Let's Set The Scene

The year is 2018, approximately five years before Sega announced its game revival initiative for classic IPs such as Golden Axe, Crazy Taxi, Jet Set Radio, Shinobi, and even Streets of Rage. If you had any nostalgia for Sega's old games, unless it was a Genesis title or it was Nights into Dreams or a Dreamcast "classic," you were pretty much shit out of luck. Before they cut the knees out of the program, their Mega Drive and Genesis Classics program on consoles and PC basically proved as much. Obviously, I'm engaging in hyperbole as there are plenty of examples that defy that characterization, like Microsoft doing an oddly compelling job of ensuring the Sega game exclusives on the OG Xbox always play nice with its backward compatibility program. Nonetheless, if you are Brazilian and have fond memories of the Master System, or are a sicko like me who thinks the Sega Saturn is a better console than the Nintendo 64, Sega, up to this point, in 2018 at least, maintained a love-hate relationship with you. Sure, they would re-release the most notable titles from those platforms on digital marketplaces, usually piecemeal, and they were, at worst, "fiiiiiiine." Still, these initiatives were always just the tip of the iceberg, and Sega never really engaged in a comprehensive re-release program for those consoles as it did with the Genesis. Before its remake, the last time we saw OG Panzer Dragoon on modern consoles was the Sega Ages lineup in 2006. And yet, something interesting happened in 2018. Near the tail end of that year, in December, Forever Entertainment announced that they had signed a licensing deal with Sega to do remakes for Panzer Dragon and Panzer Dragoon II Zwei. The first game was set to release "before the end of 2019," with the second game's release planned for some time after that.

Later, Forever Entertainment revealed that MegaPixel Studio would be the primary developer for these remakes. And though MegaPixel doesn't exactly have a pristine track record, the first game came out and was mostly good, albeit a bit workmanlike. Sure, it slightly missed its originally announced launch by a year and came out in 2020, but it was a solid remaster. Some people felt the original promise of a "Remake" was iffy, given that the game was a shot-for-shot remaster of the original, with nothing more than a new coat of paint and some structural changes. Still, I think that criticism is, more or less, a reflection of the industry's inconsistency in what a "remake" entails, and of the often unrealistic and unsustainable expectations gamers have for games that use the label in a post-Final Fantasy VII Remake and Resident Evil 2 (2019) world. Also, when you filter to see the negative Steam reviews for the game, you realize the vast majority are from people who never played the original, and either don't get the "hype" for an on-rails game from its most ardent defenders or think it's too short despite the Panzer Dragoon Remake never retailing for full price and its length being a genre standard. But, as they say, c'est la vie! I thought the remake played great, and while it didn't perfectly emulate the graphical uniqueness of the original and the Saturn's look, it got close enough and maintained a smooth framerate, which is what you want with a modern Panzer Dragoon title more than anything else. I know some thought it was "too colorful" but I wasn't one of them. I mean look at this screenshot:

Correspondingly, it was the idea of the game actually coming out that was more exciting. The first Panzer Dragoon is a great title in the Saturn's library and totally worth playing if you have never touched it before. Nevertheless, it's the second game, Panzer Dragoon II Zwei, that's the "real shit," and the hope of most fans at the time, when all of this was announced, was that if both games did well, maybe a Panzer Dragoon Saga remake was on the horizon. But even if that last point was always a pie-in-the-sky folly, the second game was bound to be the far more compelling remake. Zwei is bigger, longer, and more mechanically interesting to play, and shares a far wider breadth of environments and locations that really showcase some of the Sega Saturn's more interesting hardware upsides. And before I start listing the many red flags that emerged from Forever Entertainment, they have since admitted that the original 2021 release date for Zwei was highly unrealistic and came from an employee who no longer works at the company. Knowing Zwei personally and having played it, and considering how public Forever was that they were also busy working on five other remake projects in 2021 (i.e., The House of the Dead, The House of the Dead 2, Fear Effect, Magical Drop, AND Shadowgate) I did not buy for a moment that Forever and their partners would get the game out by that date. However, the complete radio silence we got for damn near three to four years about whether the Zwei remake was even in active development was the real shocker. Which leads me to:

