Sega Genesis Game Opinion Summaries - Work In Progress

To say likely the most controversial thing I'll say in this thread, as a little preview of the "S" section which I've played some games for but haven't started writing yet... okay, Strider isn't that great. I've never liked the game much, and playing it again did not change my opinion. I like Strider II (Strider Returns that is, for the Genesis) more, me and like probably nobody else. It's an average, and slightly slow, Euro-platformer, but that's better than the annoying glitchy frustrating mess that is Strider. I got to level 3 today in Strider II, which was cool; level 2 often is as far as I get. In Strider 1, I gave up and turned it off at what I think is the end of level 2. That stupid part with the lasers is hard and absolutely no fun. The laser gates in level 2 of Strider 2 work fine thanks to the slower pace, but in the first game, not so much. I don't know if I've ever gotten past level 2 in Strider.

Oh yeah, and I gave Shinobi III another try today, but I don't love that one either. It has great graphics, but only okay gameplay. I got game over at the super-ultra-difficult third boss, and I don't want to go back. Shadow Dancer is way better. (Oh, and the double jump controls seem terrible. Wall-jumping too.)

In other news, adding up the Genesis (215 games), Sega CD (65 games), 32X (18 games), and 32X CD (3 games), I now have an even 300 games for the combined system. Nice. :) (It's now 300 because I got the Sega CD version of NHL '94 a few days ago.)


On the other hand, the Sonic games are, of course, incredible. I've been replaying all there of them recently, and actually beat Sonic 1 for the first time last week! That was really awesome; I'd gotten to the final boss before, but had always died there. Not this time. I beat Sonic 2, 2&K, and 3&K all years ago (between the late '90s and mid '00s), but Sonic 1 is harder and took longer to finish than the sequels. Sonics 1, 2, and 3&K are all still exceptional games. Yes, Mario World is better, but that's my favorite 2d platformer ever. Those three Sonic games are also high on the list. Kirby 2 and Wario Land for the Game Boy would also be up there, for a best 4th-gen platformers list. Actually, Mario World, S3&K, Wario Land, Sonic 2, and Kirby 2 (maybe in that order) would be a fine top-5-2d-platformers-I-have list, really, for all generations and not only the 4th. All five of those are A+ games on my somewhat forgiving scale.

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Originally Posted by Orchid87

The shadow. It makes jumps easier a lot.

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It doesn't seem very helpful to me.

Nobody? I was hoping someone could explain how you double jump in Shinobi III without having it fail like 95% of the time, and (and this is probably connected) how to not die at that stupid third-level boss...

I think everyone is probably still reeling from your controversial comments :)

Like any move with an execution window in a video game, the double jump in Shinobi III just requires you to get a feel for the timing, so just practice. The window isn't that tight at all. You will need to have it down for the vertically scrolling section later in the game where you jump from rock to rock to stay from falling off the screen (Fushin magic can help a bit there too).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQDK6cwlP08

At 2:47 is the Body Weapon boss fight, as you can see no double jump required. You'll notice the guy has managed to keep his shuriken power-up from the level so the boss goes down pretty quick, same method can apply for regular shuriken, just takes a bit longer. I don't personally do it that way, I like to dive kick it in the eyeball and make it hard for myself by double jumping the hand, but whatever works. Duck if you see it charge up the particle beam, but keep some distance because it sucks you towards it as it charges. If you still have trouble, use the fire magic, but remember if you do this you lose the Ninjutsu bonus.

Speaking of the jumping dive kick, not only is it useful to kill a chain of enemies in quick succession without touching the floor, it's also great simply to get back on the ground quicker than you usually would. That's the thing with this game, the moveset is flexible enough to allow for extremely fast and aggressive play. The problem is the levels perhaps don't quite realise it's full potential.

So far in this, for the games I went back to and tried again before writing up a summary, I liked Red Zone a bit less than I remembered, but Global Gladiators and Cool Spot more than I remembered. The initial things I wrote about those three games were different from what you see in the thread. Shinobi III and Strider, though, are about as I remember them being.

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

I think everyone is probably still reeling from your controversial comments :)

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Hah, maybe. :)

But yeah, I've never found Shinobi III to be all that great. I got it several years ago, played it once or twice, and probably hadn't touched it again until I had to play it again for this. Strider I've played a little more of than that, but like even less. Both games have bad controls, but Strider has bad hit detection and jumping on top of that; at least in Shinobi III the controls are fine so long as you aren't trying to double-jump or wall jump, both of which rarely work right. Meanwhile in Strider moving along walls is easy, but jumping off of them is hazardous and rarely goes where you want, and that hit detection is so bad...

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Like any move with an execution window in a video game, the double jump in Shinobi III just requires you to get a feel for the timing, so just practice. The window isn't that tight at all.

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You don't think it is? It seems VERY narrow to me. You should be able to jump again at any point in a jump, not only at the peak as annoying games like this one require.

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You will need to have it down for the vertically scrolling section later in the game where you jump from rock to rock to stay from falling off the screen (Fushin magic can help a bit there too).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQDK6cwlP08

At 2:47 is the Body Weapon boss fight, as you can see no double jump required. You'll notice the guy has managed to keep his shuriken power-up from the level so the boss goes down pretty quick, same method can apply for regular shuriken, just takes a bit longer. I don't personally do it that way, I like to dive kick it in the eyeball and make it hard for myself by double jumping the hand, but whatever works. Duck if you see it charge up the particle beam, but keep some distance because it sucks you towards it as it charges. If you still have trouble, use the fire magic, but remember if you do this you lose the Ninjutsu bonus.

Speaking of the jumping dive kick, not only is it useful to kill a chain of enemies in quick succession without touching the floor, it's also great simply to get back on the ground quicker than you usually would. That's the thing with this game, the moveset is flexible enough to allow for extremely fast and aggressive play. The problem is the levels perhaps don't quite realise it's full potential.

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Thanks. Maybe I'll try again.

In general though, adding more moves to Revenge of Shinobi was a good idea in that it gives the game a more ninja-like feel, but they're too hard to use! Getting up those stupid wall-jump passages in the first level was a complete pain too, I fell over and over when playing a few days ago. Compare to Ninja Gaiden for the NES for an example of better wall-jumping. Or have Strider-like wall-running, albeit with MUCH better jumping-off-the-ceiling controls of course. The way you drop straight down in Strider is very annoying.


Meanwhile, I still have not beaten Shadow Dancer, but I got to the final boss again a few days ago, since I played it a bit after Shinobi III, only to lose all my lives there yet again (yes, that has happened before). It's a very good game and a real classic, I just wish I could beat that boss... the other bosses are easy, but not the last one!

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Nobody? I was hoping someone could explain how you double jump in Shinobi III without having it fail like 95% of the time, and (and this is probably connected) how to not die at that stupid third-level boss...

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In fact, I rather wonder how you miss it 95% of the time...

As for me, it took me maybe one day to master the moves, and one more to finish the game. The only thing I found disapointing was that the game was a little too easy :) I consider it as an all-time masterpiece.

For Strider, I agree the controls are frustating, especially the non-stoppable jump, which was quite common at the time, and the collision boxes always seemed odd to me. But the game has such a vibe...

Indeed, Strider MD is a glitch fest of epic proportions. As a game it's inferior to some of Capcom's earlier efforts like Black Tiger and Daimakaimura for sure. But when it debuted in the arcades in 1989, it's movie-like presentation and stage progression, large sprites, excellent music plus Hiryu's lightning fast Cypher attack won people over. The run down the mountain and the leap to the icy precipice on the other side was iconic and beyond what home machines were expected to be able to replicate at the time.

That's why when the MD port came the following year, people were justifiably excited to be able to play what they expected to be a close port of the arcade game. Especially based on what Sega delivered with Daimakaimura the year before and the promise of it being the first 8 meg cart.

And sure enough, it was an awesome port.

It hasn't aged as gracefully as other well-regarded games of the day, but I feel it's one of those games you really had to be there at the time to experience - for a few months there it seemed like it was the best game ever made.

Finally, got another one done. Don't expect much from the Shadowrun summary, though; I didn't get far into it. The other 12 summaries here should be better.

Games covered in this summary
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Samurai Shodown
Shadow Blasters
Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi
Shadowrun (1993)
Shining Force
Shining Force II
Shining in the Darkness
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
Socket
Soldiers of Fortune
Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 2 & Knuckles
Sonic Spinball


Samurai Shodown - 1-2 player simultaneous, 6 button controller supported. Samurai Shodown is a fighting game from Takara, a port of SNK’s great arcade classic of the same name. The arcade original was one of the first weapon-based fighters, and is a pretty great game with great graphics, design, and gameplay. I like SNK a lot, and this game started one of their best series. The game is set in an anime-styled version of 18th century Japan, and there are 12 characters to play as. The cast is interesting and varied, and is a strength of the game. The game is slower-paced than Street Fighter II, but still moves at a good clip in the arcades. Characters have three punch/kick and three weapon-swing attacks, and each character has several special moves. It’s a fantastic classic! This Genesis version is similar, but is downgraded all around. First, one character has been cut, Earthquake. His sprite is just too big to manage to fit on the Genesis. That’s too bad, and it’s unfortunate that nothing replaces him. Also the sprite scaling is removed, as in the arcades the game will zoom in or out depending on how far the characters are from eachother while here there is just one zoom level, but that is to be expected on a system without hardware scaling. This Genesis version looks a bit zoomed-out compared to the arcade version and sprites look smaller, but you do get used to it. They are at least larger than the sprites in the SNES version.

Those changes are understandable, though the missing character is in the SNES version, but there is more. The graphics lose a lot of animation, sound isn’t as good and the music often just stops resulting in matches fought mostly in silence, the controls and move activations are okay but Neo-Geo caliber, and the game has slowdown. This all results in a good game, but one that’s a huge step down from the awesome arcade title. Sure, none of the other 4th-gen home consoles could get close to the Neo-Geo in most of those respects, but still, Takara wasn’t SNK, and their ports never were as good as they could have been. This is no exception. The Genesis version of Samurai Shodown is still a good game, but first, that slowdown really hurts. And it’s not only slowdown, the whole game plays a lot slower than the Neo-Geo version does. Play one and then the other and the difference is obvious. This makes this version less fun than the original. The slowdown also makes it harder to pull off your moves right, and some moves seem harder to activate here than in the Neo-Geo while others are fine. I’m not sure about the hit detection all of the time, either, it may have someissues. And that long stretches with no music is bad, but worse not all of the speech samples for special moves are here, only some of them.

The result of all those changes is that while this game may be slightly easier than the Neo-Geo game, it’s still very hard, and feels slow and not as fair, more than negating any possible easing of the intense challenge. Overall, I wish that SNK had made their own home ports, I’m sure they would be much better and more accurate than Takara’s always-flawed work. But as they are, the early-’90s home ports of Neo-Geo games are never quite the same as the real thing, and now you can play arcade-perfect versions of Samurai Shodown on newer platforms. The best ports of Neo-Geo games to the other 4th-gen consoles are probably Hudson’s four TurboGrafx (PC Engine) Arcade CD titles, though even they don’t match the Neo-Geo for sure, but sadly Samurai Shodown didn’t get a release there. I wish it had, that’d have been great. So, as good a game as this is, this Genesis version might not really be worth getting. I like Samurai Shodown a lot, it’s kind of amazing on the Neo-Geo… but why play this specific version, and not a better one? There isn’t really a reason. Play this for the Neo-Geo or a near-perfect port of that version. Arcade port. The arcade game was ported to many platforms — the Game Boy, Game Gear, 3DO, SNES, and Sega CD all have versions, as do many newer systems in compilations (PS1, PS2, Wii, etc.). This version is better than the GB or GG versions, but not as good as the PS1 or 3DO. The Sega CD version may be slightly better, but I haven’t played it myself.


Shadow Blasters - 1-2 player simultaneous. Shadow Blasters is a decent but unspectacular sidescrolling action game. You play as a team of four warriors on a short and easy quest to save the world from evil forces. The game is kind of fun while it lasts, but is a below-average title which is over far too soon. At the start you can play the first six levels in any order, then the last two stages are played sequentially after you beat the initial six. There are two difficulty settings, but both are easy. On the harder one you will die and get some game overs, but you have infinite continues and levels are short, so even on "hard" the game is easy. Ingame, you can walk slowly, jump a bit, attack with a ranged shot, and use a superbomb. Holding fire will charge up your shot, and the many powerups will boost your health, weapon power so you start with higher levels of the shot without having to hold down the button, and character speed and jumping, though these two are barely noticeable. All are character-specific, and you can swap characters at any time by pausing. Characters are slow and not maneuverable. A run or slide move would have helped a lot, here; some bosses can be hard to avoid because they move faster than you do. What you need to do is get to the boss with a lot of health in all four characters, and then switch during battle to keep people alive. This will work well.

However, the blandly-designed stages and generic bosses make it hard to get too engaged with this game. Stages are brief and a few screens high, and enemies run out at you constantly as you move, which can be annoying. They die quickly, but exploring isn't all that fun. The graphics are pretty bad, too; this is one of the worse-looking Genesis games I have. Sprites are amateurish, backgrounds basic, and there is almost no parallax scrolling to be found; almost all backgrounds are static. The music is a bit better, but it's average overall. The game does keep up a decent pace, as the short-ish stage lengths and varied environments and bosses keep things moving, but this game is not great. I do like the two two player co-op support, though, that's a great feature to have. I also like the four different characters each with their own unique attacks. Still, overall, Shadow Blasters isn't that good. The subpar visuals won't hold your interest for long, and the game is way too short and easy for its own good. Most anyone should be able to beat this game in their first sitting if they don't turn it off. It is fun enough to stick with to the end, though, so there is that. It just won't take long to finish, and "hard" is not much harder. Overall, though, Shadow Blasters is an okay but below-average game. If you like this kind of game maybe consider it if you find it cheap. Or skip it, that'd be fine too.


Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi - 1 player. The second of the three Shinobi games on the Genesis, this 1990 Sega release is one of my favorite Sega action-platformers ever and the only Shinobi game I unreservedly love. Shadow Dancer is a fantastic sidescrolling action game. Unlike the other Genesis Shinobi games you die in one hit in this one, so you'll need to be careful and take your time in each stage until you learn what to do. Unlike Shinobi III you aren't very mobile in this game; all you can do is walk left or right, jump, and attack. Up or Down plus jump move you to the next level of platforms above or below you, as in Rolling Thunder. Interestingly, touching enemies is not instant death unless they are brandishing a weapon. So, touching enemies is often non-fatal, but you do get knocked back a bit, and in the few levels with death pits this can mean being knocked into a pit. The game has very good, responsive controls though, and pits are easily avoided once you learn the levels. Again you have a sword and shurikens, both on the same button depending on the distance enemies are from you, but in this game you have infinite shurikens, thankfully. It's a great design decision that I wish the other two Genesis Shinobi games shared, it'd make them better games as with infinite shurikens you can't get stuck in no-win situations as you can in those games; your sword is not always a viable option. In the options menu you can turn on limited shurikens, but I never will. There are also some difficulty levels, but the game is challenging on any setting. This is not a really hard game, but it isn't easy either; I'd call it well-balanced, difficulty wise. You do get only two continues, so you'll be starting the game over often; this can be annoying, but this game is short enough to be fun to replay. In each level, you need to rescue some prisoners and then find your way to the exit. Many prisoners are guarded by special enemies with these green shield things they will throw. Interestingly, the game will remmeber which prisoners you have rescued between lives if you die in a level so long as it wasn't a Game Over, and the green-shield guard guys will not appear so long as their prisoners don't either. All other enemies will still be there, but still, this makes stages slightly easier the next time. All levels are straightorward, so you'll never be wandering around lost; the enemies are the challenge, not mazelike levels. The game is balanced very well in that regard. The graphics are only okay, but I like the art design. Similarly the music is good, but not too memorable.

