From 2018 to 2022, one of the annual countdown lists on this site was a collection of “special awards”, one-off chances to talk about stuff I really enjoyed or admired but couldn’t squeeze into a full standard list. Usually one of those awards was for the third-party videogame publisher who released the most impressive combination of quality and quantity that year, and some years the winner was easier to pick than others. Now this countdown may return one day, but not this year, and I simply cannot abide letting 2024’s would-be winner go by unrecognised. I feel the need to write an entirely separate post just to make up for the fact that renowned Japanese publisher Sega would have won the category this year in an essentiality unprecedented landslide.
Sega may have built its videogame fortune by making consoles in the 1990s, but those days are sadly so far behind it now that the third-party publishing era of the company has thoroughly outlasted the glory days of mind-blowing 2D sprites and edgy television/magazine advertisements. They’ve been well-managed enough to stick around, and there have been quality releases here and there, but the original videogame blue team haven’t exactly been known for consistency or dense periods of heavy-hitting, head-turning product launches. Though a hefty dose of serendipity was doubtless involved, 2024 finally changed that.
On Top Atlus(t)
Let’s ignore that I may just have written the single most tortured pun of the last twelve years and move on to the elephant in the room: the number one reason Sega owned 2024 is the well-timed fruit-bearing of several Atlus projects within one 12-month period. Sega officially acquired Atlus all the way back in 2016, but reorienting the one-time JRPG hipster house away from its stubborn habits of releasing major games in the west months or years after Japanese launch has been a slow process. But if you had to pick one year to mark a definitive end to that old-timey era, 2024 is that year.
In February, Persona 3 Reload became the first major release in its series to hit major markets worldwide on the same day, a massive deal for anyone who has ever spent any time online with a Persona fan community. But that series has broken into the mainstream since its last new numbered title, so the increased eyeballs may be largely responsible for this. What is arguably an even bigger deal is that under this modern Sega initiative, Atlus got freaking Vanillaware to release a new game worldwide simultaneously; that’s right, the developers that kept the best videogame story of the decade so far, 13 Sentinels, from the west for almost an entire year. Not even an entirely untested new IP like Metaphor: ReFantazio was safe from Atlus’ renewed organisational power, bringing its wonderful weirdness to all major markets at once.
And would you look at that: all these games sold really well!
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Vagrant Rant 