Most Underrated Mega Drive Games?

This thread's an excuse for me to say -

I'M REALLY FED UP WITH PEOPLE ON THE INTERNET HATING ON GAIN GROUND

All I see everywhere from "reputable gaming websites" is hatred and/or basic ignorance. Tons of 1/10 scores with talk of it being one of the "worst Gauntlet clones ever", or "a slow, boring action game"

Gain Ground is a damn strategy game for f#cks sake! it's not supposed to be Zombies Ate My Neighbours or Ikari Warriors! you're supposed to amass an army and work out the smartest ways of tackling each stage, not picking the 1st character on the list and running at the enemies.

Anyway that's my rant over, what are the games everyone else thinks are unfairly misjudged?

Gain Ground is decent on the MD, but from what I've seen of the original and PC Engine games they seem way better. Have you played those?


Not many people seem to like Columns 3, but I thought it was a huge improvement over the very simple and dull original.
The gameplay changes make it very intense to play competitively and I think it supports up to 5 players at once (haven't tried it though).

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Originally Posted by Alianger

Gain Ground is decent on the MD, but from what I've seen of the original and PC Engine games they seem way better. Have you played those?

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No I've only played the Mega Drive (which I had when I was a kid) and Master System (which is also cool and has some of it's own levels and quirks) versions. I've heard that the PC Engine version actually scrolls which immediately sounds like a problem to me as I wouldn't have thought you'd be able to work out a strategy and choose the right character if you can't see the whole screen at once.

I never hear people talk about how awesome Toy Story is. It has the same visual style as the Donkey Kong Country titles without having additional chips hiding in the cartridge. Additionally, there is an awesome Wolf3D style stage that is super smooth. Again, 3D done without an additional chip. Lastly, the game is fun :) Tons of different stages from platforming to racing. I really enjoyed this late Genesis title.

Whip Rush.

It won an award back in its day, but when talk of Genesis shmups (and shmups/Genesis games in general) comes about, this game doesn't get brought up very often. It's not the most intense or difficult Genesis shmup, but it's solid, has good music, offers some originality with it's weapon setup, and really doesn't do anything wrong outside of a little generic stage design.

Bonk/BC-Kid <- pretty under rated game on the Megadrive :cool:

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Originally Posted by tomaitheous

Bonk/BC-Kid <- pretty under rated game on the Megadrive :cool:

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I want my parallax :P

my most underrated game is Socket / Time Dominator #1

Arcuss Odyssey and Steal Empire

shaq fu! its just average not terrible

Gain Ground is the SHIT that game rocks big time and anybody who says otherwise is a traitor to the human race, no joke.

I think Sagaia is pretty damn underrated too...and Twin Cobra...and Burning Force.

I always liked Son of Chuck Rock. Most people don't. I think Robo Aleste is bit underrated as well.

I remember EGM trashing Sagaia's sound back when they reviewed it. To be honest, the game sounds fine to me except for the noise it makes when you press the START button on the title screen.

Some underrated games games for the Genesis That I really enjoy are:

Puggsy
Tinhead
Undead Line
Panorama Cotton (more people need this game, it's the best looking game on the Mega Drive)

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Originally Posted by Joe Redifer

I remember EGM trashing Sagaia's sound back when they reviewed it. To be honest, the game sounds fine to me except for the noise it makes when you press the START button on the title screen.

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That's to bad. That is one of my all time favorites on the Genesis and its actually better than the Saturn version.

Lizard and Redifer repped for some of the greatest paragraphs ever written on these boards.

Sagaia rules!

Thanks. :)

I don't know how underrated this game is but I really like Two Crude Dudes. It's a very fun action side-scroller game that most people here would probably think is "meh". Another one is Arrow Flash which is a shmup I really enjoy. It has great action and a good soundtrack. I also like the flash power-up which is a unique wrinkle to the shmup genre.

Here are a few more games I feel are underrated...

Master of Monsters- A turn-based strategy game that came and went in the blink of an eye. Nice graphics, fantastic music, a long and very challenging solo campaign, single-four player single map matches, lots of cool creatures that you can level up... it's a wonderful game in a genre that's woefully under represented on the Genesis.

Tinhead- Spectrum Holobyte's entry into the platformer genre on the Genesis, and it turned out quite good. Great graphics, upbeat tunes, large levels that can take a while to get through, big bosses, and an interesting attack method help make this little title fun to play. But like MoM, it came and went with little fanfare.