Still, Shadow Dancer is a short game. There are only 5 levels, each made up of several stages and then a boss. The first four levels have two not-too-long platforming levels and then a bossfight in a third stage, while the last level has four shorter platforming challenges and then the quite hard final boss. The first four bosses are surprisingly easy, and actually the first boss is harder than the second through fourth ones because the rocks he drops from the ceiling can be tough to dodge. Through the first four levels, the first boss and some of the stages, particularly in level 4, are harder than most of the bossfights. Because you die in one hit and are sent back to the start of the stage if you die, though, those stages can be tricky even with the help of those special baddies that don't appear again if you die in the level so long as you've rescued the prisoner they were guarding. Each enemy type in this game has specific patterns it follows, and you'll need to learn them and learn how to exploit them to succeed. The jumping ninja enemies are particularly difficult to avoid sometimes, particularly in the mostly-dark level where you can only see in certain spotlit areas and not the rest of the screen. That is a pretty cool stage though, I like the different approach that the dark screen requires. The levels here have a great degree of variety, more so than many games in this genre; every level is different in design as well as in environment. The stages are not flat, but there aren't many instant-death pits either until the later stages. It's all very well thought through, Shadow Dancer has fantastic level designs among the best in the genre. The first stage is a great introduction to how to play the game, and each level afterwards adds some new things. The levels here are great from the city to the warehouse to that dark cave and beyond. It's a lot of fun to slowly explore each level, learning where the enemies will appear from so that you can start to learn what to do in the stage. Sort of like in Rolling Thunder, memorization and deliberate, controlled actions are the order of the day here, and I love it this way; the other two Genesis Shinobi games don't play like this, to their detriment in my opinion.

In between levels, you play a bonus game where you fall from a tall building, trying to hit as many of the 50 ninjas that you pass along the way as you can. If you get 48 or more you get extra live(s), so try to get them all! It's difficult, but can be done with practice, as the enemy patterns are the same each time. That's it for extras here, though. This is mostly a great game, but there are a few downsides, first that the game has no secrets to find beyond a few hidden 1-ups. Some also will dislike how predictable the game is since enemies always appear in the same places every time. The graphics are also clearly early-gen; as much as I like the variety of settings, the actual graphics are nothing special, and the game doesn't do anything to push the hardware. It's short, too, with only those 5 stages. Also, the final boss is frustratingly hard. I keep getting to the last boss with plenty of lives left, only to die over and over there. Ah well, at least something in this game is hard! That's probably better than it all being easy. Overall, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is a fantastic game. Shadow Dancer looks good enough, and plays better than most games. With good controls, variety, fun and varied bosses, a great difficulty curve, unlimited shurikens, and enemies that it's great fun to fight against, Shadow Dancer is one of the best on this system. This is a must-have. There are also arcade and Sega Master System (Europe only) Shadow Dancer games, but they are apparently different from this Genesis game. I've never played either one, so I don't know if they are good. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Shadowrun (1993) - 1 player, battery save to cartridge. Shadowrun is a cyberpunk series, designed back in the '80s when the Japanese economy seemed unstoppable, so while set in Seattle, the money here is the New Yen and such. It was originally a pen and paper RPG, but I've never really played or read anything Shadowrun. This is a top-down RPG that I never have put much of any time into since buying. I have both the SNES and Genesis Shadowrun games, which are entirely different, but haven't really played either one much; both seem a bit intimidating at the start, and I haven't gotten past the initial learning curve. I did try to play the game again for this, but after dying again and again against the first enemy I could fight, I gave up. There must be some trick to this game I'm missing. Shadowrun does have nice graphics, okay music, and a somewhat ambitious design. The game is well-drawn and has some background animation, which is cool. The isometric SNES game might look better, but this has pretty good art design too, so really it's close between the two. The music is conventional Western Genesis stuff, but it's good enough. For gameplay, you walk around, talking to people, getting quests, and fighting things with your guns. With the buttons you can change who you are targeting, change weapons, and shoot. Enemies take about as many hits to kill as I have health though, come in numbers, and you move somewhat slowly, so surviving seems difficult. You have stats, and can choose three classes at the beginning, for a more combat or magic focus. The pause menu has your inventory, skills, stats, and a (text-only) questlog, though there is no map for some stupid reason. Sure, the first area isn't TOO hard to get used to, though learning what is where does require some tedious trial and error, but this is a big game, and badly needs an ingame map system. 16-bit RPGs often don't have one, but that's one thing I dislike about them. Better RPGs have maps. And when you're told "go to [placename X] and then go to [placename Y]" as a quest but aren't given any clues about where either place is and just have to wander around until you memorize the maps, that's annoying. Worse is that I keep dying against the first or second enemy, though, and it doesn't seem close. I'll try to revisit this one again. There are other Shadowrun games, but this game is Genesis-exclusive.


Shining in the Darkness - 1 player, battery save to cartridge. The first game in what would become one of Sega's longest-running series, Shining in the Darkness is a first-person dungeon-crawler RPG made by Camelot. This is a very traditional game, and that means grinding. Basically the gameplay here consists entirely of grinding. You can see maybe two spaces forward in the dungeon and that's it, also. There isn't an ingame map, of course, so draw your own or download one from the internet. Don't play the game without some kind of map, it is absolutely essential; everything looks the same as there are only a handful of different backgrounds to be seen and the dungeon is a big maze. In the dungeon there are some simple puzzles to solve, but it's mostly about grinding levels against the monsters. The encounter rate is very high, and monsters get harder the deeper you go into the dungeon. There is only one dungeon in the game and it isn't as big as some in this genre, but there are multiple floors to explore. That will take a while, though. At the start of the game, you need to grind several levels right at the front entrance of the dungeon, regularly returning to town when you need to heal. You start the game with only one character in your party, your generic hero guy who's off to save the country from evil. If you get far enough you will eventually get some party members, first a female elf mage, but that's some hours into the game. Gameplay is simple and extremely repetitive, and the battle system has little depth: as usual in JRPGs, you just attack, use magic, or use items, and item and magic management are the only real strategies here beyond 'try to not get lost'. Western first-person dungeon crawlers of the day are also often overly hard grindfests, but at least they have more puzzles in the dungeons than you will find here. This game does have some, but not many.

The game does have decent sprite art for your characters and the enemies, though. This game is by Camelot, and it has what would become their signature art style and menu and font designs. This isn't a great-looking game, but for the genre it's solid. The music is good as well, and can be catchy. In between trips to the dungeon you can buy stuff in town and save your game, but this is just a menu; there isn't an actual town or overworld to explore, unlike more in-depth first person RPGs. I wish you could save anywhere, but that is sadly rare on console RPGs. This game is simple and focused only on dungeon exploration. I'm okay with that, I like a more focused experience over an open-world game myself. But that really is about all there is to see here. After getting this game a few years ago I played more of it than I thought, and did get to the end of the first floor of the dungeon, but I haven't gone back since. I don't like grinding; skill-free grinding is not something I consider good gameplay. On top of that, the 'item and mana management as strategy' school of RPG design very much most of the time. This game is a pretty bad offender on both scores. Still, Shining in the Darkness is okay, and its simplicity makes it approachable. It can be fun to get deeper into the dungeon and see new enemies as you progress. There are better dungeon crawlers out there than this average effort. I didn't really start to actually like dungeon crawlers until they had in-game map systems, myself, so I'd say just stick to the Etrian Odyssey and Class of Heroes serieses on the DS and PSP, for some pretty good Japanese first-person dungeon crawlers. But if you see this cheap and like the genre, maybe give it a try. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games. As this is a battery save game modern compilations might be a good way to play it, if your carts' battery is dead (mine still works).


Shining Force - 1 player, battery save to cartridge. Shining Force is the second Shining game, and with this game the series shifted genres. Again made by Camelot, this game is a strategy game with RPG elements, not a first-person dungeon crawler. Whether you call the game an RPG, strategy game, Strategy-RPG, or what have you -- and all are defensible -- what Shining FOrce is is a great game. Released in 1993, Shining Force was surely at least somewhat influenced by Nintendo's classic Fire Emblem for the NES, but this game is a bit simpler and easier to play than Fire Emblem. There is also an RPG world to run around in, instead of only tactical battles. That's why the game is sort of hard to classify, the battle system is a tactical strategy game, but there is also that overworld to explore, JRPG-style, just without the random battles; instead the strategy-style battles only occur at set points. That's great. I also like that you do fight on the same map you explore on, so battles don't happen on some alternate plane as you see in many games, RPGs especially. The cartoony graphics look great, and the music is even better. This game has a really good soundtrack! But anyway, Shining Force looks good, sounds great, and is a lot of fun to play. The story and interface are really the only significant flaws in the game.

That story isn't great, though. The story is predictable JRPG stuff, as you are a boy knight who will go on to be a hero and save the world from the forces of evil, and the characters are all cliches, but that doesn't matter much. There are some non-human characters, which is interesting. Knights are centaurs instead of humans on horseback, for instance; that's kind of neat. The story and characters are decent enough to serve, and the great strategic gameplay is still really fun. The game is streamlined in several ways versus other games in this genre. First, unlike Fire Emblem, dead characters do come back. You'll need to get to a church to resurrect them to get them back, and sometimes if someone dies you will need to be without them for several battles until you get to one, but you can bring them back. Churches are also where you save, which means yes, you often need to do multiple battles without saving. This isn't good, in a strategy game you should at minimum be able to save after each battle. And in this game you get an immediate game over, go back to the last time you saved, if the main hero ever dies in battle, so be careful with him! This is one of the few issues with this game apart from the story, though. A second way the game is simplified is that each character can only hold four items, and there is only one kind of equipment in the game: weapons. Your weapon will take up one slot, and the other three are for that characters' healing items and the like. Each character has their own inventory and there is no combined storage, so sometimes you will need to consider what you need, but really it's just for healing items, so it isn't anything difficult. It is kind of annoying that you need to use separate menu commands for getting items and talking to people, though, and that there isn't a character list with health and such in the menu. The sequel fixes those two issues.

Combat is also simple. The game takes place on a square grid, and each character moves in turn. You can't move anyone you want; instead there is a turn order in each battle based on their speed I believe, and you can only move that character during their turn. Player and enemy units all mix together, so there aren't separate player and enemy turns. The system works, though sometimes when a character is blocked by another one you'll wish you could move that other one first. Characters each have their own separate stats and experience, and will gain experience points from each action they take during battle. RPG-style levelling is important there, though you can't grind -- the game follows a set path and thre aren't random battles to go back and fight, you'll just need to use better strategy if you get stuck. For attacks, weapon attacks have a one or two space (in any direction) attack range, depending on type, so swords only have melee-range attacks, while bows can shoot two. Spells generally can be used up to two spaces away as well. You start out with a combat mage and also a healer, and both are very useful. Health and magic are refilled between battles automatically, so you don't need to go rest to heal them. You do get money, but it's only for buying weapons or healing items in the shops. You also want to be on the lookout for potential party members, as as you progress your team will get larger and larger. The Shining Force has a base to fill up, and it is fun to see more group members there even if they don't do much other than just stand there and repeat the same one line. Later on, just like in Fire Emblem, you do make choices about who to bring along, and with the RPG levelling system, ones left behind will quickly fall behind so your choices do matter.

Overall, Shining Force is a great game. The game has good, well-drawn graphics, fun gameplay, a good-length quest to play, a reasonable though not Fire Emblem-level challenge along the way, and lots of fun to be had. The main negatives are the cliche story and characters and irritating limitations on where you can save, but for the most part this is a very good classic, and it's easy to see why it was so successful. I love strategy games, but mostly play them on PC and handhelds; the only TV-console strategy game that I've ever really put a lot of time into and finished is Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube. I've had this one for some time now, but never did pla yit. Well, after starting it for this summary, I want to play a lot more of this, soon. However... the sequel is even better in most respects. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games. As usual check those batteries, if you have the cart! I'm sure lots are dead.


Shining Force II - 1 player, battery save to cartridge. Shining Force II is a lot like the first game, but with even better graphics, an improved interface, some gameplay improvements, and a new, though still cliche, story. Get this, you are a warrior hero guy and need to rescue the princess and defeat the forces of evil! That plot's never been done before. So yeah, the story is once again a series of cliches. The characters seem a bit better-written than the the first games' cast, though, and I like the occasional bits of comedy; the first one is a pretty serious game, cartoony art style aside. Some of the plot points along the way are somewhat interesting as well, as far as I've gotten. For the most part though, this game is more of the same. The first game had a great formula, though, so that's just fine. Shining Force II is basically the first game, but better. First, the interface is similar, but now you don't need separate menu commands for Get Ieem and Talk; the game has context-sensitive controls instead, which is appreciated. Also you now can easily see charcter health and a list of your characters in the menu, which you couldn't do in the first one. In most other ways, the game is more like the original. Again the soundtrack is really good, and the graphics are more varied and detailed than in the first game. Gameplay is similar to before, but there is maybe a little more variety. For instance, where in the first game at the beginning mages and healers are near-useless in combat and do only 1 damage, here they can do 3-4 damage in regular combat, which makes them more useful fighters. Several hours into the game actually my healer has the most kills, oddly enough. Gameplay is the same as before, with RPG-style world exploration interspersed with strategic battles at set points. Again you have a Shining Force to build, and choices to make about which characters to take with you in battle. And yes, the interface still has that iconic Camelot style. Unfortunately, you still can only save at those too-far-apart churches, annoyingly enough. This time sometimes you have to heal characters at the church if they run out of health in a battle, but other times they just come back after the battle. I have no idea why it's sometimes one and sometimes the other, it doesn't make much sense. And there is one battle early on with a surprise can't-win scenario, which was interesting, I wasn't expecting that.

For the most part, though, you know what you're getting with Shining Force II: a very good strategy game with RPG levelling, sort of like Fire Emblem but not as brutally difficult. The quest may be generic, but the gameplay along the way is really great. Strategy games are my favorite genre, and these games are the kind of strategy game that works great on a console. The game is simple enough to be very playable with a gamepad, but has enough strategy in character placements and actions that battles are lots of fun. The basics here are standard JRPG stuff, with only Attack, Magic, and Item for actions, and you still can hold only a few items and have only weapons for equipment, but this all works just fine in a strategy game. You have a full party to move around the map, after all, and strategy will definitely be required if you want to keep them alive and win. Again if the main character dies you lose the battle, but instead of being sent back to your last save, now you seem to just have to restart the fight, usually. That's good. Overall, Shining Force II is a fantastic game. In graphics, music, and gameplay, this is top-tier stuff and I like it a lot. Definitely play at least one of the two Genesis Shining Force games, they are classics for a reason! This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master - 1 player. Shinobi III is a popular platform-action game Sega released in 1993. The last of the three Shinobi games on the Genesis, this game has moves and faster action than any Shinobi game before. However, at its core it is a followup to Revenge of Shinobi, and that, along with control issues, are my main problems with the game. It's too bad that the only-okay Revenge of Shinobi got a sequel, instead of the much better Shadow Dancer. Just like Revenge of Shinobi, this game isn't a precise and deliberate game like Shadow Dancer, but is a bit faster-paced and less controlled, and less fun. Still, even if I like this less than most Genesis fans seem to, the game does have some strong good points for sure. First, the game looks great. Shinobi III has very good graphics with great backgrounds that use a lot of parallax, top-quality sprite work for the system, lots of variety in both graphics and stage designs, and some nice effects too. The graphics can be pretty cool, from standard platforming to an early section on horseback to some tricky vertical areas and a confusing but interesting ninja fortress late in the game. Levels are a lot longer than the short Shadow Dancer stages, and you will need to figure out where to go sometimes in this game and solve some basic puzzles. Sometimes that's good, other times bad. I do like the factory level, but not the rock-shaft or last stage, for instance. You often have to use ninja moves to get through, and conceptually that's great. The stage variety in this game is a definite strength. The music is also good. This is also a bit longer than its predecessors, and will put up a good challenge too. You do have difficulty level options, but it just seems to set how many lives you get per continue.

I have a lot of problems with this game, though, and don't enjoy it much overall. As in Revenge of Shinobi, you have a health bar and two weapons, a melee sword and a limited number of ranged throwing daggers. They REALLY should have had the unlimited daggers from Shadow Dancer here, it's not hard to get stuck in a near-unwinnable situation if you run out of daggers and you have limited lives and continues in this game, and no saving. The controls have some major problems, too. Now, you have a bunch of ninja moves in this game -- you can hang from ceilings and pipes (hold Up while jumping), wall-jump off of any wall (hit jump when you touch a wall, with near-perfect timing), slide (down+jump), and double jump (hit jump again at the peak of your jump, again very tight timing is required). Most of the moves work with practice, though having to hold up to hang on things really gets old fast and helps make the last level a lot harder than it should be, but the double jumping is pretty much broken. It's incredibly difficult to pull off double jumps consistently, even after playing the game several times recently I still fail a majority of the time. That is just unacceptable; well-designed games are not this frustrating, and double jumps are not usually this hard to do. And the last two levels absolutely require extremely good double-jumping skills. In the time I got the farthest, playing on Easy, it's a miracle that I beat level six, and the first section of the last level,. 7, is just hopeless with controls this problematic. I lost all remaining lives there. With good controls that section would be pretty cool, but as it is it's frustrating and not any fun. Double jumps in games are usually so simple, why is it so hardhere? An the wall-run, ceiling-grab, etc. can be tricky to use when needed, too; it's not only one move that is a problem. That you move forward a set distance each time you hit forward while hanging from something can get you killed, for instance.

