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[JustenP88]

Played Phantasy Star 2 long enough to remind myself why I don't like playing games on my phone. Also, couldn't get homeboy to move with my joycon so that was a bust. Could advance through the dialog though. Maybe I was doing something wrong, idk.

 

[polyh3dron]

Yeah, I am not sure what's going on as it used to work just fine years ago and now stutters on my iPhone 6s Plus. The emulator coupled with Unity is clearly not doing a great job. I could grab my old android Note 3 and run this on an emulator (not Sega one) just fine.

Oh, Unity is involved? That explains it. Everything not on a high powered PC that is made in Unity runs horribly.

 

[dark10x]

Sonic 1 was just updated with the same Unity wrapper

Seriously? They did that? The Taxman port?

Screw Sega and mobile gaming.

Whether it's OS updates breaking games, games going completely unsupported, the awful free to play shit and then this kind of thing...it really just annoys me to the point where I never ever want to download another mobile game again. It's garbage.

 

[polyh3dron]

These emulators are horrible. This is not a way to honor the legacy of Sega.

Really hope they don't go and replace the versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD on the store because those are light years beyond this garbage.

Sonic 1 is still the Christian Whitehead version wrapped in ads unless you pay and/or restore your purchase, the latter of which isn't working right now for Sonic 1.

But yeah. this is why mobile gaming sucks.

 

[PanopticBlue]

Phantasy Star II is 120MB. That's ridiculous.

 

[dark10x]

Sonic 1 is still the Christian Whitehead version wrapped in ads unless you pay and/or restore your purchase, the latter of which isn't working right now for Sonic 1.

I certainly hope so.

I still hate the mobile marketplace, though.

 

[Toe-Knee]

Had anyone tried sideloading this on android tv yet?

 

[Toadthemushroom]

Digital Foundry's John just left some quick impressions about the games on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/877596180435185664

Not shocking at all, I'm still baffled as to why people want them on other formats - like I said Sega Games would deliver a quality product and charge a price worth the preservation effort and programming (see: 3D Classics)

Edit: I need to stop reading threads backwards. Beaten x 10 by the man himself!

 

[Brazil]

Well... I was hyped for this. Sad to see how these ports actually turned out.

 

[Zombie James]

http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1spviqt

This feels kinda like watching a trainwreck unfold. Sorry to all the people that are experiencing subpar performance with this Unity thing; they could have been using RetroArch right now if they hadn't been so stubbornly insistent on demanding we relicense our entire program to something that would strip us of all our rights, on top of some other unreasonable things like not showing any branding, etc. Hell, they could have had this running on the desktop right now on top of consoles and maybe some netplay as well. Oh well...

Huh, interesting.

 

[jufonuk]

I downloaded altered beast for my iphone.

will get the others, they are free to play and don't need always online.

 

[RiZ III]

Digital Foundry's John just left some quick impressions about the games on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dark1x/status/877596180435185664

Not shocking at all, I'm still baffled as to why people want them on other formats - like I said Sega Games would deliver a quality product and charge a price worth the preservation effort and programming (see: 3D Classics)

Edit: I need to stop reading threads backwards. Beaten x 10 by the man himself!

Why the hell would they wrap these in Unity?? Ugh. The ports that they had originally released on ios ran perfectly via emulation.

 

[StereoVsn]

Oh, Unity is involved? That explains it. Everything not on a high powered PC that is made in Unity runs horribly.

Shadowrun games by Harebrained Studios ran pretty well on everything (never had console versions).

 

[MassiveNights]

Just played Sonic there, didn't find the touch controls terrible. Decent option for me who is casually interested in this sort of stuff.

 

[AaronMT86]

Phantasy Star II is 120MB. That's ridiculous.

Gotta have that mobile marketing and analytics frameworks for tracking users

 

[James Scott]

The Sonic 1 port seems fine. Not sure what being wrapped in Unity did to it.

The file size for some of those games seem way too big

 

[inner-G]

It's been 4 years since 64 bit apps on iOS became a thing, you haven't been able to submit a new 32 bit app, or update, to the App Store for years now.

I don't really know what I'm talking about, technologically. I just know I have old digital games that don't work anymore

 

[Toadthemushroom]

So not only does Altered Beast deliver suboptimal performance on an iPhone 7 Plus, but it weighs 120MB.

Seven years ago Sega put out a native version of Chu Chu Rocket with reimagined touch controls on iPhone, iPad (and later Android), and it weighed less than 20MB.

Seven years ago Cave ported Espgaluda II to the iPhone 3GS, with reimagined touch controls, and the humble device was throwing around heaps of sprites at an unflinching 60fps.

