Sega promised it was going to start bringing its catalog of Dreamcast games as downloadable titles for the PS3 and Xbox 360, and it’s continuing to make good on that promise. The publisher has just announced Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing will be hitting the download pipes in “early 2011.”
Sega pleased hardcore fans about a month ago when it released Sonic Adventure, or what we like to call the last actual really good Sonic game, on the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Marketplace. At a price of around $10, it’s on par with other vintage console games being offered on the Wii’s Virtual Console platform. There, NES games cost around $5, Super NES games $8, and Nintendo 64 games are $10.
So the difficult part for Sega is to now figure out which Dreamcast games to bring back from the dead and when. We’ve got to believe that Sega Bass Fishing is not at the top of the list for anyone, and yet that will be one of the first new additions to Sega’s initiative.
Space Channel 5, on the other hand, is the perfect game to resurrect. I’d be willing to bet that at least one of you, our readers, looked at this story’s headline and though, “Oh yeah…Space Channel 5. I had totally forgotten about that game.” It’s an intoxicating mix of Japanese kitsch and rhythm-matching gameplay that made Space Channel 5 one of the more unique and memorable Dreamcast titles, but the series never really took off.
So, both Space Channel 5 Part 2 and Sega Bass Fishing will be coming out early next year, though Sega did not specify a specific release date or price. It’s probably a safe bet, though, to expect a price point that matches Sonic Adventure’s $9.99 (800 Microsoft Points). Sega also previously announced plans to bring Crazy Taxi’s original Dreamcast game to the download world as well.