Overall Shinobi III is an okay game. It looks great, each level is pretty different, and has a more agile ninja than most any other Genesis game, but it doesn't control well, and I prefer the more tightly designed, precise challenge of Shadow Dancer of this games' looser, more open style. I just don't have enough fun playing it to make it worth the frustratingly high difficulty. This is a very good game in many ways, I jdon't like the controls and while playing the game, the fun moments are fleeting compared to the frustration. It's no Shadow Dancer, either. Still, probably try Shinobi III; a lot of people like this game much more than I do. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Socket - 1 player. Socket is a platformer from Vic Tokai. An incredibly unoriginal platformer, to be specific. This game is one of the most blatant Sonic clones ever! From the graphics to the gameplay, this game is Sonic, just easier and just okay, not amazing. You are Socket aka Time Dominator in Japan, an anthropomorphic, time-travelling time-police duck robot, and need to save time from an evil badguy travelling through time and messing everything up. This is a nice-looking game with bright, often pastel, sprites. The Sonic influence is everywhere, but it does look nice. The music is pretty good as well. Music tracks are short, but catchy and fun. You run and jump, and jumping is a little slippery unfortunately, but unlike Sonic, in this game you attack with a ranged attack on the B button. It stays in the air for a while though, so it's easy to hit enemies with. Importantly, Up plus attack does a vertical attack into the air. This is rarely actually needed, but is absolutely vital on the final boss; it made that otherwise-tough boss a lot easier once I finally figured this move out! You also have a health bar and can take many hits. It does slowly drain over tme, so it is a timer as well as a life meter, but the levels are filled with lightning-bolt powerups, this games' version of Sonic rings, which refill some health when you touch them, so running out of time is rare. The game does have limited continues and no saving, but I've never actually run out of continues; both times I've played the game since buying it, I finished it. You get more continues as you go too, presumably from pickups. Yes, it's easy. The first three worlds out of seven are entirely challenge-free, and the last four are only moderate, not hard. It's good that it does get a bit harder later on, though.

Levels are large, just like Sonic, and the game tries to have a Sonic-like physics system, though it isn't quite as good. I do like that many stages have multiple routes though, it adds something to the game. Running around the levels, exploring and looking for extra lives, continues, challenge doors, and more is often fun even if the game is mostly easy. Levels go all over and are not just straight paths to the right, which is good.exploration to complete; they aren't just straight paths to the right. That's good. There are no bottomless pits in the main levels either, only spikes that just take off a bit of health. In a game this fast-moving, that's nice, though spikes should be more of a threat. Each game world first has a 'speed' stage, then one or more 'labyrinth' stages. The last labyrinth area will have a door to the world's boss. Speed stages are all about fast movement, and require almost no thought or strategy; just run, occasionally attack, and try the various paths, and you'll finish them. They are fun but insubstantial levels, and look too smiliar as all are set in Socket's future as you travel to the next time period. Only the labyrinth stages are actually set in different time periods, and even there the difference is subtle. Enemies are the same robots throughout and the whole game has a consistent look, so the whole time-travel element isn't emphasized nearly as much as it could have been.

Labyrinth stages are the meat of the game, and are fun to explore. Some have dead ends, so you will need to backtrack and check all of the routes sometimes in order to find your way forward. Doors before the last area of a world are sometimes-optional challenge areas on otherwise dead-end paths. These are the only place in the game you will find instant-death bottomless pits, and can be tough. If you die in one you do lose a life and go all the way back to the last checkpoint in the main level, which can be annoying at times. Dying in Sonic special stages doesn't take away a life! It's nice to have something kind of challenging here, and I like that they made them mostly optional so less good players can avoid them. Boss doors look the same as challenge-room doors, oddly, it would be nice if they were different. Bosses are mostly extremely easy, and just hitting attack over and over usually results in a win. The final boss is the only tougher one, and there really all you need is to remember that Up+Attack move for the second form and you should be good. Overall, Socket is an okay, slightly above average platformer. It looks and sounds good, but is extremely derivitive and has no original ideas of its own, it just copies Sonic except with a different attack system and less great quality all around. Still, it's a decent, fun little game worth a try if you like platformers and don't mind it when they are short and easy.


Soldiers of Fortune - 1-2 player simultaneous, password save. Soldiers of Fortune, or The Chaos Engine in Europe, is a European top-down action game released on several systems. This game was inspired by classics like Commando or Ikari Warriors, but is a slower-paced game with larger levels to explore. While it seems to be quite popular with classic-gaming fans in Europe, honestly I don't see why. The game does have nice graphics, with good sprite art in a cartoony steampunk-ish setting, and the music is decent up-tempu stuff as well, but the gameplay isn't nearly as good as the graphics and sound. This is a below-average game and doesn't even match up to Rambo III, much less MERCS. It does have two player co-op, which is nice, but the game is overly difficult, sometimes confusing, and doesn't control that well. It stops being fun too soon as a result. The game isn't all bad, but compared to my expectations, or other games in the genre, it's pretty disappointing. In this game you play as a team of six mercenaries, off on a series of dangerous missions. You can play as any of the six guys, and you always have an AI companion controlling a second character if you aren't playing with another human, so the game is always co-op. Each character is different and has different weapons and stats. Occasionally you will be able to buy stats and such in a shop between some levels. There are also passwords between each of the four worlds, but you need to beat an entire four-level world to get one, and I've never managed that despite more than a few tries, so I haven't gotten one myself.

The first issue here are the controls. All you can do is walk and fire in the direction you are facing; no direction-lock, no twinstick control, and in a game which needs them. Bullets are uninspiring-looking little circles, too, and shooting lacks intensity. Enemies spawn all over as you move, so you really need to either have memorized everything or be paying close attention to not take hits. Not being able to shoot while you move out of the way to dodge bullets is awful, and you will take hits... and you have vERY few hit points per life, and only three lives before it' Game Over. And no, there are no continues at all, beyond that password you may never reach. That's too harsh. The levels themselves can be interesting, but it's way too easy to get hit and the game punishes you too much for it. Level pacing is also mixed; the early levels are fun, but quickly get tedious or frusterating once stages get larger and more confusing a few levels in. As you go you collect keys, which unlock paths, and money for that shop. Some keys open one of several branching options, so there are alternate paths to add a little replay value, though most of each stage is one path. There is the core of a decent game here, but the controls and difficulty ruin it. And worse, once I got stuck in what I'm pretty sure was an impossible-to-progress-past situation, so the game has glitches as well. Since there is no timer in the game, I had to turn it off and start over. Ugh! I still haven't beaten the whole first world in this game, but playing it makes me want to not do so again anytime soon. Overall Soldiers of Fortune is a disappointing, below-average to bad game that I kind of regret buying. The nice graphics and two player co-op are the main positives here, but the gameplay isn't much fun, levels can be long and enemy spawn locations are hard to avoid, the game has glitches, and really this game is just too hard for its own good. Skip this one unless you have nostalgic feelings for it. Also available on Amiga (in Europe only) and SNES, but I only have played this version. Apparently the SNES version has lots of slowdown, so skip it.


Sonic the Hedgehog - 1 player, supports lock-on with Sonic & Knuckles (for a full Sonic 3 & Knuckles bonus-games mode called Blue Spheres, with passwords to access any possible level). Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog released in 1991, and is one of the great, industry-changing titles, the kind of game that only comes along a couple of times a generation at most, and even most of those don't turn into franchises as popular as Sonic's has been. Sega made an incredible game, and then marketed it exceptionally well. The result was a phenomenon that continues to this day, as Sonic is still Sega's mascot. Sonic created the humanoid-animal-mascot trend in character design, changed platformers with its focus on speed and attitude, and is one of the best-selling game of the 4th generation, too. And yes, I at least think that the game is still fantastic today! This game has some critics, but I love Sonic the Hedgehog. It isn't the best platformer of the generation, and I do think that its nemesis Super Mario World is the better game and the best 2d platformer ever, but Sonic 1 is outstanding, and one of the next best 2d platformers, along with its sequels, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy, and a couple of Game Boy games (wario Land 1, Kirby 2). Sonic is just exceptional in almost every way. The graphics are great, the music is iconic, the levels are fantastic beginning to end, the physics engine behind it all was unlike anything seen before in a platformer, and the large levels are a lot of fun to explore, too! The difficulty level is challenging, but it's a fun challenge, not the crushing difficulty of some other Genesis games. This is a hard game and I only beat it for the first time last month, but it's extremely fun whether or not you complete it. It's hard to think of much bad to say about this game, really.

But for the zero people reading this who don't know the game, Sonic is a platformer. Sonic runs and jumps, and rolls in a ball when you jump or hit Down while running. Hitting enemies in normal form hurts you, but hitting them in ball form hurts them. It's a simple but great system, though this first game doesn't have the spin-in-place move that would later become a series staple. Your goal is to go to the right until you reach the end of each stage. Each world has three stages, and the last has a boss in it. Levels are huge, have multiple routes, and are better-designed than most in the genre. The phyics system is great. You slow down as you run up hills, jump off a slope at the opposite angle, and such. This was a rarely-seen thing at the time, and Sonic's physics are very solid and well-programmed. It is one of the cores of the experience. The levels are extremely well-designed as well, and the game has a great balance between exploration and challenge. Levels are designed around the physics, and are absolutely full of challenging jumps to optional areas, alternate paths easier than the main one, and more. There are also TVs with powerups in them, usually rings but sometimes invincibility or a shield. In these open-levels platformers blind jumps are a common issue, and they are an issue here, but the game has few instant-death pits. They are rare enough that usually when you jump into space you have confidence that you'll land on ground... but once in a rare while, you won't, that was a pit. They are not always marked, so this is one issue with the game, until you learn where the few pits are. Most of the time, though, your main obstacles will be spikes, spike-balls, and moving enemies. If Sonic touches any of these, he drops all of the rings he was holding, but if something hits you when you have no rings you die. Up to 20 rings will appear around you after yout get hit, and you need to try to collect at least one before they vanish. It's a good mechanic, and the levels are designed to encourage memorization, but also to reward exploration. Some newer, post-Genesis Sonic gmaes go way too far into the trap-heavy school of level design, an this adds to the challenge, but not the fun. The Genesis games are better-balanced: there are traps, but you don't need to constantly stop in fear of enemies. You do need to be careful, but not inordinately so. Oh, and there are checkpoint posts, for when you die but it isn't a game over. On game over you restart the level, so long as you have continues left of course.

There is one issue people have with the levels in this game, though, and that's that later Sonic games emphasize speed much more than this game. Sonic is fast, but only the first world is entirely built around speed. After that the second world is a slow-paced underground stage, and then after that the game has a mixture of faster and slower elements. The water levels are the slowest, and some of the hardest, stages, as Sonic can drown if you go too long without getting an air bubble. I like good water levels in games, but Sonic's can be frustrating. The water-world's boss climb is one of the hardest parts of the game. Still, though, I like most of the slower parts of this game. The second world's great fun, even if you're not going full-speed most of the time! Maybe it was just including more conventional level-design elements out of uncertainty about how much people would like the speed the game starts with, but I like the results a lot. Each world looks different, and plays differently as well. All are fun. Yes, blasting through the first stage is great, but making your way through the lava pits in world 2 is also great! The one level-design element I will criticize is that you get no rings in the final boss fight, which makes it MUCH harder than it should be. Sadly, both of its sequels on the Genesis, and many of the Game Gear games, copy this particularly annoying design trait. You should not have to fight hard bosses without rings in Sonic, but most of the classic ones force this on you. It'll cause many game overs right at the end of the game.

Your second goal in the game is to get all of the Chaos Emerald collectables, which are in bonus stages. In this game, you get into bonus stages by reaching the end of the first or second stage in each world except for the last one with at least 50 rings, then jumping into the giant ring that appears, you will go into the bonus stage. Bonus stages are a rotating top-view maze, and you need to try to get to the center and get the Chaos Emerald in the middle, without running into an exit. In addition, if you get 50 rings in a bonus stage you get a continue. You start with no continues, so getting them in bonus stages is essential! There are ten opportunities to get into bonus stages in this game, and six chaos emeralds, so if you want to get them all and the special good ending screen, you need to do well. I've never quite managed to get all the emeralds in one run in a Genesis sonic game, but it is a fun challenge. The bonus stages in this game aren't the best in the series, but they are good, and a nice break from the main game. After the first world having to have 50 rings to get in is a real challenge and takes memorization, so it's satisfying once you finally get into a bonus stage in later levels!

Overall Sonic the Hedgehog is a fantastic game. Innovative when it released and still fresh and fun today, the first Sonic game is a fantastic experience. The game has fantastic graphics, a really good, iconic soundtrack, extremely well-polished gameplay, great levels to explore, lots of replay value, fun bonus stages, difficulty that is just about right, and more! The game doesn't have saving, and it is a lot shorter than Super Mario World and there are many fewer levels as well, but what it does have has all been done really well. The game doesn't have Mario's precision, as the speed and physics system makes things trickier, but what it does have is almost as great. Sonic the Hedgehog is one of the all-time great platformers. Its sequels are even better, but the first one is fantastic as well. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games. Sonic 1 has lots of ports on newer systems.


Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Sonic 2 & Knuckles - 1-2 player simultaneous, supports lock-on with Sonic & Knuckles (to play as Knuckles in this game). Basically Sonic the Hedgehog but better, faster, better-looking, and better-sounding, Sonic 2 is a fantastic sequel. It takes everything great about the original Sonic, removes the slower-paced stuff that many didn't like, and improves on everything else while also adding a second character and co-op multiplayer. The result is that Sonic 2 is another one of the great platformers. The engine, physics, graphical style, music, and everything else are all just as before, but better. This is a faster-paced game than the first one, as Sega listened to the critics and didn't include any slow areas like the second world of Sonic 1. It also has two playable characters, as Sonic's friend Tails is added. Tails the fox flies in, and flight is his signature move, but in this game you can't actually fly while playing, oddly. Also, in single player you play as Sonic only while Tails follows you around. Only a second player can play as Tails, but they can take control at any time, which is nice; it's not a separate mode. Tails has infinite lives, but has to stay on the same screen as Sonic, so play centers around Sonic. Still, it's a fun option and it's good they included it. While quite difficult, Sonic 2 is slightly easier than the first game. While Sonic 1 took me many years to finally complete, I finished Sonic 2 not too long after getting it back in 2006 or so. You still do have limited continues and no saving, unfortunately, and the game is probably longer than the first, but most of the game isn't quite as hard as it was before. The difficulty here is balanced well. One other change is that worlds only have two levels now, so there are more, shorter worlds than the first game. Future Sonic games would keep this games' two-levels style over the three-levels-each style of the original.

Beyond the addition of Tails, there are two major changes in Sonic 2 versus the first game. First, the Spin Dash has been added, and it's a move that ever since has been one of Sonic's most important. By hitting Jump while holding Down, you will spin in place, and then zoom off as soon as you let go. You can still spin by running and then hitting down, but this is more useful and makes level traversal easier and more fun. And second, the Chaos Emeralds are now found in new minigames which you access a new way. Instead of getting to the end of a stage with 50 rings, now you just have to reach a checkpoint post with 50 rings. Then a portal will open above the post, and if you jump up into it you go into the bonus stage. This means that now you can go into multiple bonus stages in a single level, though each post can only be used once, checkpoint posts are limited and now are often hidden on side paths, and your rings are reset to zero after leaving a bonus stage so it isn't too easy. The bonus game itself is an into-the-screen running tube. Sonic and Tails run down a tube, collecting rings and avoiding spike balls. You need to get the required number of rings by each of several points along the tube. The first bonus stage is easy, but they quickly get hard after that. While these "3d" tubes were quite impressive back in 1992, in retrospect I probably like them the least compared to Sonic 1 or 3&K's bonus levels. They're probably harder than either other kind of bonus stage, too. Still, they are fun, and it's nice that Sega mixed things up by changing the bonus stages each time. One final lesser change is continues. This time, you get a continue by getting enough bonus points in levels, instead of based on coins in bonus stages. I'm not sure if this makes getting continues easier or harder, it's sort of mixed.

