Welcome to another week of My Life With SEGA, this week A.J. has two games to review for the 32x. Shadow Squadron and Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000. Never heard of them? Well, press play and educate yourself.
“In this “classic” episode of My Life with SEGA, I show some love for SEGA’s most maligned add-on; the 32X. You’re not got getting just one lousy review, but two! Shadow Squadron and Zaxxon’s Motherbase 2000.”
I was never fortunate or rich enough growing up to own a 32X. Actually I never meet anyone around the time that actually had one. So its good to see A.J. crack down some 32x reviews, even if the game pisses him off.
“It’s another “classic” episode from the vault. If you thought my review of Cliffhanger was scathing, just you wait until you endure the horror that is Motocross Championship for the SEGA Genesis 32X.”
Most of the retro Sonic titles are being removed from the Japanese Virtual Console service. There has ben no word if these games will also be removed from the American and European Virtual Console. Games removed from Virtual Console can’t be bought by any new users, though they can be redownloaded once bought.
The Sonic titles being removed:
Gaming site Playr2 recently polled 1,411 gamers, asking them to vote for the best retro console, and a whopping 61% chose the SEGA Mega Drive! Other SEGA consoles also made the top ten, including the Master System and the Game Gear. Unfortunately, our favorite underdog the Dreamcast did not make the list. Placing second was the Nintendo 64. If the NES and SNES were Nintendo 1 and Nintendo 2, whatever happened to Nintendo 3 through Nintendo 63? After the break, check out the full top ten and feel free to agree with me in the comments that the Mega Drive/Genesis is the best retro console of all time.
So why is this called a squid girl Genesis? Well, in Japan there is a anime called “Invader! Squid Girl” that came from 2chan image boards. I guess its pretty popular with the natives over there, in the series they have a mock version of the Genesis (Mega Drive in Japan) called the Ika Drive. So a fan decided to repaint his working Mega Drive to match.
Got to be honest, I’m actually a fan of the SEGA Genesis/Mega Drive classic (first console) in white. Those blue buttons also look great. What do you guys think?
[Source: Destructoid]
This theme above was released in the European PSN store update and it’s awesome! It seems that it’s only for PSN+ users, America might get it later. I personally will be rocking this one.
That is basically a SEGA fan’s bedroom in the early 90’s.
[You know you want to see him back]
Annnnnnd introducing…..SEGA Sequel Saturdays. The new feature where we discuss what we feel would be the perfect way to do sequels to some of our favorite SEGA games. This week, I tackle Vectorman, a pretty awesome SEGA Genesis run-and-gun platformer that was developed by BlueSky Software and published by SEGA. Though an attempt was made to revive the character back on the PS2 in 2003, the game was cancelled. All hope shouldn’t be lost, though. I still definitely think it’s possible to make a great next gen Vectorman game, and if you hit the jump, you’ll see how I’d go about reviving this Genesis icon for the current gen, and you can express your own ideas as well.
Pier Solar started off life in 2004 in an internet forum, flash forward to now and its a full fledge game. In the game you play as Hoston, a young botanist who has to save his father from a illness. The game uses 64 meg cart, if you didn’t know, that is some intense power and is the biggest Genesis cart ever.
You can order the game via its official website.
The game has already gone into re-print due to overwhelming fan demand. It looks pretty good and I might order a copy for myself soon. As for screenshots, hit the jump.
One of my favorite Genesis games, Gunstar Heroes, is now on the iPhone (and iPod Touch as well, I assume). The game will run you $2.99. Wow, that is like a cup of coffee for one of the best Genesis games ever.
If that wasn’t enough, the game has bluetooth multiplayer. That is pretty awesome.
[Source: Siliconera]
One month ago SEGA brought iPhone and iPod Touch owners Shining Force. This Thursday the SEGA RPG love continues with the release of Phantasy Star II! For just $2.99 the classic game will be fully playable, running on the same emulator as previous games. However, unlike games that require precise controls and fail on SEGA’s Genesis emulator (I’m looking at you, Sonic 2), Phantasy Star II is promised to be a smooth experience as the game itself does not require fast timing or a fast frame rate.
Here’s hoping that we get more SEGA RPGs in the coming months!
[Source: TouchArcade and The Nomad Junkyard]
So you want to play your SEGA Mega Drive/Genesis, but your brother has the Super Nintendo hooked up? Fear no more, now you can play SNES and Genesis off the same console, they even threw in NES as well. That is 3 consoles, all in one. This isn’t the first time a company have done this, but this one looks fairly good.
The console has 2 controller ports for each platform, so you don’t have to use a Genesis pad to play NES games. Unless you really want to. So yes, this will work with your original controllers from the official console. The console already comes packed with ‘wireless’ controllers. If you like that stuff. You get to choose either red or black for the console. Cost? $69.99.
If for some odd reason, you have to play Super Mario Bros. on your SEGA Genesis. Now you can! Thanks to a kind soul that ported the game over to the 16-bit blast processor.
I’m pretty sure this would have been a bigger deal if it was the days of the ’16-bit war’, but Genesis does what Nintendon’t and now does what they do as well. Take that! The game is titled SMB4MD, standing for Super Mario Bros. for Mega Drive. Makes sense. Also can’t work with Genesis hardware yet, only emulator.
I remember the stories about Yuji Naka making a working NES emulator for the Mega Drive back in the day, seems like everyone else is just catching up.
[Source: Kotaku]
June 7th, 1990, SEGA showed off Sonic the Hedgehog to the public at the Tokyo Game Show. When they showed it, the game was 2 months into development. So what they showed was very early.
Above is one of the first screens ever shown to the public and you can tell much has changed. First of all the background, from its odd city and mountains was changed in the final product. Though, regardless of stuff being changed, the art style and vision seemed to be there from day one. The other screen that 1up had was the early title screen, which looks a lot like the original only without the Green Hill Zone backdrop.
[Source: 1up]
Even though SEGA is preparing for the upcoming Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown, does not mean it will stop adding stuff to Virtua Fighter 5R. SEGA updated VF5R this month, with classic SEGA consoles.
The image above shows the prices of the consoles, which can be used on your characters back. The prices for the in game items are the same price as the real consoles when they launched in Japan. Of course, you buy the consoles with in-game currency. Make Akira look like Segata, with a Saturn on his back? Brilliant!
[Source: Versus City]
SEGA used “Pirate TV” as a advertising campaign for the SEGA Mega Drive (US: Genesis) in Britain. The dog tag above was given to a UKR reader by SEGA during a event to try out the Mega CD and Sonic 2.
This is where I talk about how in my day, console wars where fought on the playground, not behind a computers. You get the idea.
