Yeah, had my eye on that.

MD ages ago, retro club thread.  I've messed around with the arcade game on the Capcom Stadium Collection (I think) a couple of times, but I didn't get far.

I think its reputation comes from the quality of the MD port in the early days of the console wars.

Fair points.

63. Comix Zone - Mega Drive (1hr)

I've tried to play this multiple times over the years, always tapping out either before the end of the first stage or not long after the start of the second.  I occasionally stumble across someone who loves it on the internet, either on YouTube or a blog or something, and it always seems to pique my interest again.  They all mention the dreaded acquired taste flavour, so being a Segachap I guess I'm duped into wanting to acquire the taste, even though the phrase usually just means 'naff' when applied to retro games.  Great idea, chunky presentation and fleshed out combat moveset aside, this this is most certainly more naff than not.  If you punch chests or doors, which you seemingly need to do, each blow chips away at your own health bar.  Yep, honestly.  I got to stage 4 on the Super Console X3 until I realised this was chipping away at my sanity too, took to the retro thread to declare I was done for good...and then for some reason booted it up on Switch while I loaded up a video walkthrough on the TV.  It turns out there are loads of hidden items you can pick up (three of which aren't even hidden - they're on the floor next to an NPC in the first panel of the first page). It also turns out that finding and using these items at precise points is more or less essential to progression, even though some can only be found by deploying your rat buddy in the correct place so it scratches a chunk of the page away to reveal [dynamite].  So it almost becomes a scrolling beat 'em up/Another World hybrid, given that you won't succeed if you don't play it precisely, but this wasn't a eureka moment by any means - it's still a crap game, even though I understand how it ticks at long last.

Highlights?  It looks very good for a MD game and is clearly a late gen effort even to the untrained eye.  Animation is great and there's plenty of variety to the stages, at least visually.  One of the enemies appears to shout "pack it in!" at you while doing a passable Lily Savage impression, which I enjoyed, but I assume I was mishearing the sample.  

Lowlights?  Everything else really.  It occasionally threatens to be enjoyable but never actually gets there.  Sound effects are decent but the music has that metallic clunk I didn't even like at the time.  The tunes are very Mega Drive, but that wasn't always a good thing.  It's also only just over half an hour long if you follow the optimal path, which just isn't good enough really, considering this would've cost £45-£50.  I'm done with it forever and there's no way I'd recommend it to even the most diehard Sega peeps.  Maybe this sort of shit is the reason I was fiending for polygons in 1995 - some of these late cycle 16-bit games were so focused on squeezing the last drops of juice out of their host consoles that the gameplay became an afterthought.  Anyone fancy Vectorman or Ballz in 2023?  Thought not*.  53%  According to Wikipedia a Comix Zone film tie-in was announced in 2022, so I'm sure that will be absolutely terrific.  

*Having said that I bet even less people fancy playing Hi-Octane or Virtual Hydlide these days.  Today's hot take: 'Let's push things forward' (apart from being a banger) usually equates to 'poor in hindsight' with videogames.  This format deserves a revisit - I wouldn't be completely against a Lizardcube update, for example - but as it stands the game based on the idea is crap.

64. Streets of Rage 2 - Mega Drive (55mins)

Probably my answer to the rather specific pub-quiz question 'the dev team behind which game is mostly likely to have made a pact with the devil to engender truly astonishing results?'.  First released in 1992, this was the first 16-meg MD cart to make its way to these shores (in Jan '93), and it was so far ahead of the competition it still strikes me as ridiculous even now.  Ignoring all its other towering achievements for a second and focusing on the graphics alone, the pure alchemic technical prowess is off the chart.  Like, literally off the chart - if I'd made a chart of what was or even might be possible for a SOR sequel on the system in 1992, the game that actually appeared would have hovered somewhere further up the page.  Streets of Rage looked grand for 1991, but a 'let's make this run nicely eh?' approach was clearly taken with its visuals to ensure the inclusion of a working simultaneous two player mode.  It most definitely strutted its stuff admirably, but comparatively speaking the sequel - which appeared less than 18mths later - made me go from HAPPY WITH MY LEAF FACE to SLACK JAWED WONDER GIF.  It didn't embiggen the sprite size and detail to the determent of performance either; it cranked everything up way past what anyone might've considered [11] to be at the time, and retained a slowdown-free multiplayer mode.  It really was an astonishing achievement.