 

[Bucket-o-roadkill]

So what is the point in this. It's free? So are the games filled with ads? How are they making money from this....

 

[dickroach]

I really don't see how Shining Force and Toejam & Earl on phones is important

 

[Toadthemushroom]

So what is the point in this. It's free? So are the games filled with ads? How are they making money from this....

Basically marketing, and they are using analytics to inform decisions as to which mobile and console games to make in the future. I suspect the latter will be hard to do if enthusiasts don't pick this up. Like, the odds of a Crazy Taxi sequel happening will be slim if, say, the DC port to Unity is bad, it might send the wrong message that people don't care about Crazy taxi anymore.

 

[batfax]

Basically marketing, and they are using analytics to inform decisions as to which mobile and console games to make in the future. I suspect the latter will be hard to do if enthusiasts don't pick this up. Like, the odds of a Crazy Taxi sequel happening will be slim if, say, the DC port to Unity is bad, it might send the wrong message that people don't care about Crazy taxi anymore.

Yeah. It's a shame, since I downloaded PSII basically to work their little marketing machine to show I want Phantasy Star, but man I am not about to pay or even significantly play this awful port.

 

[TheAngryInternet]

The Sonic 1 port seems fine. Not sure what being wrapped in Unity did to it.

From the sound of it the big issue is the emulation, which wouldn't affect Sonic 1 since it's an honest-to-god port.

 

[dark10x]

Basically marketing, and they are using analytics to inform decisions as to which mobile and console games to make in the future. I suspect the latter will be hard to do if enthusiasts don't pick this up. Like, the odds of a Crazy Taxi sequel happening will be slim if, say, the DC port to Unity is bad, it might send the wrong message that people don't care about Crazy taxi anymore.

The only hope here is that they just put a wrapper around the already available iOS port (which is unbelievably good and visually superior to the Dreamcast original).

I DID download the update for Sonic 1 and it does have a modified front-end BUT it is still Christian's port.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the "restore purchase" option just times out so it's now filled with ads. Still, at least it's intact and that should fix itself.

 

[Bucket-o-roadkill]

Basically marketing, and they are using analytics to inform decisions as to which mobile and console games to make in the future. I suspect the latter will be hard to do if enthusiasts don't pick this up. Like, the odds of a Crazy Taxi sequel happening will be slim if, say, the DC port to Unity is bad, it might send the wrong message that people don't care about Crazy taxi anymore.

I was gonna say, so if all these ports are bad, no one plays them so they conclude that there's no demand.

Wtf happened to Sega, honestly. Beyond sad how the mighty have fallen. I'm looking at you too, Atari.

 

[Brazil]

Tried Altered Beast.


Sorry BrazilGAF.

 

[moltonasty]

I don't know why, but I expected better from Sega at this point. Super disappointing that this is what they have to offer after all the hype.

 

[SinCityAssassin]

About 90% of the games so far are in Unity. The reason we chose Unity as middleware is it enables us to take this content to other platforms as well. So my first focus is mobile. It's a huge project and what I really want to do is get mobile right. After this, there are options: we can look at desktop, Facebook, we could even take these games to consoles like Switch.

What's the likelihood that it'd happen?

 

[TheOnlyOneHeEverFeared]

What kind of controllers work with this? Cos playing sonic with the onscreen controls is just awful.

 

[Brian_FETO]

If the ports are bad that's pretty pathetic

"Amazing SEGA" in action

 

[Toadthemushroom]

The only hope here is that they just put a wrapper around the already available iOS port (which is unbelievably good and visually superior to the Dreamcast original).

I DID download the update for Sonic 1 and it does have a modified front-end BUT it is still Christian's port.

Unfortunately, at the moment, the "restore purchase" option just times out so it's now filled with ads. Still, at least it's intact and that should fix itself.

That's good to hear, I never tried the Crazy Taxi port but it did come from the period where they even hired BlitWorks to do Jet Set Radio.

Going back to that old interview with the Chu Chu Rocket port team, one paragraph stood out to me (bolded):

What was the most difficult thing about moving from joypad to touch control?

We talked about a number of different control schemes: tap arrow-tap board, drag the arrow from the panel to the board, swiping, etc, but the swiping method felt the most comfortable. Some game modes require the player to be quick, and nothing is quicker than swiping.

As a result, I think the most difficult decision we had to make for the controls was determining how large we could make each gameboard tile appear on the screen.

Too small, and players would have trouble being precise. Too big, and we would run out of screen real estate. Once everything came together, the control scheme became perfect.

What were you provided with in terms of original code and assets?

