by William Talley, filed in Games, News on May.11, 2016
Ever since the end of the 16 bit era, Sega has been making it’s back catalog of Sega Genesis titles in any way they can, starting with the Sega Smash Pack on Dreamcast, compilations on PS2, Xbox 360, and PS3, re-releases on digital platforms such as android, iOS, and Xbox Live, and more recently Steam. Speaking of Steam, the genesis re-leases were simply bundles of titles with not much of an interface. It was pretty lacking compared to say, Sonic’s Mega Genesis Collection. However, this changed as of a few weeks ago thanks to D3 entertainment. If you own any of Steam’s Sega Genesis games (which include everything from Comix Zone and Streets of Rage to Eternal Champions and Crackdown), you now have access to SEGA Genesis & Mega Drive Classics collection. Upon firing it up, you’ll find yourself in a 3-D room full of 90s Genesis memorabilia, including a couple of issues of Sonic’s comic book. You can adjust any of the options and launch a title by picking it off your shelf. The room’s day and night cycle is controlled by your clock. Not to shabby. However the real treat is that SGMDC now supports the Steam Workshop, Steam’s mod database. That’s right, now you can legally romhack Genesis games. You’ll find everything on the workshop from versions of Sonic featuring Mario and Kirby, Japanese versions of certain games, and what may very well be the greatest Sega mod of all time, “Streets of Rage II except enemies make weird Tim Allen noises when they die”. There is already a selection of Sega games on Steam right now, hopefully this means we’ll see more. Maybe even some Sega CD games, or even Sega Saturn titles!
Magazines have themselves become a retro medium, but what if someone could use that to their advantage in a dying industry? Double-win if you can tie it to retro video games. That’s exactly what we have with our guests this week! Vinnk and Sean welcome co-founders Mike Kennedy and Mark Kaminski of Retro Magazine to talk about their Year 2 Kickstarter, and their favorite retro games. They also stick around for Future Retro and Pile of Shame to share some really interesting games we (or at least some of us) haven’t played before!
Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV: http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/111
Before EA, official sports titles were more spread out, and used in all kind of ways. Games like NBA Jam are hard to come by these days (barring updates to NBA Jam). Before annual installments of Year of the Same Game, you had crazy sports game ideas that were one and done. These weren’t simulators, like we have today, but imaginitive riffs on the sports to make up for any technical proficiency that hardware
of the time may have had. And that’s what makes them Rad Sports Games. Vinnk and Sean talk about their favorite titles, including the aforementioned NBA Jam, Punch Out, Bases Loaded (and a bunch of other weird baseball games), and even Scotti Pippen’s Slam City! If you’ve never played it before, why… it sure is something else. Will we ever see their like again? Aside from EA picking up the IP for NBA Jam from Midway, that is…
Leave your own voicemail at 608-492-1923, or just share your thoughts in the show notes at FamicomDojo.TV: http://famicomdojo.tv/podcast/86
Sonic and Knuckles was the last good Sonic game for the Sega Genesis, and it was released at the height of the 16-bit era. It was basically an expansion pack for Sonic 3, although it could be played by itself. Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles were originally intended to be one game (as a matter of fact, if you do the level select code in Sonic 3, you can hear music from the stages in Sonic and Knuckles, and McDonalds featured a promo based on Sonic 3 that mentioned the Flying Battery Zone, a level which wasn’t seen in the game). However, time constrains reared their ugly head, and Sonic 3 was cut down to 6 zones. However, this turned out to be a blessing in disguise, as we got 2 awesome Sonic games in the same year, and S&K utilized a pretty cool feature. [Read the rest of this entry…]
by William Talley, filed in Lost Classics on Feb.07, 2013
Streets of Rage 2 is a sequel to Sega’s classic beat-em-up, and it signified one of the best reasons to own a Sega Genesis back in the days. Taking control of one of four characters, you set out to rescue your friend from criminal overlord Mr. X. You (and a friend if playing co-op) will battle through 8 levels, such as a tropical island and an amusement park. The graphics are some of the best seen on the Genesis and the soundtrack, composed by Yuzo Koshiro is one of the best soundtracks in a 16 bit video game. The electronica/techno beats will keep your blood pumping as you beat up everyone in your way. It’s available in several Sega compilations, and you can buy it on just about every download service, so if you haven’t played this classic, now is a good time to do so.
Before I started last month’s Halloween motif, I did re-visitations of several old school Disney games. Now that it’s November, I thought I would bring you one more. Of course seeing as how Halloween was 2 days ago, lets take a look at one of Disney’s darker properties: Gargoyles. [Read the rest of this entry…]
by William Talley, filed in Lost Classics on Aug.10, 2012
In the summer of 1994, the big two 16-bit publishers, Nintendo and Sega, released new racing games for their respective systems. Both of them pushed the envelope in graphical capabilities thanks to special chips in their cartridges, and were also fun to play. So which one is better? Well, click below and lets find out. [Read the rest of this entry…]
Region locking is nothing new. It hasn’t taken many different forms, but wasn’t always deliberate either. Many handhelds were exempt from this scheme for the longest time (including the Game Boy and DS series), but with time all things change. SeanOrange and Vinnk discuss the very state of affairs that necessitates the existence of organizations like Operation Rainfall, how they came to be, and where they might go from here.
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