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Roar of the Beast was the first of our two-part review of Sunsoft’s Beauty and the Beast games for the Genesis, and we finish things off today with a full review of the other release, Belle’s Quest. An odd pair of platformers, the two play like a single Sunsoft title that was divided in half. We know how the first one is in terms of quality, but is the second part any better? Apparently not…
Sega’s Eternal Champions is one of the more controversial fighting series out there. Most people tend to either love it or hate it, and the debate only gets stronger as time goes by. The majority during the 16-bit era seems to have been on the side of the game, as Sega made a strong push to promote it and its characters. There was plenty of merchandising, and even some spin-offs, so the franchise was obviously selling. That being said, not everything with the series moniker was quality, as evidenced by the atrocious Game Gear side-scroller Chicago Syndicate, which featured private eye Larcen Tyler. The bland level design is fitting complimented by an awful fighting mechanic, resulting in a game no one ever need play again.
The NFL season is winding down, and the playoff picture is becoming clearer with each passing week (go Pats!). That being said, professional sports can be rough, so why not make your own destiny? There’s no better way to do so than with video games! Electronic Arts’ Madden series has been the benchmark for football for two decades, and in no place was its evolution more notable than on the Genesis. The ’95 installment made major strides in bringing a true football simulation to Sega’s console, but it fumbled in a few areas.
Long after the 16-bit era has ended, gamers in the west are finally beginning to enjoy these titles through emulation and the efforts of companies such as Super Fighter Team. One beat-’em-up that conjures forth images of Capcom’s Knights of the Round is Never Ending Soft’s Shui Hu Feng Yun Zhuan (known to many outside Taiwan as Water Margin: Beneath the Clouds) is a two-player experience that most definitely should have been localized.
The Genesis is no stranger to controversy, especially where violent content is concerned. The current ratings system employed by the gaming industry is in very large part thanks to the initiative Sega took to identify the content of games released on its hardware. Titles like Night Trap and Mortal Kombat made huge waves in the press, but a few other equally violent games were almost completely ignored. One of those, TechnoCop, was probably given the cold shoulder due to one simple fact: it’s not very good. When you wrap dull gameplay in bad graphics and audio, the resulting package isn’t worthy of much notice.