The Sega Mega Drive/Genesis Thread (NEW)!!!

[Obiwanshinobi]

What's so wrong with the PS1 version that makes even the choppy and pixelated Sega CD version more preferable?

I'd like to know too.

Alien Soldier would have been a better game if there were more buttons to perform all the functions and moves the game wants you to do. Fitting everything on a d-pad and 3 buttons just makes half the game (for me anyhow, playing on the VC, lol) fighting the controls as opposed to all the bosses.

Now, Dynamite Headdy is the Genesis Treasure game worth playing, in my opinion. Very solid all-around, even if the shmup stage is a bit wonky (too loose to control honestly).

In actual MD games, the 3 buttons thing makes a kind of sense. Where I don't really get it are doujin computer games. The latest odd one - Gigantic Army. Is it a vengeance? Sega's learnt its lesson in humility, so it's up for the crowd to pay the price, huh?
As for Dynamite Headdy, it's like those Sega games namedropped all over the shop I struggle to believe even former cool kids really play these days. MD/Genny has got so much more playable stuff after all...

Kid Chameleon is a system top 5'er for me. Give it a little chance, at least.

Maybe when I softmod my Wii. Apparently MD emulation is excellent there, and the remote makes for a decent digital controller of few buttons. Also, I seek an excuse to use the MK Wii wheel for something else than Excite Truck (yes, I tried it with Other M, but gave up).
Come to think of it, maybe Landstalker will be more enjoyable with the Wiimote.

[CIT]

Alien Soldier would have been a better game if there were more buttons to perform all the functions and moves the game wants you to do. Fitting everything on a d-pad and 3 buttons just makes half the game (for me anyhow, playing on the VC, lol) fighting the controls as opposed to all the bosses.

Well, Alien Soldier is meant to be played with the 6 button pad. Duh!

The PS1 version of Volfied also had a US budget release under the name "Qix Neo". Are there any differences in the US Genesis Ultimate Qix version of Volfied from the original JP version?

Not sure, I've never payed the US release.

Also get the Saturn (best port) or PS1 (dirt cheap) versions of Night Striker, they're way more enjoyable than the MCD port.

The MCD port is actually preferable to the flawed PS1 port. I recently passed on the PS1 port for only like 300 yen because I'd rather get the Saturn or MCD versions. The MCD version is nice for its arranged soundtrack, while the Saturn is the best arcade port. Check out a cool video comparing all three games here: LINK.

Why do you think the MCD version with its choppy framerate and terribly pixelated graphics is better than the PS1 port?
The PS1 is far from perfect, as Taito had lost the source code for the arcade game, and Ving had to basically reconstruct the entire game with the existing assets and by analyzing the PCB, meaning it's more of an approximation with some differences in enemy patterns and how some of the scaling works. It also doesn't support analog controls. Still I think it's leagues above the MCD port and much closer to the real Night Striker experience. For 300 yen you can do a lot worse.

Also, that video doesn't even include the PlayStation version, he just says how crap he thinks it is. But it's Yakumo, so anything on a Sega system will always be better.

[BIL]

As for Dynamite Headdy, it's like those Sega games namedropped all over the shop I struggle to believe even former cool kids really play these days. MD/Genny has got so much more playable stuff after all...

I like it more than I did at the time, actually. Some decently challenging and very diverse level designs and bosses in there, the grapple mechanic is satsifying and the motif is original and lots of fun. I don't see it as competing with the hardcore action stuff like Gunstar, Rocket Knight, Ex-Ranza et al, and simpler hop n' bops like the Sonic games make me sick with boredom, so it's a nice medium.

Also, the Japanese box is irresistable. Classic example of "cool cat Japan protagonist gets angry bull testosterone injections for fugly western release." RIP Kirby, Sparkster, Headdy and Alisia.





Not even going to inline this POS

[undamned]

Kid Chameleon is a system top 5'er for me. Give it a little chance, at least.

I thought this game was great, as a kid (lol). I'll have to pop it in again and see how it has held up.
-ud

[louisg]

The PS1 is far from perfect, as Taito had lost the source code for the arcade game, and Ving had to basically reconstruct the entire game with the existing assets and by analyzing the PCB, meaning it's more of an approximation with some differences in enemy patterns and how some of the scaling works. It also doesn't support analog controls. Still I think it's leagues above the MCD port and much closer to the real Night Striker experience. For 300 yen you can do a lot worse.