We were given the entire project archive for both the Dreamcast and Game Boy Advance titles, including source code and graphics.

The menu code was rewritten from scratch but all of the game modes use the original Dreamcast code. You can put the iOS version next to the Dreamcast version and they'll be 1-for-1 exact.

What part of ChuChu Rocket! are you most proud of?

I think I'm most proud of the download size for both iPhone and iPad versions. We took extra effort to make sure the size was under 20MB so that anyone can download it whenever they wanted.

All of the graphics and audio assets are present; nothing is missing. Unfortunately, I have learned that most customers won't notice this, so my pride is somewhat bittersweet.

Still rings true today, I suspect. Will be interesting to see how the Sega Forever service is received in the short run.

 

[Kolibri]

Shame to see these early impressions

Sega Forever

Spoiler

Fucking Up.

 

[AaronMT86]

Oh for fucks sakes Sega

http://imgur.com/a/h5UPJ

 

[Platy]

Tried Altered Beast.


Sorry BrazilGAF.

But is the sound better than Tectoy's Mega Drive ?

 

[Sophia]

I "Nope'd" out pretty quickly when I saw the Phantasy Star 2 version ask for permissions it really doesn't need to be asking for. Like push notifications.

Same thing for Sonic 1:

Push notifications? Location? Reading my phone status? There is no reason these apps need these kind of permissions.

 

[Toadthemushroom]

Oh for fucks sakes Sega

http://imgur.com/a/h5UPJ

#analytics #engagement #interaction

 

[James Scott]

Was this part of the Amazing SEGA initiative? Also surprised they've been teasing this for ages.

Kind of interested how they'd get Saturn games working on a Unity emulator

 

[Xiao Hu]

Does SEGA even know the term Q&A? This has tbe potential to be really good for the company and mobile gaming but the lazy ass approach ruins everything before it could start off. Fucking sad...

 

[StereoVsn]

Was this part of the Amazing SEGA initiative? Also surprised they've been teasing this for ages.

Kind of interested how they'd get Saturn games working on a Unity emulator

Yeah considering how Genesis games are working I am not keeping my hopes up for Dreamcast/Saturn unless there is a port and not emulation for those.

 

[metsallica]

These emulators are horrible. This is not a way to honor the legacy of Sega.

Really hope they don't go and replace the versions of Sonic 1, 2 and CD on the store because those are light years beyond this garbage.

Fodder for a DF Retro? Would be interesting.

 

[Piston Hyundai]

Does SEGA even know the term Q&A? This has tbe potential to be really good for the company and mobile gaming but the lazy ass approach ruins everything before it could start off. Fucking sad...

what does Question & Answer have to do with any of this

 

[catmincer]

I'm trying to think what Dreamcast games would actually work on a mobile phone with a touchscreen. Space Channel 5? Not a lot else.

 

[almostjuliuscaesar]

"from all of SEGA's console generations"

on mobile

 

[StereoVsn]

I'm trying to think what Dreamcast games would actually work on a mobile phone with a touchscreen. Space Channel 5? Not a lot else.

Skies of Arcadia would work great. They could also possibly redo Shenmue's combat for the touchscreen and then provide Shenmue 1&2 for mobile tablets!

 

[GurgleBot20]

It would be kind of shitty if Sega finally got around to re-releasing their neglected Master System and Saturn libraries, only for them to be on mobile and wrapped around a broken emulator.

 

[Cymbal Head]

Hoping to try a few of these out with my Switch pro controller after work.

 

[dark10x]

I'm trying to think what Dreamcast games would actually work on a mobile phone with a touchscreen. Space Channel 5? Not a lot else.

Crazy Taxi is brilliant on mobile. No joke. It controls way better than you'd think.

 

[EvilMario]

Bringing SEGA back to its 'glory days' seems like the ultimate hyperbole, but I enjoy that they're going to be offering these.

 

[Raitaro]

If the ports are bad that's pretty pathetic

"Amazing SEGA" in action

Indeed.

(And yes mobile defenders, they should be on consoles as well as that is where most of the oldschool Sega fans are that they seem to want to target with their new "Amazing" monniker and the "we want to bring back our glory days of quality and iconic IP's" philosophy.)

Edit: forgot to add that the commercial is excellent in a wacky throwback way. A shame though that this seems to be in line with Sega recently: all effective branding and talk that makes you hopeful but little actual action to deliver on the promises made.

 

[ScaryShark]

The Comix Zone port is surprisingly really good. It controls much better than I would have thought (iPhone 7 Plus) and looks and sounds as I would expect. I have a lot of nostalgia for that game and this is really cool to have.

I'm not having the experiences some in this thread are. *shrug*