Super Roster Maker - Sega Superstars Fighters

Similar to Nintendo's Super Smash Bros. series, Sega Superstars is a chance for gamers to experience a little of everything Sega has to offer. Having seen life in the form of a motion-sensor minigame collection, a tennis game, and two racing games, this series allows players to view the characters and worlds of their most well-known titles. With the catalogue they have however, one could argue that they could pull a move similar to Nintendo and make a fighting game with their vast library of franchises.

That's what we'll look at today in the topic of this Super Roster Maker: Sega Superstars Fighters.

For this article, we'll use the same selection methods used in the Nintendo vs. Capcom roster article and pick the characters based on four different categories. Those four categories are the Icons (the main faces everyone associates with the company), the Fighters (popular or top-tier characters from previous fighting games), the Stars (important or popular characters from currently relevant or soon-to-be-relevant series), and the Wild Cards (either developer favorites, fan favorites, or experimental characters with weird moveset ideas or presentations).

Now, let's choose our characters.

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Part 1 - The Icons

For this section, we'll pull one character each from the franchises most frequently involved with the Sega Superstars series as a whole, including the racing games, Sega Superstars Tennis, and the original game for the PS2 used with the PlayStation EyeToy.

Motion controls before Nintendo made it cool.

The picks are:

Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog)
AiAi (Super Monkey Ball)

Ulala (Space Channel 5)
Amigo (Samba de Amigo)

Alex Kidd (Alex Kidd in Miracle World)
Beat (Jet Set Radio)

The six series listed above were all involved in most or all of the Sega Superstars games and these guys are the main characters for each of them. Crazy Taxi also made the list, but a game where the main premise is being a taxi driver and that's it doesn't exactly lend itself to producing a fighting character.

Part 2 - The Fighters

Selecting our fighting game veterans, a variety of different games, particularly old ones, were used. The games are Sonic the Fighters, Virtua Fighter 5, Fighting Vipers, Eternal Champions, and Super Smash Bros. (a Nintendo game that includes Sega characters as third-party guests). Since most of Sega's fighting games are rather old, we can't rely on Eventhubs for the most part to provide tier lists for everything. So, for many of the games, forums on different websites provided opinions from fans on the games' rosters, including people's favorites and which ones were the best to use.

The picks are:

For Sonic the Fighters: Espio and Dr. Eggman

For Virtua Fighter 5: Akira Yuki and Jacky Bryant

For Fighting Vipers: Honey and Genghis Bahn




For Eternal Champions: Larcen Tyler and Trident

For Super Smash Bros. 4: Shadow and Bayonetta

These characters are ones that fans on forums largely say are their favorites or powerful (sometimes, too powerful) picks in games. Addressing one of these characters, while Shadow isn't playable in Smash, he is an assist character within the game and was a popular request a new playable character in the series next entry, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

If only it actually came true...

Part 3 - The Stars

These characters are meant to promote series that are currently prominent or have a high-profile project coming up in the future. However, despite having a large catalog of franchises they can use for games, Sega has only been paying big attention to a few series recently, those being Sonic the Hedgehog, Valkyria Chronicles, and Yakuza. A fourth can be added here since a revival for the Sakura Wars series has been announced for 2019, but that's about it.

The picks are:

Tails (Sonic the Hedgehog)
Selvaria Bles (Valkyria Chronicles)

Kazuma Kiryu (Yakuza)
Sakura Shinguji (Sakura Wars)


Only four characters in this section. Don't worry. The next one will bring a bunch more in.

Part 4 - The Wild Cards

This section is split into three different parts: developer favorites, fan favorites, and characters that have potential for an out-of-the-box moveset idea or presentation. For the first section, we looked for developer interviews where they stated what their favorite SEGA games or characters were.

Dev Favs:

Scooter (Alien Storm)
Toma (Shining Force EXA)

Sketch Turner (Comix Zone)
Axel Stone (Streets of Rage)

In an article about the Sega Genesis Classics Collection (link here), several Sega developers stated what their favorite classic games were from the collection. That served as the basis here since it could provide some lesser known, interesting characters. Among other answers, Hiroyuki Sakamoti (the director of Yakuza 6) picked Alien Storm, Makoto Suzuki (the producer of Shining Resonance Refrain) picked Shining in the Darkness, Mizuki Hosoyamada (producer of Puyo Puyo Tetris) picked Comix Zone, and Al Hope (director of Alien Isolation) picked Streets of Rage 2.

The three beat-em-up characters were easy, being either stand out or main characters from their games. For the Shining series, Toma from Shining Force EXA was selected for being a more distinct character than the ones from the Genesis era games and for his inclusion in the Project X Zone series giving him more exposure than some other characters.


Fan Favs:

Erica Fontaine (Sakura Wars)
Ryo Hazuki (Shenmue)

Combo (Jet Set Radio)
Knuckles (Sonic the Hedgehog)


A different article showed which Sega franchises and characters Sega fans wanted to see more of, which series they're most invested in, and what their favorite characters were. Taking all three given lists into account was how we got these four picks.

Experimental Characters:

Segata Sanshiro (Sega Saturn)
NiGHTS (NiGHTS into Dreams)

Coco Tapioca (Space Channel 5)
Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo)


This would probably be the section with the most varied, disputable picks. Looking again at the series listed in the article from the Fan Favs section, focus was on characters that filled an underrepresented fighting niche or those that could have unique fighting mechanics or presentations. Going over the chosen characters, Segata Sanshiro could use moves inspired by his commercial appearances for the Sega Saturn, NiGHTS can fly and shape-shift for different fighting styles and spatial control, Coco Tapioca from Space Channel 5 is a heavyweight character that could use potential rhythm based attacks, and Arle Nadja from Puyo Puyo can use moves involving the game's titular puzzle pieces and connecting them for different effects or damage outputs.

Final Results

The Roster: Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Espio, Shadow, Dr. Eggman, Ulala, Coco Tapioca, Beat, Combo, Akira, Jacky, Honey, Bahn, Larcen, Trident, Sakura, Erica, AiAi, Amigo, Alex Kidd, Bayonetta, Selvaria, Kazuma, Scooter, Toma, Sketch, Axel, Ryo, Segata, NiGHTS, Arle

This roster gives us a grand total of 32 characters. Six of those characters come from the Sonic the Hedgehog series while all the other series involved only have one or two characters. If this list seems weighed a bit heavily in favor of the Sonic series, that probably just shows how Sega themselves have been favoring it lately.

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What did you think of this roster? What characters do you think would make it into a large Sega crossover fighter? Make your voice heard in the comments below. Thanks for coming!