Although my playthrough of Phantasy Star II sputtered to an end well before that game’s completion, my appetite for an older JRPG hadn’t been satiated. There was no shortage of such game on the Sega Genesis Classics compilation I was playing, and with most of them still new to me, I decided to stick with it for the time being. Continuing on with the next entry in the Phantasy Star series – Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom – was an option, but I went ahead and placed it on my backlog. Instead, having learned that Phantasy Star II was the first JRPG released on the Genesis, I thought I’d follow it up with the next chronologically released JRPG (available on this compilation). That game, which debuted half a year later, was Sword of Vermilion.
If you’ve read a few of my reviews, you know I often mention my backlog. I’ve made a concerted effort to work through the treasure trove of games I own or have always wanted to play the last few years, and it’s been a fulfilling process.
It wasn’t too long ago that I completed Phantasy Star, many years after first playing it. Thanks to a number of enhancements that allowed the player to determine how much they valued their time, the SEGA AGES release of Phantasy Star proved to be an enjoyable way to finally roll credits. Well naturally, that set me up to play Phantasy Star II.
One of more than 50 games included in the Sega Genesis Classics compilation, Fatal Labyrinth is unique among its brethren. It is the only roguelike dungeon crawler with role-playing mechanics, and clocking in at only a few hours, it was just what I needed to fill the gaps between other games. Its narrow focus left me wanting, however. Continue reading Fatal Labyrinth [Sega Genesis] – Review→
Truly my foray into the Alien franchise began with Alien Trilogy on the PlayStation, although I’ve barely touched that game. It began in earnest after watching Prometheus, an “unofficial” movie in the series, although it’s about as official as anything else if you ask me. I’ve now watched all movies in the franchise and am ready to dive into the related games and feel confident in my understanding of the source material. It helped too! I can comprehend the mediocrity of Alien 3 on the Sega Genesis a little more knowing that the movie it’s based on is of the same quality.
Of the “five” movies, I’d put Alien 3 at the bottom of the list. This is to say, I didn’t begin playing the Genesis game with much optimism. On the whole, I thought the movie was rather brown and monotonous visually, and the game didn’t shake this aura early on. It looks to have a few different environments to be fair, but I didn’t witness these firsthand. The gameplay was related to the events of the movie too but skewed (and omitted) the storyline in favor of more action.
Most stages tasked Ripley with rescuing the prisoners of Fiorina 161 and combating the aliens. The stages needed to be completed in a set amount of time and this was hard to do the first time through. Most took a few attempts to learn where the aliens popped up and rushed me and where the prisoners were. Locating the prisoners wasn’t so bad (I had to explore the stages anyways, right?) but constantly getting bum rushed by the aliens grew annoying. Often, they’d materialize at the edge of the screen as I progressed. They’d quickly charge and if I didn’t immediately start shooting, I would take damage. This led to much trial and error.
Hostages were abound, but aliens were more prevalent.
This sounds like a lot of negativity towards Alien 3. You want the lowdown though? I only progressed to the third stage and the game has twelve! I had no idea it was that beefy until I did further research. This being the case, I would only take this review as my experiences with a minority of the game and not a comprehensive examination of it. After seeing that I barely scraped the surface I am interested in playing more of it, but not because what I experienced was such a joy to play. I was oddly compelled to continue playing it, even when I felt like many of my deaths were cheap, so take that as you will.
On consoles, Lethal Enforcers was released in a massive cardboard box that could contain the Konami Justifier.
Back when arcades ruled the video game roost, light gun games were widespread. The genre wasn’t as ubiquitous on home consoles, but it seems like each console from back in the day had a light gun. One game with a big presence back then was Lethal Enforcers. It was originally released as an arcade game in 1992, but was ported to the Genesis, Super Nintendo, and Sega CD from 1993-1994. Developed and published by Konami, each version came bundled with the Konami Justifier, a blue light gun modeled after the Cult Python, the iconic .357 Magnum revolver. Enabling cooperative play is the harder to find pink light gun, although it works across all three platforms.
The Genesis and Sega CD versions were very grainy.
Lethal Enforcers contains little narrative, but little is needed. Crime is being committed and as a cop, it’s your (and your partner’s) duty to uphold the law. You’ll shoot through scenes in which bad guys pop their heads up from cover looking to blow yours off. Without quick timing and precise accuracy, game over comes quickly. Once those qualities are on lock-down though, you might just be able to make your city a little cleaner. While that sounded like an ad, that’s pretty much the best way I can sum up the game.
My friend and I played the Genesis and Sega CD versions of Lethal Enforcers and I only noticed one difference between the two versions – the soundtrack of the Sega CD version was of a higher quality. Both games looked identical, although the Sega CD version should look much better than its Genesis counterpart. I imagine the Super Nintendo version is identical to the Genesis version, although without playing it myself, I can’t say with certainty.
