Taz-Mania

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Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater

Yeah, the SMS Taz shown there (not Escape From Mars) plays nicely although it's kind of ugly with all its yellowness.

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That's supposed to fit with the recurrent theme in the cartoon of the Tasmanian island being all yellowish. I think that aspect it's actually a little more faithful in this game that what the Mega Drive game does in that regard.

Escape from Mars on the Master System is just a straight TecToy conversion of the Game Gear Escape from Mars game, which is of course a better game than the horrid Game Gear Taz-Mania game (I don't get how Sega could let that crappy abomination to happen), but worse and sluggish gameplay wise compared with the Master System Taz-Mania game. It's also more close to the Mega Drive Escape from Mars original than this Master System version is to the Mega Drive Taz-Mania.

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Originally Posted by Thenewguy

Well I own over 300 16-bit games across the SNES, Genesis, and Amiga, and Hard Corps is easily in my top 10 games of that entire generation, I didn't own it at the time, first played it a few years ago, so there's zero nostalgia attachment, I was completely obsessed with it for months, getting all endings, and I still put it on on a semi-regular basis now, I muthuf#cking love that game.

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StarMist hates all games that require even a modicum of skill to complete.
There is no point arguing against that.

If someone here, by chance, understand french, check this great video by the french avgn. (Or also this one by someone else.)

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Originally Posted by gio

If someone here, by chance, understand french, check this great video by the french avgn. (Or also this one by someone else.)

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"Los! Los! Spielen!" ROFLMAO!!!

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Originally Posted by DarkDragon

Graphics were awesome so thats cancels out the musc. Other than the mine shaft, the level design was fine. The factory, the ice part, the jungle, it was all enjoyable. If you had played this game back in 1992 as a 12 year old you would have appreciated this game a lot more trust me. Its so easy to play it as a adult in modern times and nitpick all the flaws and call in rubbish. Is it a top 10 Genesis platformer, no but saying its worthless is way too harsh IMO.

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Yeah, I too was totally blown away by all the hate this game is getting. Like really, reallu totally blown away. :o So I think you've nailed it right on the money, or whatever that saying is? Because yes, I played this back in the day as a kid and did appreciate it very much. Enough to want to add it to my permanent collection as "A Genesis must have" I thought to myself after a few rentals with this game. Still do. When I played it back in the day I made it all the way to the mine cart level. That's when my spare lives started to run dry. Made it there one or two more times and that was the last of the first Taz I played, as I never ended up renting it again. Guess that mine cart level temp scared me away or something?

I did fire it up in an emulator like twice in the recent past, only just for some little playtime to relive my good childhood memories of Taz Mania & my brand new Sega Genesis 2. And yeah, I can see why folks are complaining about the "spoty controls" when steering jumps to pefectly land of them water gyzers. But funny thing is back in the day I don't recall having any complaints about the controls at all. I eventually got a really good hang of them I recall by that tree top level where you had to pick up speed by spinning then jumping. Once I got a hang of that level, I felt like a real pro, lol. And boy, did I feel on top of the world + thought "The controls/gameplay is supper fun now!" :D

I also enjoyed the cartoon it was based off of + enjoyed the classic toons that toon was based off of like everybody else, since every kid back then was heavily exposed to these cartoons. So it really contributed to really easily getting into this game. Especially with graphics that looked this good + it had an overworld map too bood (LOVE videogame overworld maps. They just make my imagination soar like crazy!). I remember first seeing them in the Sega Genesis comercials and the Taz scenes really sticking out to me. Making me either; a) really wanting a Genesis (so I bet this game alone sold a ton of Genesis games), and/or; b) being really proud of finally owning one. As back then I really thought this was a Sega Genesis killer app. And since the SNES Taz didn't seem near as good... yep, means Genesis fanboys had some amunition in the playground, lol (thought back then I was an SNES fanboy that was still slowly starting to see the powers of the Dark Side until I fully switched sides and still remain on since about closer to the end of the 16-Bit days. Game like this one made turning over much easier :)).


Never played the second game, thought I knew of it and really wanted to play it very badly, I suprisingly never did. Too bad. As it would of been nice to have nostalgic memories of the second game too...


