One of the most welcomed shocks to come from last year’s Video Game Awards was a weird, nostalgia trailer from Sega boasting the retooling of several titles from the company’s past. These games included classic Genisis titles Shinobi and Golden Axe, as well as Dreamcast titles Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi.
In a recent Japan Times interview, we finally got a sense of the scope of these projects, originally announced as remakes using the latest graphics. It was also announced as part of this interview that Sega’s relatively new Sapporo Studio is part of this project, only having been founded in 2021. It appears from the interview that they are only a part of development, with no independent projects in development currently.
Sapporo studio head Takaya Segawa spoke about this, stating:
The studio has an R&D department that handles designing and programming games and a QA department in charge of quality control. Recruitment in R&D is progressing as expected, but for QA we received more applications than anticipated, so a second branch of Sapporo Studio opened in April 2023.
As part of this, it appears Crazy Taxi is being given plenty of attention, being referred to as a “AAA” title as part of the same interview, though with very little context. Previously in December, the game was described as “innovative and fresh style driving action” that’s meant to invoke a “cheerful feeling of freedom” mixed with the “fusion of nature and city”.
While the games did look great in their initial trailer, it was unclear how much Sega planned to invest in them. Last year, when Sega canceled their upcoming live-service game Hyenas, it was stated that Sega had multiple unannounced big games that included many of these reboot projects. Whether all of them are viewed as AAA or only some is also still unclear. Hopefully, we will hear more about these games soon, given that each one has a pretty special place for me growing up, even if it is reportedly several years away.
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