Your favorite SEGA franchises (excluding Sonic)

[cjmcray]

With SEGA's (mostly abandoned) library of unique characters, what are your top 3 favorites? I had a lot of fun with Kid Chameleon in my youth, and Comix Zone was a blast. (How awesome would a cel-shaded remake of that be?) I would love to see a new Crazy Taxi that takes advantage of the PS4's hardware too. That being said, I think my top 3 would have to be from the Dreamcast era: Shenmue, Jet Set Radio and Crazy Taxi. How about you?

[cjmcray]

Sorry if the text in my original post seems a little jumbled together. I'm on amobile phone at the moment that, for whatever reason, won't let me space between paragraphs.

[Wombatwarlord777]

As lame as it sounds, I actually don't have a lot of experience with SEGA's other franchises. I played a lot of Super Monkey Ball back in the day, and I've sort of played NiGHTS via SRB2's special stages, which I enjoyed. Aesthetically, though, I've always thought that Jet Grind Radio was always the coolest thing, even though I've never actually played it. I'll have to get around to it someday.

So anyways, Super Monkey Ball, NiGHTS, and Jet Grind Radio are my top three, I guess.

[big_smile]

Like Wombatwarlord777, I don't have that much experience with the other Sega franchises, so my list might seem a little odd.

1. Streets of Rage – I love the beat-em action, the 80's style design and the amazing music. SoR3 is my favourite. I know conventional wisdom says SOR2 is the best and I can see why: In many ways SOR3 is something of a disappointment as it's essentially SOR2.1. However, the additions, while being slight, do add a lot to the experience.

2. Virtual Cop/Ghost Squad – Much like Streets of Rage, this take a simplistic genre but adds plenty of exploration and variety. Technically, Ghost Squad is a separate franchise, but it's the same game in all but name.

3. A tie up between Fighting Vipers or NiGHTS. NiGHTS is a unique experience that is unlike other. Fighting Vipers is often considered vastly inferior to Virtua Fighter, but I'm not really that skilled at fighting games, so I prefer the immediate impact of Vipers.

Other favourites include Space Channel 5, Shenmue, Panzer Dragoon Saga and Golden Axe, but I've only played these in small doses.
I also love Power Stone, which is actually a Capcom franchise, but it was exclusive to the Dreamcast (if you ignore the PSP anthology re-release).

[Locit]

Panzer Dragoon. No other series has ever really come close for me in terms of combined gameplay, atmosphere and world-building. Saga is still my favorite RPG.

[cjmcray]

Wombat, you're in luck. The original Jet Grind Radio is available on Steam if you want to check it out. You can also try the NullDC emulator. There's a ton of great Dreamcast exclusives that were never ported to other consoles. (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Shenmue, Super Magnetic Neo, Sword of Beserk, and the original Soul Calibur. Floigan Bros was pretty fun too imo, though some didn't care for it.)

[G.Silver]

I assume we're excluding other Sonic Team games, too, right?

Virtual On (especially Oratorio Tangram) has the special distinction of being the only "fighting" game that I liked enough to get really good at, bought arcade sticks for, etc. I don't like what they've done with the more recent games (they're old now, too!) but in terms of both hours and money spent, VO is probably the most significant Sega franchises for me, besides Sonic (and even then. I think VO more than any other series I like is one that would benefit from a new release in HD, it was always a very slick-looking game but designing one specifically for that format would be really cool.

Shinobi is definitely another favorite, specifically Revenge of and Shinobi 3. Revenge in particular has a real nostalgic quality, kind of alongside games like Streets of Rage, it's got that Yuzo Koshiro soundrack, and from that period where Sega games really seemed like they were made by fans, since Revenge has so many characters rather shamelessly borrowed from pop culture. Sega will never be small enough to get away with that kind of thing again! (And arguably they never were, since they kept having to remove those characters from later editions of the game..) Shinobi 3 is my favorite though, it's still the best feeling ninja game I've ever played and is one of my all-time favorites for certain. I still really like Shinobi on 3DS (I think I raved about it pretty extensively in other threads here..) as well.

I guess number three is Fantasy Zone! It's not a series where I especially want a new entry, especially with the relatively recent release of FZ2W for 3DS, but I really like these games, and I'm really happy with the 3DS remakes.

[cjmcray]

You can mention other Sonic Team games if you want, I just wanted to keep Sonic games out of the topic as that subject has been discussed to death. I never played Fantasy Zone, but since we're talking old-old school SEGA, I gotta mention Space Harrier. I wasted so much time playing that in the arcade in Shenmue.

[G.Silver]

I guess I should elaborate on that one, then! The thing that I really like about Fantasy Zone is the pacing of it. You can go wherever you like, like Defender, and you can play it however you want but what ends up being the most effective way to do it is to rush in towards the big enemies (bases) and destroy them before the small enemies (ones that already exist and ones that the bases emit) have time to close back in and destroy you or drive you away from the bases. You get more coins the faster you destroy enemies as well, which enable you to buy more powerful weapons, too (but I like to stick with the basic/cheaper weapons and power ups for as long as I can). As the difficulty ramps up you get this behavior where you keep pushing in and then being driven away, and that constant high speed attack/retreat cycle is something I really like. It's also got a great soundtrack and it looks wonderful, but of course that's not unusual at all for Sega titles..

I think excluding Sonic Team titles at least makes it easier for me since NiGHTS and Burning Rangers are also huge favorites, but kind of obvious for this forum? BR more than anything is a game I'd like to see revisited in some fashion, especially now that randomly generated rogue-like games in unexpected genres are now the hip cool thing--BR is as much a rogue-alike as anything else in the genre today.

I like every game that has been mentioned so far a lot. :)

[Wombatwarlord777]

Shit, I forgot about Fantasy Zone. I've played a bit of that and it's always a good time.

Also, Puyo Pop is eternally a satisfying puzzle game.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Space Harrier for the turbografx16 was maybe one of the first games I've ever played. in any case it probably shaped my tastes in otherworldly surreal settings, which few even match SH to this day. Not to mention a love for sweeping musical scores.

That said, the one Genesis game I think I've played nearly as much as Sonic is Toe Jam & Earl 2: Panic on Funkotron. I think I'll track down the arranged soundtrack someday.

I dunno. A lot of Sega properties never stuck around long enough to ever really hit that crescendo other companies' *coughnintendocough* IPs have. And in terms recognizability, if there is a iconography to any non-Sonic series, they're lost on me and likely the general audience. Then again, I'm pig-sick of a lot of nintendo franchises, and the best are those that eschew their iconography anyways. It's a delicate balance, I guess.