Sagaia- Taito's Genesis version of Darius II got more publicity, but it wasn't always good publicity. While it was praised for the number of levels and replayability, the graphics got picked at, and the sound was flat out bashed. It was either EGM or Mega Play (both?) that said this game didn't have a good soundtrack, which floored me. I find the music to be very nice, and the sound effects to be good for the most part as well. Add in well done graphics, 28 levels, hidden modes, and a good challenge, and I'm honestly not sure how this game ever got scores below an 8.

Alisia Dragoon- How did this game not get a big budget to push it? Great graphics, wonderful music, 8 large stages, a tracking attack up that actually works well most of the time, great graphical design... it's a fine example of a game that should be a part of every Genesis owners library. But somehow, it was largely ignored by magazines, and thus didn't get the exposure it deserved in order to show players just how great a game it is.

Lightening Force- I honestly can't remember the last time I saw a ball dropped this hard. Sega changed a name that everyone would have recognized, and brought out was is arguably the best 16bit shmup out there with no magazine ads, no commercials, and no pimping of any kind. Tack on idiocy like Mega Play who gave it only straight 7s (one of the few magazines to even review it), and it was like people were going out of their way to make sure this fantastic game failed.

This is Thunder Force IV, and it is made of awesomeness from start to finish. Why Sega and game magazines at the time didn't realize this and let people know it, is beyond me.

Raiden Trad- A home port of the classic arcade shmup that gets panned a lot, but I've always found it to be a quality port. The music, while not as prominent, is still faithful to the original tunes, the graphics are good, the action can get intense, and overall, it still feels like Raiden. It blows the SNES port out of the water, and even offers and super hard extra stage for those who manage to win. Is it a perfect port? No. Is a quality port overall? Yes.

Roadblasters- A surprisingly good arcade port.The graphics are close, as is the music, and even the scaling wasn't bad. The sound effects aren't always too accurate, but they're not horrifically off either. It has all the levels, and it plays and feels like the arcade game. It's just too bad by the time it came out, the arcade game had faded into the background of gaming, and as such, the Genesis port didn't make much of a splash.

Wow sounds like Thunder Force IV got a raw deal in the US, here in the UK it was pretty highly rated by all the magazines and constantly brought up everytime a new shmup was released for comparison, many would finish a shmup review by saying something like "not as good as Thunder Force IV so buy that instead"

Super Hydlide.
Everytime this game is brought up it's "Oh hey a sequel to Hydlide. Crap."

Sure Hydlide and Virtual Hydlide were abominations but Super Hydlide is actually a very interesting and well-done action RPG. It's definitely not for everyone but that's part of the charm. You've got these sub-systems like a rating that keeps track of how "good" you are(killing neutral monsters will cause this to drop), a weight system that slows you down to a crawl if you're carrying too much stuff(and makes you do no damage if your equipment is too heavy). You also have to be well-prepared before you explore the dungeons by making sure you have plenty of rations and get a good night's rest(since staying up overnight can really screw you over).

Like I said not for everyone but it's still quality at what it does. People just write it off way too quickly.

Also I just did a playthrough of Space Harrier II and aside from the janky scrolling and choppiness it isn't all bad. It's certainly better than Sub-par Thunder Blade at least.

Off the top of my head..... Outlander, and ........and......Frogger!... Aaaaand Space invaders..... And Fire Mustang

Yeah - Fire Mustang is fun. And Gynoug, which is one of my favourite MD shmups. :)

Games I don't understand all the hate for include Sol-Feace/Deace, Dragon's Revenge, Blades of Vengeance, and even Ballz.

Also - Alien Storm, Runark/Growl, and Mazin Wars (excluding the boss-levels) are three cheesy scrolling beat-em-ups I've always enjoyed, being fully aware of their cheese-levels. Maou Renjishi too, actually. The SOR trilogy still sneers at them all :)

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Originally Posted by Alianger

The gameplay changes make it very intense to play competitively and I think it supports up to 5 players at once (haven't tried it though).

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yes. it is awesome

Here are a few games that i think are highly underrated.

Toe Jam And Earl 2
A lot of people hate this game because of the complete rebuild of how the game works, but if you take this game and don't even think about it being a sequel to TJ&E it's a very charming and fun game.

Bottom line is give it a chance before you say you hate it.

Bonanza Brothers
Many people put this game down, i personally always had a lot of fun playing this with friends and whatnot.
To me it was a neat concept with the stealth and the fact you couldn't kill your enemies, just stun them.
I still break this game out every now and then to do a quick 1 life run.

Fatal Labrinth
Im not going to try and sit here and try and say this is an awesome game or anything because it really isn't.
But in my eyes i also dont see it as a horrible game, a lot of people hate this game, and i mean hate.
I think it's fun to pop in every now and play for a half hour or so.

Not the best game but still not half as bad as some games out there.

