My Life in Gaming Marathon #2 - SEGA Systems and Games

with the 8-bit system starting to show their age at the end of the 1980s many gamers found themselves wondering what would be the next step how do you top a juggernaut like the nes sega's response would be the introduction of the genesis driven by the promise of arcade quality graphics in the comfort of my own living room the genesis power would deliver on all fronts but little did i know the true power that was hiding underneath that sleek exterior welcome to rgb 203 where we're going to be looking at how to get the best picture out of your genesis sega cd and 32x ready let's go [Applause] the sega mega drive was released in north america in august 1989 as the sega genesis early on the genesis was popular for its high quality ports that were touted as bringing the arcade experience home based on sega's powerful system 16 arcade hardware the console has a palette of 512 colors and can display up to 61 colors at once at a resolution of 320 by 224 or in some instances 256 by 224 you might notice extraneous graphical information and over scan around the gameplay area stuff like a solid colored border and these little blinking dot things this was out of sight on your old crt but will be on full display on your hdtv but don't worry this is completely normal conventional wisdom suggests that there are two ways to hook up a sega genesis rf or composite video and unfortunately much of the genesis graphical prowess is muddied as a result of it having some of the absolute worst looking composite video of any console if you're looking to take things to the next level it's possible to modify the genesis internally and install s-video output several years ago corey actually bought a genesis that had been modified with s-video but he had a number of issues with it and couldn't get it to work reliably now that's not to say that all s-video genesis mods are shoddy but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter because we soon learned that despite the genesis's infamously poor composite video quality it actually already has something even better than s video much like his predecessor the sega master system the large 8-pin din on the back natively supports rgb video and best of all the rgb signal from the sega genesis is razor sharp despite generating some of the worst looking composite video i'd say that the genesis outputs some of the most striking rgb video that i've seen on any console we use an external video scaler called the framemeister which can take analog video including rgb and processes it much more quickly and cleanly than your tv's internal video scale or you could use bnc breakout cables with a professional crt monitor look for cables that are wired up for c-sync for the cleanest results learn more about sync and rgb 103 now those are the basics but when it comes to the genesis there are quite a number of other options and considerations we've previously mentioned hd retrovision who have put a ton of research into converting the rgb signal to sega genesis and snes into what you'll recognize as standard rca component cables we've got our hands on the final circuits for these cables and we think it's an excellent cost-effective option for people who want to tap the genesis's rgb signal without additional expensive hardware it's not an hd scaling solution but it's a heck of a lot cleaner than a composite video signal or you could use it on a crt with component input which looks amazing there's also all-in-one conversion solutions like skirt to component boxes or the retro clarity which combines functionality for multiple consoles into a single unit but again these are not hd scalers now when it comes to the console itself there are some things to keep in mind with the first model of the sega genesis possibly the quirkiest thing about the genesis is that despite its supporting stereo audio it only outputs mono audio from its av port on the back but there is a workaround on the front side of the unit there's a headphone jack that outputs glorious stereo sound rgb cable makers have integrated a 3.5 millimeter jack into their scar and jb 21 cables so just plug it in crank up the volume slider and you're good to go next if you're a big fan of sonic the hedgehog 2 split screen mode then this one is for you have you ever noticed how this mode looks ultra sharp well that's because programmers had to pull off some tricks to get it working and it runs in a special 480i mode if you're using an external scaler then you might not be able to get this mode to display correctly look what happens when the xrgb mini framemeister gets to it [Music] you might notice that older units of the original genesis model have the silly phrase high definition graphics emblazoned across the top if you're wondering whether this matters when choosing a genesis for rgb i wouldn't worry too much about it there were several revisions to the internal board each with their own idiosyncrasies but they all performed nearly the same in fact most of the differences have more to do with a slight difference in audio tone that's not quite as pleasing in later models but that's a whole other can of worms and we'll have to cover it in another episode which brings us to jail bars jail what this is a term you might see in rgb discussions from time to time you see on certain colors you'll see these vertical lines of alternating lighter and darker colors creating a pattern which has affectionately been given the name jail bars the genesis shows them on darker colored blue shades most prominently but they're also an issue on a few other colors as well thankfully as the genesis hardware evolved this would become less pronounced in further revisions however if you want to get rid of them completely then you'll have to resort to a simple but destructive internal modification to the composite video trace as we've mentioned there could be slight differences on the inside of consoles that otherwise look very similar on the outside but aside from that the genesis has three major redesigns each with their own pros and cons the smaller model 2 genesis looks much more like a 90s console and features a brand new port on the back that not only integrates stereo audio without the need for a headphone connector but also a completely new form factor thankfully it still outputs beautiful rgb but when shopping for cables keep in mind that you need to buy specifically for a model 1 or model 2 console in 1995 after optimizing the genesis hardware so thoroughly sega was able to shrink it down slap on an lcd screen and make it portable they called it the sega nomad and it was released only in the united states not only is it a fully functioning portable genesis it can also be connected to a tv with its av port located at the top which conveniently uses the exact same cables as the model 2 genesis and has the same capabilities including the ability to natively output rgb however depending on your cables or equipment some people have noted issues when using c-sync with the nomad so it might be a safer bet to buy cables using sync on composite for rgb instead arriving well after its heyday the last major hardware revision is imaginatively named the genesis 3. this tiny budget console saw the removal of its native rgb output though if this is your favorite genesis rgb is still possible through modification also removed every facet of the model 1 and model 2's famous expandability sega decided would be in their best interest to expand the power of their console by using hardware add-ons cd technology seemed like the next logical step for sega power up the sega cd was released in 1992 at a steep 300 without the limited confines of a cartridge and boasting expanded audio capabilities sega welcomed us to the next level another big addition to this console was its hardware scaling and rotation which brought it on par with the super nes okay the good news is that since the sega cd just plugs directly into the expansion slot of the sega genesis model 1 or 2 it utilizes the genesis's rgb capable video output even though it requires its own ac adapter and expands the system's graphical capabilities you don't have to do anything different in terms of video output everything looks amazing all around but the extra clarity that rgb affords certainly doesn't do any favors for the add-on signature full motion video titles sega would release a remodel of the sega cd with a form factor more appropriate for the recent released genesis model 2. this newer version does not have any downfalls compared to the first model in addition sega would also release a compact unit called the cdx which consolidated genesis and sega cd tech into one body this system uses genesis ii cables and is completely capable of native rgb they'd also license this technology to other companies who would create their own redesigned units such as the xy aka the wonder mega these are also capable of outputting rgb natively despite the enhancement that the sega cd afforded the console was still limited in a variety of ways most notably that it was still held to the genesis original color palette with sega's next generation console still a ways away they released the cartridge-based sega 32x in 1994 which supplemented thousands of colors and some serious processing power this unit plugs into the cartridge slot of the genesis and has its own video output it utilizes a genesis 2 style av port so can use the exact same cable what it does need is a smaller cable that connects the genesis av output to an input on the 32x naturally this cable will need to be compatible with their hardware so if you have a genesis model 1 then get a cable that has the larger den on it oh and one more thing don't forget that the genesis is capable of playing master system games in full rgb using the power based converter peripheral check out rgb 201 for more information on that [Music] while the genesis is one of the easiest systems to get excellent rgb video out of multiple revisions and hardware expansions do change the system's capabilities and create some interesting considerations but if you're just worried about what cables to buy all you have to do is check which model it's for and you'll be fine so as we finish up here select titles from the genesis library have been featured in just a ton of compilations and digital releases over the years is it worth bothering with rgb and real genesis hardware well here's a look we'll let you decide [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] one of my fondest childhood memories is getting my sega genesis on christmas of 1989. i still have my original console and use it heavily to this day while i'm a big fan of using original hardware when it comes to games there's a huge group of people out there that are fans of the system but no longer have one laying around let's be honest here sega genesis game collections are not exactly a revolutionary thing we're well past the point of being able to keep track of all these compilation releases with the most recent being the sega genesis classics compilation disc for the xbox one and playstation 4 consoles i had a chance to take a look at the xbox one version thanks to a review copy provided by sega let's take a look at some of the previous collections to see how this new one stands up and how it compares to a real sega genesis console [Music] [Applause] [Music] sega genesis classics was developed by d3t limited utilizing a 1990s bedroom as a hub world you can interact with virtual game carts and a crt to give a sort of physical interpretation of the built-in emulator used for the games it's fun if a little bit low res looking moving around the room gives you a number of options the game controllers give you surprisingly limited button configurations and the desk lets you check out achievements leaderboards and challenges the shelf contains the game library where you can thumb through each of the available 53 games game selection wise most of these had been released in previous collections but there are some notables that are brand new to any compilation released in north america the most exciting of these are treasures running guns alien soldier and gun star heroes on the flip side there's quite a few omissions that are kind of odd of course sonic 3 and sonic and knuckles are the ones that people will talk about but back in 2016 sega got the rights to the thunder force series along with all the other technosoft games it was a real missed opportunity to include those games in this collection especially since they were such big parts of the genesis early years anyway choosing a game pulls it off the shelf and inserts the cart into the console from here it either boots up or you can choose a number of emulator settings but first we should understand the resolution of genesis games and how it scaled in this compilation to fit your hdtv [Music] most sega genesis games were designed with a resolution of 320x224 which was intended to fit within the 4x3 aspect ratio of old crt televisions in addition some games used a 256 wide mode but it's much less common fitting these resolutions into the typical 1080p frame on modern consoles comes with some challenges in the case of this new collection the vertical resolution of 224 is multiplied approximately 4.82 times to fill the 1080p space this results in uneven pixel rows causing a shimmering effect when the screen scrolls vertically most notable with an overhead perspective like in the fantasy star games by default the horizontal resolution is forced into the proper 4x3 space which is all well and good but again this causes uneven pixel sizing however i found that the horizontal scrolling shimmer is not as noticeable as the vertical shimmer in most games but it totally depends on your character's movement speed there is an interesting workaround though if you go into the emulator settings and choose stretched full screen then the system completely fills the horizontal space for games that are rendered at 320 pixels wide this is a perfect 6x integer scale to 1920 resulting in uniform pixel columns and no horizontal shimmer but the aspect ratio is a bit of a deal breaker right well simply change your tv's aspect ratio to 4x3 and voila problem solved although it may look a bit skinny note that the stretched full screen trick is not effective for fixing the uneven sizing of games that run at 256 pixels wide it's really unfortunate that these are still a common issue with emulated classics the easy solution is to scale the vertical resolution by an integer four times for 1080p would result in some black bars on the top and bottom but it's far preferable to a distracting shimmer this collection also has no 4k support for ps4 pro or xbox one x which is really unfortunate because the 4k resolution is an integer scale of 240p and could have easily solved many of these issues in the emulator settings you have a number of pixel scaling options that soften the hard edges of scaled sprites giving them a smooth if almost cell shaded look if you're into this kind of stuff it's a nice option to have but it's worth noting that none of these pixel scaling options can totally eliminate the shimmering effect if you enjoy the crt-like scan line look then there's a toggle for that as well as of the time of this video the xbox one version only allows you to use these in the awkward zoomed out mode where you see the tv frame i guess the problem has been patched on the playstation 4 version making them visible in full screen you can also change the tv projection which curves the image to feel more like the bubble of a crt screen [Music] outside of the actual scaling the games are emulated pretty well but there's absolutely some issues that can crop up it should be noted that these kinds of collections tend to use a single emulator for all the included games because of this catch-all approach it can often result in glitches and weirdness that are difficult to replicate creating custom tailored emulators for each game such as those used in the wii virtual console usually results in near perfect execution when it comes to the sound department i found there to be a couple of hiccups that may bother you depending on how closely you pay attention most sounds are fairly accurate although some music did tend to exhibit an odd stuttering and skipping from time to time the seriousness of this varies from game to game appearing most heavily in fantasy star 3. [Music] do [Music] in contrast a number of voice samples seem to be cleaned up for some inexplicable reason stuff like stars come on when you boot up the game two axles bare knuckle and streets of rage three everything seems slightly clearer or maybe it's just different i'll let you decide which is [Music] better [Music] as you'll see throughout this episode the emulation of the genesis yamaha ym2612 sound chip is oftentimes one of the hardest aspects of the system to get right to this day another common sound issue that seems to be cropping up with emulation on newer platforms seems to be that of sound delay meaning that a sound effect kicks in several frames after an action occurs unfortunately sound delay does crop up in this collection as well i noticed it but a good amount of players will not [Music] speaking of delays input lag is a huge point of contention when it comes to emulation it's nearly impossible to work around on modern consoles due to the way that the different technologies work together so it should be expected to exist at least minimally in all these collections i'm personally not super susceptible to it although i can feel it from time to time that said i honestly didn't feel any major input lag problems while playing offline the additional emulator options are fairly robust selectable border art is there for people who absolutely cannot handle having parts of the screen unoccupied i prefer black though which isn't always an option when it comes to these kind of anthologies so i was happy to see it with certain games you can also choose your region allowing you to play japanese versions when it seems more palatable such as with streets of rage 3. i always hated the color changes made for the us disabling the sprite limit is nice for games that can be plagued with occasional sprite flicker such as gun star heroes it can also cause glitches in certain games such as the case in the sonic 1 title screen but you know you're unlikely to find many examples where it makes much of a difference in these included games mirror mode is a bit of an outside of the box idea for these kind of collections it flips the entire game resulting in new challenges for long time players a modern convenience is a fast forward and rewind functions like if you didn't get enough rings on the bonus stage of sonic 2 using the triggers you can rewind time and give it another shot alternatively you can proficiently speed up grinding in one of the included rpgs safe states are easily created and loaded using the right analog stick which i felt was much more intuitive and useful than the typical menu implementation although it's possible that the rewind feature may make this a bit obsolete loading a safe state is much quicker unfortunately outside of some of the game's specific challenges there doesn't seem to be much in the way of extra materials if there are hidden games here it's certainly not obvious [Music] finally for many the ability to take these games online for multiplayer may just be the deciding factor in purchasing this collection how does it work well pretty decently depending on the game that you choose there is substantial input lag when playing this way along with occasional hiccups but considering that these games were never meant to be played this way it's surprisingly functional and fun it's at its best for slower brawlers like golden axe and streets of rage where split-second inputs don't exactly mean the difference of life and death for faster action games like gun star heroes and monster lair familiarity with the game can be the difference of going the distance or a swift death so while not perfect this collection is fairly well done both in presentation and functionality there are a lot of ideas here inspired by older compilations so how does this overall package stand up against those that came before it well i can't look at every single one but genesis collections have definitely had some ups and downs to get where they are today to my knowledge the earliest compilations of genesis titles were for the sega cd which makes a lot of sense when you think about it the sega classics arcade collection was a pack-in disc containing four of the best genesis games golden axe streets of rage revenge of shinobi and columns for the most part these remain exactly the same as their cartridge counterparts although there are some minor enhancements such as redone music in the case of golden axe and columns and new voice samples for streets of rage and golden axe [Music] oh and two player mode was removed from golden axe for some reason when the sega cd model 2 was launched this same disc was packed in but this time with an additional title super monaco gp [Music] on the sega saturn probably the most well-known collection of genesis titles is sonic jam which rounds up the four main genesis sonic platforming titles unlike your typical compilation these were full on ports containing enhancements and optimizations [Music] in japan sega did release additional compilation disks of 16-bit titles which used emulators to play rom files off disk first was the fantasy star collection which included all four of sega's iconic rpgs and i love mickey mouse and donald duck a compilation of castle of illusion and quack shot [Music] and while it's fudging the rules just a little bit i gotta mention the thunder force gold packs which are collections of the mega drive versions of thunder force 2 3 and 4. it also included thunder force ac which is the arcade version of three these are must-haves for fans of the series even though these were originally done in-house by technosoft sega owns the rights to these games now so i'm just gonna go with it [Music] but it was perhaps the release of the sega smash pack vol 1 on the dreamcast that brought the idea of sega genesis compilation discs to the forefront of the collective gamer consciousness at least in the console gaming space [Music] hoping to spur sales of the dreamcast with a little nostalgia of the good old days of sega the sega smash pak vol 1 used an emulator developed by yuki enterprises and featured 12 games in total nine of which were genesis games the dreamcast was one of the first systems to support 480i video output in nearly all games if not handled correctly this can be problematic for games that are originally designed for 240p often resulting in a softer overall look in addition to the flicker normally present in 480i video thankfully this doesn't seem to be the case with the sega smash back although we are faced with another problem severely increased brightness and over saturation additionally the sega smash pack supports the dreamcast's ability to output vga which can help bring back the defined edges that tend to be lost in the flickering fields of interlaced content while the brightness and over saturation persist the increased clarity reveals a slight dithering in certain colors which affects certain dreamcast games over vga this isn't present in all games but it's there in the smash backs case all that aside the sega smash pack is particularly infamous for its awful emulation which is actually pretty hilarious and retrospect hey sonic is on the outside of the banner here too dare we even start with the sound put bluntly is absolutely butchered beyond recognition to the point of being comical somehow this aspect is actually worse than it was in my memory with the death of the dreamcast and sega's exit from the council hardware market it wasn't too long before we'd see genesis compilations crop up on other systems in the usa we received the sega genesis collection on the playstation 2 which consisted of 28 sega genesis titles and was developed by digital eclipse who along with backbone entertainment had their fingerprints all over just about every classic game compilation released in the mid to late 2000s in the us at a glance the sega genesis collection appears to be a better overall package than the sega smash back despite the odd omission of such games like revenge of shinobi and the streets of rage trilogy [Music] although the playstation 2 is capable of 240p video this compilation only offers 480i and 480p video output unfortunately the combination of an improperly scaled pixel aspect and filtering leads to a soft and blurry picture overall although you can