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Are the Adventure Games liabilities to rerelease?


Whatever the WhoCares

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SA1 and 2 are generally well-regarded among Sonic fans. But when it comes to critics, it’s a different story. These titles were infamously lambasted by the press when they came out for seventh-gen  consoles. And given how Sega treats games with lower metascores, I do wonder, are they afraid to put them on modern hardware? Switch versions, I would imagine, ought to sell like hotcakes, but maybe Sega is worried they’ll damage the brand somehow? Then again, I could be overthinking it; plenty of critically acclaimed titles have never been released on modern platforms. 

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I support the Dreamcast versions being released as-is just for the sake of ease of access, but if they were rereleased in their current state, they probably wouldn't be attractive purchases to the target audience they always market Sonic games to. It would have to be for that sweetspot of people who love these games, warts and all and sega is probably unsure of how big of a market that is these days.

I don't think they're 'liabilities' per say but they probably don't see the potential payout as worth the effort to try and sort through them and iron out the kinks. Sonic Adventure 1, specifically, has a lot of collision detection problems that fall far below the standard for the time and it's only gotten worse with each subsequent release. Sonic Adventure 2 is an easier sell because it's a lot less ambitious and focused more on refinement. It largely works the way you'd expect it to as a result but it still needs some work and there are questionable elements baked into it's design that you really can't do anything about.

Actually releasing decent versions of those games that represent them well is now an investment in either case, and while I think the payoff might be worth it, it's not as much of a surefire bet as releasing Classic Sonic again, so Sega isn't likely to budge.

I think it's a shame, but I have my original copies and the modded Steam versions so I'm not losing sleep over it. Just give me Unleashed so I can check out.

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Wouldn't say that they are to do with review scores otherwise Heroes would have already got a re-release (outside of an emulated PS2 version on the PS3).

The issue is that the Adventure games were from an era where they were still trying to work out 3D so there's camera and control issues, both these problems plagued not just Sonic games but for a vast majority of the 6th generation with some games/genres handling them better than others. As time goes on, there have been less and less re-releases from that era and either they have been remade including Sega's own Yakuza 1 and 2 or that they were reworked and improved (something like Krome's Ty PC ports) with the other option being emulated such as Super Mario Sunshine on 3D Allstars or stuff like Xbox backwards compatibility.

This would cause a debate whether to re-release with the issues that they have or just to remake them. We don't even know if Sega still has the source code for Adventure (the original Dreamcast version) but most likely not which is why we get botched ports of the Gamecube remake. Dreamcast emulation is picking up so it is doable but not sure if it is powerful enough to run on the Switch, shouldn't be a problem for PS4/Xbox One upwards. Adventure 2 seems to be better of the two ports as the Gamecube version added extras yet Big was mostly restored in the PS3/360/PC port and some versions of Adventure 2 on the Dreamcast were either unfinished or triggered copy protection. The recent port also has bugs of its own... Bundling both games and Shuffle while we are at it would probably ease the reviews a bit but then it might get mocked for their problems.

So then a remake would be a better option, better collision detection, fixing the facial expressions/lip sync, include all of the DLC/extras that the originals had (SA1 DC, SA2 Battle). Then again considering the complaints that Colours Ultimate is getting, a remake (or a remake of a remake in the case of Adventure) might even end up being worse. People will be outraged if the Adventure games played like Forces.

It's one of those where you don't know what to do.

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Yes; i feel like the Adventures being reissued would be best suited for if there is ever an official Dreamcast-nextgen hybrid console.  I am not sure when or why that would ever happen, but, now that it has been 20 years since it went out of production, there is a sweet spot of, i guess between a few and as many as 10-15 years into the future to design and release a well-received sort of boutique console that could play both Dreamcast games correctly (whether this was through the original CDs, i am not sure how likely that could be, or, a new digital-only method) along with having options for any and all third party developers as well as homebrewing! 

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They re-released SA2 on Xbox Live and it wasn’t an issue. So I don’t see why SEGA would hesitate.   

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