GameTap Has Panzer Dragoon Saga Rights

Online game service GameTap apparently has the publishing rights to cult classic and exceedingly rare eBay goldmine Panzer Dragoon Saga, but has yet to put the game out because it’s not high on its priorities list…yet.

Good news: you could be playing Panzer Dragoon Saga someday without having to pay absolutely ridiculous prices on eBay. Online games service GameTap owns the rights to emulate and publish the Sega Saturn title, which saw an extremely limited release in the U.S. and commands a passionate cult following. Bad news: GameTap does not currently have any concrete plans to put the game out.

“Panzer Dragoon Saga was never fully investigated as a release candidate,” Jake Armstrong, GameTap’s operations lead, told former GameTap writer Doug Perry of GameInsano.com, who divulged the info. “It’s a good game and a very rare title, so there would be a definite cool factor in getting it out there, but there would be other emulation efforts I would think we would want to work on first.”

Panzer Dragoon Saga, which stretches across four discs and contains extensive cutscenes, is apparently quite the effort to emulate for use on PCs. While the other two Panzer Dragoon games on GameTap were feasibly done, Saga is on a whole other scale, and just might not be worth GameTap’s time and money considering the game’s niche appeal.

GameTap, however, has responded to the recent flood of publicity this news has brought to their doorstep. “We are faced with the choice of using our resources to develop projects that benefit a tremendous number of users or use them developing a single for much more targeted audience,” GameTap wrote on their official blog. “But perhaps the audience for a title like Panzer Dragoon Saga is larger than we think.”

And so, they’re taking a measure of that potential audience. How much do you want Panzer Dragoon Saga on GameTap? Head over here and vote in this poll to make your voice heard. No guarantees here, but GameTap says that “if there is a significant amount of interest, Panzer Dragoon Saga will become a higher development priority for GameTap.”