The Long Radio Silence About This Remake Until About Last Year

Okay, before we delve into why it was genuinely shocking a demo for the Zwei remake crossed paths with Steam's February 2026 Next Fest event, we have to talk about Forever Entertainment and their development associate, MegaPixel Studio. Neither label is exactly in the best standing with the retro gaming community, despite each having a rather in-depth list of classic game remakes and remasters under their belt. Forever Entertainment is a publisher and acts as a middleman, tracking down remaster and re-release opportunities and then contracting third-party developers to bring those IPs to modern systems and OSs. That's not to say they never delve into active internal game development, but when you review even a snapshot of the games connected to them, you'll find remakes and re-releases to be the lion's share of their works today. People sometimes approach their work with caution because of their incredibly mixed track record. Their partnership with Square-Enix brought us the mostly good FRONT MISSION 1st: Remake. Still, they were also behind the terrible FRONT MISSION 2: Remake, which was accused of using generative AI to replace 2D art assets, and their contracted FRONT MISSION 3: Remake also faced accusations of using generative AI. Again, Forever Entertainment didn't actively develop those latter two games; instead, it outsourced their development to third parties: Storm Trident for Front Mission 2 and MegaPixel Studio for Front Mission 3. Also, their culpability is murky, given that Square Enix remains one of a handful of major game developers still publicly supporting AI mandates in game development. Did they use AI of their own volition, or was it part of their contractual agreement? We simply don't know.

The same goes for developer MegaPixel Studio. However, what I see with them is a Tose-esque game studio. The quality of their work is directly proportional to how much money they get from their IP partners; they aren't WayForward, they aren't miracle workers that go above and beyond expectations. Like Tose, their games are either good to fine with erudite but orthodox beginnings, middles, and ends. MegaPixel did decent work on the "remake" of the first Panzer Dragoon. In contrast, their House of the Dead remakes translate the source material literally, but with better graphics, and feel completely soulless as a result. Though, admittedly, the House of the Dead games aren't exactly outstanding in the first place. This point makes the fact that both studios dropped the ball in being transparent about the possibly troubled development of the Zwei remake all the more curious. The whole business model for remaking and remastering old games, with a few exceptions, is speed. You run the game through an algorithm to up-res the original textures, play-test the controls, demo early builds at conventions or expos, and then ship. It's not the most romantic slice of game development, but that's how this part of the industry has been since the PS2 days, and especially when releasing retro games on digital marketplaces became more commonplace.

So, here's the timeline for the Zwei remake. Announced alongside the first Panzer Dragoon remake in 2018, developer MegaPixel maintained it was a top priority for them even after the first game slightly missed its original 2019 launch target. To clarify, the Panzer Dragoon remake would eventually be released in 2020, a full year past its original launch window. With that in mind, MegaPixel and Forever likely began work on the Zwei remake later than either had planned. I have no insider knowledge of how things panned out and want to be clear that I am going entirely by personal inferences drawn from the evidence we have at hand. Nonetheless, after the release of the Panzer Dragoon remake in 2020, it wouldn't be until 2021 that someone from Forever Entertainment would hint at a 2021 release date for the Zwei remake. That put the game on a roughly year-and-a-half development cycle, which was about par for the course for previous titles from both MegaPixel and Forever. But then Panzer Dragoon fans would only get vague hints that MegaPixel was still working on the game FOR TWO WHOLE YEARS while the company began work on other remakes and remasters! It wouldn't be until 2023 that a representative from Forever Entertainment on their Discord clarified that, yes, the Zwei remake was still in the works and that the 2021 date was a mistake.

Now, that's fair enough. We have seen developers, both big and small, jump the gun in sharing release dates, and smaller developers should get more leeway. HOWEVER, in the case of Forever Entertainment and MegaPixel Studios, after they apologized for prematurely announcing a release for the Zwei remake, they went completely dead silent on the project for another TWO YEARS! It wasn't until last year, in September 2025, that the Panzer Dragoon Remake Twitter account suddenly announced that a demo for the Zwei remake would be playable at the 2025 Tokyo Game Show. The announcement came out of nowhere, and the screenshots that emerged shortly thereafter didn't inspire confidence about the project's future. To MegaPixel and Forever Entertainment's credit, they talked a good game and were humble in the lead-up to their exhibition at TGS 2025. They admitted that Zwei was a larger game project than they initially assumed and publicly stated that the Zwei remake would involve approximately 40-50 developers, programmers, and designers. In watching the TGS 2025 demo, you can tell the environments were larger, allowing players more freedom to move and explore, whereas in the original, things felt far more cramped. But as the Panzer Dragoon Legacy article I linked to earlier points out, the color palette felt off. It didn't perfectly capture the feel of the Panzer Dragoon games being set in the post-apocalypse, a major problem with the first remake. No matter, at the very least, the people connected with the Zwei remake were talking to the public, and with the announcement that a demo would be playable during Next Fest in February 2026, fans would at least be able to see if the wait was worth it.