Wow, they had to reprogram it from scratch? That makes me really respect it. It's a shame that it's so easy though. IIRC, it has some of the same issues as the MCD port, so maybe they based it off that (like the cannons in the tunnels shooting straight ahead, not at the player).

[EmperorIng]

I thought the cannons always shot straight ahead in the tunnels. At least, that's what happens in the Saturn port.

[Ruldra]

Kid Chameleon is a system top 5'er for me. Give it a little chance, at least.

I thought this game was great, as a kid (lol). I'll have to pop it in again and see how it has held up.
-ud

I still want to beat this in my lifetime. Excellent game.

[greg]

Why do you think the MCD version with its choppy framerate and terribly pixelated graphics is better than the PS1 port?

Well, like I said, the arranged soundtrack makes the MCD version interesting. In my opinion, that makes it maybe worth a buy for the unique factor alone (as long as it doesn't cost much). Spec gave me a burned copy of Night Striker on the Sega CD a year ago, but I somehow misplaced it.

As for the Playstation version, I'm guilty of just going by Yakumo's recommendation. I might pick it up while I am spending the week around New Years at the in-laws' place in Nagano-ken. There are several Book Offs, GEOs, and Heiando stores in that area that have a great selection of older games, including CIB SFC, GB, GBC, and even some Game Gear and Wonderswan games... all CIB. It's fun going going around to all those stores.

[Ed Oscuro]

Battle Mania just sold for only 4,300 yen on YAJ last night.

Whenever I tried to sell my second copy of the game, I was getting held around the $60-$70 range. Dunno what it eventually went for. Not really surprised; it's not terribly rare. Cool cover though.

It's the second game that is expensive, in case somebody was uncertain about this. (Also there's that dodgy Korean region printing of it lol)

Speaking of which, has anyone put up with more than the first two stages of The Terminator MD, and if so does it become any less agonising?

I played through the whole thing using some savestates and a guide recently.

It's more or less from the same design school as Deep Space Nine: Crossroads of Time for the Genesis, just a bit more competently designed and considerably streamlined. Run through one level after another, that's it. Not much in the way of actual fun stuff.

The Robocop vs. Terminator games aren't very fun either.

RE: Kid Chameleon

Kind of ugly but otherwise feels like a competent take on Mario. The one thing I think is a bit odd, if not downright frustrating, is that it has that tendency I thought I felt in the Sonic games to put a bunch of stuff in the levels - cool secrets aplenty in Kid Chameleon - but there wasn't really much motivation to go for a good portion of it.

[BIL]

Wow, stage 6-1 of Alisia Dragoon is godawful. On Hard it takes a scholarly degree of memorisation, not due to challenging design but enemies on the bottom floor shooting you in the face from offscreen. Be in the air before they shoot or get hit. A strange detour into kusogameville after five consistently excellent stages. Mercifully 6-2 is the exact same stage minus the instant hits and plays fine... almost got the clear this evening but the last stage's shoggoth farm took too much out of me. This game is pretty intense on the higher difficulty setting, not much margin for error at all. Almost reminds me of Ninja Spirit's brand of intricate, carefully-rehearsed yet always fraught memoriser action.

I'm pretty sure the medium-height jump stumble is a glitch. It's as if the game gets confused into thinking the character is falling from a high ledge.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Weird thing is, I haven't heard anything good about any Terminator game (Raf World doesn't count), whereas A(vsP) games at least somebody enjoyed some time ago.
Such a shame Capcom didn't port Punisher to Saturn/PSX... Probably the licence thing.

[Rob]

Kind of ugly but otherwise feels like a competent take on Mario.

Ugly in '92 shades. KC definitely gives Mario 3/World level designs a merciless beating - all of the Christmas/birthday nostalgia in the world can't save that stuff from being a bore to replay. KC has the same huge maze of stages, but I think the lack of a save system encouraged them to make much tighter, challenging game that makes a much better use of the various power-ups than those Marios and their cute tanooki suits. They deserved the right to make a sequel and not Sonic Spinball.

[greg]

I saw Magical Taruruto-kun for the MD last night at my local Kanteidan for only 180 yen. After researching about it online, I will buy it when I go back there. It looks like a cute and fun platformer!

