At the close of 2023, Sega announced its plans to reimagine several of its greatest arcade games, including Crazy Taxi and Golden Axe, for current home consoles. It’s a welcome endeavour as modern gamers reared on Sonic the Hedgehog may overlook the company’s incredible heritage. While we’ve been trained to think of Sega as a perennial also-ran in the console wars, it dominated the arcade scene for years, some of its biggest hits occurring during the Sega Saturn era. So here’s a gentle reminder of the greatest coin-op games in the manufacturer’s long history.
15. After Burner (1987)
A thundering masterwork in designer Yu Suzuki’s taikan (“body sensation”) series of hydraulic coin-op cabinets, After Burner is a flight combat experience of unparalleled intensity, allowing you to climb into the cockpit of an F-14 Tomcat and take to the skies. Vast billowing pixel explosions, barrel rolls, the scenery scorching by beneath, this was a complete Top Gun fantasy machine.
14. Zaxxon (1982)
Until this point most space shooters moved either horizontally or vertically, but Sega decided on a different path: isometric scrolling. The result is a peculiarly immersive shooter for the era, heightened by the fact that up and down on the stick controls altitude rather than forward and backward movement across the screen. The vast space fortresses you fly over have a crisp, almost mathematical design, like huge circuit boards, a strong aesthetic that still holds up.
13. Virtua Racing (1992)
I was so torn between this and Super Hang-On, but in the end I opted for the first game in Sega’s Virtua series of realtime-rendered 3D arcade titles. It’s a pure F1 racer set over three circuits, the flat-shaded polygons giving it the serious look of a military or aerospace simulator. Running on the experimental Model 1 arcade tech it was smooth and fluid, with a broad widescreen display for added immersion. This was the beginning of 3D driving games as we know them today.
12. Last Bronx (1996)
Think Sega and 3D fighting games and Virtua Fighter always pops up, but the company produced many other masterpieces of the genre. I could have gone with the hyper-stylish Fighting Vipers, but instead it’s this one from AM3, a darker, more gritty alternative, featuring motion captured street warriors and weapon-based combat including nunchucks, tonfas and swords. Set in a dark post-economic collapse Tokyo and with a pummelling techno soundtrack it was a huge hit in Japan, but unfairly overshadowed by Soul Edge in the west.
11. Alien Syndrome (1987)
Gauntlet meets Aliens in this classic two-player multi-directional shooter, in which you play crew members of a spacecraft overrun by extraterrestrial gelatinous blobs and dome-headed monsters clearly inspired by HR Giger’s designs for the Ridley Scott movie. It’s super tense, with an excellent range of weapons (including a flame-thrower of course) and it brought an authentic horror feel to the scrolling shooter genre.
10. The House of the Dead 2 (1998)
A mainstay of arcades for the last two decades, Takashi Oda’s horror light gun sequel is a rich baroque spectacle, turning the streets of Venice red with zombie blood. You play as special agents investigating the undead plague, blasting the guts out of monsters while delivering dialogue so wooden it could be plunged through the heart of a vampire.
9. Space Harrier (1985)
OK, so the core gameplay of Space Harrier is not that great, the strange into-the-screen 3D-style action concealing a lot of the detail behind the rocket-powered protagonist. However, with its wild up-and-down hydraulic cabinet, it is a defining example of the taikan design philosophy, the rollercoaster feel accentuating the psychedelic space opera taking place on screen. The audio, too, was wonderful. There’s a whole generation of gamers who will never forget the words: “Welcome to the Fantasy Zone. Get ready!”
8. Crazy Taxi (1999)
One of the true superstars of the 1999-2001 period, when Sega created its multipurpose Naomi technology, based on similar tech to the Dreamcast console. It’s a driving game with a difference – you don’t race, you whiz around a city picking up demanding customers and dropping them off as fast as possible to earn cash. It’s incredibly accessible, but the handling model conceals incredible score-multiplying depth, allowing a range of dash and drift moves. Filled with humour, energy and colour it typified Sega’s best output in a bittersweet era.
7. Golden Axe (1989)
Heavily inspired by the Conan movies, designer Makoto Uchida took everything he’d learned from the somewhat flawed Altered Beast and created the ultimate high fantasy hack-’em-up, featuring three diverse heroes, skeletal warriors, mace-wielding musclemen and beautiful combat animations. You could steal magic potions from gnomes, you could hijack and ride fire-breathing dragons, and every new stage begins with terrified yokels running away screaming. This is peak late 80s arcade design.
6. Virtua Cop 2 (1995)
The original Virtua Cop light gun shooter followed trigger-happy police bros Michael Hardy and James Cools as they blasted their way through city streets filled with scumbags and innocent bystanders. The sequel does almost exactly the same, but with superior 3D visuals and more interesting enemies. The action rockets through a busy downtown plaza, a fancy cruise ship and the inside of a moving subway train, and the amount of depth and variety developer Sega AM2 gets into each battle is incredible.
5. Shinobi (1987)
Brilliantly cashing in on the mid-80s pop culture obsession with ninjas, Shinobi is one of the great scrolling hack-n-slash games. Its hero Joe Musashi uses kicks, punches and endless shuriken to vanquish a motley crew of mercenaries sent out by the deadly criminal organisation Zeed, rescuing hostages on the way. Frantic, adrenaline-pumping stuff – and sequel Shadow Dancer was wonderful too.
4. OutRun (1986)
In which Yu Suzuki somehow bottled the entire essence of the 80s – the synth-rich music, the sunshine, the macho cars – and turned it into one of the era’s greatest arcade hits. Giving players their own route through an exotic worldwide tour, Outrun feels like a joyride rather than a race, hinting at the open-world driving games that would follow a decade later.
3. Sega Rally (1994)
Developed by Sega’s AM3 department, a specialist in sports and simulation games, Sega Rally gets you driving over a range of different road surfaces, each affecting the handling in different ways. The cars, including the Toyota Celica and iconic Lancia Delta, are low in resolution but beautiful in shape and detail, and the roads snake through rural lanes and treacherous mountain passes. Such a evocative and exciting ride, and the Saturn version was lovely too.
2. Virtua Fighter 2 (1994)
Yu Suzuki brought his obsession with detailed, intricate simulation to the fighting game genre via the original Virtua Fighter, but the sequel adds much greater character detail including (for the era) luscious texture mapping. Unlike the Tekken and Street Fighter titles, VF2 has no ludicrous magical moves or soap-opera story. Its hugely adaptable fighting mechanic, based on a range of real-life martial arts styles, provided authenticity and bone-crunching action.
1. Daytona USA (1994)
There’s a reason you can still find dual Daytona USA cabinets in almost every seaside or city arcade. Sega AM2’s seminal 3D driving game still has the best handling of any arcade racer – smooth response, exciting, and with fast-paced visuals to match. The Saturn conversion stood alongside Ridge Racer on the PlayStation to usher in the era of the 32-bit home console. For all the millions of hours of pleasure and competition it has given over the years, it is a true legend of the amusement arcades.