The Demo In Question

Oh, goodness, where do I even start? First, the demo, which was only available while Next Fest was active, was an in medias res jump into the original game's second episode. Other than the gameplay sequence, which amounts to about ten to fifteen minutes of play time, there are no cutscenes or cinematics to speak of, and the only real highlight in the options beyond the ability to adjust the game's resolution is the fact that you can toggle the audio to play the original soundtrack. Lacking a connecting episode, the demo doesn't play up or showcase Zwei's strengths or how it excels over its predecessor. Admittedly, the second episode takes about ten minutes to complete in the original game. Still, the decision to rely on just the second episode for this demo raises a ton of questions. MegaPixel and Forever Entertainment showed in the first Panzer Dragoon remake that they don't intend to deviate too far from the source material. So, they knew that by publishing this demo after making fans and interested players wait for 4 to 5 years, they were releasing something that amounted to 10 minutes of gameplay with limited replayability. So, it should come as no surprise that the reception of the demo, while it was up, was "mixed."

And it wasn't just the length that made people concerned about the full release. When I played the demo, two things caught me by surprise. First, I found the graphics far muddier and visually messier than in the first Panzer Dragoon remake. Some people thought the first remake was too bright and colorful, which I agree with, and it did undercut the game's post-apocalyptic themes, but it looked good enough while the game was running at full speed. The Zwei remake's demo had some really rough textures, especially with the enemy aircraft and vehicles. On top of that, at one point, I got stuck, or my dragon got magnetically attached to an object, which didn't affect my ability to complete the demo. Yes, it's a demo, and this isn't a disqualifying glitch, but it was definitely awkward to look at. Nonetheless, what really took me by surprise was how much stiffer the controls felt, and how off the pathfinding felt as well. I mentioned earlier that I was almost magnetically attracted to some debris. This issue happened during the sequence in which you run from left to right and vice versa to destroy enemy turrets on multiple buildings in what looks like a mining facility. Without crystallized memories of what the original level played like, it was shockingly difficult to know where the level wanted me to go or what my targets were in the first place. Snapping the view around felt shockingly stiff, and targeting enemies was equally clunky, which is a surprise because, despite its faults, that wasn't the case with the first remake. When I did need to transition between viewpoints, I felt the demo jerked HARD between perspectives, making it difficult to find the center of action at times.

Regardless, my biggest issue with the Zwei demo stems from the episode they picked, which is one of the earlier ones, where your dragon isn't fully evolved and hasn't yet achieved full flight. When you think about what makes the Panzer Dragoon games "fun," the feeling of flying quickly while shooting oncoming targets and projectiles is near the top of that list. You don't really get that with this demo, and that's partly by design in the original game. You're still getting your feet wet, and the game hasn't introduced some of its core mechanics yet. It's possible this gets better over time or when the full game comes out, but what's unlikely to change is that the game doesn't look great. The smoothed textures lack depth, and the entire demo felt hazy. There's an almost timeless yet distinct aesthetic to the original Zwei. When using what appears to be a modified version of the Panzer Dragoon remake's engine, that aesthetic is completely lost. That's part of the reason a Zwei remake was always going to be harder: the game conveys a clearer, more discernible world, with a narrative that follows the action and the paths you're exploring. I wouldn't say that I play the Panzer Dragoon games for the story, but the relationship between the dragon and the protagonist does way more to sell you on the game's world than you'd think, and its progression of levels has a much more overt purpose. Before we continue, briefly look at these two screenshots. The first is from MegaPixel's first Panzer Dragoon remake and the second is one I took during the Zwei demo:

