4 classic Sega properties we’d love to see get new games

Sega’s recent financial reports got people talking for a number of reasons, but one of the most significant is the fact that the company is interested in “making its existing IPs into global brands” — similar to how Sonic has comfortably become a multimedia franchise — as well as “utilisation of past IPs”.

Exactly how Sega intends to make use of these past IPs is kept quite vague throughout the document, but besides incorporating those properties into their proposed “Super Games”, whatever those might be, they specifically call out the possibilities of “Remasters” (converting old titles to current platforms), “Remakes” (adding significant new features atop the core gameplay of the original) and “Reboots” (constructing a new game while maintaining the look and feel of the property).

So with that in mind, here’s five Sega properties that we’d welcome at the very least a remaster, and perhaps a remake or reboot.

Crazy Taxi

Despite being one of Sega’s most beloved arcade-style games that is inevitably referenced any time someone so much as thinks the word “crazy” or “taxi”, we’ve not seen much from Crazy Taxi since the original Dreamcast game was ported to Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2010.

For the unfamiliar, in Crazy Taxi, you drive a taxi in an open world environment, picking up fares and delivering them to their destinations as quickly as you can. Performing various stunts along the way — including near-misses with traffic, jumps and drifts — allows you to earn additional tips on top of your passenger’s base fare, and there are a number of advanced techniques you’ll need to learn to pull off if you want to succeed.

With the recent resurgence in arcade-style games, the time is absolutely ripe for a Crazy Taxi renaissance of some description. Whether it’s an HD compilation of the three mainline games (including the oft-forgotten original Xbox third title), some sort of “Crazy Taxi Ultimate” remake that blends all three of them together, or a completely new title in the series, there’s plenty of scope for Crazy Taxi to return.

If Sega were to make an appropriately chaotic sandbox filled with physics objects to smash, hurl around the map and generally wreck, this could be a great game for streamers, too; doubtless most of you know how popular silly sandbox titles are with that community. Plus can you imagine the possibilities multiplayer might offer? LazuLight plays Crazy Taxi Ultimate collab when?

Jet Set Radio

In Jet Set Radio, you take on the role of some painfully cool rollerblading street kids as they attempt to strike back against the authoritarian government the only way they know how: by drawing giant dicks and scrawling obscenities on every flat surface in the neighbourhood. (Okay, the dicks and obscenities are optional, but the fact you could design your own graffiti tags was a genius addition.)

Jet Set Radio has had consistent love over the years for its varied gameplay, its popularisation of cel-shaded 3D graphics — which have become a mainstay of anime-style games in more recent years — and its banging soundtracks. And yet we haven’t seen much from it on the official side of things.

That said, we have seen a number of developers paying very obvious and deliberate homage to Jet Set Radio in titles like Hover and Sunset Overdrive — one could even argue that Nintendo’s Splatoon has a certain amount of Jet Set Radio DNA in the mix in terms of its overall vibe and presentation.

There’s clearly a market, in other words, so it would doubtless pay off well for Sega to resurrect the franchise in some form or another — at the very minimum, an HD remaster double pack of the Dreamcast original and the Xbox sequel would be a welcome sight, but a brand new game would be even better. And with there being plenty of self-consciously retro-style “cool” games around at the moment, a new Jet Set Radio would fit right in with the modern gaming marketplace.

Shinobi

The great thing about Shinobi as a franchise is that it’s proven itself over the years to be pretty flexible; the early games in the series were platform action games, while a vastly underappreciated PS2 installment (and a spinoff) showed the series’ potential to move into the 3D realm.

With Joe Musashi being an iconic enough character from Sega’s back catalogue to put in an appearance in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Transformed (we’ll have another one of those while we’re on, eh Sega) it seems strange that we haven’t seen any sort of attempt to reboot Shinobi since a 2011 3DS title that most people have probably forgotten existed, and a Sega Ages rerelease of the first game in the series.

There are plenty of possibilities for a new Shinobi. There could be a retelling of Joe Musashi’s story from the early games in the series; there could be a brand new title in the mould of Tecmo’s Ninja Gaiden series; there could even be a new “modern retro” installment in the series if Sega partnered up with a team that is good at that sort of thing, such as Inti Creates. Whatever form it takes, we want more ninjas!

Skies of Arcadia

Ah, Skies of Arcadia. Everyone who played this RPG from 2000 has fond memories of it for one reason or another, be it the excellent soundtrack, memorable characters, cool battle systems — including aerial naval combat! — or simply the general quality of the game overall. But it underperformed commercially, meaning that a sequel which entered the planning stages in 2003 was eventually shelved in favour of Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love.

In 2012, Sega’s brand manager suggested that a Skies of Arcadia HD release was likely to happen after the positive reception to rereleases of Sonic Adventure, Crazy Taxi and Jet Set Radio on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and Sega renewed the trademark that same year — sadly, this never came to anything, much to the chagrin of people who were already frustrated at the rising price of the Dreamcast and GameCube versions of the game on the second-hand market.

Hope isn’t dead for this one, though; as recently as 2020, original team member Kenji Hiruta tweeted that he “really really” wanted to develop a sequel for the game, and promised to pass on everyone’s comments to Sega. We haven’t heard anything since on this, sadly — and notably, Skies of Arcadia isn’t one of the dormant IPs that Sega specifically references in its financial report — but we can keep hoping.

Hell, at this point, just a new port of the original, perhaps with some touched-up graphics, would be a welcome sight. I think there’s a significant number of people out there who would pay good money for that!

---

What classic properties would you love to see Sega bring back? Be sure to let us know in the comments or via the usual social channels — or if you have some more detailed ideas, why not write us a note for the Friday Letters Page? Click the “Write to Rice!” widget over on the right to share your thoughts.

^{Disclosure: Some links in this article may be affiliate links, which means we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase after clicking on them. This is at no additional cost to you and helps support Rice Digital!}