Otherwise, though, Sonic 2 is more of the same. The graphics are very similar, just better. The music is familiar, but with new compositions which are just as great as the originals. The levels are like those in the first game, but bigger. Again the final boss is really tough and you have no rings for the fight, irritatingly. The new bonus stages are also frustrating, but they do look really cool and play okay once you memorize them. Tails is a decent addition, even if he's not nearly as cool-looking as Sonic. You can't play as Tails in single player, unfortunately, bue he's basically a Sonic clone; he does fly into the screen after dying, but otherwise plays just like Sonic. You can even play as Knuckles in this game if you connect it to a Sonic & Knuckles cart! That's really cool. Playing as Knuckles in Sonic 2 is really fun, I like it a lot. At one point Sonic 2 with Knuckles was maybe my favorite Sonic game, in fact, though S3&K really is the best one. Knuckles has a lower jump height, but can glide and climb up walls. He also doesn't lose rings after bonus stages, which is fantastic and makes the game easier. He's great. There is also a splitscreen versus mode, for two-player competitive play. I've never found it all that exciting compared to the main game, but it's nice they added it I guess. The main game is great. Levels are large, multi-pathed, and incredibly fun to explore. Different paths can play very differently and lead to different areas and secrets, and this game encourages exploration more than the first game since not only coins and lives, but also checkpoints with their bonus-warp gates, are scattered around. This game is hard but fun, and will keep you coming back until you beat it. Sonic 2 is a fantastic classic which deserves its place as one of the all-time-great platformers. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Sonic Spinball - 1 player. Because Sonic 3 wouldn't be finished until 1994, Sega had its American studio Sega Technical Institute make a Sonic game for the 1993 holiday season. Instead of making a platformer like their previous work Kid Chameleon, this pinball game was the result. This game is a pinball game with a platformer-styled design to it. Sonic is mostly a pinball, but your goal is to get three Chaos Emeralds in each table so that you can move on to the next one, instead of playing for score on a preset table. Here you actually have a time limit, and the tables are gimmicky and are designed around unlocking areas to progress towards the emeralds, instead of more conventional pinball table design. Kirby's Pinball Land for Game Boy, one of the great console pinball games of the generation, also has levels and progression, but it balances things better -- those tables can be beaten, but also are great pinball tables even outside of that. Here, you just don't get that feeling, unfortunately. The physics are also extremely bouncy, so Sonic will go flying all over, without much control. Hitting what you want can be difficult. The controls are also bad -- you use A and B for the flippers, and C for both flippers. Other, better console pinball games of the era use Left on the d-pad for the left flipper and the rightmost button for the right one. That is a far better control scheme than this. You really want a thumb on each flipper, and holding the controller so one thumb is on A and the other on B isn't too comfortable. The game does look pretty nice, though. This clearly isn't a Sonic Team game, and you can tell that it's a Western game, but the graphics are good and each environment is detailed and nice-looking. The music is solid as well, though it's not main-series Sonic caliber stuff.

The game has one other major flaw, though, and it's crippling: this game is incredibly difficult. Sonic Spinball gives you three lives and zero continues. Once you've died three times, it's all the way back to the beginning of the game you go. And after the first table, the which has ball-saver platforms, there is nothing to save a ball if it drains, you just lose a life every time. I did manage to beat the first table while playing the game for this summary, but quickly got game over on the second because of this. In a progression-based game that is this hard, with random deaths inevitable thanks to the physics and genre, having no continues or saving is too cruel. Overall Sonic Spinball is an okay, average game, but it could have been better. The game can be fun to play if you can stay alive, but it has a bunch of issues which hold it back. Pinball and Sonic fans might want to try it, but this definitely isn't a must-play game. Some years after getting this game and finding it way too hard, I got the Game Gear version. The graphics there aren't nearly as good, but the game is much easier and, for me, more fun. I've beaten that game and did like it. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.

Couple of things. Samurai Shodown on Genesis is locked to the zoomed in view, it's the SNES game that's zoomed out. So the characters really don't appear that much smaller than the Neo originals at all, it's not like the 16-bit Street Fighter situation here.

And the Sega CD version is not just this game with CD audio, since it's a different port from Funcom and published by JVC, if memory serves correctly.

Lastly, Shinobi III has 'frustratingly high difficulty'? Hory shit dude... most people thought it was too easy! (changing the difficulty only affects the health gauge, and not enemy patterns/behaviour). I agree it's not as good as the other two on MD though.

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

Couple of things. Samurai Shodown on Genesis is locked to the zoomed in view, it's the SNES game that's zoomed out. So the characters really don't appear that much smaller than the Neo originals at all, it's not like the 16-bit Street Fighter situation here.

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They're definitely smaller, though. Maybe they are even smaller on SNES, I don't know (never played that version), but the graphics on Genesis look a bit small...

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And the Sega CD version is not just this game with CD audio, since it's a different port from Funcom and published by JVC, if memory serves correctly.

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I guess it is different, yes:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbt7xiKPJ3M SCD version looks like it plays very similarly, and is also missing Earthquake, but clearly has bigger, more zoomed-in graphics. It definitely looks nicer than the Genesis version visually. I've never played it, though; I only have played the Genesis, Game Boy, Neo-Geo, and 3DO versions. I should probably remove that sentence.

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Lastly, Shinobi III has 'frustratingly high difficulty'? Hory shit dude... most people thought it was too easy! (changing the difficulty only affects the health gauge, and not enemy patterns/behaviour). I agree it's not as good as the other two on MD though.

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Note "frustrating" as well as "difficult". Both in the summary and in my post last week I've said how frustrating Shinobi III's controls are, the iffy controls are a big part of it. All three of the Genesis Shinobi games are hard, though, yes.

On a related note, the first GG Shinobi game is insanely difficult. Still haven't finished more than like one level in that game...

Like others, I'm not really getting your problems with Shinobi 3. What could possibly be difficult about the wall jump? It's a total cakewalk; just hold the direction you're going in and press jump again when you're touching the wall. The timing isn't strict at all. Forward+jump, that's it.

The double jump, on the other hand, does have relatively strict timing, but it's obvious that you need to be at the peak of your jump to use it (when you note that it gives you access to one of your most devastating moves, it's more understandable). I do tend to fail it from time to time, but I think that mostly has to do with the timing seeming a bit different from Revenge (that one I can execute from feel alone 99.9% of the time). I think your main problem just lies in expecting it to work like other games; this isn't a platformer with a cushy double jump for people who suck at games, this is Shinobi.

Honestly, graphics aside, I think the controls are the strongest part of the game. That shit is sublime. The string of moves you can rattle off after leaving the ground alone is extremely satisfying. I wish they made Shinobi 4 and a dozen other games with that engine. I'd love to see RoS with that movelist, or something with larger and more vertically sprawling levels.

By the way, if you find yourself running out of shurikens, there's an easy cheat for that; set the number to 00 in the options, change the sound effect to "shuriken", and wait a few seconds. That'll give you an infinite amount to work with.

Samurai Shodown for Sega CD is an improved port as OverDrone already corrected though it's still missing the zoom out (and as a result Earthquake). The characters are bigger, everything looks better and I think all of the animations are intact, or at least far more intact than the Genesis version. The audio was recorded straight from the Neo Geo which is nice. The only real crippling flaw is the load times.

The SNES version does have Earthquake but if you thought the visuals took a hit in the Genesis version you'll be appalled by that one.

I won't touch much on Shinobi 3 since I'm sure you already knew your opinion was going to be an unpopular one. I'm another who finds Shinobi III to be the easiest of the three Genesis games, though that's not a criticism of it because I think it's in the sweet spot for console game difficulty. I consider it a near perfect example of a 16-bit action game. Everything about it is satisfying and smooth as silk to me.

It's interesting that the criticism is all Shinobi III (and a couple of issues with the SS review that I think I've fixed now). I thought that my pretty harsh criticism of Soldiers of Fortune would also be controversial, given the usual good reviews that game gets...

But on another note, does anyone else agree with me that Sonic 2 & Knuckles is probably more fun than the base Sonic 2?

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Originally Posted by Assman

Like others, I'm not really getting your problems with Shinobi 3. What could possibly be difficult about the wall jump? It's a total cakewalk; just hold the direction you're going in and press jump again when you're touching the wall. The timing isn't strict at all. Forward+jump, that's it.

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When I played the game again and got to the last level I had better luck with the wall-jump than in my post last week; this is why I focus more on other things in the summary. The issue, though, is that you drop off the wall if you don't hit the jump button quickly. That's just annoying, in better games you stick to the wall and don't have to worry about that!

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The double jump, on the other hand, does have relatively strict timing, but it's obvious that you need to be at the peak of your jump to use it (when you note that it gives you access to one of your most devastating moves, it's more understandable). I do tend to fail it from time to time, but I think that mostly has to do with the timing seeming a bit different from Revenge (that one I can execute from feel alone 99.9% of the time). I think your main problem just lies in expecting it to work like other games; this isn't a platformer with a cushy double jump for people who suck at games, this is Shinobi.

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"Bad controls are good!" is not something I'd ever agree to, but that kind of seems like what you're saying here -- that the game is better because it's harder to play. I don't agree with that idea.

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Honestly, graphics aside, I think the controls are the strongest part of the game. That shit is sublime. The string of moves you can rattle off after leaving the ground alone is extremely satisfying. I wish they made Shinobi 4 and a dozen other games with that engine. I'd love to see RoS with that movelist, or something with larger and more vertically sprawling levels.

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Having more move options is nice -- Shadow Blasters is a example of a game that could have used some more, that I just played recently for this -- but you need good access to those moves too.

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By the way, if you find yourself running out of shurikens, there's an easy cheat for that; set the number to 00 in the options, change the sound effect to "shuriken", and wait a few seconds. That'll give you an infinite amount to work with.

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That's good to know.

I always saw Soldiers of Fortune as pretty love/hate. Or at least love/meh.

I would never say that Super Shinobi 2 (lets start calling it by it's real name, shall we?) has anything near close to what could be called 'bad controls'. Your comment about the wall jump suggesting you have to hit jump button quickly or it will fail - isn't true, the window is massive on that move, you can literally leave it for ages before executing it without falling. Stick to the wall? not every ninja game has to ape Ninja Gaiden, it's your expectations that need recalibration here.

ABF, have you ever considered that you just might not be very good at it yet? No one else seems to share your disdain for them. After all, you've proven that you don't care to waste your time learning (yep, some stuff does have a learning curve when it comes to the controls) games that don't instantly reward you for playing the first level.

Case in point, Rapid Racer/Turboprop Racing. In Your Playstation opinion thread you say it controls poorly and as a result is one of the worst racers you've played on the console. I picked it up recently and knew exactly what Barone was talking about in regards to the learning curve - which is mostly related to the waves, being a water-based racer - and you couldn't be further from the truth with that one. There is no problem, it plays great.

Everybody has opinions, but not all are as valid as each other since some sit closer to the truth than others... IMO. :)

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

I would never say that Super Shinobi 2 (lets start calling it by it's real name, shall we?)

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No. I'm a 'Murican.

I'm going to go play some Lightening Force now. ;)

They should have went with Revenge of Shinobi 2 for the western release.

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

I would never say that Super Shinobi 2 (lets start calling it by it's real name, shall we?)

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Shinobi III is every bit as much the games' "real name" as that is.

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has anything near close to what could be called 'bad controls'. Your comment about the wall jump suggesting you have to hit jump button quickly or it will fail - isn't true, the window is massive on that move, you can literally leave it for ages before executing it without falling. Stick to the wall? not every ninja game has to ape Ninja Gaiden, it's your expectations that need recalibration here.

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Why not try to make your controls morel ike Ninja Gaiden, though? The NES Ninja Gaiden games are among the best ninja games ever, and are better than any Shinobi except maybe Shadow Dancer... and yes, the controls are part of that.

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ABF, have you ever considered that you just might not be very good at it yet? No one else seems to share your disdain for them. After all, you've proven that you don't care to waste your time learning (yep, some stuff does have a learning curve when it comes to the controls) games that don't instantly reward you for playing the first level.

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This is a totally false attack, considering that as I've said I gave the game multiple chances over at least a week, playing it several times and on the last attempt managing to get to the last level. I only did that because you people keep claiming that the controls are actually good, but the double jump never felt reliable at all and fails constantly even when I think I hit the button with perfect timing, the hang-from-wires move is annoying compared to, say Strider (not that that game doesn't have its own issues of course, but that isn't one of them),

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Case in point, Rapid Racer/Turboprop Racing. In Your Playstation opinion thread you say it controls poorly and as a result is one of the worst racers you've played on the console. I picked it up recently and knew exactly what Barone was talking about in regards to the learning curve - which is mostly related to the waves, being a water-based racer - and you couldn't be further from the truth with that one. There is no problem, it plays great.

Everybody has opinions, but not all are as valid as each other since some sit closer to the truth than others... IMO. :)

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That's not a decent comparison because that's a game I played for less than an hour once, totally hated, and have not gone back to. Nothing like Shinobi III at all.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

It's interesting that the criticism is all Shinobi III (and a couple of issues with the SS review that I think I've fixed now).

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It's probably because the problems you seem to be having with the game don't at all mesh with our experiences with it. Beyond differences in opinion, at times it's almost like you're describing a completely different game. Case in point:

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

When I played the game again and got to the last level I had better luck with the wall-jump than in my post last week; this is why I focus more on other things in the summary. The issue, though, is that you drop off the wall if you don't hit the jump button quickly. That's just annoying, in better games you stick to the wall and don't have to worry about that!

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OverDrone already pretty well covered it, but for the life of me I just can't figure out your struggle with this. My first experience with this game was jumping right into it without any kind of manual or preface, and I still found the wall jump intuitive and easy to use from the start. I don't understand what you expect it to be doing that it isn't, nor why you're so stuck on how you think it should be rather than just learning it and using it for what it is. In the context of this game, it's a move that functions extremely well.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

"Bad controls are good!" is not something I'd ever agree to, but that kind of seems like what you're saying here -- that the game is better because it's harder to play. I don't agree with that idea.

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How you gleaned that from what I said is beyond me. My admitted occasional failings with the double jump only stem from my acclimation to Revenge of Shinobi's double jump, a game whose controls I became accustomed to many years before ever playing Shinobi 3. Realistically, I shouldn't expect S3's double jump to work identically to RoS's, so you certainly shouldn't expect it to work identically to some game that doesn't even have "Shinobi" in the title. The double jump in this game simply does not work as nor serve the same purpose as it does in most other platformers. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, but that doesn't make it bad. It's not broken. It doesn't have an arbitrary fail-rate.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Having more move options is nice -- Shadow Blasters is a example of a game that could have used some more, that I just played recently for this -- but you need good access to those moves too.

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And you do, provided that you're willing to take the minimal time needed to learn how to properly access them. Having to learn how to play a game doesn't make its controls bad, and again, it seems like you'd rather bemoan how they don't work than learn how they do.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

the hang-from-wires move is annoying compared to, say Strider (not that that game doesn't have its own issues of course, but that isn't one of them)

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What? You hold "up" to grab the ceiling/pipe/whatever. What am I missing here? I feel like you're deliberately making this game way harder than it actually is.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Why not try to make your controls morel ike Ninja Gaiden, though? The NES Ninja Gaiden games are among the best ninja games ever, and are better than any Shinobi except maybe Shadow Dancer... and yes, the controls are part of that.

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'Cause it's not fucking Ninja Gaiden, it's Shinobi. I think the original Sonic games are amazing platformers that best anything else in the genre, but that doesn't mean I expect rolling and pinball physics in every other platformer and then fault them when they don't.

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Originally Posted by Assman

It's probably because the problems you seem to be having with the game don't at all mesh with our experiences with it. Beyond differences in opinion, at times it's almost like you're describing a completely different game. Case in point:

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I'm just describing the game as it is...

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OverDrone already pretty well covered it, but for the life of me I just can't figure out your struggle with this. My first experience with this game was jumping right into it without any kind of manual or preface, and I still found the wall jump intuitive and easy to use from the start. I don't understand what you expect it to be doing that it isn't, nor why you're so stuck on how you think it should be rather than just learning it and using it for what it is. In the context of this game, it's a move that functions extremely well.