manipulate your screen size and the options this issue persists no matter what you do outside of the disappointing video quality the overall emulation fares pretty decently however the sound is once again a bit of an issue for example golden axe incorrectly plays the same voice samples for everything [Music] the sega genesis collection was also released on the playstation portable and while the actual content remains largely equal between the two the portable version has quickly selectable screen sizes making for some interesting uses when coupled with component video output cables setting the screen size to original looks pretty decent if you don't mind the tiny screen size however this looks quite amazing on the psp screen so while us genesis fans at least got a decent set of games for the playstation 2 it was the japanese fans who were getting served the real good stuff thanks to japanese developer m2 who are perhaps the absolute best in the world in terms of emulating retro games for newer platforms we have the de facto standard for all compilations going forward among the most relevant to our discussion here are the space harrier collection gun star heroes treasure box monster world complete collection and the fantasy star complete collection [Music] [Music] perhaps most importantly each title has the capability to output in multiple resolutions 240p 480i 480p and 480p with scan lines based on these available options you should be able to connect to just about any tv and get a nice image m2 is very passionate about the sega genesis hardware and it shows in these collections compared to the digital eclipse collection the difference is absolutely night and day pixel aspect is correct with no filtering it looks and feels authentic and video quality isn't the end of it either most games served up in these collections not only include their japanese releases but also their international versions there's a number of variables that can be tweaked to make gameplay better and more accessible sprite limits can be increased and many games even have difficulty adjustments for example in the fantasy star complete collection lowering the difficulty level increases the amount of experience and money you get from each battle thus making games like fantasy star 2 easier to manage by removing the grind but not changing the overall difficulty level meanwhile over on the game boy advance was the fantasy star collection which was developed by digital eclipse and contained the first three games in the mainline series disappointingly the fourth game was left out for some reason either due to emulation challenges time constraints or some other factor direct supervision by overworks a sega development team largely comprised of team members from the original games certainly helps to add to the authenticity this collection came together pretty well graphical elements like text box sizes were conformed to fit the wider aspect ratio and everything looks really nice on the gba screen sound is a little odd at times but i suppose that's to be expected considering the format [Music] there have been numerous re-releases of sonic's 16-bit titles over the years the sonic mega collection was handled in-house by sonic team for the nintendo gamecube and later in a plus version for the ps2 and xbox this is the ps2 version here not only does this collect the four main releases but also a number of spin-offs like dr robotnik's main beam machine making for a great package for fans although 240p is once again not supported there is a 480p mode in addition to 480i in general it looks pretty good still a 240p rendition would have been preferred overall [Music] by 2006 as the wii basking the glow of individual genesis game releases on the virtual console in 240p on my ad the xbox 360 and playstation 3 got sonic's ultimate genesis collection from backbone entertainment this release shared a lot of dna with the previous sega genesis ps2 collection featuring 49 games in total this compilation was by far the most ambitious yet however out of these 49 games 33 are genesis and the remaining 16 are comprised of arcade and sega master system games so does it at least improve the picture quality well yes and no the games seem to be scaled properly this time although i cannot be sure it's a perfect integer scale because the entire image seemed to be softened with a bilinear filter which can conceal the telltale's shimmering for me the real downside to this collection are the forced borders to the games some of these are incredibly gaudy and distracting and there's absolutely no way to turn them off the sega vintage collection consisted of a number of downloadable games for xbox live arcade and the playstation network early on this line was handled by backbone entertainment and were overall quite blurry in the visual sense in 2012 the vintage collection was rebooted [Music] with m2 at the helm who brought a total of 15 classic games consisting of arcade master system and genesis titles to xbox live arcade and psn as expected these are just fantastic screen size options have something for everyone this is how you do it right and how you make everyone happy oh yeah did i mention that monster world 4 is one of the titles offered here different regions customizable controls and a beautiful soundtrack jukebox heck you can even record gameplay replays or download others insane replays [Music] i feel that the m2 vintage collection is the absolute best way to play these games on modern consoles my only complaint is that there is no totally black border option and that more of these weren't released i wish we could have gotten all these on a physical disk and last but certainly not least our m2's sega 3d classics for the nintendo 3ds which took all the usual trimmings of their past endeavors and made them fully 3d and portable comprised of mainly arcade games and genesis titles although there were a few master system titles sprinkled in there if you're a fan of sega's games quite simply these are must owns the way the 3d effect looks with the sprite work is really something special it's arguably the best looking 3d on the system and that's really saying something while these were featured primarily in the nintendo eshop and sold separately all titles were released across three cartridge compilations in japan here in the us we got one volume with nine games on it but unfortunately the rest were never localized due to what i can assume were poor sales next up for m2 are some enhanced sega releases for the nintendo switch i can't wait to see what they have up their sleeve for those over the past 20 years we've seen genesis games emulated on so many platforms that it's really staggering well in my mind the m2 collections remain the absolute pinnacle of genesis games on new consoles this newest compilation provides an excellent entry point for new players to see just what the genesis was capable of doing for the price it's a pretty great deal and the more people that can play wonder boy monster world the better well i was too young to be able to appreciate the beginning of arcades i was lucky enough to experience what i like to call the second age as hardware became more and more powerful developers really had a chance to run wild i was just seven years old when space hearing was released but i can pinpoint the moment i fell in love with video games is the very first time i played it it's remained more than any other game or series a constant in my life ever since in this episode i'll be taking a look at some of the ports the sequels and remakes of perhaps my favorite game of all time space harrier [Music] [Applause] [Music] designed by you suzuki and released by sega in the arcades in 1985 space harrier was the second entry in what i like to call the yu suzuki iv a series of games that utilize sega's 16-bit super scalar arcade hardware to put the player's viewpoint behind the character and was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before no matter what version you're playing the setup remains the same a blond-haired man known only as harrier uses his rocket-powered gun to propel forward across the checkerboard stages of the fantasy zone the rocket gun allows our hero to take play at any time and move to any position on screen this was all accomplished using an analog flight stick which gives you an unprecedented amount of precise control that was necessary for a game that moves this fast you're greeted to the world of space area by the now iconic exclamation welcome to the fantasy zone get ready along with it the beginning notes of what i would consider my favorite piece of game music composed by hiroshi kawaguchi aka hero the theme of space harrier is one of the longer pieces of music of the era the world being called the fantasy zone actually makes a lot of sense because it all feels like something out of a fever dream you'd almost think that you suzuki and his team at am2 were on something when they were conceptualizing this game dragons one-eyed mammoths flying mechs stone faces and whatever the heck these are every few stages you'll have a short time to catch your breath during a bonus stage carrier gets to rest his legs for a bit and hop on the back of the last dragon fighting for good uriah the two of them will plow through and destroy as many environmental obstacles as possible this is your chance to get revenge for all those indestructible towers that were giving you so many problems with some quick reflexes and encouragement from the narrator your journey comes to a rather abrupt end after 18 stages you'd think given the complexity of the arcade hardware the space area would be extremely difficult to port the home consoles but apparently all kinds of developers were willing to try because space area appeared to unjustify every platform throughout the 80s and 90s [Music] the master system version of space area is really great sure it's quite a bit slower moving than the arcade but even today i find it's fairly impressive it brings nearly everything home from the arcade which is quite a feat especially since it was so early in the console's life to work around the limitation of not being able to scale sprites this version used a technique where all objects were a part of a giant background title that updates rapidly in fact the only sprites on screen were harrier himself and the shots he fired it's not the smoothest thing in the world it's actually pretty choppy but not as much as you might think i still find it a very unique way to work around a huge problem the audio sounds great the entire musical theme is represented and even a decent sounding digitized screen really show what the master system's hardware was capable of seeking to rectify the abrupt ending of the arcade version sega added a short scene of the enemy's floating castle crumbling onto the horizon followed by an additional final boss a fiery dragon by the name of haya oh this thing moves super quick and is a deserving challenge for the game's climactic battle the master system version is amazing i loved it it was beyond every expectation i could have had i still think it's fairly impressive today but space area appeared on a ton of platforms everything from ms-dos to oddly sega's direct competition and here to tell you about some of the more notable ports is the only person i know that's as big of a fan of the game as i am joe from game sack space harrier was one of those games that i played a lot of in the arcade and i loved it so when it came out on the master system i knew that's the home console that i had to get there's a version of space area for the famicom in japan and the graphics are like really tiny looking compared to the master system version but things move a little bit more smoothly a little bit faster but gameplay-wise is just really not the greatest thing you're ever going to play in fact the master system version plays a lot better the turbografx 16 version of space here is pretty interesting it's very close to the arcade in fact it's the first home port that i saw that actually attempted to come close to the arcade it has all the voice samples so they don't sound very good the biggest issue with this is it has a striped floor instead of a checkerboard floor it just looks weird it's not space harrier i mean the master system could do a checkerboard floor the nes could even do a checkerboard floor why not the turbo graphics the game gear version of space harrier was really really odd they took the master system version shrunk it down they changed the enemies and the objects to look different so now they look kind of like weirdly grotesque and nothing at all like the arcade and they change the level names and some of the colors but it's still the same old game you're just supposed to feel like you're getting something new but you're not two years after their master system port sega followed up with an exclusive game that utilized the system's severely underused 3d glasses peripheral this game was called shockingly space harrier 3d and this wasn't just another port of the first game with some 3d tacked on it was a fully fledged original game the levels and enemies this time around are more futuristic with cityscapes lining the horizons and robot dragons as opposed to the more organic feel of the first game i guess they figured the 3d was high-tech so they got to make the game look high-tech unfortunately the scaling effect seems notably worse and the digitized voices while still impressive that they're even included sound significantly worse it's all a rather sizable step down from the original i suppose this was expected given that they had to make concessions for the 3d tech and the extra horsepower that was required to use it probably the most shining moment of space here 3d is its music beyond a nice rendition of the classic theme the original stuff here is really good especially with the fm sound version of the music when played on a sega mark iii or a master system with an fm sound synth mod the very next year in 1989 along with the launch of the sega genesis we finally got a true sequel a game we are all waiting for space harrier too but without the direct involvement of you suzuki was there even a chance this could live up to the original this time harrier completely clad in red is out to say fantasyland which has fallen into crisis i wonder if fantasyland is the same as the fantasy zone the number of stages has been cut down to a mere 13 but in an attempt to make things more interesting you're able to select which level you want to start at this is a cool idea but it kind of kills any sense of progression you could pretty much see everything that the game has to offer with no real effort they tried to up the ante here a lot you even fight the first boss from the original game as a regular enemy in this one they'd like to make you think that the original game is child's play compared to part two and then you fight this three-headed turtle the musical theme of space hero 2 starts off pretty cool but it slowly devolves into a fairly boring mundane song it's not that bad but i think the driving music of the first game is one of the most important aspects and that is completely lost with this new theme after space hero 2's fairly unenthused response sega put the series on hiatus until they had the hardware to attempt a perfect arcade translation there's a 32x version that was extremely close but it only ran at 30 frames per second compared to the arcade 60. [Music] in fact it would take the powerful saturn hardware to finally accomplish this goal combine that version with the saturn's mission stick for an experience that just might surpass the arcade game i'd consider this the definitive version [Music] so where do you go from here remake right in 2003 as part of the sega ages 2500 remake line space here found itself as volume 4. and much like the other 3d remakes in the line it's pretty janky they added tons of unnecessary things to the gameplay like a panzer dragoon style lock-on multi-shot and flash bombs where you can kill all the enemies on screen i guess i just felt like the original gameplay was too simple the graphics are pretty awful adding some boring ground textures which does the look very few favors luckily you can turn this off which will restore the original checkerboard look i always thought it was weird that there's no shadow underneath harrier at all it looks like he's running on air when he's supposed to be on the ground but it's not all bad there's a pretty good version of the theme music and the narrator finds himself in an increased role dishing out words of support like cool harrier you can be them all marvelous keep it up you got it but it's just carrier there was a period where this was the only space harrier game that i had access to via the sega ages collection and i played it quite a bit i think it's because of this that i kind of like the game more than i should but there was also another sega ages 2500 entry that was a compilation disc by the amazing team at m2 that included every version of space harrier that sega had released i should mention that there was an arcade game called planet harriers that was referred to as a sequel but i honestly can't tell you much about the game because i've never even seen a machine in person much less played it let's hope for an eventual home release on digital platforms like we did with the afterburner climax i'd love to try it if you've somehow never played space harrier these days the best way to give it a shot is on the 3ds with the sega ages 3d line it's a great conversion and 3d effect works perfectly for this game it even includes the master system only final boss with arcade graphics in 2012 with the help of a friend of mine i was very lucky to acquire a nearly perfect conditioned space harrier arcade cabinet i played enough these last two years to last a lifetime but i recently decided to sell it to a local arcade a real arcade where it belongs and there it just might have the same impact on another seven-year-old kid who is ready to fall in love with video games [Music] [Music] so i'm pretty late to the sega genesis party and i only just got mine last year the main games i wanted were contra hardcore and castlevania bloodlines but considering i'm generally not too much of a fan of sonic brawlers shmups and arcade ports i tend to be a little bit wary of recommendations coming from long time sega fans but i know there's got to be other genesis games out there that i would love but maybe haven't given serious consideration to in fact i just recently played through shinobi 3 which was maybe on the outer edges of my radar but i had no plans to really look into it [Applause] when i was offered an unwanted copy complete in box i took it for a test drive to see if it was worth adding to my backlog i expected to play for just a few levels and say wow yeah i guess it's cool enough but i ended up playing all the way to the sixth level before i got a total game over having a blast and itching to give it another go historically my ninja games of choice have been the first two ninja gaiden games on nes and the goemon series i can count those right but as attached to all of those as i am i can't deny that shinobi 3 is the only one that really made me feel like a ninja the controls take a little getting used to but you can pull off some pretty serious ninja crap your basic attack is throwing shurikens which are limited in supply but there are plenty of pickups if you're close to an enemy you'll use melee attacks instead check out this awesome running slice the timing was a little difficult for me to perform consistently but it's really neat you can even do a good old ninja turtle style dive kick wall jumps feel really cool though some areas demand a level of finesse that i've never quite learned well enough to pull off without getting hurt double jumps require more precise input than in most games the right timing is somewhere close to the top of your jump when you hold the up direction you can grab onto almost any ceiling surface which adds a cool element to the level design and one nice ability that i kept forgetting exists is a defensive pose which prevents damage from smaller attacks joe musashi also has four ninjutsu magic skills that can be selected from the pause screen you have one spell use for every life and can find more in the levels at first i was mostly just using the invincibility ninjutsu it grants free hits and i liked using it near the start of boss encounters so that i wouldn't lose my powered up shurikens i tried the fire ninjutsu once it was okay i guess [Music] but a buddy suggested that the other two ninjutsu that i'd been ignoring were actually incredibly useful he was right the magic for higher jumps which makes me think of zelda 2 was incredibly helpful during the falling rock sequence in the second to last level which makes me think of kid dracula maybe i could brag a little but i did clear this part once with just regular jumps the last ninjutsu power sounds terrible it's a self-destruct that deals heavy damage to enemies but costs one life you can't blame me for not giving it a fair shot right but your fresh life starts with full health and one ninjutsu use this essentially let you into life that was about to end poorly anyway deal great damage continued the battle without restarting and you can do it again if you have more extra lives or you could just use invincibility if you don't [Music] it's a really impressive game it looks good it sounds good the box advertises real ninja sound effects a lot of the action sequences give me more of a contra vibe than say a ninja gaiden vibe even some of the bosses look like something that might have come straight out of contra or godzilla i think it's pretty interesting how this is yet another ninja game in a modern futuristic setting of course there's nothing wrong with that so long as it's fun if you're a fan of challenging side scrollers with limited continues and can take a small learning curve for the slightly technical controls i think you'll find a lot to love here i'd actually played shinobi 3 very briefly once before when i read the sonic's ultimate genesis collection which really wasn't the right kind of scenario for me to get into it at any rate when i had the chance to really sit down with shinobi 3 and figure out if i liked it the answer was yes big time i'm definitely going to hunt down the second game revenge of shinobi and since i only beat shinobi 3 on the default difficulty setting with 2 more to go it looks like i've got plenty of ninja themed fun and suffering to look forward to [Music] if you've been watching my life and gaming for a while then it's no secret that i was a bit of a sega kid growing up from the depths of the dark musty arcade to the lime green carpet of my childhood bedroom i spent more time with sega's games than anything else space harrier shinobi fantasy star golden axe these games and many more would make their mark on me for years to come sega ages was a series of games released for the saturn that celebrated sega's legacy with arcade perfect ports and compilations of genesis and master system games with the untimely death of the dreamcast sega became a third party developer together with d3 publisher they formed the company 3d ages and created the sega ages 2500 line of games this 33 volume series consisted of three-dimensional remakes ports and compilations at budget prices that were built internally by sega themselves and other developers two mixed results most of these games remain japan exclusive today although a number of the early volumes were compiled onto a disc for us release called the sega classics collection seeing that there are 33 of these it could take a while to look at each of them in this episode i'm going to be checking out the first five volumes of the sega ages 2500 series get ready [Music] [Applause] [Music] fantasy star generation 1 is a remake of the trailblazing 8-bit sci-fi rpg which is a heck of a game to start with i briefly talked about this remake in an episode focused on the master system original but i ended up being kind of apathetic about it in retrospect i can tell that i didn't give it much of a fighting chance knocking on just about every aspect of it i wanted a fantasy star remake but my love for the original would not allow me to look at this new version for what it really was being a remake the story follows the same beats as the original alyssa landale who we know here in north america is alice sets out for revenge against the tyrannical king le chic for the death of her brother nero with the help of three additional party members she adventures across the three planets of the algol star system of course the original came out in 