Why is someone making a sequel to a forgotten Japan-only Dreamcast game?
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If you ever owned a Sega Dreamcast, you'll know it as a console that did not deserve its fate.
An innovative machine that introduce the console world to online gaming, and home to such iconic games as Shenmue, Skies of Arcadia, Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star Online, Soulcalibur Samba de Amigo, Sonic Adventure and Cosmic Smash.
Oh you've not heard of that last one? I'm not surprised. Sega's futuristic squash game was only released in Japan in September 2001… six months after the console was discontinued.
And yet here I am, speaking to Jörg Tittel, the director at Rapid Eye Movers, who has decided to build a full sequel to Cosmic Smash in VR, under the name C-Smash VRS.
This isn't a spiritual successor, but a fully licensed follow-up to the Sega original.
"I used to write for the Official Dreamcast Magazine in the US," Tittel tells us.
"My Sega love and heritage is long. It's been a dream of mine. I think for Sega to even dedicate internal resources to talk to me about Cosmic Smash was a stretch. They have so many big licenses that are lucrative for them. I had to convince them as much as I was sure I'd have to convince the outside world that this is a thing that needs to exist.
"I'm proud and happy that I did. The original Cosmic Smash deserved a global success. The Dreamcast itself deserved to have a much longer lifespan. It's the best console ever. It's the one that not only created some of the most long lasting and most memorable games of all time, but it also invented the indie game dev scene of today.
"The way Cosmic Smash was made, the way Jet Set Radio was made, the way Tetsuya Mizuguchi formed United Game Artists at the time… it was
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