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The problem is that you have to hold the dpad towards the wall in order to jump off of it; just hitting jump won't work, unlike most games. Once I figured that out it worked, but it's weird and awkward.

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How you gleaned that from what I said is beyond me. My admitted occasional failings with the double jump only stem from my acclimation to Revenge of Shinobi's double jump, a game whose controls I became accustomed to many years before ever playing Shinobi 3. Realistically, I shouldn't expect S3's double jump to work identically to RoS's, so you certainly shouldn't expect it to work identically to some game that doesn't even have "Shinobi" in the title. The double jump in this game simply does not work as nor serve the same purpose as it does in most other platformers. It is not a get-out-of-jail-free card, but that doesn't make it bad. It's not broken. It doesn't have an arbitrary fail-rate.

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"This isn't a platformer with a cushy double jump...", you said. That is, this isn't a game with good, easy-to-learn controls; it's a game with difficult controls to learn and use, that require a lot of use of the d-pad and buttons in order to do the moves and survive. Timings are tight, everything requires inputs where in other games things are simpler and more fun, etc. I guess I can see the appeal there, but the timings are way too tight, for double jumping particularly! This kind of design is a problem unless you're trying to make a niche game only for the hardcore who like that kind of thing, which I don't think this game is supposed to be.

And yes, playing now, double jumps worked maybe half of the time at most. It's really bad, one of the hardest-to-use double jumps that I've seen. You are right that the timing is different from Revenge of Shinobi, but there the double jump is also annoying, in that you also have to hit the button near the peak of the jump only. I definitely dislike that design choice. It probably is a little easier to do double jumps in that game, but they're a problem there too -- I've died quite a bit at that required double jump in the waterfall stage in, what is, it, level two... I think I forgot to mention the double jumps in my Revenge of Shinobi summary, but they aren't good. The hard-to-use double jump is definitely one of the issues I have with that game. Even if when do get better at the timing, I don't like having that short a timing window. It's not fun and makes me like both of these games less. This is one of the various reasons that I don't like this style of ninja action game as much as the original Shinobi and Shadow Dancer, or Ninja Gaiden (the NES games).

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And you do, provided that you're willing to take the minimal time needed to learn how to properly access them. Having to learn how to play a game doesn't make its controls bad, and again, it seems like you'd rather bemoan how they don't work than learn how they do.

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The time required is not minimal. I've played the game for hours now in the last few weeks, and the controls are still a problem.

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What? You hold "up" to grab the ceiling/pipe/whatever. What am I missing here? I feel like you're deliberately making this game way harder than it actually is.

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First, you have to hit up to attach. In some games, such as Strider, you don't need to do that and auto-attach to walls. That's convenient and makes that game fun to play, even if it has serious control issues in other ways. Sure, there are times you may want to control when you attach, but still, the Shinobi III way makes gameplay more difficult overall.

Second, when grabbing something, you move in set intervals, instead of having free movement as you do on the ground. Shinobi moves hand-over-hand, and you can't just move a little bit forward; hit a direction and you move a handhold that way... unless you were too close to the edge and go off the end, a very easy mistake to make, because it won't stop you at the edge of a bar, pipe, ceiling, etc. This also makes positioning for a jump harder than it should be.

And last, when you combine the grab mechanics and the double-jump mechanics, sections such as the first part of the last level are extremely difficult control-wise. You have to do a lot of double jumps over bottomless pits between grab-bars, and it's hard and not much fun. Playing on Easy I got to the last stage with a good number of lives remaining (10 or 11, I believe), but quickly lost all of them without finishing that segment because of this. One particular jump past one of the giant laser cannons was especially hard, don't think I ever got past it. Really, I was just happy that I managed to get past that falling-rocks segment a bit earlier in the game, that was difficult and went on for so long! I was pretty happy to beat the boss after that on the first time I managed to survive the many tricky double jumps between rocks you've got to do there...

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'Cause it's not fucking Ninja Gaiden, it's Shinobi. I think the original Sonic games are amazing platformers that best anything else in the genre, but that doesn't mean I expect rolling and pinball physics in every other platformer and then fault them when they don't.

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It is fair to compare similar games, though, and as ninja action games I do think it's fair to compare Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden. And beyond that, Shinobi III, with all its moves, plays quite differently from the original, slow-paced, Rolling Thunder-inspired original Shinobi...

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I'm just describing the game as it is...

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You're describing the game as you perceive it, and it's being argued your perception of it is askew due to lack of basic Super Shinobi skills.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

The problem is that you have to hold the dpad towards the wall in order to jump off of it; just hitting jump won't work, unlike most games. Once I figured that out it worked, but it's weird and awkward.

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Nope, it's simple and intuitive, to the point where sometimes I feel like I actually am Joe Musashi hopping up walls.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

First, you have to hit up to attach. In some games, such as Strider, you don't need to do that and auto-attach to walls. That's convenient and makes that game fun to play, even if it has serious control issues in other ways. Sure, there are times you may want to control when you attach, but still, the Shinobi III way makes gameplay more difficult overall.

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That's just the thing, it would be annoying if it auto-attached since you do want control of it. It gives you a choice, I can't see how taking that choice away would do anything but make it worse, since holding up is not a difficult thing.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Second, when grabbing something, you move in set intervals, instead of having free movement as you do on the ground. Shinobi moves hand-over-hand, and you can't just move a little bit forward; hit a direction and you move a handhold that way... unless you were too close to the edge and go off the end, a very easy mistake to make, because it won't stop you at the edge of a bar, pipe, ceiling, etc. This also makes positioning for a jump harder than it should be.

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This I can get behind. The shimmying in set intervals has annoyed me too, but to circumvent it I readjust my position with small jumps.

Anyway, you expected some backlash over your controversial Shinobi comments, so here it is :)

P.S. Shinobi III is a silly name for this game.

ABF, since you like Shadow Dancer so much, the next time you play it, try playing it for points. That's the main reason that kept me going back for more after I finished the game last year ( I could never beat it when I was a kid ). Select the "NO SHURIKEN" mode ( since it will net you a huge bonus a the end of every stage ); try to kill all enemies and wait until the timer on the bosses is 10 seconds or less, before delivering the final blow ( also netting a huge bonus ). And yeah, you can't lose any continues :)

For that last boss, try to position yourself at either the left or right edge of the screen when the black ninjas appear, hitting the one that's near you and sending him offscreen; keep slashing and you should quickly dispose of him. Two particular things are worth noticing: when the ninjas starts rolling ( like Sonic? ) towards you, just avoid them and they will disappear after leaving the screen. Also, when they jump at you, they'll land on the spot that you were when the jumping began.
Duck under the pilasters for cover when Zeed launches his fire attack, and throw a shuriken when you're on the descending phase of your jump. Just keep your head cool and you should beat him.

It's a must for Games that have a 1 hit kill to have at least a very good level design and SD really excels at that. Too bad the game doesn't loop when you finish it, as you can start the game from a higher difficult setting, but you don't keep your previous lives or score.

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Originally Posted by Bottino

ABF, since you like Shadow Dancer so much, the next time you play it, try playing it for points. That's the main reason that kept me going back for more after I finished the game last year ( I could never beat it when I was a kid ). Select the "NO SHURIKEN" mode ( since it will net you a huge bonus a the end of every stage ); try to kill all enemies and wait until the timer on the bosses is 10 seconds or less, before delivering the final blow ( also netting a huge bonus ). And yeah, you can't lose any continues :)

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No shurikens would make the game really hard... how would you even fight the bosses?

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For that last boss, try to position yourself at either the left or right edge of the screen when the black ninjas appear, hitting the one that's near you and sending him offscreen; keep slashing and you should quickly dispose of him.

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When playing the game recently I did notice this, yeah. It usualy works, except for that one time where they apparently weren't far enough out and jumped in and killed me.

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Two particular things are worth noticing: when the ninjas starts rolling ( like Sonic? ) towards you, just avoid them and they will disappear after leaving the screen. Also, when they jump at you, they'll land on the spot that you were when the jumping began.

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Yeah, the jumping ones usually get me after a few passes because they're hard to avoid, and you can't go too far into the center of the screen if you want to survive -- you need to be near the edges and you might not be able to get back in time. It's hard when one hit means you start the whole fight over.

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Duck under the pilasters for cover when Zeed launches his fire attack, and throw a shuriken when you're on the descending phase of your jump. Just keep your head cool and you should beat him.

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How many hits does the guy take, anyway? It's awful that he has no health bar, unlike the other bosses; that's not right. Seems like a long fight. It's a somewhat crazy jump in challenge versus the other bosses, all of which are really easy excepting only dodging those rocks in the level-1 boss fight. I mean, some challenge is good, but it s a big jump. In the rest of the game it's the levels that are hard, more so than the bosses.

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It's a must for Games that have a 1 hit kill to have at least a very good level design and SD really excels at that.

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Indeed. The level designs are great, varied, and help keep the game really fun to play.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

No shurikens would make the game really hard... how would you even fight the bosses?

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This guy did it just fine: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RrHnTdW5JQ

I love that it's even possible to do this, to be honest.

14 this time. Getting closer to the end of letter S...

Games in this update
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3
Sonic & Knuckles
Sonic 3 & Knuckles
Sonic 3D Blast
Sorcerian (J)
Space Harrier II
Spider-Man -- X-Men: Arcade's Revenge
Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage
Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety
Splatterhouse 2
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- Crossroads of Time
Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition
Streets of Rage (Sega 6-Pak)
Streets of Rage 2


Sonic 3 & Knuckles - 1-2 player simultaneous, cartridge save (FRAM in the Sonic 3 cart). Sonic 3 & Knuckles is Sega's best game ever, and one of the great platformers as well. S3&K has great graphics and music, a lot of variety, very good level designs, a long quest for a Genesis platformer, a solid difficulty level, saving so you don't have to start over every time you play with six save slots available, the series' best bonus minigame, and so much more. This game is built on the back of its sequels. The gameplay, including physics, controls, level design concepts, and the rest, is very much like the previous two games, and Sonic 2 in particular, but improved in little ways. The controls are as good as ever, but the characters have more moves now, and there are three characters to play as. The levels are classic Sonic stuff, focused on speed and challenging platforming, but they are bigger and even more fun to explore than before, and there are more secrets to find as well. You now get Chaos Emeralds by finding giant rings which are hidden around each stage. Each level has several, and you'll need to look everywhere, try to walk through seemingly solid walls, and more to find them. Some are obvious, others well-hidden. I really like this; getting rid of the requirement to have 50 rings in order to go into the bonus stages was a very good idea and it improves the game. The Blue Spheres minigame is great, too, better than those in its predecessors. You play from a third-person view behind your character, and navigate a maze of blue, red, and bounce spheres. Your goal is to touch all blue spheres, which turns them red, without touching a red one. If you hit a red sphere you fail the bonus game and are sent back to the main game, but if you turn them all blue, you get an emerald. If you make a square of blue orbs red by going around the outside edge only, the whole square will turn into rings, and you get continues by getting enough points in bonus stages. Continues are useful despite the save system because they let you continue from the checkpoint you died at, instead of the beginning of the zone, so you will have a bit of an easier time at the end of the game if you play the whole long game in one sitting than if you play it in parts. You can get through the last level with practice even without continues, though, so the game works great either way.

This is a long game, and there are 12 zones, two acts per zone in all zones except for some of the last ones, bosses at the end of every act including a miniboss after each first act and a Robotnik fight at the end of each second act, and 14 emeralds to find. Yes, 14; getting the first seven unlocks Super Sonic, and the second seven Hyper Sonic. Getting all 14 in one run would be a real challenge, but fortunately the game does save how many you've gotten. Until you beat the final boss on a save file you are locked to the current stage, but once you win, you unlock a level select. At this point you can go back, get all the emeralds, then come back to the final level and play the real final fight, which requires all emeralds. All that effort is worth it, because it's a great, epic final battle! There are many checkpoints along the way, and like in Sonic 2, if you touch one with enough rings, a warp to a special stage will open. These are not the Emerald stages, though, of course; instead they are three separate games where you can get points, rings, and lives. One is a slot machine in a Sonic 1-style rotating area; the second has you hitting a dial to knock gatcha-style balls out of a machine to get the prizes inside; and the third is a terrible one on these lightning orbs where I always immediately touch the rising line. There is a trick to it, but I've almost never managed to avoid near-instant failure. Ah well, it doesn't matter much. As for the main game, many of the setings along the way are pretty great. This game has more stages which actually change as you progress than before, including areas where sand filling in behind you as you try to escape in the tombs, the ground itself is moving upwards, crushing you if you don't get out of there fast enough, and more. The large levels have some minor puzzle elements as well which you can usually engage with or ignore. One level has these simple elevator-lifts that let you go up a level of platforms, but you can choose to use them or not. In another, you have to stand on a giant spinning, flying top to fly around and find the route forward. This part is pretty cool, flying through the air on a giant top is fun. And there's more.

The game has short cutscenes, as well. Once again Robotnik is doing evil stuff and you need to stop him. In the Sonic 3 half, new character Knuckles works as your main antagonist. He's an Echidna, and guards the Chaos Emeralds, but has been conned by Robotnik into thinking that Sonic is the real villain. After messing with you to make your route longer all game, at the end of Sonic 3, Robotnik's true evil is revealed, and in Sonic & Knuckles, Knuckles became playable for the first time. Of course, in the combined game you can play as Knuckles from the beginning, not only in the second half. As described above in Knuckles in Sonic 2, Knuckles has a shorter jump height, but can glide and climb walls. His powers make playing the game more fun, for me. Tails now can fly anytime, which is great. Tails is sort of 'easy mode' here as a result. Sonic is mostly the same, but does have some new powers: he gets additional abilities from the games' three powerups. In addition to the water-bubble orb from Sonic 2, there are now also lightning and fire orbs. All three characters get the basic function from these, but Sonic gets an exclusive second ability from each as well, such as a double jump from the lightning orb, on top of the basic it-attracts-rings power. There is even a boss fight that plays differently if you have Tails in the game. So, all four play modes, Sonic, Sonic & Tails, Tails, and Knuckles, are distinct and play differently, for additional replay value. This game does multiple characters right, in a way that its 3d sequels would often fail to match.

The game also sounds great. For the Sonic 3 half, the soundtrack was mostly composed by the famous pop artist Michael Jackson and his songwriting team. However, the game released shortly after Jackson's first child sexual assault allegations, which is probably why Jackson's name does not appear in the music credits. His team does, though, and it has been proven that his songs are indeed in the game. I've never been a Michael Jackson fan at all, but it is an interesting story. The Sonic & Knuckles half was composed by the usual Sonic composers, and it's also great. The whole soundtrack is very good, and is more technically impressive than the first two even if the original main theme is probably the most memorable tune from the series. The graphics are similar but a bit more detailed than before, too, and I think that they get slightly better in the second, S&K half of the game; those six months were used well. For negatives about this game, there are few. First, there are still places where you can randomly die for no fair reason because of crushing objects, or impossible-to-avoid obstacles or pits, or such. That stuff is always frustrating even when you have a bunch of lives stocked up. Yes, it's a staple of most all Sonic games, but it is annoying. And second, the final boss once AGAIN has no rings after the final checkpoint. The game doesn't take rings away that you have entering the (first) final fight, oddly, but you only get one chance per game at this boss with rings; die once and it's back to the usual 'fight this really hard boss with no rings'. Things are different in the real final battle, but unless you get all 14 emeralds in one run, beating that 'final' boss may be tough. It is worth the effort, though, and this game isn't as hard as the first one. Overall, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a classic which holds up extremely well. Sonic Team found a fantastic formula with the original game, and this one shows the concept in its best form. S3&K is not quite the equal of Super Mario World, my favorite platformer ever, but it is high on the list after that game. It's a great, must-play game. Also available on PC. That is the first version of the game I owned, back in the late '90s, and it's also great. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games, though it is worth noting that this combined game are often skipped over; only a few platforms, such as Wii WiiWare, actually have the full S3&K experience available.