Gain Ground and Bonanza Brothers rank high on my list of awesome games.

My favorite underrated games are..

Bram Stoker's Dracula : some cheap moments but I somehow find joy in this game.

Jewel Master: Wow, the first time I played this game I knew I had to have it. This game is not as bad or as mediocre as people claim it to be, with 12 rings to combine, you'd figure there would be more challenges and possibilities.

The soundtrack always seems to get my blood pumped as well.

Jewel Master always seemed like a pretty cool and clever game, though i've honestly only played the 1st few levels (my friend who's not interested in retro gaming and has never even played it once at home bought it before I could get to it so I only managed to play a little when we went back to my house :( )

It's one of those games that I'd buy in a second if I saw it cheap somewhere.

Undeniable truth: Jewel Master is one of the most awesome platformers on the Mega Drive.

No Ranger-X love?

Oh yeah lots of love for it!
I wouldn't include Ranger X in any list of underrated games.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

Jewel Master always seemed like a pretty cool and clever game, though i've honestly only played the 1st few levels (my friend who's not interested in retro gaming and has never even played it once at home bought it before I could get to it so I only managed to play a little when we went back to my house :( )

It's one of those games that I'd buy in a second if I saw it cheap somewhere.

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I picked mine up from amazon a year or two back for two bucks. its only missing the instructions but at least I can enjoy the sweet cover art.

I was going through the whole of Sega-16's site reviews and adding comments yesterday (yeah I was bored) and I noticed some underappreciated games there with low user scores so I guess they're worth mentioning

Vectorman - come on this game is awesome, it just takes a little while to get into the swing of it though, I really hate the sequel though

Mystic Defender - It's not amazing but it's still a good game, loads of different moves, great boss fights, nice level designs

Street Racer - is pretty good for the Mega Drive with 4-player support and everything, no way it deserves an overrall user rating of 5.7 (it was 4.5 before I rated) :(

Sparkster - deserves better than an overrall of 7.4, I mean this game is really unique, I think people just hold the fact that it's such a major change after RKA against it.

Magical Taruruuto-Kun - I haven't played this game enough to formulate a proper opinion but does it really deserve a review of 4? it doesn't seem that bad to me, there's also a lack of interest as there's not one user score on there.

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Originally Posted by jesus.arnold

Magical Taruruuto-Kun - I haven't played this game enough to formulate a proper opinion but does it really deserve a review of 4? it doesn't seem that bad to me, there's also a lack of interest as there's not one user score on there.

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There was quite a bit of discussion on that review:
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?t=4841

Another game that I remember was Streets of Rage, which got a rating of 5 or 6 IIRC - heresy.

Then Golden Axe 3 which everyone and their mom seems to hate for no reason... :?

But there are others that received incredibly low scores - Trampoline Terror, Phelios, Columns, Verytex, Zero Wing, High Seas Havoc, Socket ...

The absolute worst review is definitely Columns, then Michael Jackson's Moonwalker. Those two games are scored way underrated.

If only Melf would let us re-write reviews. But that just isn't fair to the people who wrote the review.

Why not allow multiple reviews on the same game ? - That would be worth something, especially if the ratings are totally different.

There will be multiple reviews when all games are reviewed.

I thought that's what the comments section at the bottom of the review, and the feedback threads, were for... agreeing and disagreeing opinions.

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Originally Posted by The Coop

I thought that's what the comments section at the bottom of the review, and the feedback threads, were for... agreeing and disagreeing opinions.

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Yeah, I like this better because then you can see other people's opinions and see how right or wrong the reviewer actually is.

And we won't have duplicate reviews Zebbe, we will just move on to Saturn stuff. Really, once we get someone to edit the database, we'll have Master System/Game Gear and Saturn up. So no reason for multiple reviews.

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Originally Posted by Baloo

And we won't have duplicate reviews Zebbe, we will just move on to Saturn stuff. Really, once we get someone to edit the database, we'll have Master System/Game Gear and Saturn up. So no reason for multiple reviews.

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That doesn't seem in keeping with the site's name: I thought reviews would be limited to things that can be played on a Genesis/MD (even with add-ons).

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Originally Posted by Ghaleon

That doesn't seem in keeping with the site's name: I thought reviews would be limited to things that can be played on a Genesis/MD (even with add-ons).

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Melf actually wants to expand the site. I'm not sure how it's going to work, but one of these days it will happen. We need to find a website programmer to fix the database though before any of this can happen.

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Originally Posted by Baloo

Yeah, I like this better because then you can see other people's opinions and see how right or wrong the reviewer actually is.

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Don't you mean, "How many people agree or disagree with the reviewer's opinion"?