Earlier this morning SEGA PR put out a press release about seven new SEGA Classics coming to XBLA. They are:

• Gunstar Heroes (Also coming on PSN)
• Altered Beast
• Comix Zone
• Phantasy Star 2
• Shinobi (Arcade)
  
• Sonic the Hedgehog 3
• Sonic and Knuckles

At first look, you’ll probably think to yourself “Well, I already have most of these in the Ultimate Genesis collection, so what’s the real difference here?”

The first, and what may well be the most popular, is something we received a ton of feedback and comments on since the Ultimate Genesis Collection arrived:

The Sonic and Knuckles download, which will be arriving late this summer, will work directly with Sonic 2 and Sonic 3, so if you have those downloaded already from XBLA, you can immediately start playing the games with the lock-on settings once Sonic and Knuckles releases.

(Spoilers: people like their  Hyper Sonic, Hyper Knuckles, and Super Tails – and we do too!)

“Revolutionary new Lock-on Technology” - Not so new anymore, but still pretty awesome.

Besides being able to pick up all 14 emeralds in a single playthrough, many of the games will also feature Network Play. This will exclude the obvious single-player games like Phantasy Star II, Shinobi, and Comix Zone, but should prove very interesting for the rest of the titles. All the details about Network Play specifics and how it will work in each game will be coming in the future, so keep your eyes and ears out!

For now, we’re going to celebrate by busting out some old-school blast processing. This news also rekindled a memory of one of my favorite Sonic and Knuckles commercials, which I think you should all check out:

“…So we sold the whole thing to SEGA.”

By far one of my favorite lines in all the old 90′s commercials.

Of the games and the news about online play, what are you guys most looking forward to? Are you a Sonic Lock-on fan, or more excited by online play in some of the other games?