Sonic the Hedgehog 3 - 1-2 player simultaneous, cartridge save (FRAM). Either because the game was getting too large to reasonably fit on one cartridge or in order to make more money, Sega decided to release their third main-series Sonic game in two parts. First came this game, Sonic 3, in early 1994, and then came Sonic & Knuckles about six months later at the end of the year. That latter game has a cartridge port on top of the cart, allowing other games to be connected to it. This 'lock-on technology' allows for Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles to be combined into one massive game, Sonic 3 & Knuckles. That game is the biggest and best Sonic game of them all. This is the first half of that, so it's a must-have, but not on its own. Sonic 3 is fantastic, as I describe above, and is the only Sonic game with Michael Jackson music for those that care about that, and there are eight save slots available in this game versus the six in S3&K, but alone you have no playable Knuckles, and the game feels a bit short, with a shorter length and no final boss fight as great as the ones in the previous games, or S3&K. On the subject of those save slots, though, the two sets of save slots are separate, but S3&K will remember your progress from Sonic 3, I think, so those slots are copied to the new ones I guess. S3&K progress is not copied back, however, understandably. Sonic 3 is a very good game, but play the full game, not just this half of it. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Sonic & Knuckles - 1-2 player simultaneous, has cartridge save when locked on to Sonic 3, via Sonic 3's save chip. Sonic & Knuckles is the second half of Sonic 3. The graphics and gameplay are exactly the same as before, just with new levels. This time, you can play as Sonic or Knuckles. Knuckles was introduced as a rival in Sonic 3, but this time he's playable and on your side. I've always liked playing as Knuckles, he has some great moves Sonic doesn't. When you lock this cart on to Sonics 2 or 3, you can play as Knuckles in Sonic 2 and in Sonic 3 & Knuckles, which is great. Unfortunately they couldn't get Knuckles into Sonic 1 because of engine changes, but still, it's great that it works in Sonic 2. Sonic & Knuckles on its own, however, is a bit disappointing. The game is a bit short, Tails isn't playable without lockon, and you can't save if you don't have Sonic 3 locked on, annoyingly! S&K is great fun, and I like its zones a lot, indeed maybe more than Sonic 3's, but it's the second half of a game, and you want to start from the beginning. There is no better case of 'better combined than separate' than Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles. Both games are pretty good on their own, but individually I don't think I could rank either one above Sonics 1 or 2. Combined, though, they exceed them. S3 and S&K are so much better when put together! This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games. Sonic & Knuckles is in lots of compilations that do not include Sonic 3, probably because the absence of saving makes it easier to deal with in things such as those licensed Genesis portables from AtGames which don't support any saving and have a bunch of built-in games.


Sonic 3D Blast - 1 player. Sonic 3D Blast is an isometric platformer developed by Eurocom and published by Sega in 1996. This late Genesis release is controversial, but unlike some I do like the game. I have finished this game on the Genesis, and I mostly enjoyed it along the way. The game plays from an overhead angle, and you move Sonic around in three dimensions. Yes, you only play as Sonic in this one. You can jump and spin-dash, though your spin is a lot slower-moving in this game. The slower pace of most of this game is surely one of the things a lot of Sonic fans dislike about it, but I'm fine with the game as it is. Speed is fun, yes, but a slower-paced, more deliberate game can be great too. In each level, your goal is to find all of the Flickies and then bring them to a goal ring. So, yes, the game is a series of collection quests. I don't mind this, myself; both style have a place. Each level is broken up into two parts, and you've got five or so flickies to collect in each part. You'll be wandering around levels, looking for flickies and rings, for quite a while in some stages, until you've learned their locations. Backtracking and exploration are central to this game. Levels are large and non-linear, so the game is not just about getting from point A to point B as it usually is in this series. So yes, this game is very different from previous Sonic games. And yes, it isn't quite as great as the Genesis Sonic games are. While 3D Blast is a good game, it's not an all-time great like those are. Even so, it is a good game and it is fun to play.

The game has pretty good graphics and solid music as well. Aurally, the game has good music, but it isn't as great and memorable as the main series on the Genesis. The graphics are similar, but perhaps better. The game clearly wasn't done by Sonic Team, but the look is Sonic-like, and doesn't look like a generic Euro-platformer or something; the developers clearly were given assets from Sega of Japan to work from. Each world looks different. They are the usual settings, including forest, cave, ice world, and such for locations, but all look pretty good. This is a late release for the system, and it looks it. The flickies make a return from their game Flicky, which I haven't played much of. Sonic has always been saving the small animals that Robotnik uses to power his machines, and you're doing that again here. They follow Sonic around once rescued, which is kind of cute. Sometimes this actually matters in game strategy, as a flicky is rescued if it touches one of your flickies, which can bounce above you on springs for example. In addition to the main game, 3D Blast has a bonus game as well. In order to enter a bonus stage, you have to find characters such as Tails or Knuckles hidden around the levels. If you get to one of them with the required number of rings, you go into a bonus stage. Here you are running towards the screen on a twisting track that stretches in front of you. The perspective here uses some nice graphical tricks, and the bonus stages are fun. They can be tricky, though, as there are raised platforms to jump to, pits and spikes to jump over, and more. Just like the 2d games, I've never gotten all of the rings in a single play through this game.

The level designs in Sonic 3D Blast are good. Levels are designed to be fair, and aware of the challenges of jumping in isometric 3d, this game has few to no instant death pits. There are spikes, but they just make you lose your rings like usual. Instead of pits, you usually just fall to a lower area and have to go around and try the jump again. You can die, but this makes the game much better than it would be if it was loaded with instant-death pits. While the open, exploration-focused stages can be annoying if you can't find that one flicky hiding away somewhere, most of the time finding how to get to all the flickies while staying away from or defeating badguys is fun. Collecting rings and looking for bonus stages also is good fun. The game isn't Sonic-fast, but it is good and well designed. However, it is unfortunate that the game doesn't have saving. While good, and not one of the harder Sonic games, Sonic 3D Blast is a somewhat slow-paced game, and it can get boring after a while. It's really unfortunate that even in 1996 Sega STILL didn't understand that games need to have saving! It's unfortunate, and does hold the game back. Still, overall, Sonic 3D Blast is a good isometric platfromer. The game looks nice, controls well, and is fun to play most of the time. Yes, it isn't 2d Sonic, but anyone who likes some exploration and collection in their games as I do definitely should play this game, it's a fun one. Other people should try it, and see if they like it or not. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games. There are also Saturn and PC ports of the game released in the 1990s. They have CD audio music, improved graphics with some quite nice CG-rendered sprites and backgrounds, and new bonus minigames, slightly different but both 3d takes on the tube-running minigame from Sonic 2. The Saturn one is in polygonal 3d, though the main game is of course still sprite-based, while the PC version uses sprites. The PC version also adds a save system, thankfully, though for some insane reason the Saturn one doesn't. However, getting the PC version running on a modern PC might be tricky; it has issues on new OSes. If you can get it to run, though, it's probably the best version of the game, though the Saturn bonus game might be best. Still, the Genesis version is also fun, and it's definitely worth playing. While I have all three versions of the game, this is the only one that I've beaten.


Sorcerian (J) - 1 player, battery save to cartridge. Sorcerian for the Genesis, released in 1990, is a conversion by Sega of the Falcom computer game of the same name. This Genesis version is mostly a port of the computer original, but has some new missions included. Sorcerian is one of several side-scrolling action-RPGs made by Falcom. Originally released in the 1980s, this later port has improved graphics and those new missions, but the graphics are still dated and basic with very small sprites and subpar art design, it's hard to play for the non-Japanese speaker, and I'm not convinced by the gameplay either. Despite this, for some reason I got several Japanese versions of Sorcerian, including this and the Turbo CD version. This games' box-art is great, but the game, not so much. If you are going to play this game, there are guides for the main menu options, but figuring out what to do in some quests may be tricky. At least there is some help for that menu, though; The main menu has a good 12 options, all in Japanese text, and you'll need to use and understand all of them and their submenus.

Sorcerian has two elements, the missions, which is mostly simple and straightforward, and the aforementioned menu system between missions. Here you create characters, buy items and equipment, develop magic towards the games' over a hundred spells, build character stats, and give your party members regular jobs. There are four classes, fighter, wizard, elf, and dwarf, all male or female, available. Now, by "jobs" I do not mean classes, Final Fantasy style; I mean civilian occupations you choose in a menu back at base, in order to make money and build their stats. These jobs are different from the characters' class, and some jobs are gender-specific. As characters do jobs they build stats. So, these are not full-time adventurers like in your usual RPG, they need other work too. This unique system is a centerpiece of Sorcerian's design, and it's kind of odd. Characters will age as you have them work and go on missions, and eventually get too old to continue adventuring.You can always create new characters, though, and you have three save slots in this game and quite a few characters allowed per file. There are a lot of professions available, each with different rewards, and eventually I'm sure this element of the game becomes required in order to progress. Of course, figuring out any of this is difficulty through the language barrier, even with a guide; I haven't gotten deep into this game.

When you choose a team and enter one of the ten available missions, you'll notice how tiny the sprites are. This game was originally an 8-bit computer game, and it shows. While the graphics are improved over the original and the added parallax scrolling is appreciated, Sega had to stick with the small sprites in order for everything you need to see to be visible, but still, the game looks dated and ugly. The music is average; it's nice, but nothing great. Characters do move quickly, though, in that classic Falcom way, so gameplay is fast. For controls, the d-pad moves your whole party, with one leading and the others following; Start is a menu for selecting a spell, quitting the mission, and such; A switches the order of your party; and B and C have all characters use magic and weapon attacks, respectively. Characters of different classes have different attacks, so some have magic while others use melee or ranged weapons. If a character runs out of health they die, though you can resurrect back in town between missions, but if you stand still you will recover health and mana. Enemies spawn at the edges of the screen and attack quickly, so if you're not over-leveled, battles can be tricky even with all the ranged attacks. The fast-paced combat is simplistic, but is probably the best thing about the game. It feels very Falcom-like, similar to something like Ys III but with multiple characters. There are also people to talk to in the missions, so you'll need a guide sometimes to figure out what to do if you can't read Japanese. Your goal is to beat all ten missions, but you can keep going after that if you want.

Overall, Sorceriean is an okay but odd game. While the action can be fun, the game has little depth in-game and gets repetitive quickly. And in town, there is a huge language barrier making doing much of anything a challenge even with a guide. The bland, tiny graphics are not appealing either. Falcom fans who can read Japanese will surely like this, but for the rest of us the getting to the overall-average gameplay may not be worth the hassle. If you want to play the game in English, Sierra did release versions for the PC. It has worse graphics than the Genesis or Turbo CD versions, but at least it's in English. Other versions of Sorcerian in Japanese are available on the Turbo CD, MSX, PC-88/98, and Sharp X1. The later Turbo CD version is similar to this one but with some different missions, no parallax but improved ingame graphics apart from that, and better, CD-quality music. There are also sequels and a remake for the PC and Dreamcast, again in Japan only.


Space Harrier II - 1 player. Space Harrier II is a rail shooter, and a sequel to the great Sega arcade game from several years earlier. This game has gameplay identical to the original, but with new stages to shoot through. You are the Space Harrier, flying forward as you shoot a wide variety of colorful and weird creatures and objects. The original game is a real masterpiece and one of the all-time great rail shooters. The later 32X version is also fantastic. However, this game is kind of bad. Space Harrier II is one of the first games released for the Genesis. That is important to keep in mind, but even so, the horrendously choppy graphics make this game very hard to play. As with Sega's other early scaler-style games on the Genesis, Space Harrier II has horrendous software scaling. As always the game uses differently-sized sprites the system flips between as you get closer to things, but some games are much better than others at making this look smooth. This game, like Super Thunder Blade or Super Hang-On, fails to do this acceptably. The sprites bounce between sizes in a way which looks awful, and gameplay is very choppy even beyond that. Space Harrier II was one of the first games I got for the Genesis when I got the system in '06 and I was hopeful that this followup to an arcade game I love would be good, but it isn't, at all. The sprite-art does look decent to good in still pictures, but as soon as you see it moving it looks awful. Gameplay is much more difficult than it would be with scaling sprites, too, since the lack of smoothness drags everything down. Space Harrier II is a frustrating, ugly-looking game which is not worth playing even for serious series fans. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Spider-Man -- X-Men: Arcade's Revenge - 1 player. Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge is an extremely difficult platformer from Acclaim. This multiplatform title is a crossover between two major superhero universes, and you play as both Spider-Man and four X-Men: Wolverine, Storm, Gambit, and Cyclops. The game has okay but slightly smallish graphics, average music, and good controls. The game doesn't look great, but I do like the varied settings, and it's reasonably well drawn. "Difficult" is the operating word here, though. The first level in the game is a level where you play as Spiderman and have to disarm some bombs in the correct order before time runs out. It's not difficult with some practice. After beating it you go to a level select where you can choose between all five characters. Each has two levels to try to complete, designed just for them in a unique setting. These stages are all much harder than the intro level, and dying is easy. If you get through all that through some miracle, there's a final level, I believe, where you face the main villain here, Arcade. Each character has their own powers, such as web-swinging and wall-climbing for Spiderman, throwing cards for Gambit, slashing things (including walls, as well as enemies) for Wolverine, eyebeam blasts for Cyclops, and flying for Storm, making each set of levels different, even beyond the different settings. Storm's flight-based stages are the most different, but all characters are distinct in both movement and in combat styles. The game has solid graphics, okay though imperfect controls, and decent music. It can be fun to play. Levels are varied, and are large in that Western platformer style. You usually have an objective beyond just reaching the end, so in the first level Spiderman has to reach a bunch of bombs before they explode, for example. You'll need to play each level a bit to learn what you should do in it and where to go, and the learning process there is fun, and is helped by the good level designs. Levels here are large and open, in that classic Western platformer fashion, but the stages are reasonably fun to explore and are mostly well laid out. Difficulty aside this game is above average.

However, the game has one major flaw: it's absolutely insanely difficult! You get three lives and no continues or saving in this game. That's it. There are no cheat codes to help you out, either. There are some rare extra lives to be found, but with at least a dozen tough levels to get through, Arcade's Revenge is a somewhat stratospheric challenge. It's a shame, too, because based just on the core gameplay, this is probably my favorite of the Spiderman or X-Men games that I have played on the Genesis. I don't find the Sega CD Spiderman game all that fun, and the two Genesis Spiderman beat 'em ups below are average at best as well, and the Genesis X-Men game is okay but also has issues. This game, however, really is good sometimes. Sega's X-Men game has better graphics, but this game controls well, and the combat is good and levels are fun to explore. I like the variety between the different characters too. Searching through the levels looking for stuff and beating enemies is fun. With a password save system and continues, it'd be a pretty good game. Playing a game this difficult with no continues or saving is extremely frustrating. This game is a fun platformer, but beware the difficulty level. Maybe play it in an emulator with savestates, or something. Overall I do like this game, it's good, but beware! Also available on SNES, Game Gear, and Game Boy. I also have the Game Gear version, and it's a downscaled version of this same exact title, just as difficult as it is on the Genesis.


Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage - 1 player, 6 button controller supported. Maximum Carnage is a decent-looking, but subpar, beat 'em up published by Acclaim. In this game you play as Spiderman and Venom, each in separate levels, but not both at the same time, as for some dumb reason the game is single player only. The game has nice-looking comic-book-style cutscenes, but the story feels rushed and confusing. I presume it makes sense for those who know the comicbook storyline, but I've never cared for superhero comics, and just in this game things happen too quickly to make sense. This is a beat 'em up, though, so that's not a big problem; this genre is about hitting people, not following a plot. The game has large sprites, decent but not great graphics with okay backgrounds but somewhat ugly, super-'90s punks for enemies. The art design leaves something to be desired. There are a handful of different enemy types which repeat a lot in different colors, as usual. The music is average, too. Gameplay is also average at best, though it is a bit harder than it reasonably should be. and the controls are much less precise than they are in Sega beat 'em ups. It often feels like you take unfair hits because of the sometimes-iffy controls, though there arej ust enough health-ups to keep you alive if you don't mess up much. If you do, though, it'll be Game Over fast, because you get only one continue for the entire game! The game does have some variety and can be fun to play, and beating it will be a challenge for sure. This game has more negatives than positives, overall, though.

Levels usually just scroll to the right, freezing on each screen until you beat the enemies there as usual in the genre, but sometimes you have to climb buildings instead. You can climb on walls and swing on web-lines in this game, you see. The 6-button controller is useful because the web-swinging function requires a button combination, but with the 6-button pad the Y button lets you use it with one press. The wall-climbing segment in level two is very frustrating and I've lost many lives there, though a sometimes I get lucky and get past it. It is far too easy to be knocked off the wall and back down to the ground! The regular beat 'em up segments are better, but are average at best. You have several moves you can do beyond basic punches and jump-kicks, and with C you can grab enemies long-distance or use a shield, both of which are very useful moves. Those large but badly-drawn enemies constantly attack from both sides, though, and it can be hard to not take damage, and you can't take much damage before you lose a life. The game has no difficulty settings either, and you only get that one continue. You need more than that in a game this hard. Overall, the high difficulty, flawed controls, absence of badly needed co-op play, and frustrating wall-climbing segments hold back an otherwise average game with okay graphics and sometimes-fun action. Spider-man and Venom in Maximum Carnage is below average. Maybe pick this up if you like Spiderman; otherwise pass. The bright red cartridge might be the best thing about this game. Also on SNES.


Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety - 1-2 player simultaneous, password save, 6 button controller supported. This second Spiderman isometric beat 'em up from Acclaim is a lot like the first one, but with multiplayer, smaller graphics, and passwords between levels. The web-swinging element of the game also seems to be gone, but you can still climb on walls, though. The rest of the game is similar as well, just a bit zoomed out, perhaps to better fit two player characters. A lot of people greatly dislike the graphics of this game compared to the first, and I see their point, but the art design is similar; it's just smaller. This game does look worse than the first one, but enemies look bad in both games, not only this one, and the heroes here don't look too much worse. If this is what it took to get multiplayer in I don't mind much, but both games could have used better graphics. Since this game is co-op, you now can play as either Spiderman or Venom in all levels, which is nice. The story presentation is weaker than before, though, as now the intro is mostly text; the comic-book cutscenes are gone. The story was confusing before, but this is not better.

Ingame, the controls are the same as before, which is not good. You still take damage far too easily, but the enemies feel even more aggressive now, and I take damage even faster than in the first game; this game is absurdly difficult. Indeed, where I've rarely beaten the second level of the first game, I don't think I've ever beaten the FIRST level of this one! And I have tried; it's just unfairly hard thanks to how many enemies attack you from both sides at once. There isn't much you can do in that situation other than take damage, unfortunately, and it's frustrating. If you ever do manage to beat a level at least you will get a password, thankfully -- and that is great, passwords are quite rare in 4th-gen games in this genre -- but getting to that point is harder and less fun than it should be. Versus the first one, putting in a password system helps, but does not entirely fix, the games' somewhat broken difficulty level. Enemy graphics are a bland assortment of nameless thugs, too, as enemy names, present in the first one, have been removed; this game looks and sounds average, and that's it. Some of the songs, such as the intro music, are good, but others are kind of bad. Overall, Separation Anxiety is a below-average disappointment. The game fixes some of the first games' problems, but not enough of them, and introduces some new ones, so it's hard to say which of these two games is better overall. The first one may be for one player, but this one obviously is for two. Better yet, though, play something better, such as the Streets of Rage games below. As with the first one, this game is only for big Spiderman fans, and even they probably will be disappointed. Oh yeah, and the game is in a regular black cartridge too, not the bright red one of the first game. Also on SNES and PC.


Splatterhouse 2 - 1 player, password save. This second game in Namco's horror-themed action series is a side-scrolling beat 'em up with a bit of platforming. Just like in the first game for arcades and TurboGrafx-16, the second Splatterhouse game is a memorization-heavy sidescroller. You walk to the right, hitting enemies or jumping over obstacles as you go, and your goal is to memorize exactly when you have to hit each button to avoid taking damage. Gameplay is simplistic and quickly gets boring; I don't like this game that much. It's not awful, but definitely is not good. You play as Rick, a bulked-up muscleman with a mask on who looks like a horror movie villain but here is the hero, and need to save your girlfriend from a mansion full of monsters. There are new areas and foes to see as you progress, but the game also has a somewhat consistent visual look to it. The graphics and sound are fine, but nothing great; in visuals and music this game is average. I dislike horror movies and never watch them, so all the references to popular horror movies mean little to me, but the overly simplistic and repetitive gameplay definitely means something. As much as I like isometric beat 'em ups, when you flatten them down to a single plane games usually get too simple to stay fun, and this game is no exception. The numerous traps and pits to jump over give this game a much stronger platformer element than most beat 'em ups, but it just adds to the required memorization. You do have a health bar in this game, there are weapons to find as you progress, and if you beat a level the game does give you a password to start from the next stage, and those features are both welcome, but it's still a difficult, and boring, game. I got to the second level back when I bought this game for cheap in 2006 or so, and never have gotten past it, not because it's impossible or something, but because it is just challenging enough for me to not find it worth the effort. Still, Splatterhouse 2 is an okay game. Yes, it's a pure memorizer to a degree beyond most platformers or beat 'em ups and it's pretty difficult, but the game has variety, nicely-drawn graphics, and some conceptually interesting bosses to fight. Overall, though, it's a poor and tedious well-below-average game, and considering that it now goes for a crazy-high price, save your money and don't buy this game, you'd be wasting your money. This is a game a lot of people like more than I do, though, so maybe try it if you think it sounds interesting. I think it's kind of bad, though. The game is available on Wii Virtual Console; if you MUST buy it, get it there.


Star Trek: Deep Space Nine -- Crossroads of Time - 1 player, password save. Star Trek DS9: Crossroads of Time is a mediocre and frustrating puzzle-adventure game from Novotrade that was published by Playmates. As much as I love the TV series, this console game is not my thing at all. This game is one part Prince of Persia and one part annoying maze-exploration puzzle game, and I dislike both elements of it. You play as Benjamin Sisko, commander of the space station Deep Space Nine, and questionable things are going on that you'll need to investigate. The game controls very much like Prince of Persia, so C+forward jumps forward a set distance, Up jumps up to grab on to a platform above provided that you are facing the right way and are lined up just right, Down ducks, and hitting down several times will drop down a level, provided you're facing the right way and such. You also have items, and switching between and using them doesn't always work well. The controls are clumsy and frustrating; I've never liked PoP-style game controls. Give me standard Mario or Sonic platformer controls any day! Combat is even worse, if you need to fight with your fists. While the phaser, once you get it, will drop basic foes quickly, trying to fight by punching them controls badly, is no fun, and will result in you taking as many hits as you give out. The graphics here are dark and average looking, but at least the sprites are somewhat recognizable as the characters from the show. The music is fine, but not great. The presentation here is average but decent enough, it's the gameplay that is a problem.

The level designs and gameplay are the worst thing about this game, though, particularly once you get past the station-exploration segments between action missions and get into a mission. Those station exploration parts can be a bit confusing, but just talk to everyone and go everywhere and you'll find your way eventually. In missions, though, you may have a time limit, an overlarge stage to explore, and no clear way to progress. After a while stuck in the first level I gave up and looked at a walkthrough video online; I had missed an invisible phaser that I needed, apparently. After getting stuck again in the much, much larger second level, I gave up on this game. You do get passwords between levels, which is good, but this game needed better level layouts and game design. I could go back to that walkthrough and figure out what I was missing, but playing a game that way isn't rewarding or fun, and and the game doesn't give you enough, or any, clues to help you figure out what you're supposed to be doing on your own. There is no quest-log, no pause menu with info, or anything; just a vague mission, and a level to explore. You do have a tricorder which can can to find certain item types, but good luck actually getting to them. Stations can move moving platforms around which you can then stand on and control, and I'm sure later in the game there will be some quite annoying mazes with these as well. This game feels designed to annoy and confuse the player, and I don't like that. I like mazes, but in a maze you know what to do, the challenge is to get through! Here you don't really know what to do, and with controls and design as subpar as they are in this game I don't want to stick around and figure it out. Star Trek DS9: Crossroads of Time is a subpar disappointment that borders on bad. Pass unless you're a big Prince of Persia fan who likes confusing games with bad controls. Also available on the SNES.


Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition - 1-2 player simultaneous, 6 button controller supported. Street Fighter II': Special Champion Edition is a port of several versions of Capcom's great classic one-on-one fighting game. This has always been my favorite home port of pre-Super SFII. It's a great game! Some time after Nintendo got its exclusive port of Street Fighter II, in mid 1993 Sega and, in Japan only, NEC also got versions of the game for their platforms for the Genesis and PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16). Nintendo also got a second release on the SNES, SFII Turbo. This Genesis version is the best version of home SFII available at that time, though, in my opinion at least. With good graphics and music, great controls provided that you have some 6-button controllers, fast, accurate gameplay, all twelve playable characters, eight levels of turbo available right on the main menu, two different versions of the game playable, and almost everything from the arcade classics, SFII SCE is fantastic! Really the only issue with this fantastic game is that you need to have six-button controllers, but really, for anyone who doesn't, just buy some. You won't regret it; the Sega version of the 6-button Genesis controller is one of the best and most comfortable controllers ever designed.

The gameplay here is very accurate to the arcade original. There are two modes here, for SFII': Champion Edition and SFII': Hyper Fighting, aka SFII Turbo. Each mode has some different character colors available, though each character only has two colors per mode unfortunately, and some balance changes I believe. More importantly, only the latter has turbo-speed options available. All 12 characters are present in both modes, as Champion Edition added the 4 minibosses as playable characters on top of the 8 characters from the original game. All of the moves are in both modes as well, though there may be slight differences. Characters in this game only have a few moves each, so it's not nearly as difficult to learn a characters' basic moveset as it is in a more modern fighting game, which is nice. The controls are great, and the gameplay is about as fast as it is in the arcade. Indeed, with eight levels of turbo available, this version of SFII can play very quickly indeed! Actually playing the game at max turbo is difficult, but it's am amusing way to play the game for sure. On the SNES you need a code to get over three levels of turbo, and the max is not quite as fast as it is in this game, and all other SFII games on 4th-gen systems don't have even that many levels of turbo, so this is the fastest 4th-gen console version of SFII.

The game really does look nice, too. This is the only 4th-gen console version of SFII with the original SFII arcade intro in the game. It's a very short little scene, but it is cool to see. It's weird no other version had it, but they don't. Ingame, while the graphics have, of course, been simplified from the arcades, the game doesn't feel quite as stripped-down as Samurai Shodown does; SFII holds up better on the Genesis. Some graphics have been simplified, so for instance there are now only two elephants in the background in one stage instead of three and only one or two background laters per stage, but everything important is here. The music is very accurate to the arcade as well, within the limitations of the Genesis of course. Whether the Genesis or SNES music sounds better is a matter of opinion, as both sound great. This verison may sound a bit more like the arcade game than that one, though, which is nice. Overall, SFII Special Champion Edition is a great game. Because of how many versions of SFII there are for so many consoles this game probably isn't a must-have, but it is a great version of the game and one of my personal favorite versions of SFII. Really the only bad thing I can say about it is that I like the characters added in Super SFII, so as much as I like lots of levels of turbo, I like the added characters even more. Still, apart from that SFII SCE is fantastic, and it's certainly a must-play game, at least. Fighting game fans should certainly have it, and anyone else should consider getting the game. It's one of the best versions of a classic this side of the original arcade game. Arcade port. Versions of these games are available on many other cosnoles, including the TG16 for Champion Edition and the SNES for Hyper Fighting (Turbo), though no other version is exactly the same as this one. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Streets of Rage (Sega 6-Pak) - 1-2 player simultaneous. Streets of Rage started one of Sega's more popular series on the Genesis, at least among its fans. The game is an isometric beat 'em up with a modern-day street-crime theme, and as with most games in the genre, you move from screen to screen punching everyone out as you try to save the city from thugs led by the evil Mr. X. There are three playable characters, two male and one female, and each has slightly different stats. The game has two player co-op, as you hope for in this genre. Inspired by Capcom's classic Final Fight, Streets of Rage takes that game and improves on it in pretty much every way. While Final Fight is good, Streets of Rage is better. This game has good graphics for an earlier Genesis game, good, precise controls, a fantastic soundtrack that is in the top tier for the system, and decent graphical and enemy variety. The game is mostly great, but it does have a few drawbacks, most notably a very annoying, and hard, boss-rush section in the last level, dated visuals versus its sequel, and mostly straightforward corridors for levels. I've never finished the game due to how tough the final level is. Even so, this game is one of the better beat 'em ups out there. Streets of Rage is a straightforward and repetitive game, as this genre almost always is, but it's one of the more fun beat 'em ups around... or would be, if not for its all-time-classic sequel. This game is a pretty good game, but that one is better. Still, both games are worth playing.

As mentioned this is an earlier Genesis game, and it does look rougher than its sequels visually. Sprites aren't large or as detailed as in the second one, and environments are fairly simple. All stages in this game are either horizontal corridors, excepting only the one elevator level. A few later stages do have traps or pits, to give the game a bit more variety, but its sequel or Golden Axe have far more interesting stage layouts than this game. The basic controls are simple: you can walk, jump, jump-kick, and use a superbomb move which has a backup police car shoot a rocket-launcher at the screen, damaging all enemies present. You can't use that last move in the last level, just to make things even harder. There are a few moves beyond those basics, including a backwards kick on punch+kick and some grab and throw moves to give the game a bit more variety, and that is appreciated. All moves control well, and the fighting action is fun, at least through the second-to-last stage. As with most beat 'em ups, regular enemies come in a handful of constantly-repeating varieties and are mostly easy to beat, while bosses are much harder. The bosses in this game include a tricky guy who breathes fire, a tall guy with some weapons, and many more. Between the hordes of enemies and tricky bosses, you can't win this game just by mashing attack; some strategy is required. I do like that, but sometimes it's a bit frustrating.

Overall, Streets of Rage is a very good game. The game looks nice, sounds fantastic, and plays well. The basic fighting gameplay here is great fun, and is better than classics such as Final Fight or Golden Axe based on the mechanics, even if I love Golden Axe's fantasy setting the most over this. Streets of Rage game is difficult and having to beat bosses without the bomb is annoying, and the level layouts are mostly too much of a straight line, but this is a great game in almost every category. With either one player or two, Streets of Rage is a must-try classic. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.


Streets of Rage 2 - 1-2 player simultaneous. One of the best beat 'em ups ever made, Streets of Rage 2 is one of the all-time classics! This game takes its predecessors' foundation and builds on it. This time the graphics, level designs, gameplay, enemy variety, music, and controls are all improved. Streets of Rage 2 is fantastic in all of those categories, and more besides. Once again, Mr. X is causing trouble. He kidnapped one of the guys from the first game, and the other two characters plus the kidnapped guys' little brother and a big muscleman are off to rescue him, and stop Mr. X as well. It's a simple plot, but it works, and I like that it's not a girl kidnapped like in most games. There are eight levels to fight through, and four difficulty levels available. You only get two continues, but even so, the difficulty levels really make a big difference. On Easy the game isn't hard to finish, but on the higher settings it will take skill and practice to get anywhere near the end. This game is easier than the first one, particularly on Easy, and it's appreciated. It's still plenty tough on the higher settings. This is not a long game, but for the genre, the length is just about right. The game ends just when it should, and every level is fun and very well designed. The controls are also great. They are very responsive and precise, and there are a good number of moves to use beyond the basic ones. Each character has some character-specific special moves. While this game is still repetitive, it has more variety than earlier beat 'em ups. There are also weapons to use, including knives and pipes, for some added fun. The 'bomb' attack from the first game is gone, but the added moves make up for that.

Indeed, I really like the level designs here. While most stages are a path to the right and this game does not have Golden Axe-like pits in the stages, unfortunately, the several elevator segments excepted, there are parts where the screen moves in a diagonal direction, and there are many screen transitions, doors, stairs, and such along the way. The graphics are very good as well, and this really helps keep things interesting. You aren't just looking at the same backgrounds all the time, but instead environments change regularly and each look quite different and very well drawn and detailed. There are some nice surprises too, I was not expecting one of those elevators to be there when I first played the game! There is as much enemy variety here as you'll find in the genre, too. Enemies are more different than in some beat 'em ups. There are little guys, dominatrix women, big fat guys who can breathe fire, guys on motorcycles who zoom in and try to run you over, and more! The game re-uses many bosse as regular enemies too, which really helps with the enemy variety. You have to be constantly on your toes in this game, and can't just get into a basic rhythm because of the different approaches for different enemies. Of course you punch them, but you'll need to jump-kick the motorcycle and flying guys, run from the big guys when they attack and then hit them when you can, use the fantastic 'sweep' attack (press two buttons together) to hit people on both sides of you when surrounded, and more. Enemy AI is good, and enemy placements keep pacing just right. And even though this is a game about fighting modern-day thugs, there is an 'alien' and a 'pirate' area as well, with the excuse that both are rides in an amusement park you travel through. I really like them, they add to the game for sure.

