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Virgin’s lovable caveman belly-flops his way onto the Game Gear, but he’s kind of devolved in the process. Instead of a Cro-Magnon hero, we instead got a Neanderthal who lumbers through dark and silent stages. While the core (no pun intended) of what made the Genesis game is intact, the presentation and gameplay have suffered.
Platformers were all the rage during the early ’90s, and in some places, the Master System was still getting new releases. Tec Toy’s version of Fire & Ice tried to give the machine some new blood, but it the gameplay left more people cold than hot. Still, it’s not a bad game and one worth checking out if you’re a fan of Master System imports.
A legendary series like Double Dragon deserved better. Virgin Games somehow managed to take a fan favorite and make it almost unplayable. With all the versions out there, the Game Gear port should have been one of the best. Instead, it’s a farmed-out mess of a game. Stick with other versions… any other versions.
Chuck Rock was fun on the Genesis and Sega CD, but the Master System port left a good deal of that charm back in the stone age. Poor visuals and uninspired gameplay make this the low entry on the franchise’s evolutionary scale, and it plays like a real fossil compared to other platformers. Move on to something else before we run out of puns.
Impressive in the arcades and on the NES, Super Off Road comes to the Game Gear, and it even has two-player support. Lamentably, that’s about all it has, unless you count the slippery control, crushing difficulty, and meager track selection. Maybe it’s better if this truck gets left in the garage…