Retro Gaming Australia

The Sega AGES 2500 series was an interesting experiment early last decade. It started out with D3 and Sega teaming up to produce 3D remakes of classic Sega franchises like Phantasy Star, Golden Axe and Space Harrier and selling them for 2500 yen. However, after some of these remakes turned out to be terrible, Sega teamed up with M2 to produce highly accurate ports of their other popular games like Virtua Fighter 2, Gunstar Heroes and Fantasy Zone.

Today the company announced that some of these games will be coming to the Japanese PlayStation Network as part of the PS2 Classics line up. First game up is the Saturn classic Dragon Force. It will be followed by the STV brawler Dynamite Deka (or Die Hard Arcade) and Gunstar Heroes: Treasure Box

Sega’s embrace of digital distribution appears to be paying dividends – at least for Japan.

Sega are pulling out all of the stops with digital distribution this month. Hot off the heels of Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 comes the third round of Sega Vintage Collection games for PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade.

Twelve games will be released as part of this run – Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Super Hang-On, Revenge of Shinobi, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World, Monster World IV, Streets of Rage, Streets of Rage II, Streets of Rage 3, Golden Axe, Golden Axe II and Golden Axe III.

The games are packaged differently based on which service you decide to use. On PlayStation Network, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Super Hang-On, Revenge of Shinobi, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV will be available May 22nd for $US4.99 each.

Meanwhile, on Xbox Live Arcade, the games will be available in packs of three – Monster World Collection (Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World and Monster World IV) and Alex Kidd & Co. Collection (Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Super Hang-On and Revenge of Shinobi) on May 23, while Streets of Rage Collection and Golden Axe Collection will arrive on May 30. All Xbox Live Arcade collections will be 800 points.

Hot on the heels of the Monster Land Collection, Sega has announced that M2 will also be developing another 3 in 1 release called Alex Kidd & Co.

The collection will include Alex Kidd in Miracle World, The Revenge of Shinobi and Super Hang-On.

No release date or pricing details at this stage, but expect to hear about it soon.

Remember the Sega Vintage Collection on Xbox Live Arcade? It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Well, they’re relaunching it, starting with Monster World Collection, a three in one collection that includes Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Wonder Boy in Monster World and the previously Japan-only Monster World IV.

On top of that, the collection is being done by Japanese studio M2, a developer known for producing painstakingly accurate ports of old games to new systems. For those unfamiliar with M2, they were responsible for a lot of the emulation technology behind Virtual Console, and produced the lion’s share of the second half of the Sega Ages 2500 collection – which included Monster World Collection (but that version had Wonder Boy III: The Dragon’s Trap, which is not in this collection – Oh Sega!?!).

The collection is launching on April 25th, and will boast a few neat little extras.

With Sega acknowledging that Wonder Boy exists, could a revival happen in the future?