Upcoming Reviews & Features

[Melf]

A new board means a new thread for upcoming features. There's plenty of cool stuff coming down the pike, and in the next few weeks I'll be working on:

Hacks & Homebrews: A new series that will discuss all the neat Genesis-related projects people are working on. I already have content for the first three installments, with the first going live this Tuesday.

Stories from the Book of Genesis Vol. 4: Another story about the weird stuff that happened while trying to satisfy my Sega fix! Ironically enough, it's also Wonder Boy related.

Target Earth review: Been meaning to do this one for a while. Now that PS2 is out of my system, TE is next!

I may also end up doing another "History of" article, or even another interview. It depends on how things pan out.

[Melf]

"Lost in the Arcade Vol. 1" is under way. There were so many great coin-ops that never made it to the Genesis, Sega CD, or 32X, that I felt we could do more than one installment. The first one should be up sometime this week, if time allows.

I still have that Target Earth review to do, and I'm trying to line up some more interviews too

[Drixxel]

Target Earth's a good one. If I hadn't have read in an earlier post that you were planning to whip up an evaluation, I'd have done one myself. I look forward to the review.

[Melf]

I'll be doing a "History of" on Ecco the Dolphin this weekend, and can hopefully whip up that Target Earth review this coming week. I was just so swamped this past week that I could barely pump out a single article for Sega-16.

[lordofduct]

ECCO!!!!!!

Don't forget Ecco Jr., I always wanted to try that game just because it was Ecco even though I heard it sucked.

[j_factor]

Ecco Jr. doesn't suck per se, it's just really lame.

[Menosa Torres]

Why is Ecco Jr. lame? is it not as good as the first two games?

[Melf]

It plays the same but is targeted at kids. It doesn't have the famed Ecco difficulty, but isn't that bad.

[Melf]

The article on the history of Street Fighter is in the can, and I'm probably going to do another "Side by Side" feature on the 32X vx. Saturn versions of Virtua Fighter.

[Electroman]

Melf-

My top 5 Sega mysteries that someday I would love to know answers to:

1.) Why were the original Sega games such high quality (1989-1991) and what what programming teams of Sega were responsible for them?

2.) Sort of related to #1 above, why early games like Altered Beast, Ghostbusters, Rambo III, PS2, Forgotten Worlds, Super Hang On (to name a few) seem to have similar Genesis fonts, sound effects, music fonts, and excellent artwork and graphic quality yet after the Sonic era and popularization of Sega why it seem to start to go downhill. Sega lost their arcade "flavor" if you will.

3.) Why Sega's ports of Capcom games were amongst the best programmed and highest quality? MERCS, Forgotten Worlds, Strider; Final Fight CD they were all top quality stuff. Did they outsource? What help, if any did they get from Capcom?

4.) Why and how did Konami suddenly release a ton of <QUALITY> games starting in 1994(correct me if I'm wrong)? What is the story of them, how long have they made Megadrive software, and what made them chose the games they did? Why no Metal Gear, Salamander, Gradius, or other games that would have ported so perfectly on the hyper fast 68K?

5.) <Controversial, no doubt> Why Sega of America's programming team (people who did Eternal Champions, Batman, Chakkan, etc)'s had such a wierd color palette in their games? They knew nothing about dithering apparently, and their games IMO were just suckworthy IMO. Other games like Vectorman were good however. Mysteries of Sega America games... revealed.

[StRiDA CoL]

wait
Melf you were making a history of street fighter?
and u stopped?!?!

WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!?????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Melf]

Melf-

My top 5 Sega mysteries that someday I would love to know answers to:

1.) Why were the original Sega games such high quality (1989-1991) and what what programming teams of Sega were responsible for them?

I'd love to find this out myself.

2.) Sort of related to #1 above, why early games like Altered Beast, Ghostbusters, Rambo III, PS2, Forgotten Worlds, Super Hang On (to name a few) seem to have similar Genesis fonts, sound effects, music fonts, and excellent artwork and graphic quality yet after the Sonic era and popularization of Sega why it seem to start to go downhill. Sega lost their arcade "flavor" if you will.

I feel this way as well. There's a certain flavor to those early titles that got lost after Sonic arrived. I think it had something to do with the developers getting the hang of the system, and expanding out in an attempt to stand out from other games. This seems to be true with a lot of 1st generation titles every console cycle.

3.) Why Sega's ports of Capcom games were amongst the best programmed and highest quality? MERCS, Forgotten Worlds, Strider; Final Fight CD they were all top quality stuff. Did they outsource? What help, if any did they get from Capcom?

It wouldn't surprise me if Capcom gave them everything they needed to make the games as good as possible. I do think SOJ did them all though.

4.) Why and how did Konami suddenly release a ton of <QUALITY> games starting in 1994(correct me if I'm wrong)? What is the story of them, how long have they made Megadrive software, and what made them chose the games they did? Why no Metal Gear, Salamander, Gradius, or other games that would have ported so perfectly on the hyper fast 68K?

Well, remember that no company that made software for the NES and SNES (in its beginning) could release for other consoles. This ended when Atari and Sega won their anti-trust suit against Nintendo in court. Once the ban was lifted, they went ahead with all their proposed projects.

We may not have gotten those games, but we did get a few of the big guns (Castlevania, Conta), as well as an awesome exclusive with RKA.

5.) <Controversial, no doubt> Why Sega of America's programming team (people who did Eternal Champions, Batman, Chakkan, etc)'s had such a wierd color palette in their games? They knew nothing about dithering apparently, and their games IMO were just suckworthy IMO. Other games like Vectorman were good however. Mysteries of Sega America games... revealed.

The guys who did EC (Deep Water), were actually pretty adept with the hardware. They're the only ones to ever make the Sega CD display 256 colors simultaneously. The guys who did Chakan also did Ecco, but I'm not sure about Batman Returns.

StRiDa: Lol, by "in the can" I mean that it's done and ready to go. Look for it soon!

[StRiDA CoL]

Dam

Im and i-d-i-o-t-h (group x)

[StRiDA CoL]

O
and Melf

there needs to be a hack and homebrew on that
SoR hombrew beats of rage

[Melf]

I was thinking about that. An article about the game and an interview may be in order. I'll definitely keep that in mind.