There’s no word on what games will be included in the collection, but the ratings board has classified as a M-rated release and there will be both Japanese and English language support. The title of the collection seems to imply that it will collect the Game Boy Advance Castlevania games. Three Castlevania titles release on the Game Boy Advance: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance, and Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. All three were well-received.

If Konami wants to put more than three games into the collection, they could also add DS titles Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin, and Calstlevania: Order of Ecclessia, but it might be harder to port the DS games to modern platforms given that the games were designed around having two screens.

https://twitter.com/Nibellion/status/1405959721169965057

Konami’s Super Bomberman R has sold over 2 million units worldwide since first launching in 2017. It was first available for the Nintendo Switch before releasing for Xbox One, PS4 and PC in 2018. On Twitter, the publisher confirmed that a commemorative campaign would launch in the future to celebrate.

Developed by Hexadrive, M2 and Konami, Super Bomberman R features a new story campaign that can be played solo or in local co-op. The plot is a slight reboot and sees the eight Bomberman Brothers battling the dastardly Emperor Buggler. There are about 50 stages to complete in Story Mode but the real appeal is multiplayer.

Battle Mode returns with support for up to 8 players locally or online and 19 Battlegrounds to fight on. It offers 27 characters in total, each with their own abilities. Those interested in multiplayer alone may want to wait for Super Bomberman R Online – the battle royale spin-off will be coming to PC, Xbox One, PS4 and Switch later this year and support cross-play.

https://twitter.com/bomberman573/status/1372029926426218496

Hopping aboard the trend of re-releasing older consoles in miniature versions, Sega has announced the Genesis/Mega Drive Mini. It will retail for $79.99 and release on September 19th, with a whopping 40 games included. This version of the console is based on the Model 1 Genesis, which originally launched in August 1989 in North America.

The first ten games that Sega confirmed would be coming to the platform are:

• Sonic the Hedgehog
• Ecco the Dolphin
• Castlevania: Bloodlines
• Space Harrier II
• Shining Force
• Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine
• ToeJam & Earl
• Comix Zone
• Altered Beast
• Gunstar Heroes

Along with 40 games, consumers will also receive two replica Genesis controllers with USB functionality, a USB to micro-B power cable, a power adapter (in North America only)m and an HDMI cable. Sega also confirmed that M2, which worked on the Sega Ages and Sega 3D Classics Collection, would handle porting the games.

Given Sega’s library of classics, re-releasing the Genesis with these games included is a pretty good idea. Time will tell if, as far as its quality is concerned, it’s more in line with Nintendo’s NES Mini and SNES Mini and less akin to Sony’s PlayStation Classic. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months regarding the remaining games.

SEGA Ages is bringing the company’s classic catalog to Nintendo’s Switch, but the catalog of those games may soon extend into their beloved Dreamcast games. Speaking in an interview with Japanese gaming outlet Famitsu, M2 president Naoki Horii and Sega AGES supervisor Yosuke Okunari revealed that Dreamcast games may end up coming to Nintendo’s hybrid console, too.

Apparently, if it does happen, Sega will be emulating the games, instead of porting them straight over, since it looks like they prefer the options to enhance and tweak the games that emulation provides over the relative faithfulness to the source code that simply porting it over would entail.

“At the time, it seemed likely that we’d be able to emulate Dreamcast software on the Nintendo Switch,” said Horii (translated by Nintendo Everything). “Depending on whether you’re emulating software or remaking the source code entirely, porting something is completely different. I think SEGA chose some of the titles based on that – no doubt emulation increased the number of titles they were able to choose from.”

Were it to happen, Sega still hasn’t decided on how it would want to distribute the Dreamcast games on Switch—it’s considering the Virtual Console approach and the 3D Classics approach (which it embraced fully on the 3DS) both, it seems.

“I think that this time the results of the survey influenced that as well. I haven’t really come to a conclusion yet, but I wonder if it’d be better to release more titles from the list in a manner similar to the Virtual Console (in their original state) or to hand-pick a select few with added features (like the Grantnoff boss in the 3DS version of Thunder Blade),” said Okunari.

No matter what it ends up being, I am sure may will be overjoyed simply at being able to play Dreamcast games on a modern system, and on the go. While Sega has ported the catalog on Genesis multiple times to newer systems, Dreamcast games have been relatively less widely disseminated. Hopefully this marks a move to change that.

Sega is a company that has often treated its venerated and storied past with shocking, cavalier casualness—but even when it does attempt to tap into nostalgia, it mostly does so by releasing, and re-releasing, Genesis/Mega Drive games from its 16-bit heyday. In a way, it makes sense—most people know Sega for that, after all. But at this point, Genesis games have been released on practically every platform known to mankind, and other, equally great (if not better) Sega games released on platforms like Saturn and Dreamcast have languished in obscurity.

However, with Sega AGES, a line of classic games being re-released for the Nintendo Switch, that might change. While, for now, the collection will focus on Genesis games (again), it might expand to include Saturn and Dreamcast games in the feature. Speaking about the future of the initiative, the senior director of the project said (translation via ResetEra) that it could be expanded to include Saturn and Dreamcast games in the future. Not only that, but Sega’s Sam Mullen from the localization team chipped in on ResetEra to suggest that this might in fact happen—but he did note that fans should express their interest in that happening on social media like Twitter.

Hoopefully, it does happen. Some of Sega’s best games ever made were for Saturn and Dreamcast (including many that, sadly, barely or never got any release in the west). I’d love for the chance to be able to play them on the Switch.

Sega has announced Sega AGES, a line of classic Genesis games that it will be releasing exclusively on the Nintendo Switch on the eShop starting this Summer. The first five games that launch as part of this line will include Phantasy Star, Alex Kidd in the Miracle World, Sonic the Hedgehog, Thunder Force IV, as well as beloved arcade classic Gain Ground.

This makes the collection notable in a lot of ways—for starters, it will mark the first time a lot of these games have received official western collections. Secondly, being developed by emulation wizards M2, we can be sure they will be more than accurate to their source material, rather than being shoddy recreations. It also marks the second classic gaming company, after SNK, to bring its classic catalog to the Switch—the chances of an all encompassing Virtual Console are looking slimmer and slimmer…

Sega AGES will begin to be launched on the Switch starting this Summer.