General Chaos

Genre: Strategy Developer: Game Refuge Publisher: Electronic Arts Players: 1-4 Released: 1993

General Chaos is a 16-bit Genesis game released in 1993, so I’ll compare the graphics to other games to it at the time. In this classic game for the Sega Genesis by Electronic Arts, you control an army of five soldiers and your object is to take out the other set of soldiers in team combat play. You use about eight to twelve soldiers running around on screen at once over very nicely looking terrain, detailed down to every notch, with not much slowdown at all. There really isn’t much variation between all the soldiers at all; some are chubby, some are pretty skinny, of course their uniforms and helmets are camouflaged color and look like they came out of the army. The various terrains are just a one screen battlefield, complete with barb wire and fencing. So, they did a really nice job in the graphics department.

The sound is probably the weakest part of the game, as there isn’t much music at all and it’s mostly just the sound effects during the game play. Thankfully, all the sound effects are pulled off clean and crisp and everything sounds like it should, like the gunfire and explosions. There should’ve been, however, room for more music in this game.

Here’s how the game works: it’s five-on-five warfare between two teams. You choose your set of five men before every battle and there are various types of soldiers like a flame thrower, a gunman, and a bazooka launcher guy. I believe you get limits on how many of each kind of man you can use. A battle proceeds and if one of your men loses all his life, he’ll lay out on the field for a certain amount of time, during that time, you can move your soldier by him and by pressing the C button, you call out for a medic to come and “revive” him, and he’ll be brought back into battle. There are also power-ups on the field to pick up for newer weapons.

For play modes, there’s a campaign mode where you and up to three of your buddies (with a multi-player adaptor of course) can go against the computer in a set of battles with each proceeding one being harder. There is also a mode where up to four players can team up or go against each other in combat play. The last mode is boot camp, which is essentially a training mode, so you’ll get to learn the game mechanics and adapt to playing the game, learning everything about all the units, calling out medics, etc.

Believe it or not, General Chaos is really a simple and addictive game. The rudimentary war concept makes it so much fun to blast your opponents away. Throw in some human opponents and you’ve got yourself even more fun coming. For those who aren’t familiar with strategy games, you can always get them to practice in the training mode, an option which a lot of games didn’t have at the time of this release in 1993.

This has got to be one of the most underrated games for the Genesis. I’m pretty sure just about anyone can pick it up and play and get into it, just like that. Will this new concept of play get you hooked? I was personally glued to this game forever, so if you happen to run across it in a bargain bin or used game shop, it would probably be worth the $2-5 price, because you’ll easily be in for countless hours of fun.

SCORE: 8 out of 10