[stryc9]

Don't kniow whats going on Im too pissed to work it out but I think someone dissed Alien soldier. Actually I think it was Obi. Three buttons works fine for AS, compared to other Run n guns its got a bit of a learning curve to the controls, but once you are fast enough for the game you realise how well it plays blah blah.

Hey while I'm here i'll tell you my latest NTSCJ MD pickups - Comix Zone, McDonalds Treasureland, and Power instinct. PI has large sprites onscreen, albiet displayede in a bit of a letter box, has kinda bad palette but is saved by some awesome hit FX, superior to the SNES one and even thwackier than the arcade.

Anyway I'm off to bed, don't usually shit up threads with poorly articulated stuff like this but hey, man just came back from a wedding and will boot comix zone now

[evil_ash_xero]

Man, I hate Kid Chameleon. I hated it when I got it, back in the day. And I hate it now.

A lot of the "classics" that always pop up on the "Must have Genesis games" lists aren't to my liking. I think a lot of them are just for nostalgia's sake. Whereas, there's a lot of other game(some of which never made it here) that are "the bomb(90s style)".

Alien Soldier is awesome as hell. I saw the conversation about it above. I didn't like it at first, as I found it to be confusing(I had the same problem with S&P too). Once you figure out that you can zip past bosses without being hurt, the game starts to make a lot more sense.

Has anyone talked about Ristar yet? Man that game is great. The JP version is the same, but has some graphical and story differences. Also, the part that gets on my nerves the most, is that Ristar looks mad the whole time in the U.S. version. He's pretty chipper in the JP version.

I prefer the JP version of Dynamite Headdy, as the US version has amped up difficulty. And the JP version is hard enough. Also, there's some weird graphical changes that they did to it too. Not sure why. I'm sure it's "cultural differences" or whatever.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Has anyone talked about Ristar yet?

In the very same sentence where I mentioned Alien Soldier, on the subject of input delay in Chameleon Kid.

[Jonathan Ingram]

I Ctrl+F`d this thread for Fantastic Dizzy, Dune II, General Chaos and Zero Tolerance and got no results. For shame!

Someone is working on a complete conversion of Zero Tolerance that`s supposed to include all the weapons and gameplay improvements from Beyond Zero Tolerance(an unreleased sequel which exists only in the form of a short beta).

[EmperorIng]

There's no arguing that the US Dynamite Headdy is a hard game, but I feel that the JPN version is too easy. It was enough to give you a couple lives here and there - though it is very difficult to get a continue from those puzzle pieces that fly from the boss.

These days though, I only really start losing lives until I get to Twin Freaks. Who is still a motherfucker.

[Specineff]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before. The Genesis port of Midnight Resistance has mind-blowing music which sounds better than the arcade and even the Amiga versions.

Why couldn't this be the standard driver instead of the mediocre ones even Sega themselves used in most games?

[Drum]

Trying to play Marsupilami but the emulation is dreadful. Might try another emu.
I like Fatal Rewind a bunch. I think it has some missing effects from the Amiga version but I can easily trade that stuff for no load times.

[null1024]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before. The Genesis port of Midnight Resistance has mind-blowing music which sounds better than the arcade and even the Amiga versions.

Why couldn't this be the standard driver instead of the mediocre ones even Sega themselves used in most games?

It would have been nice if SMPS [see: the Sonic games, Ristar, games with good music] was used more instead of GEMS [Sonic Spinball, most Sega of America stuff, sounds like shit] in the west.

It's not entirely the driver's fault, lots of the problem involves really shit example instrument patches that came with the driver, but considering nearly all GEMS music sounds like ass...

[EmperorIng]

The best Genesis sound engine, in my opinion, is the Cube engine - used for GleyLancer, Zero Wing, Galaxy Force II, Sagaia, and of course, Shining Force 2 (which is the one of the best Genesis soundtracks).

The sound is the richest and the guitars always sound great. So always the best for a shmup.

Hell, Space Invaders '91 (Cube as well) has some really bitchin' tunes.

But as said, it's a shame GEMS was used so much, because it [EDIT: usually]sounds like trash.

[Amended]

[BryanM]

SMPS

I heard that Playstation 4 used that.

[greg]

It would have been nice if SMPS [see: the Sonic games, Ristar, games with good music] was used more instead of GEMS [Sonic Spinball, most Sega of America stuff, sounds like shit] in the west.

