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The Genesis debuted in 1989 with a wide variety of games from all genres, sports included. Alongside the great Tommy Lasorda Baseball and the simple, yet fun Arnold Palmer Golf was a soccer game that well, sucked. To be honest, World Championship Soccer wasn’t even fun when it came out, and with the plethora of incredible soccer games to be had on the system, there’s no reason on Earth to play it today.
When it was first released in 1994, Virtua Racing wowed gamers with its incredible use of polygons and its $100 price tag. The exorbitant cost (the highest for the time) was due to it being the one and only game to ever make use of the powerful Sega Virtual Processor, or SVP chip. Until the 32X got a port a year later, this was the only way to play the arcade hit at home, and it was darn close to having a real Model 1 arcade board. It may be outdated now, but Virtua Racing’s place in Genesis history is assured.
Action games are a dime a dozen, but sometimes a few come up with an interesting idea. Sega’s Jewel Master tries something new by putting the weapons system into two handfuls of rings, each with its own power. These magical rings can be combined for all sorts of neat power, and though the game didn’t fufill its potential as hoped, it was still a fun little romp that deserves to be checked out.
Boxing has been referred to as the “sweet science,” but its history in video games has been more sweet and sour. From gems like Punch Out! and Fight Night to duds like Buster Douglas Knockout Boxing, there’s been a bit of everything over the years. Sega threw its hat in the ring several times during the Genesis era, and one of its better tries was Greatest Heavyweights, which pitted many of boxing’s most famous legends against each other.
The Genesis launch had a pretty good line up of games that tried to cover as wide a range of genres as possible. Zoom! made a valiant attempt to fill the maze game niche, and while it demonstrated some serious potential, it was ultimately undone by repetitive gameplay and extreme simplicity.