1987 but it pushed far beyond what we'd seen in terms of japanese developed console rpgs at the time even years later it remains an impressively sprawling adventure while the overarching story isn't greatly expanded upon with this version there is substantially more dialogue between characters which is all new there's some cool and oftentimes hilarious interactions that really expand these characters relationships their personalities are fully formed we've been looking at a translation created by some fans at the fantasy star cave website if you have a way of playing burned discs on your ps2 it's a great way of experiencing this japanese exclusive game perhaps in an effort to set the tone for what we can expect from future entries in the sega ages 2500 series fantasy star's graphics are fairly rudimentary compared to what was out at the time these are budget titles so it's important to set expectations as such when i originally looked at the game i was pretty hard on the overall style saying that it looked like a flash game that was probably a bit rash it's honestly not that bad at all especially when you compare it to some of the other 3d ages games we'll be covering i came to really appreciate its simple charm especially when playing it on a crt television each of the three worlds are colorful and lushly drawn and character sprites look good the anime style cutscenes are nice although i do favor the less angular style featured in the originals there's just something about 80s anime you know the dungeons do retain their first person view these were absolutely mind-blowing on an 8-bit console but are naturally much less so three console generations later i'm not sure if their layout has changed but modern conveniences such as the atlas which grants an auto mapping feature makes these mazes much less daunting on the flip side the way that the characters move through the world still kind of bothers me they glide through towns in the overworld in a way that makes them seem like they're not actually part of the world that they inhabit this is especially apparent when using a vehicle on the overworld the largest overhaul lies in the battle screen changing the first person viewpoint of the original to a more traditional third person view featured in fantasy star 2 and 4 allows for some smart optimizations and elaborations to the original without going too nuts the animation and spells are rather minimal but i do enjoy how they look a new battle option called collaboration might fool you into thinking that the devs have integrated some sort of fantasy star 4 style magic combo system but this isn't the case at all it's much less cool each character can equip up to two gems which allow them special battle abilities such as auto healing or low level magic this is especially nice for tyrone because he has no magical ability at all of course the uses here are limited because the gems are expensive and prone to breaking i think you could probably avoid using this stuff if you wanted to [Music] fantasy star soundtrack has been ingrained in my brain since i was 11 years old so naturally i was excited to hear how the remix soundtrack would sound if the fantasy star sound collection was anything to go by then we're in for a treat but it's with heavy heart that the redone music is one aspect that i was consistently disappointed by [Applause] fantasy star generation one was packaged with a mini ring binder that was meant to house these data cards that were included with future releases because of this it was packaged in a bigger box this was a fun way to track what releases you purchased but eventually they stopped doing them putting some significant time into this remake and i can safely say that i was very unfair to it the last time i looked at it it's actually rather good i just needed to look at it for what it really was maybe it's not the remake that fantasy star deserved nor i wanted but it's the one it got for now [Music] after such a strong start sega slams on the brakes and kicks it in the reverse with volume two monaco gp is a remake of their 1979 arcade game the arcade original put people in a sit-down cabinet and gave you a top-down view of the action it was a pioneer but i think i was born too late to really appreciate it give me spy hunter instead this remake naturally converts everything to polygons and gives you two modes to choose from classic and original classic mode amounts to what is essentially an endless racer which is exactly what the arcade game was your main objective is to survive as long as you can before you inevitably hit an oncoming car wreck too many times and you'll run out of time and game over this is honestly a lot harder than it looks because it's so easy to burst into flames seriously if you even so much look at an enemy car wrong you blow up original mode offers a more robust experience by spinning things into more of a kart racer type of game to add a little bit more graphical flair the entire race track rotates when you make a turn when you get a turn icon just hit the appropriate shoulder button and boom the objective remains the same but now you inexplicably have the ability to make your car jump there's also some power up boxes that gives you one of a number of different attacks such as speed boosts and making your car larger than the competition so you can run them off the road in addition if you grab enough of these stars you'll have a short period of invincibility feels good to turn the tables monaco gp was developed by tamsoft who had wanted to do stuff like the oni chambara series they honestly didn't have a whole lot to work with here based on the arcade original and you can't really blame them for trying some new stuff but you know i'm not so sure a kart racer was what i would have gone with [Music] fantasy zone slips in at volume three now this this is a real sega classic who doesn't love little opa oppa if you ask me he was the true sega mascot before sonic the hedgehog not alex kidd [Music] fantasy zone was released in the arcades in 1986 but i mainly knew of it as a master system game it's a side-scrolling shooter but instead of moving just forward you can fly a left or right if you continue in one direction the level repeats it's more like defender on crazy pills than your typical shooter your main objective is to destroy enemy bases strewn across the land shooting down enemies makes them drop money which then you can spend in shops that randomly appear here you can buy high powered weapons bombs and speed boosts the weapons only last a set amount of time or until you die so make sure you know the best way to use them once you destroy all the enemy bases then it's time to take on the boss developer sims was smart to keep things as close to the original as possible it features the arcade music while the world was simply converted to polygons opa-oppa and enemies have been redone in a cel-shaded style that truly fits this world while enabling some additional freedoms when it comes to viewpoints as such there are 3d bonus stages where you collect the money that a boss drops when you beat them these were pretty well done and i feel like they could have been a bigger part of the game as it is these are a nice ode to the unreleased space fantasy zone on the pc engine there's a nice chunk of bonus features and hey they're actually useful by collecting money in a challenge mode you can then purchase additional features such as continues a sound test and most importantly rapid fire trust me on this go for the rapid fire first it'll save your hand and make everything else way more enjoyable fantasy zone is an absolutely worthy remake and perhaps that's because it stays so close to the original the bright colors and bizarre backgrounds make for a wholly unusual experience that is a really fun look into where sega was at in the mid 80s [Music] sega keeps things in the fantasy zone with volume 4 space harrier this 3d re-envisioning of the 1985 arcade super scaler game by yu suzuki was done by tamsoft don't worry don't worry it's better than monaco gp [Music] space harrier is a third person rail shooter where you run and fly across an extraordinary world filled with weird obstacles and even more eccentric enemies it's pretty straightforward kill everything or die the original version saw a bunch of ports and sequels over the years but the 3d aegis version marked the first time that the original was fully remade stating the obvious space harrier isn't exactly a looker using default settings the original signature checkerboard ground is gone and replaced with a rather bland looking texture that is filled with bumps and hills which means that harrier can't exactly run on it going to the option screen and toggling the fractal mode will restore the original style and pride space harrier without the checkerboard is an awful idea get ready putting them back makes things seem a lot more natural and honestly just more fun to play since running on the ground is such an important part of the gameplay filling in some check marks in the unnecessary additions column harrier can now lock onto multiple enemies using a panzer dragoon style homing shot additionally you now have a smart bomb attack that clears the screen of everything i gotta tell you though this thing is super overpowered you can clear a good amount of the stage bosses just using one one place that this remake really exceeded my expectations is with the musical theme this is one of my favorite tracks of all time and hearing this rendition was a pleasant surprise the announcer's voice is suitably inspiring too making you feel really good about restoring peace to the fantasy zone [Music] now i'm going to be upfront here i really really love space here here heck it was the game that made me fall in love with video games in the first place you'd think that all signs would point to me not liking this game but i do a lot as janky in a lot of ways but i had a lot more fun with this version than i ever expected to something about it just worked for me you know volume five belongs to sega's iconic hack and slash golden axe the arcade original is timeless and the genesis port is the highlight of the console's first year beyond those the sequels save for the arcade exclusive revenge of death adder really failed to grasp the first game's magic in my opinion maybe a remake of the original was just what was needed holy mackerel what happened here to say that this 3d remake of the original is bad is putting a lightly i honestly have no idea how sims who had just done a great job on fantasy zone managed to mess us up as badly as they did the game begins with a story segment showing the history of the golden axe and how it came into the possession of the evil death adder three characters set out to reclaim the axe and bring peace to the world by slicing and dicing palette swap versions of about 4 or 5 different enemies you can set out alone or team up with a friend for some co-op action which is where the real fun is unfortunately the action in this version itself is never really engaging or any fun at all you're probably gonna get pretty bored here enemy groups pop out in a steady stream over the course of some insanely drawn out and padded levels weird choices like splitting the first level into two nearly 10 minute levels keep golden axe far away from the breezy romp of the original it would probably help if every character didn't look and move so awkwardly sometimes you get caught performing a combo and your character will attempt to throw the enemy but instead just end up with handfuls of nothing look at the way that the beasts you can mount just glide across the ground even your magic spells are a disappointment the dragon's fire in the original was awe-inspiring here there's like nothing to get excited about in short pretty much all the ambience and style that was integral to the original game's identity and appeal has been stripped away or modified to the point where it's no longer recognizable for instance all the bonus stages between each level have been removed you know the ones where some magic elves steal your food or magic potions and you have to beat them up to get it back here is just a cut scene after the first level that really goes nowhere there's absolutely no resolution or payoff to the situation heck even the character select screen says all that needs to be said about this remake where there was once a giant skeleton holding all three characters in the palm of his hand there's now a simple menu showing each character the lone bright spot here is the music it really makes you think for a second that you're playing a much better game than you are i like to think that i'm generally pretty easy going when it comes to games i like what i like and rarely do i simply despise a game this unfortunately is one of those times golden axe is an awful attempt at recreating anything close to the appeal of the original [Music] these games were supposed to be a celebration of sega's heritage but when a remake misses the mark so intensely as golden axe does it really makes me nervous about what the future releases have in store next up i'll be covering volumes 6 through 11. there's some possibilities for greatness in there virtual racing game ground and afterburner come to mind but a few more golden axes and we might have a problem a lot of people have been asking us what we think about the sega genesis mini and well sega sent us a preview unit that we've been putting through its paces for about the past week or so so let's take a look at how it's shaping up [Music] so we're trying something a little bit different with this video this is more of a preview where we're going to have a casual conversation and if you like this format of video let us know we can do more things with this more previews sort of quick looks at things that maybe aren't quite deserving of the full-fledged episode but we want to take a look at anyway so anyway this past weekend i had a chance to try the genesis mini when we were traveling to the long island retro gaming expo i played it in a hotel room with a kind of terrible tv that we had no access to the settings on so it was not the ideal environment for me to play it in but corey actually has the unit himself and has played it a lot more than i have i i received the unit last week but i've only been able to put it through its paces you know for a few days because i was working on the previous episode and i made myself wait until i finished the episode before i unboxed it uh i'm it was pretty excited to take a look at it i mean obviously it's been developed by m2 who everyone knows at this point that we are big fans of and uh i mean the system itself i love the design of it you know it looks basically like a perfect rep replica of the of the genesis you know i love that it's the the high definition graphics model which is finally appropriate you can open up the expansion door on it the cart slot opens up and you know you can just see right inside of it the volume slider on it uh it moves but it doesn't do anything obviously yeah i mean it's definitely a lot more elaborate than a lot of the other mini classic systems that have come together with those sort of mechanical parts to it and one thing i thought was interesting was even though it comes with the three button controllers you have a what is it a retro bit six button controller i think that uh it is still compatible with it because it's just a usb controller right retrobit is the official producer of the six button controllers for the system like at least in the us a lot of people are complaining that the us system and the european system are only coming with a three button controller but i have to admit that because of the game selection being more of a uh you know an earlier game list for the most part the three button is much more appropriate i mean even though i haven't used a three button controller in a long time to really sit down and play a game there's definitely something nostalgic about it and the controllers are spot on as far as i can tell except for there's kind of like a rougher texture on the d-pad versus the you know the smoother surface from the original controllers i've always kind of preferred three button controllers myself and you know it they're they're really big you kind of forget how big they are i i like the fact that they actually have long cables on them versus you know the nintendo systems for the most part i think that there is there's been a lot of care put into the like the visual aesthetics of the system well so what what happens when you turn on the system i wasn't there when you i saw you turn on the system uh in long island it just it boots up and then the music kicks in and uh i mean all the games kind of spread out from the from the center of the screen [Music] and the system does output in 720p right i mean you can definitely use a lower power bit of hardware to get 720p and it's just kind of appropriate for 240p games because you can do that simple 3x vertical scale uh and it'll it'll be good for most tvs yeah yeah and you know i like that it has all the box arts and everything right in the uh in the menu and you can actually uh hit the b button and it makes everything so you can see the spines of the of the of the cases which is cool because then you can see everything that you have on one screen you don't have to scroll through i do have to admit that the interface and you kind of notice this yourself that it's pretty touchy sometimes you'll hit left or right to select a game and it will skip several games yeah it's i i don't really know what's up with that i mean it's a nice looking interface but it it yeah i wish it's it's just too sensitive you can hit the reset button to go into the back to the menu but you can also hit the start button and hold it for five seconds and it will automatically take you to the in-game menu although on with the retro bait controller you can hit the mode button and it will automatically take you to the menu in terms of the games included though i mean i think the biggest thing for us is that uh it finally gives us a physical version of the english translation of monster world four that that we can we have in a permanent form and versus the virtual console or playstation network or xbox live [Music] like i think the asia region maybe has the best balance overall for its uh list of games not not the japan system the asia system uh because it's the only one to my knowledge with alien soldier and to me i would really like to own that version just because i feel like owning that that in my mind that helps me feel more like i own the game and whether i play it actually on the genesis mini or i just play through an ever drive having that would motivate me more to actually play through that game which i'd like to do because i love treasure games i think another exciting inclusion on this package is obviously is the mega man the wily wars which is a game that i played on the sega channel when i was young and you know it only got a physical release in japan and in europe and it runs really well i always felt like there was kind of a weird input lag to it [Music] input lag is unavoidable in stuff like this even if it's just you know the emulation or just a little bit of overhead in terms of using usb controllers there's gonna be some there but i i think it feels pretty good just in general uh one kind of fun thing in the interface though was when you went to the language it doesn't change the game lineup but you can see like the japanese box arts for example if you change it to a japanese language and i think the most fun touch is that dr robotnik's mean bean machine just straight up turns into polio pollo you you commented yourself you said i can't believe that they would possibly trap you in a different language because if you don't know how to exactly get back to the language because you have the list of languages and even the the english option is still in japanese so you gotta remember exactly where where it was and you know you get if you get stuck then you're gonna have to look it up or do something what is cool about this is actually when you switch to other languages it plays those other region versions of the game which means that stuff like sonic 1 has the parallax scrolling in the clouds and it has like the life bar in contra hardcore so you have different versions of the game which like in terms of contra hardcore kind of gives you an easier difficulty from the us version which is kind of a neat little touch [Applause] we got to mention the menu music uh which was composed by yuzukushiro and this was kind of a big selling point when they first announced it and it's kind of a different than i was expecting i was expecting more of a streets of rage type sound to it but it's actually original compositions using you know the sounds of specific genesis games music you know there's ones that are inspired by comic zone one inspired by gun star heroes [Music] so in terms of like video scaling options i mean i know we've got just a basic 4 3 and a stretch mode and you can plot apply a crt filter to either which i notice that the crt filter is it's kind of like an rgb filter it's not uh it's not like it's not supposed to look like composite right well it's not full on composite for sure um for some reason uh it just like play like wreaked havoc with my capture especially with golden axe i was getting like the scan lines were blurring together i tried several different capture cards and it just the way that it is being captured it looks atrocious it looks better in person yeah it looks it looks pretty good on the screen but i think people expecting to have like the waterfall and sonic blur and blend or the spotlights and streets of rage 2 kind of that transparency that that does not happen but it is it's a good sort of pvm-ish looking scan lines uh thing there's also two selections for borders and thankfully one of them is a pure black border and one of my main criticisms for what m2 is doing on the switch is their border off option is still kind of a gray grayscale gradient but this is perfectly black no nothing behind the image at all yeah we're both big proponents of having the option to have absolutely zero border so that i hope that they continue to do that going forward [Music] m2 has unfortunately been kind of weak with a lot of their recent hd stuff uh there is no interpolation on the normal four 4-3 mode in fact it's not really a true 4-3 mode it's uh it's actually square pixels for games that are 320 pixels wide which is a majority of the genesis library and you won't get any of the the shimmering issues caused by uh uneven pixel sizing because they're they are uniform pixels and a majority of the games on here unfortunately though uh that does mean you're gonna have problems with games like wonderboy monster world shining force and uh the gameplay in monster world four uh where those pixels are not an even size uh and so what's interesting is that you did some tests where you use the stretch mode uh which does fix this the pixel sizing in uh 256 pixel wide games which is again only a small handful of games but uh and then you can use your tvs function to squish it back in uh and that does provide you with like that accurate four three aspect ratio uh but there was also some vertical scaling that screwed up the vertical so that was no longer an integer scale and you would get shimmer and plus there was like some weird like dots or blobs along certain lines that kind of looks like a scaling glitch yeah so for the most part just use the 4-3 mode it's going to look great for a majority of the games on the system uh technically it's going to be a little bit wider than a true crt but uh i think there's a good argument to be made for you know you can see it like in the moon and uh castlevania bloodlines that always looks too skinny on a crt and it's a perfect circle on you know when when using square pixels so i i think it's i think it's the smart choice overall but i do wish m2 would use would add an option for interpolation without scan lines because they clearly have the power to do it uh with these uh with the scan scanline function things are softened a bit in the horizontal axis so you don't get shimmering at all and they've been neglecting that on like the uh the switch sega ages as well uh and and they could clearly do it and i just i just wish they would it's kind of it's like one of the few things they're doing these days that's kind of disappointing me uh you know it does look really good is games that have 480i implemented in into it uh the sonic 2 split screen looks fantastic probably the other weak point of m2's overall work is probably you know sound