The SEGA Five: SEGA-AM2 arcade only games that need console ports

Hello and welcome to another exciting edition of The Weekly Five where we make a list of various SEGA topics. I’ll be your awesome host, George and today we will be looking at five SEGA-AM2 arcade exclusives that deserve a home port. I used console in the title, but honestly I’ll take these ports on PC as well.

Let’s get started.

Shining Force Cross

Shining Force Cross almost didn’t make it on the list, not because I don’t want a home release for the game but because finding who actually developed it was more of a hassle than I thought. But after looking around the only developer that has had its named attached to the project is AM2 and even has them listed on the game’s wikipedia entry. This just means we get to talk about the game.

Shining Force Cross takes the Shining franchise in an all new action RPG direction, focusing on fighting as a group and completing quests. At first glance it looks like Shining Force Cross is trying to be Phantasy Star Online and I don’t think its a bad thing, considering I’m a big fan of the Phantasy Star Online games.

While Shining Force Cross came out in 2009 the game has received several big expansions with the latest one coming out in 2014. Seeing as SEGA West hasn’t released a console Shining game since 2007’s Shining Force EXA, I wouldn’t hold my breath on this coming to home consoles or state side. I mean, we are still waiting on the English version of Phantasy Star Online 2.

SCUD Race/Sega Super GT

Scud Race or Sega Super GT as its known in America, is a AM2 racer and one of the few big AM2 racers that was produced and directed by Toshihiro Nagoshi. Who would later go on to create Super Monkey Ball and the long running Yakuza franchise.

Scud Race actually had a port planned on the Sega Saturn and just like Virtua Fighter 3 it got moved over to Dreamcast. AM2 used a demo of Scud Race to show off the Dreamcast in a 1998 Dreamcast presentation, but the port was later cancelled for unknown reasons.

The closest we have gotten to Scud Race on home consoles is OutRun 2 on the Xbox, which features all four tracks from Scud Race complete with music.

Daytona USA 2

I consider Daytona USA one of the defining arcade racers of the 90’s and it got its fair share of home ports, some not so great and a few that did the game justice. But its crazy to think that its sequel, Daytona USA 2 never got a home console port.
Daytona USA 2 is a strange title since the first version of the game dropped its mascot, the Hornet stock car and introduced the ability to choose between three different cars and featured three brand new courses. Daytona USA 2 would later update the cabinet the same year and fix the mascot issue with Daytona USA 2: Power Edition which added a brand new fourth course to race in called ‘Challenge course’ and includes the Hornet vehicle as a selectable racer.
Much like Scud Racer, Daytona USA: Power Edition‘s Challenge Course was included in the Xbox release of OutRun 2. Boy, don’t those folks at Sumo Digital just love AM2 racers as much as us?

Virtua Cop 3

Virtua Cop 3 came out in 2003 in arcades and built on the gameplay introduced in the two previous games. Not only is the game sporting a brand new graphics engine and running on a brand new arcade board, it also added a new slow-motion mechanic system called ES Mode that lets you slow down time and take out multiple enemies. The game also introduced the ability to toggle between weapons.

Since Virtua Cop 3 ran on the the SEGA Chihiro board, which is based on architecture of the Xbox, it had a Xbox port in the works. Sadly the port was canceled due to high cost of manufacturing light guns for the system. Online users with modded Xboxs have been able to run the arcade rom with little to no issues, though some versions of the Xbox run the game better than others.
I think the world is long overdue for a Virtua Cop Trilogy release, the last Virtua Cop bundle released was Virtua Cop: Elite Edition on the Playstation 2 that featured the first two games.

Border Break

Border Break is a badass 3rd person mech action shooter released in arcades back in 2009 and it was actually a big success for SEGA. I put this game number one in my list because it just looks like so much fun.

The game takes two squads of ten mechs and has them go up against each other in various locations, with the objective of destroying the opposing teams energy reactor core. The game has a multitude of classes, upgradable parts and focus on teamwork to get specific goals done is perfect for today’s online gaming community. The console world is severely lacking online mech action games and this one just looks like it can fill that void.

AM2 has been updating Border Break heavily since release and their latest update named Border Break Scramble came out in 2014. Its nice that SEGA is committed to supporting their arcade games, but isn’t it time they tossed us a port?

Thanks for reading this new entry of The Weekly Five, if you have any questions or comments leave them below. If you ever wondered what other SEGA-AM2 arcade games stayed exclusive, check out the video above the article, towards the end. 

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