Super Mario World 64

Remember when I used to talk about unlicensed games? Good times... or not.

Anyway it's time to relive the horrors, with the demented holy grail of Sega Mega Drive tat, Super Mario World 64. First spotted back in 2008, this abysmal piece of garbage has finally succumbed to preservation efforts after almost five years of struggles. It's a good day for the world, and by extension, that means it's a bad day too.

Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings

Look it's almost topical. Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings, a Sega Mega Drive (and Super Nintendo) platform game for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. This is their legacy. I'm so very sorry.

Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad

...on Blog Squirrel.

Can't get this on Nintendo!.. or Sega... officially. Mr. Nutz: Hoppin' Mad, once set to hit your Sega Mega Drives in early 1994, before being cancelled by the man, plunging the world into fifteen years of misery and turmoil.

Thankfully we have been liberated from the darkness and oppression, as we now have both prototype source code and working ROMs of this game to play with. No doubt a good day for the world.

OutRunners

My Sega Retro journey brings me to this disaster - OutRunners for the Sega Mega Drive. What joy.

Puyo Puyo Tsuu

Look at this. Puyo Puyo Tsuu for the Mega Drive, an iteration of one of the best puzzle games ever made. A game you all need to play, but yet I can almost guarantee nobody will, mostly due to its failure of its aesthetics to appeal to anyone. First impressions are key, and Tsuu looks like another piece of worthless Japanese tat. Isn't it great that looks can be deceiving?

Skitchin'

Remember that totally radical time we had in the 90s?! Dude those times were gnarly, when we hung out and caught some waves or something.

Wouldn't it be awesome if like, a video game could totally sum up the experience. Like 1994's Skitchin' for the Sega Mega Drive. It's like, "skating" and "hitching a ride", but too x-treme to deal with Gs.

Yeah.

Tiny Toon Adventures 3

Another soul saved.

Look, it's Tiny Toon Adventures 3, an unlicensed Mega Drive platformer from the far east which has been recently dumped and tailored to the needs of emulators by the folks of Sonic/Sega Retro. It's mediocre!

Pac-Attack

Hey so you know what Pac-Man, that maze game with a yellow circle eating other yellow circles needs? A Tetris-esque spin-off of course!

Oh look here's one, Pac-Attack from 1993. Also known as Pac-Panic, through fears Europeans would interpret this as gang violence or something. It's one of the few Pac-Man spin-offs that's amazing in its own right, though I say this having not played the majority of them.

Top Fighter 2000 MK VIII

Fighting games generally aren't my style, but they soon become my style when one allows Muhammed Ali to punch Michael Jordan in the face.

It's Top Fighter 2000 MK VIII, unlicensed tripe for the Sega Mega Drive. What happened to the seven earlier versions? Who knows, who cares. Apparently it's a pretty awful game but they said that about the other two as well. Will this one break the trend?

Bible Adventures

Are you ready for the potentially fourth best religious-themed video game ever?! It's Bible Adventures for the Sega Mega Drive. Unlicensed 1995 tripe by Wisdom Tree, Bible Adventures was aimed at crazy people in American society and failed to take note of important industry standards. Sounds like a blast!

Zero Wing

I don't know about you, but if I were on the way to destruction after war began in 2101, I think I'd prefer a spaceship with a wing.

But who am I to dictate the engineering standards of ninety years in the future? I shall instead review the infamous Zero Wing, a 1991 Sega Mega Drive port of the 1989 arcade game. It's a horizontal shoot-'em-up whose fanbase mostly exists of people who get their thrills from poor sentence structure. It's a also game great.

Adventurous Boy

That was one long radio show.

"Unlicensed drivel!? I thought you'd grown out of that, Squirrel!". Not quite. Top time travelling duck fan BanjoSonic likes to feed me forgotten pirate games once in a while. This is one such game, Adventurous Boy for the Sega Mega Drive. It's a broken Fantasy Zone clone... how could I resist?

Space Harrier II

Space Harrier Harder

Space Harrier II is one of those games people love to hate. Released for the Sega Mega Drive in 1988 (as a launch title in Japan!), it's aged pretty poorly and is has always lived in the shadow of its older arcade brother. But that doesn't mean it's a bad game... does it?

Truxton

Not quite Cosmic Carnage.

It's TRUXTON, for the Sega Mega Drive, one of many shoot-'em-ups by Toaplan before the company were... "shot up" by bankruptcy... or something. It's a fairly forgettable shooter by today's standards but this blog is king when it comes to forgettable shoot-'em-ups. Or at least a member of the forgettable shoot-'em-up royal family.

Two Crude Dudes

Because who needs sense in video games?

I often long for a simpler time where you could throw out any old garbage into a video game and still be able to entertain. 1991's Two Crude Dudes (or "Crude Buster", if you're Japanese) is a prime example of something so stupid it can't help but be good, yet it also stands as something the industry would refrain from releasing today. Can't risk scores below seven out of ten!

Race Drivin'

People like to dismiss the Sega Mega Drive as being a console that can only cope with 2D graphics... and for the most part, there's a good reason for that. It's a lovely system but even with blast processors the world of three dimensions is a little out of its reach. That's not to say people didn't try to make 3D games for it though!

One attempt is 1993's Race Drivin', originally an Atari arcade game. It's a sequel (or "update") to Hard Drivin' which had similar ideas - make a full polygonal driving game to prove that Atari were still industry leaders. Of course, by 1993 they weren't, and Race Drivin' hence falls flat on its face. Here's why.

Rock 'n Roll Racing (Mega Drive)

A Super Nintendo classic, I'm sure you'll agree. So here's the Mega Drive version.

Released in 1994 by a pre-Warcraft Blizzard Entertainment, it's an... isometric racing game, and a good one too. Makes you wonder why the company only devote their time to RTSes and MMORPGs when they could be putting Monster Trucks on simple circuits to the plagiarized tones of Black Sabbath.

Top Gear 2

Tonight, I take this Mega Drive game round our track, and a violent goose is the star in our reasonably priced car.

Look, it's the Clarkson-less Top Gear 2, the sequel to... well... guess. Among other systems it was brought to the Sega Mega Drive, and is a fine example of a pseudo 3D racing game from the early 1990s. I don't talk about these sorts of games much, so here's an opportunity for me to do so.

Arcade Classics

Classic game compilations are great. With the power of modern technology the expensive arcade machines of years long past can now be played in the comfort of your own home, for cheap, instantly. Of course in some cases such as when Sega hop on the re-release train, you don't get the best results. Sega's classic "cat in a blender" additions to many Mega Drive musical scores repeatedly give your childhood that extra level of cringe, but others seem to do a reasonable job.

But what were things like before the days of emulation? Like this, Arcade Classics on the Sega Mega Drive (and Sega Game Gear). Can they get it right? Is it even possible to get Pong wrong? Better find out.

Super Skidmarks

A.k.a. Super Off Road II: Super Off Road Harder.

There were a lot of games like this in the 1990s because rendering racing games from any other perspective put huge strains on the hardware. This one, which by the way contains no skidmarks whatsoever, is a little-known game developed by Acid Software and published by Codemasters (of Micro Machines fame) for the Sega Mega Drive (and the Amiga... and once again the trainwreck that was the Amiga CD32) in 1995. It's not too shabby.