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The Bitmap Bros. are renowned for their excellent games, titles that are both well-presented and that play great. Speedball on the Genesis is a great example of that, but the Master System port, done by Mirrorsoft/Image Works, doesn’t fare as well. Everything that made the Genesis version so good is missing, so there’s no reason to bother with this version.
The battle for control of Arrakis rages on the Sega CD! Based on the classic Frank Herbert novel and taking a visual cue from the 1984 film, Dune blends action and strategy to create a solid hybrid that may be too easy for hardened strategy buffs and too bare-bones for Dune fans.
Billiards is a much loved game in the United States. Unfortunately, most Americans are unfamiliar with the game snooker (read more about it here), something our friends in England greatly enjoy. There was even a PAL Mega Drive release that understandably never came stateside, and it’s actually very good.
Many animators of the 16-bit era had a special love for the Genesis and its user-friendly hardware. With it, they were able to make some incredibly fluid games that still look beautiful today. Mike Dietz, as the director of animation for both Virgin Interactive Entertainment and Shiny Entertainment, shares that sentiment. Dietz was involved with such classics as Disney’s Aladdin, Cool Spot and the Earthworm Jim series, and he recently chatted with us about his time with the Genesis.
Licensed games rarely work. Usually, the train wreck software that accompanies a movie is a total failure due to horrible gameplay or just an uninspired cash run banking on the property’s name (hello Transformers movie games!). Sometimes, however, developers get it right. Spot Goes to Hollywood was a game that showed signs that the industry was beginning to understand that justice could be done to marketing gimmicks, and it was successful enough to be released during two hardware generations at once. Though the isometric perspective might put off some gamers, this is definitely a neat little platformer that should definitely be played.