Sega announces Model 2 Collection, bringing its best era of arcade games to 360 and PS3. First trailer here

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Sega has released a trailer for a new collection of old games heading to (at least) Japan in the near future. But don’t think this is some pointless collection of old duffers. We’re talking about its Model 2 arcade games from the mid-1990s, arguably some of the finest videogames ever made. Most of them have had home console versions before, but these appear to be arcade-perfect translations. Here’s the video:

As a quick history lesson, Model 1 was the arcade board that powered Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, ushering in the polygonal 3D era. But that could only do flat-shaded polygons, so the Model 2 board was created. This could do texture-mapping, allowing polygons to have realistic textures painted onto them. The result was 3D computer imagery that suddenly looked incredibly lifelike. And that’s when modern gaming really took off. These are the games that gave birth to pretty much everything you’re playing now.

There appears to be a fighting theme with the first batch of releases, which will be heading to PSN and Xbox live, for 800 points apiece on the latter. Virtua Fighter 2, Fighting Vipers and Sonic The Fighters are due this year, with one-on-one mech fighter Virtual On following next year, along with the slightly dodgy kickabout Virtua Striker.

Here’s hoping this means floodgates are opening on all the Model 2 games. We’ve already had a stupendous HD version of Daytona USA (opens in new tab), but we still haven’t had the original Sega Rally (opens in new tab) on current-gen, nor Virtua Cop. And we’d love to see an arcade-perfect House of the Dead too. And Manx TT, and Sega Touring Car Championship… Suffice to say there are a lot of great Model 2 games.

While the games have only been officially announced for Japan, a Western release is surely on the cards. Sega is doing a great job of re-releasing its back catalogue right now, with a wonderful port of Crazy Taxi (opens in new tab) currently doing the rounds on iOS, Jet Set Radio (opens in new tab) tagging 360/PS3 and NiGHTS into Dreams HD (opens in new tab) eating up far too much of our time. The sky is looking pretty blue right now.