emulation and to be fair genesis sound emulation is in a really weird spot right now it's extremely challenging to get right and even things like the mega sg are pretty far off there's a project happening right now called the md fourier that is a sound analysis for different mega drive and genesis hardware so this will hopefully allow like fpgas and emulators people working on them to be able to approximate the sound a lot closer to different versions of the genesis i am not like a an expert on genesis sound so it sounded pretty good to me but you did say that you noticed a fair bit of audio delay which is you know pretty common in software emulation anyway yes there there is quite a bit of sound delay i think that everything has sound delay sometimes it's more apparent than others the places i notice it the most are in columns when you drop the drop your jewels and they hit and the sound that it makes when they when it lands [Music] it's very obvious in strider when you swing your sword which in that sound effect itself is also kind of off uh it's a bit more shrill sounding than original hardware [Music] some of the voices might be a little bit worse off but i mean to be fair this is a problem that almost everything has these days you know this is to give people a good experience with the games that they loved years ago or if they missed the sega genesis to play a really excellent selection of its most of its must-play games or a good selection of its just some of its best games and you know for people like us who are so entrenched in original hardware like it's it's a novelty for us and the the the accuracy in certain areas is not a priority definitely disappointing when it doesn't always hit the marks but for the most part i mean this is this is the best you know uh plug and play emulator box for the genesis that has existed up to this point you know you have these 42 games on here but there's a lot of people say oh you know it's missing all this other stuff other regions got different games and in some cases a better selection but uh people are saying oh we're just gonna hack it you know we'll just hack it and put what we want on there but i think an important thing that people might be overlooking is the fact that uh m2 is general mo when doing stuff like this is that it's not just like a one-size-fits-all emulator and they drop it in there they actually tweak these games specifically to run within their emulator and play to their strengths and that's not something you're going to get from just dropping any game into whatever emulator is in this i guess one uh sort of small disappointment is the m2 is known for having uh these additions to the games they they do a lot of really clever smart tweaks that kind of make some of them the the ultimate versions of the games uh and in that sense you know these are pretty much i think all of them are basically the the straight up original roms and uh and and you know you compare that to say the the sega ages on switch or uh the 3ds 3d classics uh some of those are the ultimate versions of those games because they've just got these excellent additions that uh uh you know you can play them as they originally were or you can freely change your guns and gun star heroes if you want or you can increase walking speed and fantasy star experience and stuff like that you're not going to find that stuff here yeah and i feel like that's maybe my biggest disappointment with this and i'm not i'm not asking for like auto mapping and games like that like like the sega ages on the on the switch have you know it doesn't have to be something extreme like that but i'm talking you know the difficulty level in fantasy star worship all it was well you could select a different difficulty level and all it was was a rom hack that essentially that just gives you four times the money four times the experience per battle and as far as i know it's just like a its own version of the rom and i feel like they could probably just could have dropped that in there just as easily as what they're doing with just having fantasy star for vanilla version in there so i guess kind of the takeaway from that is yes you've got this this really good emulation you know you know they're going to do pretty good with emulation but at the same time it doesn't have the m2 touch so to speak you know what i mean so that you know it you know you're hitting a good baseline of quality here but it's not really going beyond yeah it does it doesn't go above and beyond like you know that they they are known for and maybe they were told you know you don't need to do all this extra stuff for it but i feel like if they're putting stuff like tetris in there you know that wasn't ever really released and you know the new version of uh darius why not put this other stuff in there as well maybe they didn't have the space for it yeah or maybe they maybe they were just concerned or sega was concerned about making the interface too complicated and too confusing for like the average user which is you know the target audience uh you know i can totally understand why you know if you're going to the video menu and it's like well i want horizontal interpolation only but not vertical interpolation that totally makes sense to us but that's just going to be too many options and too intimidating for the average person maybe they wanted to do things like that and sega said no that's that's too much let's keep it simple yes i mean in terms of like interpolation i don't expect it to be on a toggle or anything i think it just should be implemented as a baseline just have it in there because that's what the super nes mini did 99.9 percent of people are not going to even care that it's that it's on that it's not this like slightly blurred every you know few columns of pixels you know i think it's important to realize we aren't the target audience for this this is an 80 device and it's in no way a replacement for real hardware uh or having perfect uh accuracy it's just it's for people who want to get like a good selection of games plug it in their tv and relive the nostalgia of the playing the genesis in 1989 1990 and so on for people like us who you know prefer to play on real hardware this is this just serves a very limited purpose right but it's a cool it's a cool collectible it's got a great box it's got a very nice uh physical object um you know hey comes with usb genesis controllers that can be useful too and is also just a way to own certain games that maybe are very expensive or hard to get uh and you know for me that kind of legitimizes playing it on a never drive or whatever but whether i would actually play those on the on the genesis mini itself maybe maybe not i just don't know uh but uh it it does seem to be very good for what it is if you enjoy this more casual format of us getting impressions of systems and you know hardware and it's something you'd like to see us do more of let us know because this is allows us to deliver more videos to you more efficiently without these big gaps in between you know major episodes and these will in in no way replace our normal episodes these are think of them as bonus episodes so yeah that wraps it up let us know what you think of this casual conversation style of mlig mini and we'll see you next time [Music] [Music] if you had a sega cd i'm betting that this logo looks extremely familiar to you game creative staff wolf team wolf team was a japanese development team owned by a company called talinet we knew of telenet here in the us as renovation products and they released some really excellent games on the sega genesis in the middle of its lifespan games like vales and most notably guyarys which is probably the best shooter on the system but i'd say the wolf team was responsible for a number of telenet's most well-known games i admit they weren't quite on my radar until i got my beloved sega cd the add-on came with a pile of packing games but the one i latched onto most was this decent side-scrolling shooter called selfies during the first year of the sega cd's life wolf team would port several of these kind of qte inspired arcade laserdisc games games i'd never even heard of in this episode that's exactly what i'm going to be talking about the full motion video games of game creative staff wolf team [Music] cobra command was the first laserdisc port that wolf team took on the original version was released in 1984 by data east you know a bad dude's fame i'm bad in it you find yourself as the pilot of a top-secret high-powered attack helicopter called the lx-3fx and you're out to stop a terrorist organization causing havoc around the world that means it's time to use your brand new technology and blow some stuff up cobra command was the game that my friends and i were looking forward to in the sega city launch window we needed something to justify our purchase when my friends and i first saw in a magazine we thought it was going to be a completely free roaming game what a bunch of idiots fmv stands for full motion video these kind of games are generally known as the predecessor to the modern day qte the games play out as a sort of movie but as the action takes place you're given any number of button or directional prompts that you have to input as quickly as possible if you're too slow or mess up you're going to have to do it all over again it's actually pretty dumb cobra command takes things about a half step further and that you get a bit more control you have to move this little crosshair around the screen and shoot enemies instead of just hitting a single button your high-powered super helicopter is equipped with a vulcan machine gun and unlimited missiles honestly i didn't see a reason to use the machine guns at all the enemies take more hits to die from it and it's not like you can just lay on the trigger the gun will overheat if you fire it for too long missiles on the other hand you can just keep jamming on the button if you want and you'll have no problem occasionally you'll have to make some quick maneuvers but it doesn't happen all that often you're going to be shooting down terrorists in a number of scenarios like flying in between buildings of downtown new york city wrecking the remains of an ancient civilization on easter island and even inside this giant cave how the heck are these helicopters even fitting much less flying around with reckless abandon inside these caverns you'd have to be insane to fly inside this the animation is alright it's fairly choppy and definitely suffers from the sega cd's inherited limitation of only being able to display 64 colors at once it's the dark scenes that suffer the most with lots of detail being lost but it doesn't really look all that bad it certainly had a lot more style than a lot of the live action games that were getting most of the attention at the time wolf team followed up with another data east fmv port of a game called road blaster fx but here in the us atari already released a game called roadblasters so we'd come to know of this game as road avenger on their wedding day a couple is terrorized and run off the road by this gang that looks like something out of a mad max movie the widower is unsurprisingly pissed and seeks out revenge using his enhanced sports car to kill them one by one it's honestly a pretty great setup everything you need to know about the game is told during the opening cinema which is set to probably my favorite game theme song of all time seriously it is so good the controls have been pared down significantly compared to cobra command but it doesn't hurt the game at all in fact i think it makes it a lot better all you need to worry about this time is turning left or right hitting the brakes or gunning it with your turbo boosters streamlined for maximum enjoyment i'm not afraid to say it road avenger is in my opinion the best full motion video game on the sega cd maybe even ever everything comes together perfectly to create the ultimate string of over-the-top scenarios the game is full of crazy things like this driving around in the sewers through the countryside no matter where our hero goes he is sure to leave a trail of destruction behind him one of my favorite parts is when you chase your target through the streets and into a hotel lobby there's this quick cut of the concierge who is just horrified at what's happening i know our hero is pissed but you have to wonder in all his rage how many innocents were left dead in his wake the animation is way smoother and nicer looking than cover it's apparent that wolf team used and improved everything that they learned which is impressive because road avenger is just so much more out of control stylistically it still retains that overall graininess but everything moves so fast that you don't really have a lot of time to notice it i just love rode avengers so much i rented it several times just so i could replay it and watch the intro imagine how excited i was when i saw that they were going to bring out another full motion video game just a short while later taito's time gal which was decidedly less of a perfect follow-up [Music] in the year 4001 some guy named luda has stolen a time traveling device and is going through billions of years changing history articular hero follows trying to catch him but it seems like she could just be making things a lot worse for everyone using laser guns on ancient romans probably not the best idea gal warps into a variety of scenarios befitting of each time period and immediately gets into trouble from the wings of a fighter jet in 1941 to the future moon base in the distant year of 2010 hey where's our moon base that was four years ago the first thing i quickly realized about time gal is way harder than the previous two games your command input window is so much shorter i had a really hard time keeping up or just being quick enough even on easy making things even tougher is that every stage can either be normal or mirrored meaning that you're never going to be playing the same game every time you play it now this could certainly be seen as an improvement to the genre i found that the mirroring caused me even less of a chance to appreciate the actual events of the level at certain points time will stop allowing you to choose from solutions for your current predicament this seems like it would be a cool way to fuse in some branching paths but no such luck there's only one solution and the others just kill you time gal's graphics are quite a bit of a jump over the previous two games it doesn't seem to have the problem with the video dithering that the previous two games suffer from it's almost like they went back and redrew every single frame of animation making it so much more crisp looking it's almost like it's not video at all just regular old animation pretty neat a special recognition to time gal's voice she always has an innocent little quip for the bad guys that i can appreciate and i love how excited she gets during the temple of doom inspired mine cart chase [Music] for the longest time i thought time gal was the last of wolf teams fmv games but it wasn't until recently i discovered that there was one more a final fourth fmv game called revenge the ninja that i'd never even known about revenge of the ninja known as ninja hayate in japan revenge of the ninja was originally developed by taito you control the bumbling ninja hayate as he infiltrates the castle full of demons to rescue a princess he'll take on all kinds of accursed beings from samurai skeletons to giant dinosaur robots hayate is fairly accident prone so the game plays up the angle quite a bit kind of like dirk the daring and the dragon's lair games that this is clearly inspired by you kind of get the feeling that wolf team was a bit sick of doing these at this point since revenge the ninja is by far the worst of all four of these games that i've mentioned the dithering on the videos and this one is so far beyond anything else they've done it looks absolutely awful and not to mention the game is totally easy i even finished it on my first playthrough stages range from extremely short to fairly long and there's about 20 of them so it accumulates to a fairly decent sized adventure but regardless there's a reason why this game is the lesser known of the bunch it doesn't really have much going for it let's get out of here [Music] whether or not you've heard of wolf team there's a good chance you're at least a little familiar with their games if not in their past form you might be more familiar with their newer games in 1995 the remaining staff at wolf team would go on to create the tales series which has become such a staple for namco and rpg fans today so go on check out some other games you might be surprised what you find [Music] january 31st 2001 was a day that would live in infamy in the hearts and minds of every self-proclaimed sega kid out there after many highs and lows sega announced that they were ceasing production of the sega dreamcast and officially going third party sega's third party strategy ended up being pretty grand they'd released different lineups for the remaining consoles that were almost completely exclusive to those systems each release was tailored to take advantage of the hardware and the audience that each console offered and there's no system that benefited more than microsoft's xbox [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] if you ask me i think the dreamcast's most iconic game was the wonderful jet grind radio also known as jet set radio outside of the us this revolutionary title brought the technique of cel-shading polygons to the masses creating a true cartoon look unfortunately it didn't quite set the world on fire outside of the hardcore sega fans so i was shocked yet pleasantly surprised when sega announced that their very first game for the xbox was going to be a follow-up jet set radio future yeah this is dj professor k baby the master of mayhem know i'm saying bringing you another tokyo underground pirate radio broadcast from jet set radio more of a re-envisioning of the original than a true sequel jet set radio future once again puts you in control of the members of the gg's street gang you rollerblade around tag certain areas with your graffiti and pull off tricks as best as you can every once in a while though the police will show up led by the insane police chief hayashi these guys will stop at nothing to help protect public property and save tax dollars even going as far as to throw some tanks into the mix getting an upgraded look from the first game jsr future has way larger areas that are more densely populated but everything moves along at a very smooth frame rate outside of the game's look the most well-known aspect of the original was its delightful mix of licensed and original music tracks and once again hideki naganuma returns to bring the thunder the future in the title definitely refers to the neo-futuristic makeover that everyone and everything has gotten since the first game i thought it was a great evolution to the look i like it a bit more than the original event all of this is not without its problems though camera angles can be really awful and cause you to miss jumps because you can't even see what's coming i also found myself grinding on rails when i had no intention to and half the time when i did intend to i start going in the wrong direction finally a lot of time your objective can be super unclear and even if it is the map gets so cluttered that it makes no sense how am i supposed to even read this also fans were decidedly split on the gameplay changes from the first to second game some didn't like the dumbing down of the tagging system in the original you have to follow the on-screen commands to complete the tag but here all you have to do is pull the right trigger while moving past the icons and you'll spray it automatically i was actually pretty happy that the tagging was simplified though i suppose you could say that it brings down the tension quite a bit jsrf definitely had a bit of an odd course on the xbox it didn't sell all that great on its own but microsoft decided to include it as a pack-in with the system along with sega gt-2002 both discs are backwards compatible on the xbox 360. so that's pretty cool but all in all despite this it remains exclusive to xbox platforms it's not all that often that you see a game with such a fully realized aesthetic where it becomes essentially timeless jet set radio futures visuals and pure style hold up extremely well to this day my heart ain't pounded like this since since my first date i was so nervous what i'm saying i forgot to wear my underwear baby under clear blue skies crazy cabbie sun and crazy money one of my personal favorites from my early college years was a little game you might have heard of called crazy taxi a couple of years later sega released a dreamcast exclusive sequel that i totally skipped for some reason but then crazy taxi 3 high roller made its way to the xbox in 2002 and was the culmination of the epic that is the crazy taxi series before it would slowly regress into obscurity in the world of portables and free to play phone games pick a driver and cruise around in a sweet taxi convertible pick up fares and give them the ride of their life on their way to their destination before the time limit runs out that's all there is to it it's super simple and loads of fun the way every arcade style game should be of course you've got a few tricks up your sleeve since this game is completely bonkers you can boost and drift to build up combos that equals more money from your fares but since i hadn't played the series since the first one my eyes nearly flew out of my face when i saw that you can make your car jump i'm sorry what and one of the dumbest things i've seen in a while they added the ability to make your car jump at will hey why the heck not i guess it's not like the game is called rational taxi [Music] each game in the series has taken you to a new city and three's no different this time you'll find yourself cruising around las vegas i mean the glitter oasis it's got big buildings and even sprawls out into the desert but not without a bit of slowdown in spots it's decent overall but i think the west coast of the first game was so perfectly designed that i'll always view it as being superior but there's good news crazy taxi 3 includes the location from both the first game and the second this was especially great for me since i never got to speed around the second game's location the nyc inspired small apple and in addition to a brand new cast you also get the cast members from the first and second game which is good news because i was afraid of missing my beloved gina okay making a return from the dreamcast version was the mission mode aka the crazy box well it's called crazy x here in this mode you have to utilize your different moves to complete increasingly ridiculous objectives it's absolutely stupid crazy taxi 3 is the last game in the series that you'll need since it has everything that the previous games did even the music makes its way over i mean who wants to play this game without the offsprings all i want the smell of cash is in the air so go get it [Music] oh shenmue i've always been a bit back and forth on this series ever since i fell asleep waiting for an event to happen in the first game i've kind of been unsure how i feel about the series i wanna love it so you might wonder why am i even talking about this shenmue 2 is a really huge and important release for the xbox and i feel like it should be talked about but instead of me well i thought i'd get two of the biggest shenmue fans that i know to go a bit more in depth with it so shenmue was released in japan and the us to mixed results people didn't know how to take the game and also it wasn't a very big money maker they'd invested a lot of money into this franchise and it wasn't paying off the way they wanted so that changed the direction of shenmue too in this country sorry not now i can't pay it what no money well pretty much all of a sudden i heard shenmue 2 was cancelled on the dreamcast i mean i was completely devastated i remember writing on forums at the time i was a fanboy ranting and i was really ranting i was really upset about it but there was hope good shemo 2 was going to come out officially in the u.s but now it was picked up by microsoft the xbox had just come out microsoft needed some franchises on there they talked to sega paid them some money and shenmue 2 was now an xbox game which was very unusual at the time and i don't think i was that happy about it like johnny i was really disappointed that it wasn't coming out on the dreamcast but at least we were able to get it in english on some platform you know the xbox