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Remember Battlezone? The first-person experience of driving a tank through a battlefied was revolutionary for its time, and the formula has cropped up now and then since the ’80s. Dynamix used it for its Sega CD space fighter Stellar Fire, though it seems the company forgot to include the most important part of the experience: the fun. Stellar Fire offers a different type of gameplay, compared to other shooters on the Sega CD, but just how much it has to give we’ll leave to you to determine.
Like pirate? Who doesn’t? Back before Orlando Bloom an Johnny Depp made them super popular again, there was a moderately popular cartoon show based on a trio of pirates who had adventures in another land (planet?). From 1991 to 1993, The Pirates of Darkwater sought to reboot the genre, and while it wasn’t entirely successful, it did spawn a pretty decent action game with RPG elements.
taken great pains to ensure that there’s a game in the series for every console out there, and the Genesis, being dominant during its heyday, got just about every 2D version released. The last one to come to Sega’s wonder box was Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, which included everything but the kitchen sink (though I think there was a coupon in the manual to send away for one), and the debate still rages today as to how it holds up versus the SNES version.
Epyx scored a series of hits in the late ’80s with its Games series, and the California edition was ported to every console ever conceived by man. Ok, maybe not that many, but it sure does seem like everyone had a chance to play California Games, no matter what console or computer they had. The Genesis got a port of its own, courtesy of Ecco wonder group Novotrade, but what could have been the best version of all turned out to be a major letdown. After spending time with this one and seeing all the lost potential, we think someone at Novotrade deserved to be smacked in the head with a solid steel footbag.
In 1990, Sega was riding high on the success of its licensed sports games. Joe Montana Football was a solid seller, and the company was ecstatic to have secured the license of the new heavyweight boxing champ – the man who defeated “Iron” Mike Tyson – James “Buster” Douglas. Unfortunately, Sega apparently made more of an effort to get Douglas’ moniker on the box than it did to make the actual game around it, as the licensed Final Blow game it used was mediocre at best. To add insult to injury, Douglas lost his championship belt to Evander Holyfield in his very first title defense a mere nine months later.