My friend and I had a rough go at the game. It was easy to complete the first level, a bank robbery, and even do so without losing lives, but to unlock the next level, we had to have 70% accuracy. We eventually managed this, but the second level, a trip to Chinatown, upped the difficulty, while also asking us to have even better accuracy. The game has five stages and I’m sure this continues to be the case throughout the game.
This scene played like an episode of The Flintstones – my friend and I saw, like, thirty National Rubber Stamp Companies.
I really enjoy light gun games, and Lethal Enforcers seems to be one of the genre’s better examples. It’s tough, but it doesn’t force players to memorize enemy locations. With quick reflexes and good accuracy, anyone can have fun. Playing cooperatively is a treat because at that point, you’re into the experience for at least thirty bucks, but it’s definitely much more fun with a partner. Lethal Enforcers is a fun game, although for the best experience, it will be slightly costly/difficult to track down. It’s worth noting that Lethal Enforcers won’t work on HDTVs so if you’re interested, make sure you have a CRT TV or something you can play it on.
My favorite part about finding a complete copy of X-Men? The sweet poster that it came with!
Maybe my friend and I didn’t like X-Men on the Sega Genesis because we were hoping for something different. We, or at least I, thought it would be a beat ‘em up, more specifically a port of the well regarded 1992 arcade game. But X-Men is more of a platformer than a beat ‘em up and not a very fun one.
X-Men was developed by Western Technologies and published by Sega for the Genesis in 1993. My friend and I were able to assume the role of one of the four selectable characters. We got to pick from Gambit, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, and Cyclops, but there were many more appearances from familiar faces in the form of backup attacks.
After picking our characters we messed around for about a minute in the Danger Room before the game threw us into the first stage. It was evocative of a prehistoric time when cavemen roamed, but instead our enemies were leopardmen and pterodactyls. Combat was pretty basic, a jump button, attack button, and a special button, but it was somewhat clunky and it didn’t feel great.
From the heads-up display, to the graphics, to the combat, I found pretty much every aspect of X-Men to be lackluster.
The stage required us to move upwards besides just to the right, but the camera was kind of wonky with two players on screen. We fell off screen plenty of times, but Jean Grey would save us, as long as we had health. This was hard to get used to, especially with enemies and other threats throughout the stage. Scaling the stages was different but it was difficult to do in tandem. I also didn’t like the animation and the design of the first stage honestly.
My friend and I couldn’t get through the first stage of X-Men. We had a hard time figuring out the camera and it caused us much strife. I played it by myself to get a perspective of the single player and I was able to get farther, but I wasn’t interested in putting much more time into it. The soundtrack was a divisive topic between us. It was very abrasive, making obnoxious sounds, but I liked that it was different, my friend felt differently.
I thought X-Men was a poor game overall. In every department it feels like the game comes up short and I can’t imagine playing through it anytime soon.
Golden Axe was a launch title for the Sega Genesis in North America so it's not one of the better looking games on the platform.
The third beat ‘em up my friend and I played through recently was Golden Axe. Like the Streets of Rage games we played beforehand, it was developed and published by Sega, although Golden Axe was released as an arcade game before being ported to the Sega Genesis, the version we played.
Tyris Flare facing the first boss of the game. Lucky for her, she's found a cockatrice to ride.
Whereas Streets of Rage was set in an eighties or nineties version of a corrupted city, Golden Axe is set in medieval times. The three playable characters set out to rescue the king and princess who has been kidnapped by an evil ne’er-do-well named Death Adder. The plot is typical of the setting, as are the playable characters, a barbarian named Ax Battler, an Amazon named Tyris Flare, and a dwarf named Gillius Thunderhead. Unlike the plots in the Streets of Rage games where they appeared only as text at the beginning and ends, there are story bits between each level in Golden Axe, marking the progress the warriors make.
Throughout the levels my friend and I were attacked by Death Adder’s henchmen. The setting of Golden Axe allowed for the enemies to be more varied compared to Streets of Rage, although there were many who were the same model, just different statistics and a different color. Most of the bosses were repeated throughout the game and towards the end they used unfair tactics, such as the final boss’ proclivity to knocking us down and zapping us with magic, taking two of our health bars in one swoop.
And this brings me to my complaint about Golden Axe. Golden Axewas super tough, even playing on easy my friend and I had a difficult time getting to the seventh stage (eight stages total) and we eventually used a cheat code to skip levels. I normally would want to attempt completing a game without the use of cheat codes, but it seemed like we didn’t have a shot.
An example of the text displayed between levels. Although it's very simple, I appreciated the extra effort in tracking the warriors' journey.