version of shenmue two they brought back some of the people who did the voices in the original shenmue so we could hear the game fully in english and that was really cool you know hearing the same voice for ryo that we got used to playing the first game so that that was a treat how about a game it's 50 a game and the rule is i'm aware of the rules it's all right do you want to play then shenmue 2 as a game is fantastic you know you've got lots of different things you can do you can wander around explore you know talk to people you know see where that kid ran off to you with your backpack talk to shop owners there's also quicktime events where buttons flash on the screen telling you what to do you guys know what quicktime events are [Music] sorry but it's kind of weird because the colors of the buttons are in different locations on the xbox pad than they are in the dreamcast so that can kind of send you for a loop if you're used to playing the first one on the dreamcast but you get used to it i really like the story in shenmue too is you think about it you know this guy trying to get revenge for the guy who killed his father and it doesn't sound that epic but it just you know it gets to you you really kind of connect and you are yo walking everywhere doing everything doing all these mundane things and i think it's the mundane things that you do that actually help you connect to the character you either love or hate this game and honestly i'm really glad i love it i mean why wouldn't i be thanks guys you've said more about shenmue 2 than i ever could have but i have to admit while gathering footage for this episode i've spent more time with shamu too than i ever have i think i actually finally get it you have an aptitude for the move i was not mistaken early on in sega's third party initiative they ported several games they had in the works for the recently deceased dreamcast chief among these was a third-person shooter named gundub that was developed using an experimental control scheme consisting of a controller and a light gun simultaneously now that might sound difficult to manage but i do wonder if it would have been easier to handle than what we actually got there's difficult to learn controls and then there's gun valkyrie the story is about some alternate steampunk timeline where in 1906 a colony on another planet was attacked by some sort of insect i don't know i was completely confused and it didn't make a lick of sense to me just get in there and shoot some stuff gameplay is primarily based around your jetpack which obviously allows you to fly around simply hitting the left trigger allows you to take flight and then while in the air clicking in the left stick and then pressing a direction will make you boost hover or dodge to say that this is needlessly complex is putting it lightly to say that this is difficult to master is putting it even lighter these controls have always driven me crazy and caused me to quit the game every time i've tried to finish it but something started to happen recently maybe it was all those years of attempts but it started to make sense to me and suddenly i was pulling off some actual cool moves but still nothing close to the high level play you see in the demonstration mode [Music] you've got two characters to choose from the quick and nimble kelly and the powerful but sluggish sabarota for the most part i've always stuck with kelly because i've had a hard enough time wrapping my head around this so-called easy character i can't even imagine the difficult one the soundtrack is all right from what i've heard i always loved how heroic the first level's music is you can really tell that this was a dreamcast game until late in production it looks and feels like a direct port but with maybe a smoothed out frame rate the overall designs are pretty good though and i'm always a fan of a steampunk style gun valkyrie seemed to fade into obscurity fairly quick i remember its price dropping like a rock almost immediately after release and those that did give it a shot were probably turned off quickly by the controls like myself but i think if you put the time and effort in to really understand and master the nuances of the controls it's probably hugely rewarding i could just never do it kelly sabarota we are about to enter the stratosphere of the colony tiernang you should already have the topographical map of tiernang as well as dr hebel's personal file uploaded into your headset [Music] [Applause] outrun for as long as it's been around has been a staple of sega's library yu suzuki's classic arcade racer helped cement sega's domination of arcades in the mid 80's but it wouldn't be until nearly 17 years later when it would receive a direct sequel you might think after that much time they couldn't possibly recapture the feel and excitement of the original it's a total classic and practically perfect well rest assured they do recapture the magic and it is awesome [Music] there's three modes of play outrun arcade outrun challenge and outrun xbox live those servers aren't online anymore so let's make that two main modes of play you'll spend most of your time in outrun arcade but there are two important sub modes within this outrun mode has you driving through five of 15 total stages trying to make it to the end of the race before the pesky timer runs out at the end of each stage in classic style the road forks and you can either head left for an easier stage or right for a harder stage heart attack mode heart attack mode huh not only do you have to worry about the time limit but you also have to impress the lady that is riding in the passenger seat how do you do that well by following her directions sometimes she'll tell you to pass as many cars as possible and other times she'll want you to pull some crazy drifting action oh wait drifting well that wasn't in the original game outrun 2's primary gameplay addition is being able to slide around sharp turns and come out of them without losing too much speed simply take your foot off the gas tap the brake and land the gas again and you'll be able to hug a corner so tight you're practically driving sideways it's exhilarating and makes you feel like a professional [Applause] [Music] badass in addition to these outrun 2 has a pretty cool mission mode where you're given objectives such as driving a specific lanes for a certain amount of time or keeping a maximum speed some of them can get pretty wacky too such as this one where you have to do the math then drive through the gate with the answer on it one of the most iconic aspects of outrun was always its music and thankfully everything is represented very nicely here they even included some new music but i just skipped over all those because i'm always gonna pick splash wave flash wave i can't state it enough outrun 2 is completely awesome and this is coming from someone who's not even much of a racing fan in the first place everyone deserves to play this so thankfully it didn't stay exclusive to the xbox for long a short time later sega would release an updated version on both the xbox and ps2 called outrun 2006 coast to coast this version had a number of additional challenges bolstering the value of the original game which despite having a lot of unlockables itself a lot of fans felt it was slightly lacking in extras [Applause] [Music] especially on the xbox sega has some really great games i felt that these were the most notable but you're probably thinking where the heck is panzer dragoon orta aren't you well that one's just so good that it really deserves its own episode i mean it's only the best game in the xbox entire lineup we can always hope that perhaps one day sega will return to that place where it was obvious that they loved making games i have faith do you there's a part in the game where you can actually sit rio down on a toilet you've got to tap the button to get the turd out and it's really hard to get the turd out because ryo is you know pretty much constantly constipated that was the fun part i'm not serious [Music] [Applause] [Music] so let me ask you a serious question what is your favorite game of all time now i'm guessing your answer would be similar to this that is the legend of zelda ocarina of time there is no way i could answer that question for me it always comes back to chrono cross it is and almost has been a legend of zelda a link to the past well obviously the best video game series of all time is sweep it in right which game is the best i i can't just pick one now let me rephrase the question and see if your answer changes what is the most important game to you [Music] what i mean by this is a game that changed the way you thought about games it had such a profound effect on you that the way you viewed video games was forever changed for me the answer is easy sega's fantasy star following the release and frenzy over dragon quest in japan i think sega immediately decided they should get on that train the creator of their popular alex kidd character reiko kadama came forward with the idea for fantasy star now i grew up in and out of arcades and my love for space harrier guaranteed that i would ask for the sega master system instead of an nes for christmas in 1986. owners of the master system know it was a tough situation to be in the nes was completely destroying it in the hearts and minds of most kids when i saw an ad for fantasy star i could hardly believe what i was looking at the next wave in gaming you're telling me the singular picture of a sand worm look better than anything that could be on the nintendo the most important thing to me was putting this image away as ammo for the slowly ramping war between sega and nintendo i guess the least important thing to me apparently was what is this game about how does it play i don't even know what kind of game it was but honestly did it matter fantasy star is a story of alice the adventure begins when her older brother nero is gunned down by police officers by the orders of the once beloved now tyrannical king lasik swearing revenge ellis takes up nero's sword and follows his last words to seek out a man named odin atlas is joined in her quest by a little talking cat thing called meow an esper named noah and the aforementioned warrior odin on an adventure that takes place across the three planets of a solar system called algol we start out on the planet palma full of rolling hills green forests and large bodies of water closer to the sun there's motavia the desert planet and moving in the other direction is the icy desoris trying to differentiate itself from his competition fantasy star mixes technology and fantasy in a really awesome way dragons spaceships swords laser guns i'd never seen anything quite like it on my 11th birthday my family decided to go shopping i had a hunch that maybe fantasy star had been released i walked in the kb toys and saw it hanging behind the register it's going to cost me 80 every penny i'd gotten as a gift and then some but it wasn't a hard choice i'd poured over that ad for so long there's no way i wouldn't be getting it that day once i finally booted the game up i was completely in awe these graphics are so good continue you mean this game has a save system like zelda did then as soon as the actual game started i was faced with this what the heck is this where's that sand worm from the pictures why are the graphics suddenly so bad i walked around town for a second then went outside i got into my first battle with what looked like a giant fly i had to select what i wanted to do from a list of options attack item talk i was killed immediately it took me a few deaths to figure out what i was even doing and what was even happening in the fight scenes i didn't get menu driven turn-based things just yet it was so the opposite to anything that i played in my life even winning a battle i was presented with more questions what are experience points meseta i didn't have the faintest idea what was going on and despite being impressed by the 3d dungeons i felt like i'd made this huge mistake all this excitement and i think i hate this game i put it away and just played something else randomly deciding to give the game another chance i discovered the secret to proceeding yes there's an item called secrets and you have to try to buy it three times of course it's expensive and i figured out experience in leveling up while i was saving enough money or merced for it secrets turned out to be a road pass that i needed to get to the spaceport i'd been joined by meow by the end of the night and from there everything came together [Music] i was daydreaming about the game at school i convinced my friends to get their own copy of the game we'd exchanged progress and hints to advancing over the phone and on the school bus every day and when we got stuck we would call the 1 800 usa sega hint line by the time i finally defeated dark falls late that summer i'd been on an adventure really that no other game could ever match it's not just how good the game was but the entire experience that my friends and i had i still have my original fantasy star cartridge to remind me of this time it could never be replaced in 2003 with the launch of the sega ages 2500 line on the playstation 2 sega decided to remake fantasy star sounds great right and not quite released only in japan this remake was obviously done on the cheap flat out this certainly isn't the remake a trailblazer like fantasy star deserved or needed it feels like a flash game with their characters slipping and sliding all over the map all the characters got a typical modern anime makeover and didn't fare well at all in the transition meow is now brown and just how obnoxious does odin look the music is just totally inappropriate it loses that futuristic vibe that the original had instead opting for more whimsical festive [Music] sound i'm sure the development of the remake was well intentioned but just look at this artwork that appears early in the game and tell me that they really cared how does this even get a pass [Music] looking back there's so much that could be said about fantasy star that would be true everything from having a strong female protagonist to having 3d first-person dungeons and an 8-bit system and they animate shockingly well to having three full-sized overworlds to explore that made every other japanese console rpg look tiny in comparison so i can say without hesitation that while fantasy star probably isn't my favorite game of all time i mean heck i couldn't answer that question it is without a doubt the most important game for me it shaped the way i'd enjoy them from that moment on in ways that would never be repeated [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] if there's one thing that we can be sure of it's that sega loves to celebrate their past and who can blame them starting with the sega saturn they've made it a point to port or remake x number of games each generation so that fans can re-experience old favorites and new players can see where their reputation comes from perhaps this was most important after the untimely passing of the dreamcast as sega went third party they knew there was a huge potential audience who may have never even touched a sega console in the first place this opportunity birthed what might be the most ambitious revival they'd ever attempted sega ages 2500 a sprawling 33 volume lineup of remakes remasters and ports of some of their most iconic games all coming in at a budget price of 2500 yen or about 25 us dollars unfortunately as is usually the case a budget price comes with a budget quality i previously looked at the first five volumes of this series which was a mixed bag of surprising remakes two disastrous updates but what lies beyond let's check out some more entries in the sega ages 2500 series [Music] we previously left off with the mystifyingly terrible golden axe remake how such a sure thing could be messed up as badly as it was i have no idea but in this episode we'll be examining the next five releases as before the games featured in this episode are available sporadically in different regions while all were released as separate volumes in japan several were localized to north america and compiled onto a single disk called sega classics collection on the playstation 2. so with that let's get started volume 6 is the first compilation in the sega ages series combining the hard-boiled action of the 1990 arcade game bonanza brothers and his action puzzler follow-up r i'll admit that bonanza brothers always struck me as one of those games that sega perpetually seemed to be trying to make a thing at least in the us when it was released on the genesis in 1991 i had no real interest in the game at a glance it's not exactly something that looks stunning in screenshots and now that i think about it i don't think i've ever met anyone who is very passionate about it either robo or mobo are a couple of burglars hired to sneak into a variety of venues and take the vast riches just laying around this is a simple setup by itself but the intro paints these different locations as the real crooks a mint printing counterfeit money a corrupt bank a department store you need to collect evidence to expose their fraudulent activity the key to getting away scot-free is stay in the shadows and undetected duck into the background or behind a wall to wait for the most opportune moment to dispose of the guards with your trusty pistol or traps some security guards are equipped with a shield or have patrol dogs by their side so this is more of a game of patience than your typical arcade action game one small screw up and things can get out of hand quickly so you'll develop a fairly intimate knowledge of level layouts and enemy behavior a map at the center of the screen tells you where all the treasures are but there's a time limit so no pressure okay [Music] it's not exactly easy and if you can bring a partner with you then you can work together for maximum efficiency thanks to the split screen although i do wish there was a way to turn off the split screen if you're playing solo but i guess that does encourage the drop in multiplayer and is true to the original version other than a bonus game every few levels that has you collecting bags of cash while avoiding search lights that's really all there is to bonanza brothers its main draw is the stealth action which feels unique for an arcade game but is still a bit too chaotic for me but what i can absolutely appreciate is the sort of pre-rendered style of this new version this simple clean and crisp look has more appeal to it than many of the previous 2500 releases the other game in this collection is the 1993 follow-up to bonanza brothers the oddly titled tantar uh yeah tantower what does that even mean and why does it get top billing here well it turns out this was a much more popular game in japan and even spawned some direct sequels despite being ported to a number of systems the sega classics collection marks the very first time it's been officially translated to english robo and mobo are back or at least i think they are if it's not them then it's two characters with their exact proportions dressed as sherlock holmes and watson style detectives they're chasing down escaped convicts and the only way to apprehend them is by completing a variety of fast-paced puzzle games and there's an absolute ton of them something like 40 and all these unique and quirky games mostly boil down to an assortment of visual memory challenges although there's also counting maze and button mashing games in there too all are easy to understand but the real challenge comes from the ever encroaching timer the closest approximation to tantar's wacky style and gameplay that i can think of is the warioware games which may or may not have been inspired in some way but more than anything this feels like something you'd see on a touchscreen kiosk at your local sports bar while there is a story mode i'm willing to bet that most of the fun to be had will come from multiplayer sessions thankfully you can play all the minigames by themselves or in succession with up to four players although you're going to need a multi-tap for anything over two so consider me surprised if these were standalone releases i don't think either would be totally worth it but as a package then you have something unique compared to previous volumes [Music] i still have no idea what tantra means though next up is a title that when you look at the overall history of sega's games it will without fail be included in every single compilation until the end of time sure there's a ton of games in the 2500 series that fit that bill but perhaps none more so than columns [Music] the falling block match 3 jewel game has spawned a number of sequels over the years but sometimes it seems like sega really only focuses on the first game and as such it's the one that people tend to be most familiar with honestly is there anyone out there who doesn't know what columns is by now although it wasn't originally developed by sega by the time they purchased the rights and released their own version in the early 90s it was often seen as sega's answer to tetris even though they'd already developed their own version of that a year prior to callum's release since then it's become synonymous with sega's brand their 16-bit hardware in particular [Music] the sega ages 2500 columns was developed by sims who had previously done fantasy zone and golden axe one of those was pretty good and the other was not so good so really this could go either way thankfully there's only really so much you can do to update a game like columns much less screw it up i feel a little bit silly describing the gameplay of columns because i doubt there is a single sega fan out there who has never crossed paths with it at some point in their life but just to be safe shuffle these falling stacks of different colored jewels so they match up to three or more of the same color either horizontally vertically or diagonally sometimes you might create a chain reaction and destroy several combinations in succession sometimes you might even get a glowing block that will destroy all the same color score enough points and you'll go up a level and the blocks will fall faster once the well fills up then it's game over okay at a glance it does seem like a pretty no-frills remake the endless mode has two different styles original and enhanced obviously the first mode is styled after the look of the original game while utilizing much of the same sound effects and music now enhanced mode takes that same gameplay and puts a whole new coat of paint on it while rebalancing certain aspects once static blocks are now animated and spinning in place while the magic jewel meter in the center of the screen lets you know when you might receive divine help from the heavens maybe it's just me but despite the perceived graphical upgrades i couldn't help but feel that this mode looks decidedly worse than the original the biggest surprise here is hidden under the versus cpu mode by the name you might think it's just a typical face off against the computer opponent when in fact it's so much more taking a cue from columns 3 and a number of poi opoyo games this mode is actually a campaign with a storyline and everything [Music] in this mode you can arrange the magic jewels in different ways you can either clear blocks as normal raise the floor on the opponent or lower the floor on your side resulting in an interesting sort of tug of war it ends up being surprisingly challenging and fun with the cpu becoming super intense by the third level which i've honestly never been able to beat so yeah it's columns i don't know if there's a less cliche or clever way of saying that but it is what it is outside of the versus cpu mode there's not much in the way of new bells and whistles that really make this version worth seeking out but i suppose it's appropriate that we go from something as unexciting and nondescript as columns to a game that could be considered the first truly great remake in the entire 2500 series virtual racing sega's arcade formula one racer was incredibly impressive when it released in arcades in 1992 utilizing the powerful model 1 arcade board it was no small feat when it came to porting this game to home consoles the genesis version employed the sega virtua processor or svp for short to achieve some impressive results upon its release in 1994. the following ports on the 32x and saturn were also decent but it wasn't until the ps2 version arrived that certain aspects were actually able to top the coin op original [Music] dubbed virtua racing flat out in japan while the us version on the sega classics collection dropped the subtitle altogether but at least it kept everything