So GEMS is the one that sounds like a constipated robot farting in a tin outhouse, right?

[RGC]

When we have a moment, could we talk Verytex? I'm thinking words like dull, insipid, bland, uninspired, derivative, etc. Am I wrong? I had rather fond memories of this, now slightly above average cost cart. But, other than some pretty nice stage 1 and boss tracks, it now feels like a bit of a letdown. The in-stage enemy ships are not very imaginative in their design or behaviour, and there are long empty sections. Fully tooled, you barely have to move to take everything out. It's pure nostalgia keeping this one afloat -- otherwise, it is something of a floater.

[BIL]

Not sure if this has been mentioned before. The Genesis port of Midnight Resistance has mind-blowing music which sounds better than the arcade and even the Amiga versions.

Why couldn't this be the standard driver instead of the mediocre ones even Sega themselves used in most games?

Yeah, we'd discussed MR's incredible MD OST a bit earlier in the thread - the culprit being none other than Hitoshi Sakimoto. Check out Bad Omen and Gauntlet for more brilliance. Guy was a monster on the YM2612.

[stryc9]

Talking about standout sound drivers for MD, Sunsofts Panorama Cotton has some of the best drums on the console, by far. The last boss track is amazing, run thru a stereo it's incredible.

TMNT ROTS/Hyper Stone Heist has sick music as well - more of some of the best on the machine in fact, edging out its other Konami stablemates like Vampire Killer in terms of instrumentation at the very least.

Yu Yu Hakusho shows that the MD can do wicked PCM filled music and voice samples at the same time (or so it would appear, there's some tricks going on). The title screen track is one of the best on the console.

Midnight Resistance, Gauntlet - awesome soundtracks.

[null1024]

It would have been nice if SMPS [see: the Sonic games, Ristar, games with good music] was used more instead of GEMS [Sonic Spinball, most Sega of America stuff, sounds like shit] in the west.

So GEMS is the one that sounds like a constipated robot farting in a tin outhouse, right?

Yes. It is technically capable of producing better sounds, but just about every use of it sounds like synthesized ass.


On another note:
Doing good samples on the Genesis is hard -- mostly because sample playback ends up stopping repeatedly due to processor interrupts and the like. It gives the Genesis that characteristic fluttery sound for things like voices and drums [see: Sonic drums, especially 3&K, Ristar, Virtua Fighter 2 Genesis]. You need to figure out how to keep those pauses at a minimum to keep sound quality high.

So if you were playing back a sample, representing the data like 123456123456, the Genesis would end up playing something like 123444561112345556. The repeated parts are when the DAC is just sitting there doing nothing because nothing is being sent to it. There are tricks to make it more like 12344561233456 or so, which isn't perfect, but much better than otherwise, and almost unnoticable.

As a side note, games that stop everything else to play sound don't really have this problem, an example being Altered Beast. The low cartridge size were the reason the samples sounded like shit there, they were low quality as hell.

[BrianC]

Speaking of sound engines, I liked Magical Hat's music better than Decap Attack's, at first, but now, I actually like the music in Decap Attack better. The former uses the same engine as Whip Rush (which has good music, as well) and sounds very good, but also high pitched. Decap Attack actually uses the same sound engine as Battlemania 2, which is a technically better engine. It took some getting used to the different style, but I now love the halloweenish music in Decap Attack.

I found Sunsoft's engine to be one of the best ones in my opinion. Super Fantasy Zone, Batman, and Lemmings have awesome musics. However, this is not to be confused with the US designed Sunsoft published games like Blaster Master II and Revenge of the Joker, which I think use GEMS.

[ED-057]

I know that on the YM2612 there aren`t address lines to directly address the various registers, instead there is a port where the address of the register first needs to be written to expose that register (was a very common way to reduce chip pin counts and whatnot). So playing samples or music inside an interrupt service routine makes any access to the chip outside of that routine problematic, due to risk of a race condition where one routine has set the register address but is interrupted before making the actual data transfer. And to make matters more interesting the YM2612 timers weren`t even connected to a CPU interrupt so they could only be used via polling. Maybe some coders looked at that and said "I could work around this... but I can`t be arsed." (especially considering there was a warning about it in Sega`s documentation).