How Would A New Daytona USA Fare? Prelude

This topic ignited a few days back when I was making my usual Daytona 2 image/media rounds on Google, trying to find anything new.  Fortunately, since the Supermodel emulator popped up, we've been saturated with new game pics.  These are some of my pics.

But that's not the point because I found an interesting article back in 2007.  We're talking about Sega Rally Revo and how it was coming out.  Check out this long article on Neogaf.  Track deformation, tons of cars, good eye candy, etc.  You'd think ex-employees of Codemasters, Criterion, Rare and Rockstar North could bang out that dream Sega Rally game but it fizzled rather quickly, mostly because they screwed up the physics, etc.  Averaged about a 7/10 rating and you can find it on the super discount racks these days.

But in that article there's a little goodie dropped in there to please the fans.  Here's one line from this article:

Perhaps we’ll give some false hope to die-hard fans with our next comment, but what the hell: when asked by other members of the press whether or not the next project of this company will be Daytona USA, we were met with a “maybe”. Mark Fisher also replied with a “who knows!”, when asked if there’ll ever be an arcade version of this new SEGA Rally.

This quote became the subject of debate on this Team Xbox forum topic.  I'm fairly certain there are other threads out there like this one, but I can't find them all.  Use this as a microcosm of people's opinions.  Some people want just Daytona USA Xbox Live play, some want more than that (Scud Race, Daytona 2), but some don't want the game at all because Sega would screw it up.  It's worth mentioning that AM2's original staff probably doesn't work anymore (Nagoshi NEVER expresses any interest in Sega racers, Osaki is invisible, Suzuki is going around teasing that Shenmue sequel, etc.) so we don't know if Sega is competent even if they have the energy/motivation to work on it (that's where the Sega fanbase comes in to pick up the slack...hopefully).

There is one thing everyone was unanimous in saying--that Sega wouldn't make it.  We've heard the word "maybe" before.  We heard it from Toshihiro Nagoshi back in 2004.  We've also heard it from Yu Suzuki in 2011 about the new Shenmue.  And all these promises that the new Sonic games will be good.  I mean, really, does anyone take Sega seriously anymore?

EDIT: An aside here, folks.  Wait a second, another promise that comes to mind is all these new Dreamcast XBLA ports that were supposed to be released by Summer 2011.  See article from June 2010.

Earlier today at E3, we asked Sega West president Mike Hayes how many Dreamcast titles he expected to have on the service by this time next year.  His reply will warm the heart of Dreamcast lovers everywhere.  "We hope to have somewhere between 18 to 24. Around that."

And it's May 2011 and all we got were four DC games from the Sega Classics Collection (five if you count Soul Calibur, but that's Namco's game).  EDIT: Forgot a few more like Ikaruga and Rez, thanks Alex.  I know he said "hope" but still, "hope" ain't good enough.  In retrospect, what a BIG letdown.  Promise at minimum 18 games but only deliver FOUR....err,eight I guess??  Wow, don't set such high benchmarks if you have no chance of meeting them.  Even if we do extend this deadline by a couple of years, I don't see Sega spitting out fourteen more ports at this rate.  But I'm just going to go with the assumption that Mike Hayes was grabbin his stupid peelz and thus fired off a random integer from the hip not knowing if Sega could reach the mark.

But anyway...now that it's 2011, I think everyone's hopes of that new Daytona are practically dead.  From 2011 then on, it's been a big tease.  Hey, we already talked about assorted messages from fans back in the 00's.  Sega Racing Classic was supposedly a grand return to Daytona's roots, but it was just a remake.

As for today, we are getting something new--Sega Rally Online Arcade!  Only has five tracks, thirteen cars, and is a small project at best.  Basically a reworked version of Revo.  Yes, it will be fun, but if you think this game will be "loaded," I doubt it.  This site is saying May 18 but I'm not 100% sure it's true.

Since this is a complicated topic, I'm going to start another post in order to get my thoughts straight.

Click here for Part 2.