else intact in the scheme of the 2500 releases so far virtua racing represents an interesting juxtaposition to monaco gp to show just how far sega's racing games had progressed it's notable that vr was the first of the 3d aegis titles to originate from an actual 3d game and as such we're in slightly uncharted territory here it's speculated that this version of the game was built from the ground up to take advantage of the playstation 2's hardware and it really shows it has a supremely clean look to it after all this was the first home port to achieve a full 60 frames per second so it's silky smooth the increased hardware power also allows for some other luxuries most apparent is the increase in draw distance when you pull the camera out to its maximum viewpoint however this does come with some occasional slowdown in certain parts of the race the three original arcade levels are fully realized and represented big forest is perfect for beginners bay bridge is for those who want to push their skills just a little bit further finally acropolis is for the advanced vr pros out there and i am definitely not part of that elite group of most interests are three new tracks island mountain and beltway all of which remain exclusive to this version as of the time of this video now whether or not virtual racing veterans feel that these belong in the upper echelon of track designs well i'll leave that up to the people with infinitely more skill at it than me i did enjoy the beltway track in particular which felt like racing a go-kart through city streets however the different shades of grey can often mix together which caused me to miss important twists and turns especially during the evening with cloudy weather [Applause] these new levels are accessed via the grand prix mode which is more of a campaign mode here you race several sets of races across a bunch of levels in succession as you place in each race you earn special points that can be used to unlock new vehicles if you want to put some work into improving your driving skills hit up the free mode where you can practice any track you like with a number of different variables such as laps opponents and time and weather cycles so you can get your fix of that signature sega blue sky if i have any particular disappointment it's that i wish there was a bit more customization specifically i'd love to be able to tweak the size and opacity of the map maybe even prevent it from rotating during turns i find it extremely disorienting and it really gets in the way of some levels lack of specific options aside we may just have a new gold standard for these remakes even though this version has been trounced by the switch version it took a good 15 years for it to be bested as the ultimate home port i'd say that's pretty good [Music] it might be hard to believe but a number of the earliest seeds of the real-time strategy genre were planted with the help of sega most people tend to pinpoint technosoft's herzog's y on the sega genesis and mega drive as one of the main progenitors of rts but credit should be given to game ground whose curious mix of strategy and action help light the fuse game ground was released in the arcade in 1988 on sega's system 24 hardware although it does have a following in japan there doesn't seem to be a lot of love for it in north america despite having been ported or emulated on a number of consoles over the years from the master system to most recently the nintendo switch this can likely be attributed to its less than impressive graphics especially when compared to his contemporaries like altered beast which looked better despite being developed on older hardware thus it's little surprise that the 3d age's remake of game ground remained japan exclusive [Music] so what is going on here exactly well game ground mixes elements of gauntlet with dashes of strategy that create a rather unique blend unlike anything else in sega's pantheon each arena is made up of a single overhead screen filled with precisely placed enemies who block and exit you begin with three characters in your entourage completing each level can be done in two different ways kill all the enemies or get every character to the exit before the timer runs down the real strategy comes into play when you have to choose which character is best suited for each level and the enemy layout each member has two different styles of attack which play to different strengths for instance ather throws his spears forward but he doesn't have a very long range so if you get too close then you might trigger a mob of enemies that you can't possibly deal with fast enough situations like this would be more manageable for johnny who can snipe them from a safe distance however athera can arc his spears in the air to get enemies on high ground or on the other side of a wall something which johnny cannot do betty has a gun for close quarter fighting but she can also toss explosives to take out multiple enemies at once once you choose your character you're committed to them until they exit the level or are captured by the enemy if the latter happens then they turn into this little doll on the playing field if your next character can grab the doll and make it to the exit then you've successfully rescued your companion and they're available to use once again but if you get hit then the replacement character needs to be rescued instead but you're not limited to just those three individuals some levels have additional characters that can be rescued each with their own abilities from being able to stun enemies to firing rockets the larger you're following the better your chances are of seeing further levels the 3d update to the graphics doesn't do much to enhance the overall experience with muddy textures and tiny characters who looked much less defined in their sprite counterparts a much better approach would have been to do something similar to bonanza brothers on the other hand the new soundtrack really blew me away shining a light on classic sega music that i'd never really given consideration to there is an extra mode that unlocks upon completing the main game which supposedly changes the graphics stats and gameplay although i wasn't able to get a first hand look for years i judged game grounds solely on how it looked in screenshots which frankly isn't too impressive but upon playing it i'm not ashamed to say that i was wrong when looking at a list of you suzuki's super scalar masterpieces the two top spots are usually given to space harrier and outrun those two games in particular change the landscape of arcades in the mid-80s and are still influential today in a distant third you'll probably find the beautifully chaotic fighter jet shooter afterburner 2. i fell in love with the arcade game's fast action at an early age with movies like top gun and iron eagle driving my desire unlike the master system version of space harrier the home port of afterburner proved to be a significant disappointment for me years later i put my hopes and dreams into some promising screenshots of afterburner 2 on the genesis hoping that the 16-bit hardware could deliver what the 8-bit could not while it was an improvement i was let down yet again by the time the afterburner complete was released on the 32x i'd moved on if only i'd given it one more chance i would likely have found this version to be completely satisfactory regardless of the reduced frame rate [Music] however perfection was achieved with the sega aegis release on a saturn which when combined with a mission stick brought you as close as possible to the arcade experience without an actual cabinet it took 10 years but we finally had a definitive version to play at home so where am i going with all this well despite not being as well regarded as the previously mentioned super scaler games the actual feel of afterburner 2 seems to be much much tougher to lock down and get right in ports which has me wondering would a complete remake be able to accurately translate the gameplay intensity and speed of what seems like a simple game on the surface get ready once again developed by sims who seems to have been given the keys to the most iconic arcade games featured in the early 2500 series we have a fairly good idea of what to expect by now fairly faithful gameplay budget graphics and smart choices with the soundtrack afterburner 2 fits this to a t but that's good news right at its core afterburner 2 is a breezy arcade shooter that is meant to last no more than 20 minutes and this version does a good job of approximating the feel of the super scalar game the speed is there and it feels nice with the analog stick of the dual shock too the main issue is the graphics which severely suffer from their interpretation to polygons from the deck of the sega enterprise to above the clouds even with the increased variation of foliage buildings and structures it lacks any sort of character of its own this is especially apparent when it comes to explosions especially when you yourself take a direct hit from an enemy rocket it simply lacks any of the impact and spectacle but hey at least the smoke trails look decent sims smartly left hero's soundtrack untouched while the arcade music is iconic in its own right i normally opt for the with melody compositions used in afterburner 1 and most ports here you can listen to these variations of the soundtrack and the options menu but that's it you can't play the game with them sound effects do match the original though in terms of extras this is a bit more bare bones than any other release up to this point the arranged mode lets you choose from different planes but as far as i can tell they don't change a single thing gameplay wise and are nothing more than a different skin for better or worse i'd say the afterburner 2 is the most boring release in the sega ages 2500 series thus far [Music] so what do you think did you see anything here that makes you feel any different than the last set outside of virtua racing which is the true star of the show in this group i'd say that game ground was the big revelation for me it looks simple and maybe a bit off-putting to some people who would judge it based on its visuals alone i mean i was one of those for the longest time but it's super unique and interesting afterburner on the other hand well i feel like that's a bit of a missed opportunity but in a world where afterburner climax exists it's not that big of a deal i suppose so what do we have up next well among others there's poi opoyo and hakuto noken that's black belt for you u.s master system fans and of course the super scalar icon outrun i'm a bit curious how these are going to come together aren't you [Music] as i'm sure you already know i was a bit of a sega kid actually all of my closest neighborhood friends were one thing we consistently found ourselves doing is having to settle for sega's version of the popular games that were out on the nes one such game was contra we knew it was an experience that we were sorely missing out on on our system we never did quite find exactly the game we were looking for but we did find a two-player co-op experience in a little known game called quartet a quirky little side-scrolling shooter with a great soundtrack until the early 1990s i had no clue that this game i'd been enjoying for years with my friends was based on an arcade game of the same name imagine my surprise when i walked into a department store called hills and saw this arcade cabinet with the name quartet 2 written across the top of it i thought it was a sequel to the master system game released the arcades by sega and their system 16 hardware this quartet was a very different game than i'd come to know this version featured a four player co-op that was obviously inspired by midway's gauntlet which was released just the year before what's interesting is that shortly after release sega followed up with quartet 2 which was the exact same game but cuts the number of simultaneous players in app opting instead for character selection instead of each being locked to their designated controller slot you choose from a quartet of characters joe mary edgar and lee don't just love this guy's mustache it's perfect anyway each character is unique because they have different guns lee has a wide shot edgar has a grenade launcher mary has a machine gun and joe has a rapid fire handgun as soon as you start a digitized voice gives you your mission only he opens the door open the door hey this sounds pretty simple i suppose there's some sort of backstory about space parts but it doesn't really matter quartet takes place across a never-ending loop of 32 levels some of these are simple linear passages guiding you to the boss and then to the exit door while others will allow you to go left or right and explore freely the downside with this is that you might find the exit first and then have to backtrack across the whole level you can grab various power-ups through and along the way they will evolve your character by upping your firepower putting a spring in your jump or increasing your speed oh yeah you can also grab this sweet jet pack and fly but it's pretty worthless in the usually enclosed spaces you'll definitely need all the help you can get though mainly because it's difficult to hold onto an item for more than a few seconds you see whenever your character takes a hit your character yelps and falls over writhing on the floor for a few seconds [Music] it's seriously infuriating [Music] sega knew that they couldn't really replicate the arcade experience at home nor do i really think that they wanted to i mean quartet's core gameplay just really wouldn't work very well at home it'd be kind of boring because having four players wasn't really an option in 1987 sega brought quartet to the home market this version for all intents and purposes was a completely new game a better game most apparent right out of the gate is the overall cohesiveness of the entire experience the number of levels have been cut down significantly from 32 to a more manageable six this large discrepancy is made up because each one is much longer more wide open and far more fun than any in the arcade game you'll need to search every nook and cranny because in order to unlock access to the final area you have to uncover five of these gold stars if you happen to miss one you'll loop back and search for them after you complete the fifth level making things even more interesting is that some levels exist on two planes you'll find passages that take you back and forth between different areas allowing for a nicer sense of exploration and depth navigating certain areas in this version is definitely a bit tougher due to the inclusion of bottomless pits and platforming remember that essentially worthless jetpack i mentioned it's going to be your best friend here due to the weaker hardware only mary and edgard made the jump from the arcade this might strike you as disappointing but it really doesn't matter because both characters play and shoot exactly alike in this version using a code i guess our old mustachioed friendly is there in spirit you can access his wavegun by pressing the pause button on the system 14 times before starting your game this will make the game a bit easier though i love the home version of quartet so much early on it was one of my favorite master system games the arcade version it's okay it's definitely interesting but i never got a chance to play a multiplayer hey maybe it's awesome that way maybe one day i'll get a chance to play it one thing i've got to say though ever since playing quartet for the first time the main theme music has slowly been coming one of my absolute favorite pieces of video game music ever as much as i love the 8-bit version of it the arcade rendition absolutely kills it although i'm not really a fan i was surprised to see the theme was covered in a hatsune miku game if one of those games came out here they had the song in him kind of have to give it a try [Music] open the door only if he opens the door i'll never forget that moment as i watched the ending credits roll a wave of confusion washed over me why did i feel so empty when i was 12 years old i'd never been so hyped for a game as i was for fantasy star 2. sure altered beast and ghouls and ghosts were amazing but this this was the reason i wanted a sega genesis so what happened between the moment i pressed start for the first time and when the ending credits rolled what led to this empty feeling was fantasy star 2 a bad game was my excitement level so high that i created impossible expectations that could never be reached or was it something else [Applause] a millennium has passed since alice meow odin and noah freed the algol galaxy from the clutches of the tyrannical king lasik since then the three planets had prospered under the watch of an advanced ai called mother brain this supercomputer runs everything and has been the catalyst for significant change such as completely terraforming the once arid desert planet of motavia into one now covered in grass forests and lakes in the capital city of paseo a young government agent named rolf has been having nightmares about a young girl fighting a giant demon if you finish the first game no doubt this scene probably looks familiar doesn't it after reporting to work at the control center at the center of town the governor assigns roth with the dangerous task of finding out why the biosystems laboratory is pumping out all kinds of crazy monsters that are roaming the countryside what the heck is going on is the mother brain malfunctioning returning home to prep for his mission rolf is confronted by nay a young girl whom he rescued off the streets seven months earlier an experimental mix of human cells and bio monsters nae has no recollection of any events prior to being rescued by rolfe she begs him to take her on this mission and thus begins our grand adventure right away you could tell that this is going to be much different from the first game that game started as a tale of revenge and followed that singular plot until just about the very end of the game part 2 on the other hand starts small and becomes increasingly more epic over the course of several story arcs ralph and nae will be joined on their adventure by six additional characters from various walks of life that show up at his doorstep you can have up to four people in your party at once and are free to swap them out at any point each have their own specialties and magic but you're pretty safe picking your favorite and sticking with them throughout the entire adventure visually the 1 000 year time skip between games gives the creators a lot of leeway in the way everything is designed this was the entry in the series that really defined what the world of fantasy star looks like sure it's all still a mix of fantasy and technology but everything leans much heavier towards the latter the way the characters are drawn some tall and lanky others with a bit of a cyberpunk uh david bowie look gives everything a much heavier science fiction style the music also evolves to feel more high energy and technology driven and is possibly the most memorable and varied in the entire series but you know despite the increased hardware power and more refined look you could argue that fantasy star 2 looks marginally worse overall than its predecessor a lot of that has to do with a couple of particular things which just so happen to be the biggest changes from the first game i remember when screenshots started popping up in magazines and i saw the first image of ralph and company fighting some enemies i thought it had to be a placeholder hey it's cool we can finally see the characters physically fight but what's the deal with the background or lack thereof it's just a generic blue grid it couldn't possibly look like this in the final game right unfortunately it was [Music] i can only assume that this battle style was adopted because more than one enemy can now appear on screen during battle and each are fully animated even when they're idle so was the trade-off worth it for me no it felt like it took away from the world significantly no longer could we place ourselves on the ground level to see what the world looks like from the character's perspective okay sure so we lose that ground level point of view during battles that's fine at least we'll get to see it when we got to the dungeons right can you imagine what these things are going to look like on 16-bit hardware well it turns out that these were changed too [Music] these new dungeons are large elaborate and complicated in a different way than the 3d mazes only the novelty of the first person view is truly lacking but the newfound freedom allowed for the designers to come up with much more interesting locales in fact despite the increased memory available it's puzzling how small fantasy star 2 feels overall compared to the first fantasy star had three huge planets to explore and the adventure covered every inch of them surely here you'd be doing the same i'll admit i was pretty disappointed when i didn't get to travel to another planet until more than halfway through the game your planet jumping within the first couple of hours in the last game you know i was doubly disappointed that the quest only takes you to two of the three planets [Music] i suppose the larger cast helps make the world feel a bit fuller but none of the characters that join rolf on his quest give much of a backstory outside of what they tell you when they first arrive at rolf's home how much this has to do with the subpar english translation is the big question however sega did release a set of japanese exclusive text adventures that fleshed out several characters backstories leading up to the events of fantasy star 2. these are actually a pretty interesting part of the lore and should be talked about here to tell you all about them is my fellow fantasy star series enthusiast greg stewart from generation 16. let's face it fantasy star 2 is really the story of ralph and nay the other six party members are so much fodder filling general rpg roles like magic users ranged fighters and healers unless you play the fantasy star text adventures suddenly rudo becomes a tragic figure on a mission to avenge his family in his village hughie becomes a scholar bent on the destruction of biomonsters and sure becomes a spoiled rich kid who was so bored with her life of luxury that she turned to thieving just for the sheer thrill of it you have to use your imagination though while the presentation of the fantasy star text adventures is nice including unique graphics for each character and all new music you'll spend most of the time reading text and staring at the same character portraits this is by design the fantasy star text adventures were part of the sega game toshokan tiny games users could download through the mega net service over the mega modem which was released in japan in november of 1990 that's right sega had downloadable episodic games available on their game console in 1990. talk about ahead of their time the fantasy star text adventures rely heavily on descriptions of lush landscapes and the bustling city life of paseo and the entire experience is menu driven you'll basically want to explore every nook and cranny pick up every object use everything on everything and then do it all over again until you trigger the next event in the story the fantasy star fan in me loves that these adventures exist even more so that they've been translated into english generally i just love knowing more about everyone's motivation it's fascinating to see the backstory for all eight characters [Music] sega leading up to the release of fantasy star 2 i'd soak up every single detail i could find about it in magazines before the internet this could be precious little info especially when it came to an obscure genre like japanese rpgs i'd see a single blurry screenshot and my mind would run wild with possibilities an adventure that was supposed to be so huge and complex the sega felt they needed to include a 110 page hint book and this my friends is where my story goes horribly wrong if you've seen the episode of my life and gaming where i talked about the first game you know that a big part of what made it so special was the experience of figuring out the game and finding my way through it you could say that it was just as much of an adventure outside of the game as it was inside of the game fantasy star 2's included him book covers every single dungeon and major event leading up to the second to last boss it's all just there practically begging you to read it the second you tore off the shrink wrap and you know what i was twelve i didn't know any better i had no experience to draw from and i read