Remaining Sega Forever mobile games being hit with End-of-Service announcements UPDATE: Annnnnnnd they’re gone

The final nail in Sega Forever’s coffin has just been pounded in. The once-promising initiative out of Sega Europe to bring classic Sega games back on mobile devices as free, ad-supported games had already been quietly discontinued years ago and several games were delisted and left with their online services disabled in 2023. Now, most of the remaining games are meeting the same fate.

Like before, this comes without any official announcement from Sega outside of this end-of-service notice popping up within the affected games, along with a link directly to Sega’s website. Each of the games will remain playable offline and tied to your Google Play or Apple account if you had previously downloaded them, but they will no longer be updated, so it’s only a matter of time until they do become unplayable as Sega will no longer make sure they keep up with ongoing Android or iOS updates. This has actually already happened with each of the games that were delisted the last time since we reported on it two years ago. The topical games here are still available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store as of this writing, so you may as well download the remaining games if you haven’t already and enjoy them while you can. As part of this update, all online features will be shut down, which amounted to leaderboards and, for the Genesis/Mega-Drive games, save-states saved onto the cloud. Local save data will remain accessible. The option to pay $2 USD to disable ads, which will now be disabled anyway, is also gone.

Check past the break for a list of the affected titles.

The games hit with end-of-service announcements are:

• Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II
• Sonic CD Classic
• Super Monkey Ball: Sakura Edition
• Virtua Tennis Challenge
• Crazy Taxi Classic
• Golden Axe Classics (Golden Axe, Golden Axe II, and Golden Axe III)
• Shining Force Classics (Shining in the Darkness, Shining Force, and Shining Force II)
• Streets of Rage Classic
• Streets of Rage 2 Classic

The only two games not affected are Sonic the Hedgehog Classic and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Classic.

The saddest thing about these apps now being on their death knell is that we’re losing a bunch of evergreen classic titles that, for now, have no other official way of being played. Some of the Genesis games here and more are available on Nintendo Switch Online, with Streets of Rage and a previously delisted Sega Forever title, ESWAT: City Under Siege, in particular being included in the most recent update. However, Sega have also recently delisted their popular Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive Classics Collection and Crazy Taxi HD from all platforms they was available on. This means that, for the first time in almost twenty years, a ton of Genesis games that seemed to have been constantly available on many platforms since Sega’s exit from the console race are now scarce, which is unheard of given Sega’s longstanding reputation for constant Genesis game compilations over the years. The case of Crazy Taxi is also a notable one, as this mobile port of the game was the only port since the original 6th generation console ports (Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo Gamecube) to feature the iconic soundtrack consisting of licensed songs from The Offspring and Bad Religion. Even the recently delisted PC and console HD ports that this mobile version was based on did not have that.

Not only that, but Super Monkey Ball: Sakura Edition and Virtua Tennis Challenge are completely unique games in both series that were only ever available on mobile platforms. They were delisted once before, but Sega Forever brought them back and kept them accessible on newer mobile devices for years only for them to now have their days numbered once again. Super Monkey Ball: Sakura Edition, while not amazing, did feature a whole series of unique levels never featured in any other Super Monkey Ball game to date, as well as a unique mini-game only playable on tablets. Virtua Tennis Challenge is also the only Virtua Tennis game Sega still offered today and still made any profit from. With all Virtua Tennis games, including this one, featuring the likenesses of real life professional Tennis players, the odds of any Virtua Tennis game seeing an official re-release are slim-to-none, so unless Sega works a miracle there or decides to make a brand new Virtua Tennis game, Virtua Tennis could very well be gone forever once Virtua Tennis Challenge disappears.

Of course, there are rumblings that Sega is planning an all-new means of delivering their classic games to players everywhere, with a subscription service similar to Nintendo Switch Online being a likely possibility. Peppering some retro arcade titles into the Like A Dragon series of games has also worked out shockingly well for Sega so far. Perhaps they learned some valuable lessons from Sega Forever’s failings that any future preservation efforts will benefit from? Only time will tell, but it seems doubtful that mobile app stores will play a part in this either way. For now, lets all pour one out to Sega Forever. Its ambitions may not have gone far, but I’d say it was an interesting experiment nonetheless.

Oh, and as an aside, Sega Forever’s social media channels are still silent. At least their discord server lives on, where it has now been renamed to just “Sega” and remains a good community to discuss Sega’s past, present, and future. You’re welcome to join them from this link. (Join ours too, while you’re at it.)

Are you sad to see more Sega Forever games about to go away? Do you have any memories with Sega Forever you wanna share? I personally won’t forget how I often played them on the treadmills and bike machines at my local gym and how I beat Shining Force II and Phantasy Star IV for the first time this way. That’s also how I first beat Sonic the Hedgehog 2 with all the Chaos Emeralds and finally saw the true ending for myself (as well as how I was shocked to learn that this version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 made some changes to that ending that I won’t spoil). Anyway, discuss your thoughts and your special Sega Forever memories in the comments below.

Update: It’s been discovered that, at least as of June 30th 2025, perhaps earlier, all the affected apps listed above are now removed from the app stores, with only Sonic the Hedgehog 1 and 2 Classic remaining. As stated before, if you downloaded any of those apps before their delisting, you will still be able to download and play them, at least for now.

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