Four SEGA Virtual Console Games To Be Taken Down In Japan

As the weeks have gone by, more and more games are set to be disappearing off the Nintendo Virtual Console service for the Wii, with games such as R-Type no longer available to buy after a certain date. Now it seems SEGA will also follow suit, with four of its games going offline from the Japanese VC service by the 30th March. The quartet of games are the Mega Drive/Genesis games Sonic the Hedgehog 1, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic & Knuckles, alongside the Master System’s version of Sonic the Hedgehog.

This is only affecting the actual purchase of the games. If a game is purchased before the cut off date, it will still be free to play. So if you want to play these classics before they go, make sure to get them ASAP.

It is unknown at this point why the games are going offline, but the disappearance of these 4 games does seem to only affect the Japanese VC. Whether it will affect EU or US Virtual Console stores in the future is unclear, but we’ll keep things updated if any of this quartet are heading off elsewhere.

[Original source from story from Nintendo Life, whose article can be found here]

UPDATE: Thanks once again to the folks at Nintendo Life, we have more information about the situation about the SEGA games being dropped. Although the take down is still going ahead in Japan, it is confirmed that in the EU the games will remain online. No news on the US Virtual Console, but if the EU store is staying unchanged, it looks promising that they’ll keep the Sonic games up there too.