that thing cover to cover the first night i had the game which effectively ruined any possibility there was of repeating the experience i had with the first fantasy star [Music] there were no surprises in store for me at all no figuring things out for myself and none of the actual plot twists truly shocked me and trust me there's some damn good plot to us here all the stuff was just me moving from point to point towards the final dungeon of the game i probably had my nose in that hint book more than i was even playing the game in retrospect it's easy to see why they included the hymnbook fantasy star 2 is an insanely difficult game progression is often obtuse the dungeons are huge and monsters can kill you in an instant even if you spend a whole bunch of time grinding and believe me you will be spending a ton of time grinding [Music] the final battle was hard won and the climax was one of the most open-ended yet satisfying i'd had the pleasure of experiencing but the overall experience felt void of any real accomplishment i was so excited to work through everything with my friends but instead i saw the last dungeon before i went to bed on day one and i had no one to blame but myself i was never gonna let something like that happen again it's easy to see that fantasy star 2 is a really good game with some fairly significant flaws it's definitely one of the more popular entries in the series with fans because of its iconic look brutal challenge and amazing soundtrack so while fantasy star 2 is ultimately my least favorite game in the mainline series it was a pivotal game for me and that it taught me early on that using a walk through every step of the way especially when it comes to rpgs could be a very very bad thing and that i shouldn't do it because it will most likely ruin the experience for me but you know it might sound weird but that's why i appreciate it so much today [Music] 2019 has been such a great year for sega genesis and mega drive fans hasn't it sure we've seen tons of great options over the years for enjoying the system's most popular games but i say that 2019 is the year that everyone including sega themselves went all out thanks to consoles like the mega sg from analog and the genesis mini wireless and wired controllers from 8-bit doe and retro bit and fantastic projects from the community like the triple bypass mod it's easy to see why sega appreciation and game prices are on the rise the cherry on top comes from spain based developer tara onion who spent the last couple of years developing what could be considered the ultimate sega flash cart the mega sd this device not only supports the requisite genesis and master system games but at long last delivers something that myself and others have been clamoring for sega cd-rom games we've been able to take a look at the mega sd thanks to a review unit sent to us by tara onion so let's dive in and see what this thing can do okay ignition on three ready three the early 90s were an interesting time for the video game industry cartridges had long been the preferred media for consoles and for good reason not only are they fast and efficient but more importantly they're extremely durable but as games grew in size and complexity by leaps and bounds it was clear that developers needed more legroom when nec released the cd-rom add-on for the pc engine in 1988 it was off to the races to see who would be next to utilize what seemed like at the time a limitless canvas of data storage at an exponentially lower manufacturing cost sega delivered their cd-rom expansion in japan in 1991 and throughout other regions over the course of the next two years in japan and europe this device was known as the mega cd while north america came to know as the sega cd connecting to an edge connector hidden inside an expansion slot on the genesis the sega cd more than doubles the console's height cds are loaded into the system through a front loading tray which really drove home its premium feel and let's face it it just looks awesome they added girth wasn't just for show either inside was a hodgepodge of additional tech for developers to play with including hardware-based scaling and rotation which was a staple of the genesis closest competitor the super nintendo this added hardware didn't come cheap landing at nearly 300 dollars in the u.s although a number of pack-ins were included to help sweeten the pot granted early games didn't seem to offer much that couldn't already be done on a cartridge a number of hardware revisions from lower cost redesigns two streamlined all-in-one consoles followed over the sega cd's lifespan while the add-on sold fairly decently worldwide for the time it's often grouped in with the 32x as a high-profile failure which tarnished sega's reputation in the west but the system's library ended up being fairly decent for those determined enough to wade past a glut of full motion video games which hey a lot of those are pretty fun too whether it's due to the aging hardware or the deterioration of cds themselves the sega cd is yet another example of the fragility of disk based consoles as such a number of capable members of the retro gaming community have sought to merge the aging tech with modern hardware optical disk emulators also known as odes do away with the tiny moving parts of a disk drive and whisking the game data away from scratch-prone discs to the relative safety of solid state media we previously talked at length about the various odes for the sega saturn and playstation one but perhaps the most elaborate ode came in the form of terra onion's super sd system 3 for the pc engine and turbo graphics 16. the ssd s3 connects to the back of the console allowing the user to not only play super cd-rom games without the need for original hardware or expansion cards but also hue card roms as well all to say nothing about how it's also a plug-and-play rgb video output solution while the ssd s3 did struggle with various challenges at its inception mostly surrounding its video output capabilities it's in a pretty great spot now thanks to input from the community talented modders and electrical engineers a number of firmware and hardware fixes have helped to optimize the device naturally the big question was what would terra onion do as a follow-up most including myself were hoping for a sega cd focused device the biggest hurdle that has prevented such a device from becoming reality is that the sega cd is so much more complex than the pc engine cd system which isn't much more than a cd drive the sega cd is a system unto itself with many discrete chips that enhance the power of the sega genesis [Music] in the summer of 2019 terra onion announced that they had overcome these challenges by unveiling the mega sd an ode for the sega cd and so much more it's available for about 260 us dollars via terraonion.com i'd always imagine that a sega cd replacement would attach to the edge connector the same way that a real sega cd would when the msd was revealed as an oversized cartridge i was pleasantly surprised that this much more appealing form factor was even possible housed in the same type of smoky translucent plastic that the ssd s3 came in the size and shape is virtually indistinguishable from a virtual racing cartridge on the side you have a micro sd card slot and a singular physical button inside is a blue pcb populated with a number of chips a green access led and a spartan based fpga the cartridge edge is subtly chamfered to prevent wear and tear on the system slot while drawing the correct voltage in fact the whole device draws less power than a real virtual racing cart which really leads me to think to classify the msd or heck even the ssd s3 as an ode is a bit inaccurate a typical ode replaces the drive functionality alone while the rest of the hardware remains the same this is total hardware emulation via the fpga so think of it like this the mega sc is as much a sega cd as the super nt as a super nes or the mega sg is a sega genesis supporting fat32 or exfat formatted micro sd cards up to 400 gigs you should have more than enough space for anything you'd want to play from reaching the region [Music] the mega sd will work on most hardware variants the original model 1 and model 2 genesis will be the go-to's for those who choose original hardware the genesis 3 and the portable nomad will also work but both will take different mods to get the fully desired functionality such as cd audio but it's still crazy seeing sega cd games running on a nomad screen isn't it what about system on the chip style clone consoles well i just had the gamers tech minigen on hand to test and color me surprised it works it's composite only and cd audio doesn't work either not sure if a mod would fix that or if anyone cares enough to figure it out but it's the one two punch combo of the analog mega sg and mega sd that may just provide the ultimate road to 16-bit heaven just remember to tick the enabled cartridge and cd audio box while unchecking automatically enables cd audio in the sg's options if you want to get the most out of it as usual i'll be showing a bunch of material captured from different consoles and revisions throughout the entire episode so keep in mind that as the device gets into more people's hands i'm sure lots of quirks will pop up thankfully up until now tara onion has been pretty good at stamping out glitches or incompatibilities at the firmware level speaking of firmware the msd does keep these updates locked behind a user account on the terra onion website which requires you to register your device's serial number this number can be found on the back of the cartridge itself or via the option menu in the front end user interface the firmware download generated seems to be tailored to only install on a unit with a matching serial number [Music] the main menu is pretty self-explanatory you scroll up and down to navigate the various directories you previously set up on the sd card via your computer if you're using a mega sg be sure to set the reset mode to hard in the sd's options which ensures higher compatibility with games working by causing a hard console reset when you choose a game to play in general it's probably best to just leave it set this way whether it's pulling game roms from your own carts using devices like the retro or ripping disk images from your cd games using a computer program like image burn you'll have to put in a little bit of legwork to get everything just the way you like it if you decide to skew towards grabbing the games from elsewhere well that's up to you to figure out while sega cd support is probably the main reason people would be interested in the msd in the first place it's easy to forget that it can play all kinds of other games too yeah it might be hard to get excited about genesis and mega drive games support in a world where krix's mega everdrive has been a thing for years but the all-in-one functionality is a big part of the appeal here predictably genesis games seem to run exactly as you'd expect once you start a game you can bring up an in-game menu by pressing up and start on the controller this menu has several functions specific to running regular genesis games while cheat codes and save states are standard fare for higher tier flash cards fans of the latter will be pleasantly surprised by a whopping eight yes eight individual save slots per game i know this sounds extreme but i love the idea of keeping a set of save states that would allow me to quickly jump back to later levels save state files are stored on the sd card within the state folder and have a matching file name to the rom so they can be easily shared generating or loading a safe state can cause some odd behavior with the genesis sound hardware like weird sounds or just music not playing at all thankfully it tends to correct itself when something happens that would cause the music to start over like dying or pausing and unpausing a special note is the support for virtua racing the original cartridge uses a specially integrated chip making the mega sd to my knowledge the very first genesis flash cart capable of playing it some unlicensed games with enormous rom sizes also worked like pure solar however make note that the in-game menu cannot be accessed while playing some of these special case games master system cartridge and card games are both supported via the genesis master system mode well except for f15 fighting falcon which originally used a specific graphical mode not carried over to the genesis hardware sms games use the button located on the side of the mega sd to pause and unpause the game similar to a real system unfortunately with master system mode there is no in-game menu and consequently save states are not possible as far as i know the only flash card that supports save states for sms games is krix's master everdrive x7 this mode does offer optional emulation of the master system's yamaha ym2413 fm expansion audio which can be toggled on and off in the main option menu [Music] finally 32x roms are supported if you have a 32x unit attached to your console i understand that this might seem like a bummer for some but it simply comes down to the way that the genesis and 32x interact with each other we just got to accept that it's not viable right now that'll play and that having it would require at least a bigger and more expensive fpga having a 32x attach does come with a slew of considerations though in short you lose the ability for any sort of in-game menu even for regular genesis games which means no save states you also won't be able to boot master system or sega cd games in a nice effort to quell confusion incompatible games won't even show up in the main menu at all you have a 32x attached finish johnny cage wins all variants of save file types are supported from the sram used by most games to the eeprom used in certain games like wonderboy and monster world with the most recent firmware update save files are simply drag and drop from everdrives or real cartridges via a retrod gently place the srm file into the bup folder and match the file name to the game rom by the way if this is a subject you'd like to learn more about check out our episode on cartridge save file preservation [Music] of course this is all good stuff but it's the much touted sega cd support that most of you are here for right if you're a fan of the system like i am then the ability to play these games off of solid state media tips the scales and makes the mega sd an essential and unique flash cartridge cd-rom game images need to be ripped as a dot bin img or dot iso and are required to have a dot q file sorting each combo of disk image and q file into their own folder gives us what we see as a standalone game in the mega sd's menu interface multi-game disks need to have all files in the same folder and labeled in a way that they appear in the correct order disc one disc two you know what i mean cd games do have the particular caveat of requiring a bios file which can be a bit of a prickly subject because they are still under copyright however you decide to obtain these files is completely up to you you'll need to load them into the options of the main menu one for each supported region one important thing to keep in mind is that the sega cd functionality on the mega sd will not work at all if you have a real sega cd connected to your console because it causes some sort of bus conflict and so this means no sega cd game loadings on the all-in-one systems such as the cdx or wonder mega as you may have already guessed this also means that the handful of 32x cd games aren't supported either games are auto detected by region via the header of the disk image and will boot up the correct bios file you can even play the red book audio from here as if you had the disk inserted or manage your backup ram and save files once the game actually loads you'll be greeted with that all too familiar jingle [Music] most cd-rom consoles up to the playstation used built-in ram to store save games with extra storage available on expansions like ram carts so how does the mega sd deal with this hurdle matching what a real system would do the mega sd has the option to generate a single pool of internal memory and accompanying ram cart which will be automatically loaded when you play a cd game this file is stored on the sd card and consists of an equal amount of internal space as a real sega cd while the ram cart storage is a bit smaller than what you'd get using an official ram cart if you want to function within these confines and juggle files back and forth hey you can do that but really who wants to jump through those hoops when you can have unlimited space enabling the per game backup ram option creates an internal and ram cart pool per disk image meaning that the chances of you running out of space are very very slim like cartridge games cd backup ram files have a srm file extension and are stored within the bup folder for maximum convenience and easy file transfer the in-game menu does work with sega cd games which is pretty convenient although there are understandably no save states you can reboot the game or jump back to the mega sd menu from here this is also how disc changes are normally handled with multi-disc games alternatively if you along for the time on or tradition of getting up off the couch and swapping the discs pressing the button on the mega sd will achieve the same results your ball junior for fun i tried swapping discs during the opening fmv of night trap causing it to play random scenes from disc two and generally just glitching out you know the guy really scares me ashley can i trust you yeah i thought it was cool that the game behaved the same way as it would if you did the same thing on a sega cd model 2 which i think is a testament to how accurate the sega cd hardware emulation is on the mega sd [Music] [Applause] [Music] thankfully we don't have to think twice about video quality output with the mega sd but we do have to consider an important part of the cd gaming experience audio [Music] cara onion has enlisted the help of firebrand x who has developed a number of audiocentric mods for the genesis to design an amp circuit to drive analog audio into the genesis circuitry as a result there's quite a few options that address the sound in particular you can set the default cdda and pcm audio levels back in the main menu options cdda stands for compact disk digital audio referring to the audio on disk pcm audio comes from the additional sound chip in the hardware itself and is used for both sound effects and some music tracks these audio levels can be tweaked separately but the default 80 value mimics the level of real hardware going beyond that amount might cause audio distortion in some games these levels can also be temporarily altered via the in-game menu which is pretty handy for games where the audio balance just doesn't sound right in addition the cdda treble boost and pcm low-pass filter options available in the main menu can be ticked to bring the overall sound closer to the original hardware [Music] combination [Music] um while you might not think that it would be tricky to emulate the characteristics of cd audio it did take the team some work to match the sound signature the most recent firmware combines firebrand x's attention to detail with the help of md fourier to get the audio as close as possible to original hardware in this case a va3 model one genesis and a model one sega cd md fourier is an ongoing open source project dedicated to analyzing original genesis and mega drive audio for preservation and to assist in producing accurate emulation one final note on the mega sd sound capabilities we were told that there may be a slight buzzing while the sd card is being accessed and can be heard during moments of complete silence tara onion even delayed the announcement of the mega sd for several months while they worked with electrical engineers to reduce this as much as possible i'd say it was well worth the effort because i have to crank the volume by at least 40 decibels to bring it out in my captures but you know if you can pick it out with her ears then consider me impressed you've got much better hearing than i do when cd-rom games were first arriving on the market one mark you'd always see levied against the medium is load times for the most part i'd say that sega cd games aren't too horrible in this area overall or maybe i'm just used to it by now but one major benefit that anyone would expect out of the mega sd is the ability to speed up load times and speed them up it does in some cases though audio and video are timed by the developer in such a way to keep everything in sync speeding up load times might cause them to fall out of sync hey at least i'm not the one who's whining about being away from earth so long yeah well at least i've got it girlfriend waiting for me back on earth what about you hey the radar reports multiple unidentified objects heading our way uh-oh this doesn't look good in which case the emulate seek time option comes in handy this will slow everything down to mimic the real read speed of the original hardware the firmware actually keeps track of the games that need this applied so you can just leave the toggle off all the time and the system will slow it down when it's needed you were totally hot randy carl dude rogie kyle [Laughter] for the most part i say that the improvements are fairly minor a second here two seconds there but in some games such as willie beemish hi my name's willie which has excruciatingly long load times to do anything well it's significantly better willie beamish what did i just say oh no the old boom caught me better think of something fast it doesn't make the game all that more playable but i guess fans will be happy oh no the old room caught me better think of something fast [Music] one of the more interesting experimental features is the scaling speed up option which speeds up the sega cd's vdp for smoother scaling in certain instances although it's recommended to leave this off most of the time it might be fun to see how it affects certain games now that you know what this thing is capable of doing let's relax and have some fun what are some things you should check out if you pick up a mega sd the sega cd may not have a vast library but it does have some notable games that i feel are absolutely essential not only that but we can't forget what might just be the ultimate use of the mega sd mega drive plus did you know that a game could be programmed in such a way to use both the genesis and sega cd hardware in tandem the game itself plays off the cartridge while the sega cd could be used for music tracks it's a mystery why sega never took advantage of this ability much less publicized it how cool would this have been back in the 90s as far as i know watermelon's peer solar and the great architects was the first game to utilize this hidden capability [Music] tara onion knew this sort of functionality would be heavily desired super nes fans have been enjoying cd audio hacks of cartridge games using the sd to snes flash cart and this msu-1 chip for some time now well tara onion delivers the goods with what they call mega drive plus games it's about time the sega fans can get in on this kind of action but the downside is there's just not a lot of them yet the first one i played was outrun which mixes the arcade music with the genesis game it's alright i guess i don't love this version of the game in the first place and the audio is kind of quiet [Music] there's certainly ample room for improvement here but the other mega drive plus release thus far is virtually perfect and it's one of the first games that i'm sure came to mind when you first heard of this feature streets of rage 2. man this is awesome the music is balanced perfectly and the music tracks sound like something that would have existed if sega had done this themselves and you know what they should have i gotta tell you there's so many mega drive plus games that i'd like to see in the future i'm just spitballing here but could you imagine a michael jackson's moonwalker with the real mj tunes yeah i guess you could say i'm kind of excited about this kind of stuff the sega cd was my first exposure to the divisive working designs who were responsible for localizing some choice rpgs in a time when they weren't all that popular in the west [Music] i never dreamed you'd say goodbye like this the world beyond these shores is such a dangerous place other than their now sometimes dated translations one of the big things that makes working designs so contentious is their knack for altering aspects below the surface increasing difficulty having restrictions placed on saving your game and more if these sorts of