Devolver Digital wants to make a new Seaman game
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?