Panzer Dragoon Remake

Panzer Dragoon II Zwei Demo

Still, I don't want any of you to think I'm one of those crazy people who think MegaPixel or Forever Entertainment has "ruined" a classic game or should be ashamed by what they put out. Looking at their previous work and the fact that this project has received zero attention or support from Sega makes a sad fact clear as day to me. All the issues I and others have listed are baked into the DNA of Forever's Sega remasters, and that's partly Sega's fault; Sega never fully bought into the idea of remaking these games. This game doesn't have a great budget, and MegaPixel's likely lean resources were stretched thin by something bigger than what they normally work on. To give the devil its due, they published not one, not two, but THREE patches for their Next Fest demo, so there's no denying they are reviewing and processing feedback. It's important to note that they did the same when the first Panzer Dragoon remake shared its first screenshots and environment render. After fans decried them as too colorful, MegaPixel changed the color saturation before the full release. Regardless, do the math on the number of patches proportional to the amount of gameplay that was available in the demo. Three patches, with some of the fixes being basic stuff, like enemy turrets working as intended, for a ten to fifteen-minute demo. That is WILD and not exactly comforting for fans who have been waiting on this project for approximately eight years!

What's Next For The Panzer Dragoon Zwei: Remake And The Future Of The Series?

I have no idea why it took MegaPixel and Forever Entertainment eight years to make something that is ultimately going to be indicative of their previous sedulous, albeit often questionable, remake works (i.e., Front Mission 2/3, House of the Dead, et al.). Maybe Panzer Dragoon II Zwei got lost in the mix, maybe the money from Sega dried up for a bit, or maybe the two realized that the project was a sunk cost given its larger size and scope compared to its predecessor. Maybe they thought they were signing up for a repeat of their last Panzer Dragoon project and realized after the fact that that wasn't the case, but the contract still stipulated they needed to release something. The message the demo conveyed to me is simple and one we all know too well at this point. When "classic" games get remade, if it isn't being done internally in the studio that owns the IP, you're rolling the dice on whether it will be any good. The contracted studios that work in the remake and remaster slice of the industry have lean margins and move from project to project at a breakneck pace. The major oddity in Zwei's case is that the involved parties didn't cut bait after experiencing some troubles in development or project priorities and instead went radio silent for YEARS. More often than not, we know that's a red flag that a game is dead.

The demo from Next Fest is no longer playable. In a move that is more common than I'd like to admit, not only did MegaPixel and Forever Entertainment pull the demo from future play, they also made it unplayable for those who never deleted it from their libraries. Whenever I click the demo's icon to start it, Steam tells me I no longer have a license to play it, then boots me back to my desktop. The game's Steam page offers a statement following the conclusion of Next Fest, stating that the developers will take all the input they received to make the final game as good as possible. If the demo is any indication of what the foundation of the final game might be, I'm confident in saying that the Zwei remake has a low to moderate ceiling. Maybe the controls get tighter and the textures a little better; none of that is going to change how MegaPixel's engine or algorithm interprets the original game's quadrilaterals and creative choices, and while I generally found that to be passable with the first Panzer Dragoon remake, it's going to be a much tougher sell with Zwei. Zwei has what feels like a "complete world," and a more noticeable series of creative choices that fill it. Also, Panzer Dragoon fans have more alternative game options than they had back in 2018. Consider, for a moment, that February 2026's Next Fest also featured highly-acclaimed demos for Denshattack! and Wild Blue Skies, the latter of which is an unabashed homage to Star Fox 64. The on-rails genre is seeing a mini-resurgence, and its fans don't need to settle for okie-doke.

And to anyone who was holding out hope that the release of a Panzer Dragoon 1 and Zwei remake meant there was a sliver of a chance for a Panzer Dragoon Saga re-release or remake, I have two things to say to you. One, Sega is highly unlikely to put up the money to make it worthwhile for any of its contractors. Second, unless they did that remake internally, a third-party-developed Panzer Dragoon Saga feels like an inevitable monkey's paw situation. Bringing that game to modern consoles and PCs requires love, not AI or LLMs; it requires real, genuine love. Like most, I'd rather struggle with Mednafen than look at an abomination on Steam that relied on generative AI. Regretably, as I hinted at in the start, outside of three to four games, Sega needs to be dragged, kicking and screaming, to give a shit about any classic games from the Saturn's catalog. Consider for a moment that the most readily available Panzer Dragoon game in its original form is Orta, because Microsoft, not Sega, made it a fixture of its backward-compatibility program. That says a lot to me.