What genesis/megadrive games turned out to be way better than you anticipated?

[Mark Robert]

I researched Splatterhouse 3 quite a bit by watching youtube vids of gameplay and reviews. I finally decided to buy it a couple weeks ago thinking it would be a decent beat 'em up with horror elements. When I finally bought off ebay and started playing, I was blown away by the awesome soundtrack and beautiful graphics. The gameplay is really engaging too. I had been on the fence with this title for a long time but when I finally did play it, it really resonated with me. What genesis games have you reluctantly bought that turned out to be much better than you anticipated?

[Kamahl]

Well, I didn't buy it, but I never expected Puggsy to be as good as it is before actually playing it. It has the most awesome secrets ever.

[Olls]

McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. No doubt about it.
Who expects anything good to be related to McDonald's?

[Kamahl]

McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. No doubt about it.
Who expects anything good to be related to McDonald's?

Ah yes, this one too no doubt. But I kinda did expect it to be at least acceptable based on the developer.

[Iron Lizard]

Wiz'N'Liz is way more fun I thought it would be.

[grasshopper]

trouble shooter, this should have been a huge sleeper hit. should be on more top 10 lists if you ask me.

[goldenband]

Jewel Master. I bought it as part of a package deal, and barely knew anything about it; until then, I'd figured it was a puzzle game or something. I was expecting yet another middling action platformer -- if that -- but was quite impressed by the high quality of the gameplay and music.

Gain Ground also took me by surprise. I felt a weird compulsion to buy it, didn't really know why, but once I played it with my girlfriend we looked at other and said a more moderate version of "This is the best game ever!"

More controversially, I was expecting Shadow of the Beast to be borderline unplayable because of all the negative reports, but actually I had a blast with it. Same thing with Asterix and the Great Rescue, though not on the same level.

[Masked Avenger]

Sonic 1. I seriously expected some boring Mario clone and avoided the title for a while.

Shinobi III: Not too much of a fan of Revenge of Shinobi and previews made it look like it was similar. It was way better, thankfully.

Cool Spot. A bottom of the barrel license game and it turned out to be quite a tight platformer.

[True Grave]

Cool Spot! I remember renting this one at my local video store out of pure curiosity, and Figured a game tie-in to a soda of all things wouldn't be very good at all. However, this title was a pretty spiffy platformer and deserves a spot(no pun) in most collections imo.

I think they made another game too. Never played it. Anyone know if it was any good?

[Obviously]

Dinosaurs for Hire. It's not really the greatest game by any stretch of the imagination but I picked it up because it was complete and three dollars and I had an extremely entertaining time with it. Unfortunately it's one of those games that you'd really like to play co-op but because of the unforgiving platforming parts it's really frustrating to play with a friend. Still, I expected bottom of the barrel garbage and had a lot of fun.

I also expected to hate Cyborg Justice but I'm in the possibly brain damaged minority who actually enjoys it.

[Black_Tiger]

Lunar Eternal Blue. I was so disappointed by Lunar The Silver Star that I kept my expectations low, no matter what I saw of it in magazines. Still can't believe to this day how well it turned out.

The Space Adventure. I didn't think much of it when I saw it previewed in at least one magazine, but I bought it new while EB was clearing out their Sega-CD stock. It completely blew me away and remains my favorite digicomic game. Everything I hated about the localization of Snatcher wasn't broken here, but the game itself plays so smooth and is so well balanced out and paced.

[QuickSciFi]

Robocop Vs. The Terminator.

Every so often, we get a "good" movie franchise based game; but it is a rare occasion when such a game turns out to be Grade A title on par with any Grade A game of its generation.

[TmEE]

Robocop Vs. The Terminator.

Every so often, we get a "good" movie franchise based game; but it is a rare occasion when such a game turns out to be Grade A title on par with any Grade A game of its generation.

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to QuickSciFi again."


I was very pleased with Heavy Nova. There's some other games too but I cannot think of any right now...

[Kamahl]

Yeah Robocop vs The Terminator is great, but I could tell it was awesome from gameplay videos. Way way better than the SNES version.

[Josh]

Art of Fighting. Most of the reviews I read and the videos of it I saw online before purchasing it criticized the Sega Genesis version for the high difficulty level in the single player mode (with some saying that the hard difficulty made the game unplayable or unbeatable) and lacking the scaling feature. I played it and ended up having a lot of fun. I thought it'd be an awful mess of a port, but it ended up being one of my all time favorite games on the system.