random words while blasting the heads of some zombies off? And it’s all based on my favorite Lightgun-Shooter ever! What could possibly go wrong?
3. Skies of Arcadia
Skies of Arcadia is a timeless classic when it comes to JRPGs! It has a great story, likeable characters and good combat going for it. The original on the Dreamcast version of the game is very popular and thus actually costs quite some money if you want to get it. The Gamecube version, which made some additions to the game and fixed some problems with it is also quite rare and fetches high prices too. Including this would make a second volume of the collection very, VERY attractive!
2. Jet Set Radio
Pretty much the fan-favorite game on the system. While not being terribly rare, it is the one game a lot of my friends want to play with when they are over to have a look at my Dreamcast. The game holds up amazingly well to this day thanks to its cel-shade look and the gameplay still is absolutely amazing. An HD-version of this should be a no-brainer
1. Shenmue 1 and 2
No surprise here, really. Pack in one of these two games or both of them and your collection will sell millions of copies. Let me explain why: The game has a big historic value, there aren’t too many copies on the market and those copies sell for big prices. I got myself both games for a total price of 120€! That is a lot of money for a bunch of retro-games! If Sega does it right, it can do a lot of amazing things by adding achievements to the game! They would also see how much interest there still is in the series and maybe they’ll actually start thinking about doing a sequel in some form.
The Dreamcast PSO goes up to Version 2, right? Episode 1 and 2 was a GC/XB game, would that make a problem for the DC collection?
Regardless, I would not complain if it were included lol
Nice choices. Considering they need to be first party dreamcast games, those are some of the more iconic titles.
How about a HD update of Crazy Taxi 2. Which had some issues with low draw distance on the Dreamcast.
Alien Front online would be another good match for xbox live support.
Why SC2 was included was an easy one. That along with Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi and Sega Bass Fishing were all PC ports. Hence, easy to port because they were ported already. Sega will never make a second collection.
Space Channel 5 had pre-rendered video backgrounds, and they’d probably look terrible on newer consoles unless they were completely re-rendered in high-definition.