The world's premier resource for SEGA's arcade and console hardware legacy!
Sometimes, a company gets too complacent with its properties, and decides to farm them out. Big mistake. The result is almost never good, as demonstrated by U.S. Gold’s horrible Journey from Darkness: Strider Returns. It took everything the original game did well and buried it up deep, deep in the Earth, and what was released was decidedly un-Strider-like.
Why do companies release peripherals, only to let them starve to death? Sega’s Menacer often comes to mind whenever Genesis fans ask this very question. There were very few games for it, and one of the best was left in Europe (a rare example of PAL gamers getting a game U.S. Genesis owners didn’t). Body Count was an alien-filled romp packed with great graphics and intense action, and Sega never released it stateside.
As popular as they were in the mid ’90s, it was only a matter of time before Beavis & Butthead made their way to consoles. Their Genesis adventure wasn’t half bad, if you were a fan of the show. Filled with inside jokes and toilet humor, the game had little appeal to those who didn’t appreciate the duo’s brand of humor. Fans, however, loved it.
Despite two other releases, Genesis owners were lucky enough to get a great port of Valis III. Sure, it’s missing some levels and a few cut scenes, but this is essentially the same game, and it was one of the big draws from Renovation upon its debut. Moreover, it has perhaps one of the best endings of the pre-CD era, a perfect cap to the awesome storyline that unfolds between stages (complete with Engrish and everything!).
When Wanderers from Ys was first released on the Turbo Grafx-16 CD-ROM, fans were taken aback by the change in gameplay style. Why had Falcom messed with the formula? Why make it a side-scroller? Needless to say, many gamers turned their back on the game, and it remains something of the black sheep of the franchise to this day. Even with later ports to both the Genesis and SNES (as well as the MSX and even the NES), it still gets no respect. The irony is that Ys III is actually a competent little action/RPG that deserves to be played.