With combos, we could get up to five hits in on an enemy, but it was difficult lining up correctly to do so. And I personally felt like I wasn’t getting enough response after hitting the attack button. I’m not sure exactly why I felt this way, perhaps it was the sound design of the hits, they sounded peculiar, not what I would expect from a metal weapon, or perhaps because I didn’t enjoy the sluggish character movement.
Rather than having a single health bar that depletes in differing amounts depending on the strength of attacks, my friend and I were instead given a health bar that consisted of what turned out to be three hits or combos. This made it feel like we had less of a shot just because we couldn’t take a lot of damage, couple that with the enemies’ ability to keep you in their combo if hit and it lead to frustration for both my friend and I.
But the most frustrating aspect for us was the difficulty of the final boss. We originally got to the seventh stage before losing our continues. We opted then to use a cheat code to select the final level and another to add nine continues. The final boss took an enormous amount of damage and he was able to evade the bulk of our attacks, and he had a little help with the aid of some invincible skeletons. Later on in the fight, he began using magic after knocking us down, taking out two of our health bars. He was difficult and we used plenty of continues but we ultimately conquered him and saved the king and princess.
Golden Axe was a mixed bag for me. A lot of the stages had a similar feel, but there were a few that had interesting settings, and they were fairly short which I liked. The soundtrack seemed meager, but the tracks present were phenomenal and I found myself humming them as we played, especially the first stage’s song. I appreciated having story bits throughout the game rather than at the beginning and ends. But I disliked the reuse of lack of standard enemy design and the similar looks of the majority of the stages. And more importantly, I disliked the way the game felt. It’s a hard concept to quantify but it is ultimately what made me like Golden Axe less than Streets of Rage and Streets of Rage 2. Golden Axe was equally filled with parts I liked and disliked and for that I recommend it only to those seeking out another beat ‘em up.
Max, Blaze, Axel, and Eddie taking out baddies on the box art.
So, before I played Streets of Rage, I thought I disliked beat ‘em ups but it turns out, I really enjoy a solid beat ‘em up, especially with a friend. With Streets of Rage completed I naturally moved onto Streets of Rage 2. Figuring out exactly who had a hand in the game’s development was a little tricky. The credits list people working at Ancient, MNM (MNM Software, later Mindware), Shout!OW (Shout! Designworks), HIC (couldn’t find any info on this), and I’m sure a few were from Sega. Anyways, I’ve always heard talk of Streets of Rage 2, that it was the best in the series and perhaps the genre, so I was anxious to try it for myself.
Streets of Rage 2 begins a year after the events of Streets of Rage. Peace has returned to the city that Adam Hunter, Axel Stone, and Blaze Fielding once called home. Axel and Blaze have retired from the police force and moved out of town while Adam is still an officer and lives on the edge of the city with his kid brother Eddie “Skate” Hunter. On the anniversary of Mr. X’s downfall the gang gets together to celebrate. The next day, Eddie returns to find his older brother gone and their house ransacked. He gets a hold of Axel and Blaze and when they arrive, they notice a picture of Adam tied up at the feet of Mr. X. Not ones to leave a friend behind, Axel and Blaze set out to rescue Adam with the aid of Eddie and Axel’s wrestling friend Max.
Axel, facing four thugs. Notice the enemy's health bar underneath Axel's.
With the cheesy plot of Streets of Rage 2 providing momentum for these four, the battles soon ensued as my friend and I ventured throughout the nameless city once again. While the stages in Streets of Rage definitely had a strong atmosphere with the nighttime setting, the flashing neon lights, the dark, pumping soundtrack, the stages themselves were straightforward and for the most part, similar in setting.
Streets of Rage 2 contains the familiar elements of stage design compared to the original, but took my friend and I through a greater diversity of stages. We ventured through the city streets at the outset, but soon fought through an amusement park, a stadium, and even a jungle. And besides the diversity in backgrounds, the stages themselves were broken into two or three sections themselves. These sections seemed as long as the stages in the original game, which meant the stages in Streets of Rage 2 were longer, while still retaining succinctness.
There were two changes to the gameplay of Streets of Rage 2 that I really enjoyed. First off, the game was much speedier compared to the original. I initially thought character movement in Streets of Rage was a little slow (especially vertical movement) but it wasn’t so slow that I couldn’t adapt or didn’t enjoy the game. This increase in speed appeals to me because it feels like there is more immediate feedback between my inputs and my character’s action, plus I enjoy the game moving at a slightly faster clip.
Axel, fighting the boss of the stadium stage.
The second change I enjoyed was the addition of an enemy health bar whenever they were attacked. Whenever my friend or I would attack an enemy, that enemy’s health bar would appear underneath the health bar of the player that attacked them. This was smart as we had more information on the situation at hand and knew how much more damage we needed to deal to a specific enemy.