Anywho, got to give this game another serious playthrough, and hopefully make it past that mine cart level this time, and see how it really holds up today? Either way, I heavily doubt it'll be as bad as most here say. As one thing I've noticed is that is most folks these days aren't pleased within 5-20 min and/or game seems much too hard, it's automatically a super bad game by default. No questions asked. "Burn the infidels!!!" Then they start looking for all kinds of excuses to toss against said game to make it seem like they know what they're talking about... or something just as lame? Shows how forgiving & open minded we as a human race really are... crap, I'm getting all philosophical about a Taz-Manian game?! :o

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Originally Posted by DarkDragon

Graphics were awesome so thats cancels out the musc. Other than the mine shaft, the level design was fine. The factory, the ice part, the jungle, it was all enjoyable. If you had played this game back in 1992 as a 12 year old you would have appreciated this game a lot more trust me. Its so easy to play it as a adult in modern times and nitpick all the flaws and call in rubbish. Is it a top 10 Genesis platformer, no but saying its worthless is way too harsh IMO.

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I actually did play the game back in the day; granted I was much younger than 12, but I still didn't think much of the game when the family used to rent it out from our local video shop.

EDIT: I'm replying to a near 3 year old post. Crickey.

This game just used to freak me out a little bit too much. It was also one of those games that seemed to be more puzzle than action. Combine that with a weird camera and you get a weird semi-bleh game.

The tornado is difficult to control, the camera tricks you some times and jumping usually result in cheap deaths, the sound and music is really really annoying. When I was a child, I didn't have many games. Unfortunately my mom bought me this one. I was a little forced to play it. But it wasn't a nice experience.

I'm very surprised by the hate this game is getting on here I must say. I loved it as a kid and although it doesn't get plugged into my Mega Drive today as often as some games do I still find it great fun and play it through to completion from time to time. Things like the mine cart level are just about remembering the course and acting accordingly as in any game and really not meant to incur the frothing at the mouth fury that it seems to inflict on a lot of people here. As for the music I take it none of you are or were fans of the old Warner Loony Tunes cartoons if not the cartoon Taz-Mania that this game was inspired from? If you were you'd notice that the offbeat plinky plonky score and sound effects are deliberate and sound just like the score from your average Loony Tune show in the same way that Taz is perfectly drawn and animated in the same fashion. You don't have to be a fan of old cartoons to enjoy this game for what it is but I'm guessing it definitely helps.

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Originally Posted by Mega Drive Bowlsey

As for the music I take it none of you are or were fans of the old Warner Loony Tunes cartoons if not the cartoon Taz-Mania that this game was inspired from? If you were you'd notice that the offbeat plinky plonky score and sound effects are deliberate and sound just like the score from your average Loony Tune show in the same way that Taz is perfectly drawn and animated in the same fashion. You don't have to be a fan of old cartoons to enjoy this game for what it is but I'm guessing it definitely helps.

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That's one of the things I like the most from this game and which was sadly missing in the Taz in Escape from Mars sequel.

Road Runner: Desert Demolition also does the same thing in a pretty good way. Too bad that game is so easy and short.

Recently revisited my childhood experience with Taz-Mania, and the biggest disappointment was being able to reach that brick wall of a mine cart level on my first attempt with plenty of continues left to boot. Otherwise this game was still a lot of fun to play due to it's spinning gameplay mechanic. But because it was so much easier & shorter then I remembered, it really hurts the game overall in my opinion.

Also weird that this games runs at 30 frames the entire time except for the first boss fight were it seems to run at 60fps.

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Originally Posted by Melf

Back when I had just received a Sega Genesis for Christmas and still didn't have any games other than the great Sonic The Hedgehog, I remember seeing a certain commercial of Taz-Mania countless times on TV. Its graphics were unbelievable, it looked a lot like a real cartoon, and I absolutely had to have it! I bought it the first chance I got with my own money.

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Yes, I too seen that commercial lots of times and blew me away with it's graphics and how it looked like a real cartoon. Never managed to own it, but rented it at least twice and had a blast with it. Hence the fond childhood memories. Wanted to buy it too, so I guess Sega was right. You have to toss some brick walls like that seeming trial & error only memorizer of a mine cart level to keep players from beating their games in one rental and keep them wanting more. Lucky in this case, once you make it to the mine cart level, you've basically seen the entire game. Only like the final boss after that. So I never end up wanting to beat this game knowing that.

Well here it is. IIRC, this is the very first game I rented. I think I watched it on some TV show, and way before Taz Mania aired in Spain (more or less a whole year, I think).
While the graphics were nice, there was something in this game that over the years I learned to appreciate. And it's its soundtrack: I've never seen such an awesome tribute to Carl Stalling and his team. Both [the very uneven] music and the FX sound like a real Looney Tunes cartoon.
Gameplay-wise is not that good, however, with some of the cheapest, unavoidable traps ever seen in a MD game, many leaps of faith, some hard enemies (the Bushrats are especially annoying) and a minecart level that could hold a candle to the hovering bikes from Battletoads.
Funny? Quite. Well made technically? Sure. Mediocre play-wise? So much.