The Seaman franchise caused a lot of confusion for us here at SEGAbits when it was announced and, well, probably more confusion when we first played it on Dreamcast. That doesn’t mean the game didn’t have a fanbase, the game was the third highest selling Dreamcast game in Japan when it was released and the sequel Seaman 2 (Japan only) sold similar numbers when released in 2007.
In 2008 the creator and company president behind Seaman and Seaman 2, Vivarium Inc, actually tried to get a Seaman spin-off called GABO! on to the Apple App Store. Sadly they where rejected by Apple and doesn’t seem like the game ever came out.
Now flash forward to the present, Chief Financial Officer from the US publisher Devolver Digital has openly asked SEGA to allow them to handle a new entry to the Seaman franchise via the power of Twitter. Devolver Digital is known for publishing titles like Hotline Miami, Shadow Warriror and bringing back the Serious Sam franchise. The only issue I see here is that Devolver Digital is a publisher, basically what SEGA (and their other company they own, Atlus) does already (and has been doing for decades).
But since SEGA hasn’t done anything with the the IP in 8 years, can it really hurt them to license it to another publisher and get it off the ground? What are your thoughts?
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Devolver is probably my favorite publisher around. They could do great things with the Seaman IP.
It really is a shame Seaman 2 never released over here. Along with Typing of the Dead.
Typing of the Dead for PS2
It doesn’t really matter who publishes it, but for it to really be Seaman, it would have to be directed by Yoot Saito. If any game developer can be described as an auteur, he would have to be among them. It’s a very idiosyncratic and personal kind of game, and IIRC he said he designed it to be intentionally annoying for players in certain ways.
Personally I enjoyed what I played of it, but I got stuck fairly early on in Seaman’s evolution, and I think it would be nice if any newer version was a bit less linear.
I bet it’s gonna be something hard to happen. Take Ecco for example. Ed Annunziata tried, more than one time, to revive the franchise. SEGA didn’t let he do it. And he is the ‘creator’.
I agree with Centrale. If they wanted to make a modern port of Seaman, or even bring Seaman 2 west, it’d be fine. But it’s like asking for permission to make The Tower III! Yoot Saito’s games need Yoot Saito in a way that isn’t true for a lot of other franchises.
Also, incidentally, we need more Yoot Saito games.