The final aspect worth mentioning is the technical improvements of Streets of Rage 2 compared to the original. The character models of allies and enemies alike appeared more detailed (perhaps larger too) and the backdrops of the stages were more animated. The backgrounds had more elements moving and there was generally more going on; overall, the game looked better. I very much enjoyed the soundtrack to Streets of Rage, and the soundtrack for Streets of Rage 2 is as good, if not better. It sounds darker but more importantly, it is much clearer than the original’s.
So, as it turned out, the hype I had heard about Streets of Rage 2 turned out to be accurate. The game was a better experience overall, and that’s saying something as I really enjoyed Streets of Rage. The story isn’t the main motivator for these types of games, they seem too shallow and something that’s tacked on at the beginning and ending of the game, but the gameplay remained as good as Streets of Rage and introduced a few improvements. And from a technical standpoint, the game seemed like a large improvement over the original. I recommend Streets of Rage 2, more so than the original.
Originally released on the Sega Genesis in 1991, there is no love for Adam Hunter on the box art.
I thought I wasn’t into beat ‘em ups. I remember looking down on the genre, perhaps because of the negative reception I saw most of the beat ‘em ups receiving in the mid 2000s. But after my friend casually brought up Streets of Rage, I thought we should play through it. I had at least one copy somewhere and I knew it wouldn’t take too long to complete, and I had never even played any of the Streets of Rage games, a series well regarded by many. After playing through Streets of Rage, I realized my dislike of the genre was feigned.
Blaze Fielding has her hands full on the beachfront stage.
Streets of Rage was developed and published by Sega and released onto the Sega Genesis in 1991. The game’s three protagonists Adam Hunter, Axel Stone, and Blaze Fielding are young cops in a corrupted police force. The city they live in has fallen into the hands of a criminal syndicate, led by Mr. X. He has bankrolled everyone, including the police force, and the city is now in chaos with no law enforcement. They decide to take matters into their own hands (or rather, fists) and set out to take down this criminal syndicate.
With three protagonists, my friend and I each chose one that suited our tastes as they all have slightly different statistics regarding power, speed, and jumping. My friend and I had an easy time with the game. The stages at first were succinct, and longer towards the end, all the while continuously adding more and tougher enemies as we progressed. I enjoyed the length of the stages for the same reason I enjoy books with short chapters. I felt as though I was making continual progress and being rewarded, while the levels themselves never outstayed their welcome.
For the most part, my friend and I stuck to simple combos and the occasional throw. With little experimentation, the game seems simple, but once I flipped through the manual I realized how much depth there was to the fighting. I was shocked to see all the different ways I could handle enemies when I grabbed them, I never attempted pressing the jump button before, I just thought of taking them out, but there turned out to be a lot more I could do, and I tried more on my following playthroughs.
My friend and I traversed through eight stages before finally having our showdown with Mr. X himself. When we confronted him, he gave us the option of joining him and becoming his right hand man. I wanted to take him down and declined, but my friend must have a rogue streak in him as he accepted Mr. X’s offer, or perhaps he accidentally pressed the wrong button. Since there could only be one right hand man, Mr. X made us face off, with my friend eventually taking me out. Mr. X had more in store for my friend however. He didn’t accept him just yet; he instead sent him back to the sixth stage and forced him to fight his way back, and this time alone. After burning all his continues on our duel, he didn’t feel like working his way back to Mr. X.
Yuzo Kushiro's soundtrack is phenomenal, as evidenced by his copyright on the title screen.
On a later playthrough, by myself this time, I reached Mr. X fairly easily, although just before I got to him I lost a great deal of lives. The final stage has a showdown with the first four bosses of the game, and while I had a handle on most by this point, the fourth boss was a chore. The fourth boss was a pair of females who focused on jumping and grabs. I found the timing difficult to pin down for attacking and evading, and with two of them, I couldn’t really grab and do damage to one, knowing that I was vulnerable to the second one. I finally conquered them and had my showdown with Mr. X. He was quite cheap too. He moved much faster than anyone I had encountered before, myself included, and I believe I could only damage him with a lead pipe that was lying on the ground. The lead pipe has a great range and is powerful, but swinging it takes time. And throughout the battle, Mr. X summons some of the powerful enemies so I had plenty to do throughout the fight.
I came away enjoying Streets of Rage more than I thought I would. I had a blast playing through it with a friend, and even on single player playthroughs I enjoyed the journey. The game wasn’t too difficult, although I refrained from playing on higher difficulties, and I’d say it takes about an hour and a half to complete. The gameplay was deeper than I originally anticipated, the environments were varied as were the enemies, although some enemies were palette swaps of earlier ones, and the soundtrack was surprisingly phenomenal. I played through Streets of Rage a few times and highly recommend it.
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My Brain on Games 