Nintendo has received many challengers to their consoles and portables over the years and most of them fail. Their biggest rival for decades was Sega. They were a giant video game creator and console manufacturer until Sony and Microsoft came along and slowly started to replace them.
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Thankfully, their story would not end with the Dreamcast as they shifted gears and focused on game creation instead. They've made and helped publish hundreds of titles over the years. Some of them have received sequels while others haven't been so lucky. Let's take a look at some of these Sega one-offs from original titles to spinoffs from popular series.
Alpha Protocol was a collaboration between Obsidian Entertainment and Sega. Obsidian made a big splash in 2010 thanks to Fallout: New Vegas, which was a notoriously buggy game but fans still ate it up. The studio was known for crafting giant RPGs that were rough around the edges like this.
Somehow, these rough edges were not met with a forgiving wave of the hand for Alpha Protocol, which came out months before Fallout: New Vegas. It was a unique idea as a spy-based RPG that could have gone on to become a franchise if only the launch were better.
Binary Domain was created by the Yakuza developers at Sega. It features a weird cast of characters and a unique story reminiscent of the high drama of the Yakuza series, except the gameplay and subject matter were new. It took place in the far-off future wherein robots were integrated into society.
After a virus caused them to go haywire, a crack team of specialists is sent in to fix the problem. It's a squad-based shooter and almost feels like a Terminator game spiritually.
Captain America: Super Soldier came off of the heels of Batman: Arkham Asylum. That game changed everything as it proved to fans that a good superhero game could be made, especially with Batman as the star. Captain America: Super Soldier borrowed a lot from it, including the combat.
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The game is based on the first movie and helps fill in some gaps of what Captain America was doing in World War 2 before squaring off with Red Skull at the end of that movie. While not perfect, the developers did a decent job and it is an underrated gem.
This game was a collaboration with tri-Ace, a company most widely known for the Star Ocean franchise. Resonance of Fate was an ambitious turn-based RPG with a twist. The three playable characters used guns and when they took action, they would walk along a set path on the battlefield.
This was done to make the gameplay feel more alive like in an action movie gun battle. The mechanics turned out to be a little too ambitious and confusing though. While it didn't get a sequel, it did get a remaster in 2018.
Skies of Arcadia is probably the one RPG from Sega that fans have been dying to see a sequel to. It came out in an era where sky pirates and airships still populated the genre. The Dreamcast game did get ported to the GameCube with a few enhancements but that was very early on.
There was never been a digital port or remaster for consoles in our modern era. The legacy has lived on through another Sega RPG franchise via Valkyria Chronicles, wherein characters from Skies of Arcadia have made cameos.
Sonic is Sega's cash cow character and they have tried every genre under the sun. They even combined their efforts with BioWare in creating the DS RPG, Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood. It had turn-based combat with action prompts akin to the Mario RPG series.
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There were also exploring segments on the map with somewhat traditional gameplay for a top-down Sonic game. Another spinoff that was a one-and-done situation was Shadow the Hedgehog, which gave Sonic's rival a gun. It wasn't a well-received game, but it could have been something akin to the Ratchet and Clank games.
Vanquish was a collaboration between PlatinumGames and Sega. Previously, the two companies joined forces for Bayonetta and this was the next big project that unfortunately went nowhere, unlike that franchise. Set in a futuristic space society, players were armed with a power suit to protect them against human and robot terrorists.
They had a wide variety of guns but the coolest gameplay gimmick was power sliding through battlefields and slowing down time. It got a remaster in 2020, ten years after its initial launch but no sequel or spinoff has come as of yet.
Virtua Quest was Sega's effort in chasing after that sweet Kingdom Hearts money. It was an action RPG with kid-friendly graphics and easy-to-understand mechanics. It was a crossover RPG with some Sega franchises like Virtua Fighter as the lead.
It was a novel idea but it didn't have the nostalgia magic of Square Enix or Disney to help make it a global hit. Maybe, someday, Sega could try again and add a lot more crossovers to the mix.
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