The world's premier resource for SEGA's arcade and console hardware legacy!
SegaSonic The Hedgehog was one of the few games in the franchise to not see a home release, due to its trackball control scheme. Thankfully, it can still be played via emulation in MAME. It may be short, but it’s a fun three-player romp that was great to play with friends. Staff writer Doug Jackson spent some time with it, so read on for his impressions!
Wrestling games are a dime a dozen now, but there was a time when Genesis owners had literally none to play. After teasing us with a blurb for Wrestle War in two of its pack-in posters, Sega decided against releasing the game in America. Maybe the company knew better after all, as we really weren’t missing much. Bland, generic characters and stiff gameplay made it a title to forget, and we could always play Tecmo World Wrestling on the NES. At least that one was good.
Today, many console gamers enjoy the tower defense genre of games. The genre wasn’t so well known back in 1990, when Atari games released Rampart in the arcades. Featuring play for up to three people simultaneously, it was ported to every console known to man, including the Genesis. Handled by Tengen, the 16-bit version is actually pretty darn good.
In the arcades, Atari’s T-MEK was a monstrous and intimidating machine. The massive cab fit two players and could be linked to another, making for some awesome four-player matches. The 32X version, however, lost that great multi-player capability in the conversion (along with most of the game’s charm), and if you listened hard enough, you could hear the poor little mushroom panting as it strained under the T-MEK’s engine. I guess it’s true that sometimes, a game is better left in the arcade.
Taito released plenty of games for the Genesis, but its Sega CD library wasn’t quite as robust. Some of the games that made it onto the add-on seem to have a “B grade” quality to them, and after playing The Ninja Warriors for the Japanese Mega CD, that assessment might actually be too generous. Granted, the source material isn’t that deep to begin with, but one questions why the CD technology seemed to only be used for redbook audio. What a waste.