ZAP.

We've been posting a few stories here and there from a recent interview with M2’s CEO Naoki Horii, Sega producer Kagasei Shimomura and director Rieko Kodama, the latter of whom is most famous for her association with Phantasy Star, which is coming to the Switch soon. The interview covered Phantasy Star as well as the news that Switch is capable of emulating Sega's Naomi arcade board, but there are plenty of other interesting facts contained within, too.

One of the more appealing pieces of info relates to one of Sega's past arcade favourites; a title that has been rather forgotten thanks to the annoying complexities of licencing.

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Back in 1993, Sega used the power of its Model 1 board - at that point one of the most powerful pieces of gaming hardware on the planet - to create Star Wars Arcade, a thrilling 3D replication of the X-Wing and TIE Fighter battles seen in the movies. The game was later ported to the 32X, albeit in a vastly scaled-down format.

During the same interview with Japanese news site Game Watch, it was stated that the teams at M2 and Sega were working extensively with the Model 1 hardware to create the SEGA AGES version of Virtua Racing, and that they had such an intimate knowledge of the system that they could easily port Star Wars Arcade, if the proper authorization could be obtained. While this might seem like a pipe dream, it would seem that the group are hopeful that the licence could potentially be renewed for this particular title.

This would be quite a coup for Switch fans, as Star Wars Arcade has never been faithfully converted to a home system - the 32X edition is a pale imitation of the coin-op. It also makes us hopeful that Sega could potentially resurrect 1998's Star Wars Trilogy Arcade, which launched on the Model 3 hardware and has never, ever been ported to any other platform.

[source dualshockers.com, via gonintendo.com]