The soundtrack in this game is a legendarily great one, also. The game has a very good videogame-soundtrack score. While this is not my very favorite kind of Genesis soundtrack, techno soundtracks like Adventures of Batman & Robin or such are, it is a very good soundtrack which adds to the game for sure. SoR2 has some memorable music, and it pushes the music chip, too. Overall, Streets of Rage 2 is a very good game in every category. The game is well-balanced, fun, easy on Easy and yet hard on Hard, is just the right length, has varied environments and enemy types, more moves than early beat 'em ups, four playable characters who each play differently, has good graphics and outstanding music, and just generally maybe the best overall gameplay in any beat 'em up ever. I much prefer Golden Axe thematically over this game's sometimes bland modern setting, and that counts for a lot, but I do have to admit that Streets of Rage 2 has the better, more complex, and more evolved gameplay, and is the better game overall. And the best of other developers in the genre, including TMNT III (NES), my favorite Konami beat 'em up, and Shadows over Mystara (Arcade), my favorite Capcom game in the genre, probably don't quite match up to this game. Streets of Rage 2 is a must-play classic for everyone, regardless of if you like beat 'em ups or not. This game is available in collections and digital re-releases of Sega’s Genesis games.

I wholeheartedly agree with all you've said about SF2SCE. My favourite version too. Though, honesty forces me to concede the vocals are bad. Much better with Stef's alternate driver though.

It is a great game, but favorite version? Well, it is my favorite version from before Super SFII, yes; I like it more than Turbo on the SNES or the other versions, probably both because I've played it a lot more than the first two SNES versions, and it is a really good version of the game. But I do like Super (for the SNES, since that's the version I have) more overall, despite probably having the most nostalgia for SFII: SCE for the Genesis, because those four added characters are great... and having more colors than two or so is nice, too. It is very close between the two games, but... no Cammy in this one.

Oh, I never got Super for Genesis or Turbo for SNES because I already had the other versions. I do think sometimes about getting Super for the Genesis, but haven't done so, so far at least. I did get SFII CE for the PC Engine (TG16), even though it's similar to the CE half of this Genesis game but without the Turbo half, in order to have that system's version of Street Fighter. That version is also great, but it has worse audio than the Genesis version, no parallax, and no turbo speed options of course, so I'd give the Genesis version the edge.

For me, Super is another game. There are WW, CE, SCE, HF on one side, and SSF2 and SSF2T on the other.

And while I like the new movesets and most improved gfx, i find all new characters totally crap. The same goes for the hit sound, that alone weakens the game.

I can't think of anything better about pre-Super versions other than the additional turbo options, though... why do many people prefer Turbo over Super? I don't get it, it can't only be about more levels of turbo...

But as for the new characters, the other three aren't the best, but Cammy is great.

Well, for Genesis, the music on Super is far inferior to SCE with some of the weakest drums ever. A lot of stage backgrounds are not as authentic as the arcade in Super either. The hit sounds aren't as good, as tryphon said, and that goes triple for the SNES version (although that one has much better music than the Genesis one). People were at the time apathetic about the new characters, flaming dragon punches etc.

People are in general more nostalgic for the CPS1 SFs. Just the way it is. Arcade fans had started to tire of SF by the time Super came out (I personally had started playing Fatal Fury Special), and this apathy translated over to the home ports as too, as Capcom well knows.

I can understand why there'd be more nostalgia for the earlier versions, sure -- they came first, and sold a lot better than Super, which was a disappointment at the time sales-wise. However, looking back at the games, there's almost nothing better about the pre-Super versions. The better game seems clear to me. Though if the sound is worse on the Genesis version of Super that is disappointing, SCE on Genesis sounds reasonably good.


On another note, things from this last update that are maybe worth discussion:
- That I think Sonic 3D Blast is a good (not great, but good) game
- That I do not like Splatterhouse 2 much
- That I actually kind of like Arcade's Revenge despite it being nearly impossible

I do like the Splatterhouse games on MD and wouldn't be without them - although I can understand your opinion of 2 for sure. I had the PAL version as a kid and never having played the first game in the arcade or the PCE port I was disappointed by this MD exclusive sequel. I still liked it enough to finish it, but it seemed overly simplistic and the animation was lacking on Rick's (and enemy) attacks. In short I agreed with the CVG/Mean Machines review at the time.

These days though I appreciate it for what it is a bit more and enjoy it for it's graphics, music and set pieces, and as shallow as it sounds, the cover and manual for the NTSCJ version (US version is a joke). As you mentioned, it's pure memo, and I prefer my games to be a bit more dynamic than that usually. Still great fun to one-credit though.

I was going to say that Crude Buster is the better single-plane beat 'em up, but I dunno.

Splatterhouse Part 3 is a different story though. That's definitely up there with the SOR games for me, and IMO better than the Golden Axe games on MD. The timed, non-linear level design that gives you Stage X if you're quick enough (NTSCJ limit is tighter) is great.

Don't bother playing the US version if you haven't already though since Namco apparently crudely messed with the game balance by turning the get-off-me spin kick into a special move, that although now requiring a directional input did far too much damage, presumably rendering the rest of the moveset pointless. The idea was for it to give you some breathing space at the cost of hardly any damage to the enemy, and to reset them from a fall.

I think I've mentioned this in the dedicated thread to that game, so I'll stop there.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

- That I actually kind of like Arcade's Revenge despite it being nearly impossible

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There's a 1UP trick in the Gambit stage that's present in both the SNES and Genesis versions (so it appears to be intentional?), and that makes the game a lot more manageable.

It's actually not that hard, just unforgiving, so having unlimited chances to practice helps a lot. But I agree that the game would benefit from continues and/or passwords; doing that Spider-Man stage over and over again gets old fast.

That said, the second Wolverine stage (i.e. the Juggernaut fight) is really quite evil, and brings the game to a screeching halt unless you know exactly what to do.

And more to the point, the Genesis port is inferior in every way to the SNES version. The SNES game even plays better, in addition to the better graphics and infinitely better soundtrack (the music is comfortably in the top 5 on the SNES, IMHO). Sometimes the Genesis gets the edge on controls, but not this time -- it's noticeably clunker, especially the Gambit stage. I wrote up a comparison here.

I mean, seriously, check this out:



Almost 25 years later, it still blows me away. It takes almost four minutes to reach the loop point!

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Originally Posted by goldenband

There's a 1UP trick in the Gambit stage that's present in both the SNES and Genesis versions (so it appears to be intentional?), and that makes the game a lot more manageable.

It's actually not that hard, just unforgiving, so having unlimited chances to practice helps a lot. But I agree that the game would benefit from continues and/or passwords; doing that Spider-Man stage over and over again gets old fast.

That said, the second Wolverine stage (i.e. the Juggernaut fight) is really quite evil, and brings the game to a screeching halt unless you know exactly what to do.

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Yeah, I think the game is one of the best possible cases for a game which, saving/continues aside, would have been a fairly average game difficulty-wise, for the time anyway. The levels aren't impossible once you've practiced them a bit, and the game has some decent variety between characters and in level structures which helps me want to keep trying. It's really only the complete absence of any kind of save or continue system that makes the game ruinously, impossibly difficult. With savestates, even just between levels, I probably could beat this game in time. As it is, though, I doubt I ever will, no continues in a game where it's very easy to lose lives is awful. I do like the game, but I'll probably never see the second half of it unless I play it in an emulator with savestates... and I don't do that much, not since I got a big collection of the real games.

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And more to the point, the Genesis port is inferior in every way to the SNES version. The SNES game even plays better, in addition to the better graphics and infinitely better soundtrack (the music is comfortably in the top 5 on the SNES, IMHO). Sometimes the Genesis gets the edge on controls, but not this time -- it's noticeably clunker, especially the Gambit stage. I wrote up a comparison here.

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Huh. I first got the Game Gear version, actually, a few years ago, and liked it enough that I decided I'd get the SNES or Genesis versions if I found one for cheap. I saw the Genesis version first, after that, so I got it. It's better than the GG for sure, though based on that I guess the SNES is better.

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

I do like the Splatterhouse games on MD and wouldn't be without them - although I can understand your opinion of 2 for sure. I had the PAL version as a kid and never having played the first game in the arcade or the PCE port I was disappointed by this MD exclusive sequel. I still liked it enough to finish it, but it seemed overly simplistic and the animation was lacking on Rick's (and enemy) attacks. In short I agreed with the CVG/Mean Machines review at the time.

These days though I appreciate it for what it is a bit more and enjoy it for it's graphics, music and set pieces, and as shallow as it sounds, the cover and manual for the NTSCJ version (US version is a joke). As you mentioned, it's pure memo, and I prefer my games to be a bit more dynamic than that usually. Still great fun to one-credit though.

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One credit? That'd take so much time, it's a hard game... myself I'm thankful that the game has saving, but that didn't make me want to keep playing. I don't know if I've ever even finished level two... maybe not. It gets hard fast, and I don't have much fun playing it. I got the game because it was really cheap, since back in the mid '00s when I got the system Genesis prices were crazy low. Now the game is probably worth like ten times what I paid... (like, $6 or something for a complete copy) so I'm lucky to have the game in that sense, but not in the "do I actually like the game" sense. That latter one is the more important, of course. :p

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I was going to say that Crude Buster is the better single-plane beat 'em up, but I dunno.

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I generally don't like side-scrolling beat em ups, as a genre. They are too simplistic and get boring VERY quickly. The best ones are ... okay ... but almost never actually good. Comix Zone is great, but it's the exception to the rule. Outside of that game the genre is not so good. To name some I have for various systems, Cyber Cross, Wonder Momo, Melfand Stories, China Warrior, Black Belt, Rush'n Attack, Vigilante, Ninja Warriors (SCD ver.), Ninja Warriors [Again, for SNES], and such... those are okay games, but I don't really like any of them. The best of those are probably the two SNES ones, Melfand Stories and Ninja Warriors, followed maybe by the TG16 version of Vigilante (the SMS one is okay, but not quite is good; I do have both), but none are better than 'above average' level stuff, "C+" grades for those top three if I was scoring them. If you count TMNT II: Back from the Sewers for the Game Boy maybe it's my favorite sidescrolling beat 'em up, but it has some little isometric parts, and that game is kind of a platformer too... but that game is fun. It actually is a good game. Almost always, though, and I have thought about this, I generally somewhat dislike side-scrolling beat 'em ups.

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Splatterhouse Part 3 is a different story though. That's definitely up there with the SOR games for me, and IMO better than the Golden Axe games on MD. The timed, non-linear level design that gives you Stage X if you're quick enough (NTSCJ limit is tighter) is great.

Don't bother playing the US version if you haven't already though since Namco apparently crudely messed with the game balance by turning the get-off-me spin kick into a special move, that although now requiring a directional input did far too much damage, presumably rendering the rest of the moveset pointless. The idea was for it to give you some breathing space at the cost of hardly any damage to the enemy, and to reset them from a fall.

I think I've mentioned this in the dedicated thread to that game, so I'll stop there.

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I hate game-wide timers in games, so I highly doubt I'd ever agree that that kind of a feature is "great". Regardless though I would like to play the third game; isometric beat 'em ups are generally far better than side-scrolling ones, so the third game is probably a lot more fun to play than the second.

Ninja Warriors Again is the best single-plane beat 'em up by a long shot IMO, also the best SNES brawler.

Ahrrggh, can't believe I forgot Comix Zone. Yeah, that one is probably the best example of that genre on the system. Good game with a few flaws to it, and I'm not a fan of the soundtrack, but the animation, voice, sound FX etc are all extremely impressive for the Mega Drive.

Another MD game where the difficulty is overrated. At least with the JP version, which I found very manageable.

Re: Splatterhouse Part 3 timer: It's not for everyone I suppose, but it pushes you to play hard and smart, and I appreciate that. If it wasn't there, there wouldn't be a reason to deliberate on taking detours for 1-UPs and such. The game has continues/password (can't remember if the Japanese version has a password actually - never bothered with it if it did), but I thought just using one credit on Normal or Difficult was fine. Later on, there are enemies that will basically kill you with two hits, so it forces you to play well with minimal mistakes.

The last boss(es) are a pain in the arse no matter what though. So many invincibility frames.

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Originally Posted by Vludi

Ninja Warriors Again is the best single-plane beat 'em up by a long shot IMO, also the best SNES brawler.

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It's a bit better than most, but it's no match for Comix Zone. The graphics, level designs, and gameplay are all way better than the first (incredibly repetitive) Ninja Warriors game, but it is disappointing that it has no multiplayer. The final boss area is also a complete pain... "throw enemies at the screen" stuff at the end, seriously? That was pretty annoying. It is alright otherwise, though.

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Originally Posted by OverDrone

Ahrrggh, can't believe I forgot Comix Zone. Yeah, that one is probably the best example of that genre on the system. Good game with a few flaws to it, and I'm not a fan of the soundtrack, but the animation, voice, sound FX etc are all extremely impressive for the Mega Drive.

Another MD game where the difficulty is overrated. At least with the JP version, which I found very manageable.

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Comix Zone is an incredibly difficult game, and I've still never gotten past the halfway point, but it's fantastic anyway. The graphics, controls, moveset, puzzles, music, and style all set it way above most games in the genre. I only wish it wasn't so ridiculously hard (lives and more continues would fix it!), but almost all of Sega Technical Institute's games are too hard -- Kid Chameleon, The Ooze, and Sonic Spinball are, of course, all also really difficult games.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

It's a bit better than most, but it's no match for Comix Zone. The graphics, level designs, and gameplay are all way better than the first (incredibly repetitive) Ninja Warriors game, but it is disappointing that it has no multiplayer. The final boss area is also a complete pain... "throw enemies at the screen" stuff at the end, seriously? That was pretty annoying. It is alright otherwise, though.

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Comix Zone is cool in the sense that it has many cool secrets and alternate ways to solve things (often not related to melee combat), kinda similar to a puzzle game or a gimmicky action platformer, but as a beat 'em up it has a rather mediocre combat compared to NW Again if you ask me (it has character variety to begin with). And i don't think the game would work well with co-op, way too cluttered.

I suspect the US version of Comix Zone is harder than the NTSCJ one, just from a few things I've read in the past. But also suspect that the random (IIRC) item drops might have something to do with it as well, on some runs I seemed to end up with more health pick-ups than others. One of the runs with a generous amount of those was where I cleared it, as you can imagine.

Not only that, but using Roadkill on every panel until you know what's there is a great help, and tends to de-fang the whole 'take damage from punching objects' thing since a lot of the time you uncover dynamite to circumvent those situations. Overall, there are not a lot of times you are forced to wear the damage, one way or another, which makes me wonder why they made it like that in the first place.

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Originally Posted by Vludi

Comix Zone is cool in the sense that it has many cool secrets and alternate ways to solve things (often not related to melee combat), kinda similar to a puzzle game or a gimmicky action platformer, but as a beat 'em up it has a rather mediocre combat compared to NW Again if you ask me (it has character variety to begin with). And i don't think the game would work well with co-op, way too cluttered.

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Really? Is that the one made by Natsume right?
It's funny, because I think just the opposite. Comix Zone combat works rather well in a single dimensional plane, whereas I think that NW would've greatly benefited from being able to move up/down. It's a good game, but it suffers from something that plagues pretty much every Super NES beat'em ups: generic enemy design and setting. It also feels inferior to previous \Natsume efforts, like Pocky & Rocky and Wild Guns.

And yeah, Comix Zone isn't really that hard. Although I'm curious to the fact that's easier on the NTSC-J version; being a western game, it's something rather unusual. The norm was to a take an original Japanese game and to crank up the difficulty, usually screwing up with the balance of the game. Just look at Akumajou Densetsu/ Castlevania 3 or Ninja Gaiden 3 (JP/US) on the NES and Hellfire ( made even harder in the US version! Fuck that ) or RKA. Although Twin Cobra 2 in a much more manageable game than the original Kyukykoku Tiger 2 on the Arcades.

Comix Zone could have done with another two stages, it's a bit short. Compounding that there are no harder difficulties that I'm aware of so once your done, your done. After beating the game the fights became trivial for me, but I still return to it occasionally just to soak in the presentation.

Another couple of stages that introduce melee weapons would have been awesome, but I'm sure the content already there maxes out the 16 meg cart. Hell I always thought it was bigger than that BITD just based on the animation!

Hellfire, ha that's one I've never beaten, and I've had it since a kid. I always mean to knuckle down on it but usually end up putting on something else if I die at the downward-scrolly bit :)