things rub you the wrong way i recommend checking out the unworked designs hacks which undoes a lot of the tinkering while keeping the original translation once the disk image has been patched these are absolutely playable on the mega sd i went more in depth on these in our useful rom hacks episode so if you want some specifics of what was altered check that out [Music] back in 2015 a programmer named brian van buren did a lot of legwork when it comes to decoding sega cd's save ram files he compiled the various utilities that he developed in an archive called scd tools an offshoot of this project was backup shell an interface that can be run on a real sega cd and allows you to copy pre-selected save files to the internal or cartridge memory you can also tamper with the hex data of the save files to help give you more money increase your hit points and other kind of stuff it's pretty neat once you copy the save files just rename the associated backup shell.srm file in the butt folder to match whatever game you want to use those saves with although it seems like much of this work was unfortunately under appreciated brian van buren if you somehow see this thanks for making scd tools so what about just general games worth checking out everyone already knows about the expensive ones heck they probably bought the mega sd to be able to play them you know games like ko flang squadron shining force cd [Music] and of course snatcher so little john's memory might provide us with an important lead that's right [Music] but do yourself a favor and beeline for road avenger which is perhaps the greatest fmv game ever made and is such an over-the-top roller coaster that it tends to leave a strong impression on anyone who plays it it also has the best opening theme of all time well at least in my opinion and if you like that check out the gaming museo's cover of it here on youtube he totally does it justice [Music] and then there's star strike an fmv rail shooter that was originally cancelled and then later released by good deal games in 2001 they made something like five copies of it and it is hilarious this is our new rookie pilot trace hi i'm cosmo get ready for the ride of your life kid yeah and if you lived through the first mission call me snoopy this this right here is exactly the kind of stuff that i play fmv games for it's so stupid i love it as a lifelong sega fan how cool is it to finally see this lavish attention put on the genesis i for one could never have imagined when i was 13 that i'd be playing a cd game off a cartridge so what do you think well i feel that the mega sd easily takes the crown of essential flash card for the sega genesis others might feel that its price is a bit too hefty versus the alternatives a real sega cd can play burn discs without modding the system which might be plenty for some but that does require you to have the original hardware already or heck maybe you don't even care about the system at all in which case i get it i don't agree but i get it but the potential for future mega drive plus games brings everything home at long last giving the genesis an sd to snes equivalent that has been long overdue we may never see a year full of loving innovation directed towards the genesis ever again but that's okay i can't think of anything else that i'd want breaking contact [Music] i'm a big fan of the sega cd even though i only had about 220 titles available in the us it was home to some of the best games of the 16-bit generation and in my opinion a lot of that has to do with this little company called working designs now when people hear that name the first thing they think of is the lunar series and rightfully so but on the other hand they are responsible for bringing a little gem of a game called potful mail to the u.s that deserves just as much if not more recognition if you're familiar with platfomail i bet it's with the sega cd version there are a couple of other versions that preceded this one however one on the pc 98 and one on the pc engine super cd in 1993 sega and falcon decided to collaborate on a full remake for the mega drive cd-rom add-on the mega cd this remake would be completely done by sega in-house and would retain the basic elements like characters and music all while taking advantage of power of new hardware there was a time when sega was flirting with the idea of completely overhauling powerful mail into a sonic the hedgehog spin-off and calling it sister sonic luckily sega came to their senses i mean sonic with swords that's an awful idea in april of 1994 pop full mail was released on the mega cd in japan though it was pretty much your standard 16-bit hack and slash platformer papa mail stood out from the crowd with big beautiful sprites anime cut scenes slick animation screen filling bosses and a rocking soundtrack by falcom's own sound team jdk as eclectic as the sega cd's library was even in the u.s it seemed like exactly the kind of game that was destined to stay in japan forever thankfully that wouldn't be the case shortly after his japanese release a small company based out of reading california named working designs showed interest working designs was known for being one of the only companies that was localizing obscure japanese games to the west my first experience with working designs was with the original lunar the silver star and the sega cd lunar was the first game i ever played that made me care for its characters as if they were real people a real testament to their writing ability my connection to that game was so strong that it made me a fan for life all i had to do was see one of their magazine ads and i knew i was going to be buying papal mail was released in the us about a year after the japanese version this was a fairly quick turnaround for working designs who was well known for taking their time our story opens with the titular hero a bounty hunter being thwarted by the diabolical nuts crackers [Music] returning to town a failure mail sees a bounty for a good wizard gone bad named muttonhead with an impressive 2 million gold reward on his head nail sets out to bring him in this might just be the one big bounty to give her a lifetime of riches and fortune but it's never that simple right freaky creeps i can't believe it it is it's mutton head over the course of her quest mail will be joined by a couple of other adventurers an apprentice wizard named taro who seems to have a history with old muttonhead and gaw what can i say about god well he's this blue bat monster yeah screw it he's one of the best characters in a video game ever and that's all you really need to know mail and company will traverse a giant forest mines volcanoes and ice mountains to collect their bounty turns out muttonhead is under control of a mysterious man who is trying to collect four orbs to resurrect three great demon gods figures right naturally all three characters have various strengths and weaknesses male moves fast but has short attack range keto uses powerful magic to attack from long distances but is fairly weak physically and can't jump far gaw has powerful attacks that can jump higher than any other character but he moves so slow there are some rpg light elements in the form of upgradeable equipment purchased via shops in each world this gives each character different attack methods and is a nice incentive to change up play styles you can switch between characters at just about any time except during boss battles let's be honest though working designs was definitely most well known for their localizations love them or hate them their translations were absolutely something relatively unseen on consoles at the time their writing made a habit of infusing lots of real world pop culture references into dialogue maybe a couple of one-liners or the way a character talks and hey i know you can do it melee come on win one for the slick stuff that working designs humor if you will with potful mail working design has decided to pull out all the stops and go full-on with the comedy at times it can feel like a train of 90s references but the way the humor is appropriated for the world of the game nothing feels too out of place that is distracting it almost feels like a saturday morning cartoon do you sometimes feel less than fresh i know i do cd-rom technology was at a point where the novelty of spoken dialogue had kind of worn off but working designs was faced with a conundrum here they had over three hours of it when the format only allowed for one by forgoing the typical red book audio that was used in most games at the time therein laid the solution by cutting the quality of dialogue in half and using variable bit rates one for in-game dialogue and another for cut scenes they're able to get all the voiceovers in there and even add ones in places that weren't present in the japanese version i guess i really underestimated the power and the result of these pesky flying blobs the layoffs are plentiful and come quick just about every conversation contains some sort of humorous little nuggets king lips daffy duck homage as king of the land i lift not on proclaim that you shall have whatever you request god's constant sass you simple-minded paperweight and spendt uncommons amazing insults i am sventi uncommon remember that before i crush your brain like a tiny juicy raisin there's just so much to love here and the charm is off the charts pawpaw mail would see one more version a year later on the super famicom that as you can guess stayed in japan this version was done by falcom themselves it's fairly decent but the way your enemies don't seem to react to your sword slashes gives it a loose cheap feeling and what's up with male's constant eye blinking unfortunately this is where the series would end which is actually kind of odd considering falcom's propensity for sequels it's really too bad we never got a follow-up with these characters or even just anything set in this world to this day working designs remains one of my favorite companies even long after their death considering the prices that their games tend to fetch on ebay nowadays i'm obviously not alone i fully believe that potfull mail's legacy in the us was due to its writing of all their games that i've played i feel that pot full mail is the moment in time where that working design's humor worked the absolute best you can be anything you dream it's the start of the end and only you can see all that you can be [Music] [Music] if you're a fan of the ghostbusters and come on seriously who isn't you're probably familiar with the activision game that was on just about every single platform known to man in the 1980s but what most people don't realize is that sega made an original ghostbusters game in 1990 and it gave everybody what they wanted from the series in the first place a badass run and gun developed by compile of moosha fame this version of ghostbusters is interesting because most people don't even know it exists it's never been ported or appeared on any digital download service i guess you could say that in some ways it's the forgotten ghostbusters game i originally played this version of ghostbusters around when it was released and then i sold it off telling myself that i didn't like it or something i mean i'd actually forgotten that i'd even played it and then one day i stumbled across it and then i knew that i had to give it another shot the story here is actually an original one set shortly after the events of the movie peter ray and egon are once again down on their luck i guess the good will of saving the world didn't go far lo and behold a random earthquake shakes something loose in the depths of new york city and once again we're teetering on the edge of a disaster of biblical proportions your first order of business is to choose your character the gang's all here hey wait where's winston for some reason mr zedmore is completely excluded i guess it might have to do with each character having two stats speed and stamina adding in a fourth character would either make him the absolute best or the absolute worst player choice in the game i gotta admit the defining aesthetic of this game as you've probably noticed is the characters enormous heads i mean they're huge gigantic but they look awesome like the activation version before it we're faced with a map screen after the initial story setup but in this case you just choose one of four levels and then head on over there you've got home sweet home the apartment the uh woody house and the high rise the owner of the high rise penthouse is afraid that the paranormal activity will affect your resale price i hate to break it to you lady but these rooms filled with water already did that and once you reach the roof you can relax you've made it it's getting some fresh air after a hard day's work after beating the initial four levels the other two characters get kidnapped and taken to the castle at the far edge of the city cue the obvious plot twist but what i didn't really see coming was this huge hole to hell opening up in the middle of nyc undoubtedly killing hundreds of thousands of people for a run and gun the level layouts are a bit more wide open and non-linear than you'd expect you fight your way through each level looking for a set number of mid ghosts after trapping them in classic ghostbusters form you move on to the boss ghost each level has no less than two mid-ghosts to catch and having these kind of makes the game feel like a boss rush each case nets you some cash to spend on different items like a three-way shot or a barrier to reduce damage luckily there are several life and health refills delivered by our old friend slimer throughout each level i mean it wouldn't be a ghostbusters game without him right [Music] hey thanks but if you need to get a bit more serious with life recovery you can always buy some food from the local chinese takeout like this peking duck oh this chinese restaurant also sells night vision goggles and bombs wait bombs seriously bombs work on ghosts who knew naturally the requisite ghostbusters theme does make an appearance and it sounds good the rest of the tunes are fairly upbeat and catchy too tapping into the sense of fun the movie had with its soundtrack the pause music is especially great i must say that the years have been kind to the genesis version of ghostbusters and i'm not afraid to admit that i was completely wrong about it when i was a kid and it's way better than i remember it being it's just too bad that it remains largely obscure it's weird that it even exists i mean oh at least it's weird to me but if you didn't know about it before now you do and you should definitely check it out if you have a chance looking at a developer's body of work on a platform can be super interesting before the internet you'd learn to tell if a game was usually going to be worth your time by the name of the developer on the box now things are a little more complicated these days but back then if you saw a capcom logo on an nes game you'd know that the game was probably going to have good music if you saw that blue and white sega logo it usually meant that you're going to have that arcade experience at home or simply seeing the words squaresoft meant that you were in for an epic adventure that just might change video games for you so i thought it would be fun to take a look at a sampling of a developer's games and a specific platform to see how they were doing and where they were with their games at that point in time in this episode i'm going to be checking out namco on the genesis [Music] during the 8-bit generation namco is a big supporter of the nes early on after all it was the home of the legendary pac-man so of course any burgeoning console would want them on their side namco is actually the first licensee of nintendo's system and that earned them a sort of special treatment perks like being able to manufacture their own cartridges which was a huge money saver for them over time nintendo's behemoth steamrolled all competition and well they got cocky when it was time for namco to resign their licensee agreement the benefits they previously enjoyed went away this understandably rubbed those in charge of namco the wrong way which prompted them to throw a huge amount of support behind sega's newest 16-bit console [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] in my constant attempt at finding a game to fill a void that the lack of a decent space harrier port or sequel left of me my search led me to a game called burning force a third person rail shooter that was first released in the arcades in 1989 and then was ported to the genesis in 1990 you control a space cadet named hiromi tengenji who rides a sweet looking hoverbike as she trains to be a space fighter for the earth university this training takes place over the course of five days each with four sections the first two levels take place exclusively on the hoverbike which can only move left and right but at the start of the third section your bike is upgraded and becomes a spaceship it's insane you are no longer limited to a left and right movement but now you can fly all around the screen space harrier style after taking down the big boss of the day you're treated to a nice bonus stage romp where you pick up these point bubbles which will usually result in an extra life or two it's a nice way to top off a hard day's work if you ask me scattered along each level are a number of different bubbles you can pick up that will alter your attack type stuff like wave beams laser shots and a wide shot the latter being my personal favorite because it covers a huge area of the screen you also have the requisite smart bomb attack which clears the screen of enemies the graphics are decent and the scaling is fairly smooth there's a few little animation touches that i really enjoy like how when you lose a life hiromi leaps off her bike as it explodes does a flip and lands on another and while the music is definitely an average affair i always really love the theme of the first day it's one of those songs that stuck with me ever since i first played it everything else though just don't ask me to pick it out on a playlist overall burning force just an okay game i was fairly disappointed with it when i first played it because i looked forward to it for so long and then i beat it the first day that i owned it revisiting it now the thing i noticed the most is that unmistakable early namco look a look that really holds up [Music] man i love the first rolling thunder in the arcade even though i could barely make it past the second area i spent a lot of time on that cabinet when i saw that the sequel aptly titled rolling thunder 2 was on its way to the genesis in 1990 there was no hesitation on my part secret agent albatross is back and this time he is joined by the previously captured agent laila blitz wait what yup that's right rolling thunder 2 ups the ante by adding a two player simultaneous mode and it is awesome i never imagined that a co-op mode was exactly what the first game was missing but it's absolutely the secret sauce here each agent starts out equipped with only a handgun and needless to say ammunition for said weapons is extremely limited but you can enter doors and take cover and acquire extra bullets you'll also pick up alternate weapons hidden behind specific doors heavy duty weapons like submachine guns shotguns and flamethrowers let you lay waste to the enemy henchmen who melt away when you take them out the overall look of rolling thunder 2 is great it's very obvious that it's using the game's full 8 megs of power i always loved how spy characters from this era of games and anime were represented as being so tall and lanky the music is appropriately espionage and emulates that spy atmosphere very well i gotta say i think that rolling thunder 2 is one of the best third party games on the genesis and absolutely my favorite of all the games that namco released on the system the two player mode adds a ton of variety and fun i highly recommend it [Music] in the early years of the 16-bit console wars there was just one game that made me sad not to have a turbo graphics 16. that game was splatterhouse let's get this out of the way first off growing up i was a huge friday the 13th fan as a parent now i was probably way too young to be watching those movies when i did but it was a different time so obviously when i saw screenshots of splatterhouse and egm i lost my mind wait you mean you play as jason in this it was like my ultimate game and i had no chance of playing it myself until a couple of years later when namco brought the series over from the sinking turbo graphics you play as a guy named rick who uses the power of a demonic mask to rescue his girlfriend from a haunted house full of ghosts demons and other creatures you punch and jump kick your way through a number of stages it's really straightforward but the real hook of the game is the blood and guts in the pre-mortal combat world that the splatterhouse series was unleashed into my only real experience with extreme gore in a game was chopping heads off and sword of sodom this was a whole new level punching creatures in half splattering them against the wall in the background with a swing of a 2x4 now 13 year old cory was probably a little too excited about this stuff but at the time it was unlike anything i'd ever seen i've always loved the details of the sprites in splatterhouse everything just looks all veiny grotesque it carries the horror theme amazingly well but for me it was very much an instance of style over substance i actually didn't make it further than level 2 until recently and to be honest i didn't care for it in the long run but really splatterhouse 2 is worth checking out just to see some of the f'd up stuff in this game [Music] shoot-'em-ups on the genesis made up a huge portion of the council's library early on namco's foray into the arena was with a part of their greek mythology-based vertical shooter called felios you control the god of the sun apollo who rides atop pegasus the winged horse and a quest to rescue the goddess of the moon artemis from a titan named typhon what is kind of weird is that the game portrays apollo and artemis as lovers when in actual greek mythology the two were brother and sister the namesake of the game is actually the sword that apollo wields a quick button press shoots a single shot while holding down the button allows you to charge up your sword for a much powerful larger attack felios is actually a fairly standard shooter of the era but it does have a few things to set it apart to make it something special like i really love the of a life bar instead of a typical one-hit kill this game gets intense later on so you're definitely going to need those extra hits another big thing is the setting itself and a sea of space shooters moving to an ancient greek setting was a huge breath of fresh air everything looks amazing from lush valleys to lava rivers and finally outer space didn't i just say it was different than other space shooters sure it's a little weird that artemis slowly loses her clothing throughout the course of the game but the cut scenes between each level are pretty neat and get this they are fully voiced how crazy is that sure it sounds awful i have no idea how this didn't blow my mind when i was a kid i received two genesis games for christmas in 1990 felios and a game called hellfire both were among the most difficult shooters i've ever encountered out of those two felios is the only one i found myself going back to it's super super hard but it's a really great game [Music] so there you go a nice sampling of some of namco's games on the genesis if i had to just pick one that i thought you should hunt down well that would be easy rolling thunder 2 for sure if you're interested in checking out some of the others well you should know that some can get a bit pricey so what was your favorite game by namco on the genesis there were a bunch that i didn't list here so i'd love to hear what you pick till next time thanks for watching [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: My Life in Gaming

Views: 633,807

Keywords: video binge watch, ghostbusters, sonic the hedgehog, sega games, space harrier, sega mega drive, wonder boy, shinobi, phantasy star, phantasy star rpg, crazy taxi, RGB, nintendo, sega, sony, microsoft, console, Component, SCART, Composite, resolution, 240p, 480i, 480p, 720p, CRT, PVM, Mod, HDTV, Framemeister, OSSC, video game, retro gaming, game hacks, game setup, mlig, modern tv, vintage gaming, console port, emulation, fpga, saturn, dreamcast, terraonion, roms, mega sd, classic gaming, sonic adventure

Id: CC5CaoUrZLk

Length: 236min 52sec (14212 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021