The likes of Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony have routed the video gaming market.
But there are still people out there who love SEGA.
So to SEGA fans, we say this:
All your dreams have come true.
To retro fans we say this:
You may join in it.
To what you ask?
To a party where you will play all SEGA games ever made.
And you will do it on your smartphone.
It doesn’t matter which one you use.
Android and iOS, both will get all SEGA games of all times.
And we haven’t even told you the best part.
Here is the best part:
You will play all SEGA games ever on your smartphone, for FREE.
That’s right.
For free.
Why should you trust us?
Well, don’t if you want to (but thousands do in case you’re wondering).
But trust SEGA.
Yes.
SEGA has just announced the new SEGA forever program.
This program will offer all SEGA games to all SEGA games lovers.
It will do so in phases.
In other words, SEGA will release SEGA games according to the proper console era.
Currently, you have,
- Master System
- Dreamcast
- Genesis
- Sega Mega Drive
And more.
But you don’t have to know the whole list.
Because you will play these games on your smartphone.
Not on a console.
Table of Contents
The new SEGA Forever program will launch this week.
And as mentioned before, it will launch for Android and iOS for free.
You don’t need a SEGA nerd to tell you the list of expected launch games.
Most of the games will belong to the Mega Drive generation though.
These include,
- Altered Beast
- Comix Zone
- Sonic The Hedgehog
- Kid Chameleon
- Phantasy Star II
Metro UK revealed in a report that players will not need an internet connection to play these games.
To put it another way, all SEGA games in the SEGA Forever program are offline playable.
Most of these games will also have modern features.
Modern features such as,
- Leaderboards
- Cloud saves
- And of course, Bluetooth controller support
As alluded to before, SEGA will release SEGA games in phases.
Right now, the company will try to release a new SEGA game after every couple of weeks.
Eventually, the company will incorporate video game titles from all SEGA consoles.
This means we’ll get games from SG-1000 to right through Dreamcast.
But why would SEGA want to start such a program?
We don’t know.
You can thank Mike Evans for that.
Why?
Because he is the Chief Marketing Officer behind the concept.
Evans told the media that the company has plans to release unreleased games, especially in the West.
Most of these games are from the Dreamcast era.
Games such as,
- Girl’s Garden
- Segagaga
Evans told Metro UK the company had never before done anything similar.
He said that the new SEGA Forever program crossed all of the various but different gaming eras.
Furthermore, the company will not show prejudice against any gaming era.
This means it doesn’t matter if you grew up in the 90s or the 80s.
You will get your games for free.
Evan told Metro UK that the company wanted to know how it could take older content that spanned almost two decades and made it available in a single place at the same time.
There is one problem though:
SEGA engineers never made SEGA games to work with modern controllers.
And certainly not for a smartphone touchscreen.
But Evan has a solution.
He says that the company had tried to give the players as good an experience as possible.
Evans also said that players who don’t prefer to play games on a touchscreen can buy an affordable Bluetooth controller for the SEGA Forever program.
The company will also allow players to set these games up on their TV.
Unfortunately, the games will not have added content.
The difficult levels will remain the same and so will the aid system.
SEGA Forever games will enable players to lower/change the difficulty level from the game’s’ menus though.
Why has SEGA done this you ask?
Well, according to Evan, the company wanted to make sure that they stayed true to the original games and not add anything.
He told Metro UK that the company did not just go in and change the original ROM.
That’s because the company wanted faithful emulations and not something new.
According to Evan, this was the only way the project could work commercially.
So how will SEGA make money from the project?
Because SEGA just told us that all games will come for free.
Well, Evan says the company will earn money via short adverts.
These adverts would play before a player starts up a game.
Metro UK also reported that SEGA may also have plans to introduce subscription services in the future.
Such subscription plans will allow players to skip ads in order to play the game as soon as it starts.
Right now, SEGA has a £1.99 in place for gamers who want to get rid of ads.
Meanwhile, game news sites such as Eurogamer tried out some of the offered games on both iPhone and Android.
The reputed gaming blog website reported that the ads did not interfere with gameplay.
Eurogamer also said that gamers would find a reasonable appeal to use a physical controller for these Forever games.
Some reports in the media also say that SEGA is currently also working on native apps which will run on Android TV and Apple TV.
