The Sega Forever Twitter account has been teasing mobile ports of the Shining series. Sega Forever is the banner that brings classic Sega games to Android and iOS devices, which is a bit different from Sega Ages. Shining is a series of role-playing games that began in 1991. Sega Forever began teasing a re-release of some kind earlier this week.
The first tweet from Sega Forever teasing the Shining series’ mobile debut came on October 21. Fans quickly connected the Sega logo GIF to Shining Force a turn-based tactics game released in 1992. Following that was a tweet from October 22 which depicted an old man rising from a rocking chair. The old man appears during the intro to Shining in the Darkness, the first game in the series. A third, similarly cryptic tweet appeared on October 23 featuring a young girl reading from a book. The girl is also from the Shining series, and fans are speculating what games are coming to mobile devices.
Sega Forever launched in June 2017 as a service to re-release catalog titles on iOS and Android devices. Sega Genesis, Game Gear, and Master System titles have all made the jump to the service. Sonic the Hedgehog and Crazy Taxi were brought to the service natively. While others like Phantasy Star II and Streets of Rage which are emulated. The service had been consistently expanding with new games roughly every few weeks—although that has slowed in 2018 to about a game or so a month. The last game brought to the Sega Forever service was Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 2 in August 2018. All of the titles are free-to-play, ad-supported versions of the full games. Users can pay a per-game fee to remove ads.
The Shining series is a mix of dungeon crawlers, strategy games, and action role-playing titles. Shining in the Darkness was a first-person dungeon crawler, while most of the Shining Force subseries is comparable to Fire Emblem. Other titles in the series include Shining Soul and Shining Wisdom which hew closer to action role-playing conventions.
The Sega Forever teases for Shining Force and Shining in the Darkness could be just the start for Shining titles coming to Android and iOS. There have been over 30 releases in the franchise, and many could be brought to mobile devices.