Then you've got the crunching sound effects and outstanding Hall Of Fame soundtrack, the extended length, the wonderfully varied locations, the iconic bosses, and perhaps most importantly of all, the enhanced combat, which added all sorts of extras to each character's moveset.  Tenderising jump kicks, a charged quick knockdown, two energy draining specials apiece, one no health penalty sub-special and even a run for Skate.  And deeper still, we have tweaks like Max hitting backwards as well as forwards with swords and drainpipes, or Blaze's Brett Riverboat tier knife skills.  Just about the only thing missing - and probably one of only two complaints that I'd level at the entire game - is the lack up team-up moves for two players, which I presume only hit the cutting room floor due to time restraints (you can grab another player, but they both just sort of stand there blinking at the camera until the grabber automatically releases the grabee.  Or suplexes them).  The other complaint would be the complete lack of holes to throw people down, which is a common genre bugbear of mine.  Come on - lobbing people out of the lifts in SOR1 and SOR4 is about as good as the genre gets - it even beats enticing the AI to waddle to their doom in Golden Axe.

So basically, I think this is one of the very best games ever made.  I played it through with Retroking in one sitting yesterday, using the overlooked multiplayer options available on the Switch online sub packages (it might just be us impressed by the fact that all games in each of the available console libraries can be played over the internet, but we think it's neat as fuck - it's just a shame there aren't more titles on there).  So the TLDR is that Streets of Rage 4 is the best game in the series, imho, but 2 is the most impressive by a considerable distance and might well be the best in-house Sega developed title of all time.  98%



Unfuckingtouchable in the genre for roughly 28 years.

Weirdly my wife started playing Tetris Effect yesterday, after dabbling with Klax and Bust A Move for a bit on the SuperConsole X3+.  I'm pretty sure she was still tapping away in the early hours.

Too late now, she's hooked. It'll be Peggle 2 all over again until she's done with it. Is 99 the free online one?

12.Resi 4 Remake - Run 2 - 12 Hours - 11,000,000/10 - Xbox Series X

Even better on Hardcore with so many toys to play with…onto the next run…

Love how many words/syllables he manages to pack into those lines. Guys got talent, can see how he ended up in Bone Thugs n Harmony.

8. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (MD) - 2hrs 45mins

Been a long time since I've played through this. It gets off to a great start, of the games eleven Zones the first eight are genuinely some of my favourites of the entire series. Chemical Plant, Aquatic Ruin, Hill Top and Mystic Cave are all very memorable, and far superior to everything in the first game, apart from Green Hill Zone of course.

Problem is the game falls off a cliff in the final quarter for me. Sky Chase Zone, Wing Fortress and Death Egg Zone are probably the three worse Zones in all the Mega Drive games.

The Special Zones are greatly improved from the first game. Once all the Emeralds are collected here you unlock Super Sonic, who isn't to dissimilar from Mario with the invincibility Star. Problem is he controls a bit unwieldy imo, I've never really clicked with it. Also it uses your Rings as a counter, once you hit zero you return to Blue Sonic, and we all know how vulnerable he is with no Rings. I just don't think the risk/reward works.

Where this entry really excels for me is the music, I think this has one of the greatest soundtracks of the era, there are some absolute belters on here, timeless stuff. Michael Jackson ain't got nothing on Masato Nakamura.

Overall, 3/Knuckles is the blue blurs peak,  but this is a close second despite not being quite as iconic as the original.

8/10 

My list

Even the music for the split screen levels was banging.

I'd rather play 62 1hr games I like than 1 62hr game I don't...

hylian_elf wrote:

Love you.  You really are the Foum Joke(r).

It's been that way since the maroon foum fam.

9. Super Bomberman 3 (SNES) 4hrs 37mins

Good old Bomberman, there's not much between any of the SNES/PC Engine games for me. They're all amazing multiplayer games and have solid story modes/campaigns that can be played in co-op.

The main addition to this version was the inclusion of eggs that when collected hatch into kangaroo-like creatures called Louie. There are five variants of Louie, with each one having a specific special ability, and they also allow you an extra hit.

There are six worlds, the first five of which are very generous with checkpoints and passwords. The sixth world is only revealed after completing the first five, and consists of seven stages and the final boss. These all have to be completed without continuing. I think about a quarter of my playtime was spent here, it was a bastard.

Classic stuff.

8/10 

My list