Genre: Misc Developer: Digital Pictures Publisher: Sega of America Players: 1 Released: 1993
Talk about bottom-of-the-barrel. Chances are, unless you’re a hardcore Sega CD collector, you haven’t even heard of this thing. You’re not missing much; trust me. It’s a demo disc featuring six music videos. That’s it. It’s like those Make-My-Video games, except without the terrible gameplay. Six music videos – I’m not kidding; that’s all there is. I don’t know how much this was back when it was first released, but Sega can’t have produced very many copies at all. That means it’s now a rare collector’s item, albeit one that maybe seven people on the planet care about owning. Why exactly was this released for the Sega CD?
The videos themselves are slightly better than the standard system fare, but they’re still grainy. The music quality on most of the tracks is well below par. Most of the time, it sounds like you’re listening to the band through a muffled wall! Yikes. The one menu is basic and bare bones. There are options to fast-forward and rewind, but why would you?
In any case, here’s a review of the type of “rock music” you’ll be exposing yourself to if you bother with this disc.
Too Much Joy: Donna Everywhere
A bit of ’90s alternative mixed with a touch of pop-punk. Kind of reminds me of Stacy’s Mom for some reason. Decent, but not great. 2/5
T-Ride: Backdoor Romeo
Starts off unintelligible before turning into what sounds like a bad Aerosmith cover band. The darkest song on the disc, it’s really pretty terrible. 1/5
The Belltower: Outshine the Sun
The second-best song on the disc (not saying much there.) A jangly surf-rock track that’s more pop than rock, but that’s not a bad thing. Sounds a bit like Oasis. 3/5
Mr. Big: To Be with You
The only song I’d heard of before popping this in. It’s a great happy/cheesy love acoustic ballad. He’s got a good voice, and it’s really catchy and fun. 4/5
Xtra Large: Hooker
Worst track on the disc by far. Terrible video, terrible effects, terrible singing/rapping. This was painfully bad. 1/5
Dramarama: Haven’t Got a Clue
Forgettable and bland ’90s alternative rock, but it’s not offensively bad. The most interesting thing about it is that the singer is playing maracas in the video. 2/5
If you’ve read this far, you can anticipate the score I’m going to give this. It’s not a game at all. It’s filled with songs that range from decent to ear-shreddingly awful. It’s obscure and deserves to stay obscure. Heck, YouTube has outdated this disc in so many ways. If you’re really curious, just watch the music videos online, have a laugh at their terribleness, then go about your day. There is absolutely no reason to ever bother searching this out.
SCORE: 1 out of 10
Judging music isn’t too fair unless you can include a small list of your preferences as a reference, because your view holds more relevance to people with similar sensibilities…
You seem to favor pop music over rock in general based on your review,
so i don’t think you were going to like this game from the start.
From my perspective the worst songs were Too Much Joy’s Danna Everywhere (1/5 because pop punk is an oximoron and it sucked at trying to be such)…
And Mr.Big’s To Be With You (2/5 because they wanted to sound like Extreme’s More Than Words which was way better. at least Mr.Big had a few good harmonies… not the worst singers)…
Dramarama’s Haven’t Got A Clue to me was a low 3/5… maybe 2.5/5 because it wasn’t very original for alternative rock, but it wasn’t particularly bad.
The Belltower’s Outshine The Sun was actually really good, definitely a high 4/5. the guitar reminds me a little of REM and the hole song is mellow. also alt chick singers rock (besides courtney love, screw HOLE)…
T-Ride’s Backdoor Romeo was pretty good to me and i’d rate it a 4/5 because I like the styles they employed and the guitar kicked major butt, but ppl that aren’t particularly into 80’s style rock in the vein of Extreme but generally like rock and appreciate technical guitar playing would rate it a 2.5-3/5…
Xtra Large’s Hooker was a big surprise to me. i read this review 1st then watched all the videos while saving this for last thinking it was going to be some over-the-top cheesy rap-rock from the early 90’s. that description is nowhere close to Xtra Large… the 1st thing that comes to mind when i hear it on youtube was PRIMUS. and Primus may “suck”, but they friggin’ rock… to me this was the best song so i’ll give it a 5/5. but i can see how ppl who don’t like heavy/funky edgy rock might rate it 2/5 maybe, but it’s in no way a 1/5 by rock standards.
1 last thing, to rate this as a game is absurd… it was sold as a “mix tape” of music videos. as sega software i think the concept was a good idea, but they could have let a more capable group handle the project. even if it was just in japan, if they got enough major anime producers interested we’d have a bunch of cool shows to watch on a console that was ahead of it’s time. if viacom signed on too we might have had v-cds for sega cd of beavis and butthead/liquid television(?), ren & stimpy, and many other great american cartoons (and other shows). sadly either they didn’t attempt to, or were shot down, but there was still potential…
With a decent amount of good obscure alt/rock bands, and cool concept versus poor quality, lack of accessibility, and over all failure to sell i’d give this a 4/10 overall.