Top 20 Worst Mega Drive / Genesis games

[Azathoth]

Plus some of the music is great.

GFII is possibly one of my top 5 Sega soundtracks of the entire 16-bit era. Really nice compositions that fit the action well, and the subtle "pew pew" of the auto fire in the background can really set me in the nostalgic state of mind to back when the game was fresh. Along with Cosmic Carnage and a few other games, I can recognize it as a rather mediocre gaming experience that I sometimes play just to hear all the tunes from the levels.

[True Grave]

The Genesis port of Galaxy Force II was not bad at all. As for it being beyond what the system could handle, given that it was released fairly early in the console's lifespan i'm sure a better port could have been made later on when developers could get the most out of the system.

[KimbleJustice]

A good amount of Galaxy Force II defense here. I'll answer various points the best I can to try and justify the game's selection.

-I wanted a scaler shooter in the first half of the list, as generally I don't think it was a genre that the MD was able to pull off all that well - so already I've got a pretty limited choice. Obviously the better games in the genre are out immediately - Panorama Cotton, Burning Force, Space Harrier II (not exactly well received, but I like it - I love Space Harrier in general though) and the 32X After Burner/Space Harrier ports. The more average games are also knocked out: After Burner II/III, G-LOC, Night Striker...I'm left with almost nothing after all that - really, just Galaxy Force II and Super Thunder Blade. The spot would have probably gone to Super Thunder Blade, and perhaps should have - but I already had one game in the list that I'd covered in detail in another video (Strider Returns) that I wasn't going to remove, and I'd done the same for Super Thunder Blade - I already have a pretty full review of me slating it. So, the spot went to Galaxy Force II because I hadn't already covered it.

-The music...hell yeah, the music is great. Sega scaler shooters pretty much have fantastic music across the board, and this game isn't an exception - and the Mega Drive's music isn't all that far off from the Arcade's. The music and sound fx are the best part of the game without a doubt.

-But that's just where it stops for me - the game's so disappointing in every other regard. As I've mentioned previously, I'm a fan of Galaxy Force II - as an Arcade title, it's held up brilliantly. But so much of the game's appeal is based around two things: First there was the game's machine, which was even grander than After Burner's - of course, we'll obviously be setting that aside as it's silly to criticise the port on these grounds. In the main, there's the insane graphics and speed - how much is going on, how fast it is and all that. True Grave mentions that they may have been able to create a better port of GFII later on in the console's life...I'm not so sure, really. At the very least, it would have to be a 32X game - it wouldn't have been arcade perfect, but it would have been closer. Even the Saturn's version of GFII was noticeably not arcade perfect - the first time anyone could experience an arcade perfect port of GFII was when it came out for the PS2 as part of the Sega Ages line. It was an incredibly advanced game for 1988, and even now, it's still visually impressive - the peak of what Sega could do with their super scaler technology.

-The Mega Drive version of GFII has to strip all these important elements away - the sprites can't be nearly as big, you have basic flat colours instead of textures...but when you take all that away, what's left? The game's appeal was as a technical showcase - for me, it simply can't survive on gameplay alone. I've seen underpowered machines pull off some brilliant coin-op conversions in the past, but with this one it just wasn't feasible, because they had to take away the whole reason for the game's existence in order to port it to the Mega Drive. It feels like such a bad idea to me. A coin-op conversion should try to give you that same experience, only in the home - and this game just can't do it.

-Is this harsh? Yes, probably. But perhaps they could have done things a bit differently. Perhaps they could have tried to create a more intense and less faithful scaler shooter, even if this would have certainly hurt the graphics more (the Space Harrier II approach, in short). If they'd done that, they might have had better results - it wouldn't have been any more faithful to the arcade, but the game itself would be more satisfying - and in fact, the increased action may have made the game feel closer to the arcade in spirit. By trying to make a faithful conversion, CRI end up striking out because all they can really do is remove lots of things - they can't add anything.

A long post (again...), but hopefully it makes sense as a justification. I'm glad that debating's opened up on this.

[knicksfan89]

sorry for my belated post on this but wanted to put my two cents into heavy nova, man I cannot believe how awful that game is after a intro sequence and music that good, after that they ballsed up in spectacular fashion

[Vector]

Are you the same guy who talks about the Spectrum and Renegade 3 ? How can you like the Spectrum, the characters are black and white in games with 4 colors as a background. I mean did that come out before c64 ?

[Kamahl]

Are you the same guy who talks about the Spectrum and Renegade 3 ? How can you like the Spectrum, the characters are black and white in games with 4 colors as a background. I mean did that come out before c64 ?

There's spectrum games that look better than the C64 versions, Zynaps for example. The typical low res look of the C64 is horrible.

[KimbleJustice]

I've never talked about Renegade 3...that's an atrocious game.

As far as the Spectrum goes, the games may have been rather limited graphics wise but the games were very creative - so many more inventive games were made on the Speccy than there were on the C64. Not to say that the C64 was bad, but I'll always greatly prefer the Speccy. Isn't this place dedicated to an old machine anyway?

[Vector]

Isn't this place dedicated to an old machine anyway?

Yeah...and ?

Edit :

My fault, thought this was you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOYGAfmH8WI

[Mr Smith]

Are you the same guy who talks about the Spectrum and Renegade 3 ? How can you like the Spectrum, the characters are black and white in games with 4 colors as a background. I mean did that come out before c64 ?

How can you not like the Speccy? This post is a disgrace to humanity. When I rule the world, the Speccy traitors shall be the second batch of purge's, right after the Raul deniers.

[Vector]

How can you not like the Speccy? This post is a disgrace to humanity. When I rule the world, the Speccy traitors shall be the second batch of purge's, right after the Raul deniers.

Who said I didn't like it ? I didn't. Re read. I asked people how they could like it though being some characters are black and white.

Reading isn't much if you can't comprehend the sentences.

[Kamahl]

Who said I didn't like it ? I didn't. Re read. I asked people how they could like it though being some characters are black and white.

Mr. Smith can't be banned.
As for your question, I can't either (if it's really the monochrome Spectrum games), the spectrum has plenty of games that aren't monochrome.

[Vector]

Cool thanks for answering. Yeah I only post that gif back because he posted the same gif for some reason in his reply after he quoted me and didn't comprehend my post correctly. I never said I liked or disliked the Spectrum or C64. Plus they were questions.