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The early days of the Genesis were marked by big name licenses attached to… not so big games. Buster Douglas Knockout Boxing, Tommy Lasorda Baseball, and Pat Riley Basketball were just a few of the titles that were pushed based on their endorsements, rather than their features and gameplay. Pat Riley was particularly offensive in this regard, sporting – no pun intended – dull gameplay and some wacky physics.
When you think “racing game,” you tend to think of blinding speed and screeching tires. Few people, if any, would think of loop-de-loops and… cows? Yes, the latter can only bring one racer to mind – that of Atari’s Hard Drivin’, which received a Genesis port by Tengen. Was the game too much for the stock console to handle, or was the old black box capable of reproducing a true driving simulator?
Electronic Arts’ NHL series is highly revered by gamers, and given the longevity it has seen (rivaled only by that of EA’s other juggernaut, the Madden games), something is obviously right with the series. Nowhere was this more apparent than in the 1994 edition of the franchise, which turned out to be the only game in the series to receive a Sega CD version. In 1994, Sports fans needed no other reason to reconsider a purchase of the add-on once this baby was released.
Street basketball is well-represented in video games. From early classics like Jordan vs. Bird to the immensely popular NBA Jam series, there are quite a few games from which to choose (so long as you ignore White Men Can’t Jump on the Jaguar!). Jammit, Virgin Games’ entry on the court, may lack the real players of NBA Jam, but it sure does make up for it in attitude!
They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and by that logic Capcom’s Street Fighter II must be blushing like a virgin bride on her wedding day. The amount of clones out there that shamelessly rip off the arcade classic is staggering, and it seemed that everyone tried to cash in on the craze at one time or another. Kaneko’s Deadly Moves, also released on the SNES as Power Moves, was one such cash run. To say it compares poorly to its source material would be a major understatement, and one wonders just how inspired (or drunk) its developers really were when they set out to create it.