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With all the later, more advanced offerings by Sega and Electronic Arts, most people tend to forget the early sports games released on the Genesis. Some of them are rightly forgotten, but others such as Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf, still hold up pretty well. Granted, you’re not going to get the full PGA experience, but it’s still a fun way to spend an afternoon.
At the height of the 16-bit era, an elite group of creators enjoyed creative freedom at Sega that many developers today would kill for. The Sega Technical Institute was the home of some of the brightest minds in the industry, including Mark Cerny, Peter Morawiec, and Roger Hector. Among them was a young artist who would go on to work on one of the most controversial titles in Sega’s history, Sonic Xtreme. Chris Senn saw his fair share of interesting things while he worked at the House that Sonic Built, and he recently chatted with Sega-16 about his experiences.
We all love to pop in a game and enjoy what it offers, never really stopping to consider all the work that goes into making that little case of plastic and silicon turn into something worth playing. Often, the development process is much harder than one would think, and occasionally, it’s downright horrible. One game that experienced more than its fair share of problems was the Adventures of Willy Beamish on the Sega CD. From difficulties getting authorization from Sega to working around the Sega CD’s terribly slow drive, poor Willy almost never got off the ground.
Gamers looking for a challenging and impressive action game need look no further than Sega’s Adventures of Batman & Robin. Awesome graphical effects and some great boss battles make this one a classic. Sega-16 recently chatted with Chris George, a former artist for Adventures developer Clockwork Tortoise, and he had quite a bit to say about his time at Sega and the creation of this memorable game.
Late in 1992, Sega took Accolade to court for releasing unlicensed software on the Genesis. The resulting court decision sent shock waves through the gaming industry, setting a precedent about the legality of reverse engineering. The practice didn’t start with the Accolade case, though, and there’s a rich history of how it played out legally before Sega’s case set the law in stone. Sega-16 examines the events leading up to the landmark Sega vs. Accolade case in our latest feature Genesis Firsts: Reverse Engineering.