30 Years of Genesis: Going 30 Years Playing No More Than 30 Minutes of Sonic

This summer marks the 30th anniversary of the launch of the Sega Genesis in North America. I had such a nostalgia trip reliving my memories of the GameBoy while crafting my recent GameBoy 30th Anniversary piece, that it only seemed fitting that Sega’s iconic 16-bit platform gets the same honors of recounting my memories with it. If you are looking for a more authoritative historical piece on it I recommend either Phoenix IV or Console Wars. The former is a strictly informative recounting of the history of the system while the latter is an entertaining retelling done in the form of a novel after days of interviews with everyone involved. The following are my own personal experiences of playing the Genesis over the past three decades.

I remember first encountering the Genesis while spending either Thanksgiving or Christmas 1991 over at my older sister and brother-in-law’s house. I was only eight at the time, and remember being perplexed at the black gaming box and the thought that there could somehow be other systems than the good ‘ol NES. I did not subscribe to any gaming magazines at this point and I think I was still about a year away from experiencing Sega’s deluge of combative commercials against the SNES. During that holiday season of ’91 I recalled playing the first Streets of Rage on the Genesis with my little brother nonstop the couple days we were there. I remember being blown away by how superior it was graphically to what I experienced with other NES brawlers before like Double Dragon. We only got up to the stage where we faced off against the dueling karate sisters who kept whooping us and neither my brother nor I had the skills at the time to get past.

The next year or two the only times I recall playing the Genesis were at my sister’s for the holidays or the occasional store kiosk. I remember my brother-in-law picked up other games we played regularly like ToeJam & Earl, Buster Douglas Boxing, Toxic Crusaders and PGA Tour Golf. I dug all of them, especially ToeJam & Earl where I had no idea what was happening half the time with its unorthodox level structure and item pick-ups, but loving the co-op gameplay, stylish graphics and its funky beats at the time. Brief memories of store kiosk play from the early 90s consisted of being horrible at the original Sonic the Hedgehog because it was too fast for my childhood noggin’ to comprehend. I also recall being confused at early editions of Madden Football at store kiosks because when I would press buttons to hike the ball ‘Audible’ would appear on screen and then eight or nine-year old Dale had no idea what that meant compared to easier pick up and play NES pigskin games I was conditioned to.

Until Christmas of 1995 I probably played no more than about 10 Genesis games all together. I was more aware of the system by that time thanks to reading magazines more regularly at that point and hearing from classmates who had the system, but until that point I was pretty loyal to my NES still (I did not get a SNES until late ’96). For the Christmas season of ’95 my best friend at the time who coincidentally lived three blocks away from me, Rich, received a Genesis and that was when I got a lot more hands-on time with its extensive library of titles. Rich and I shared a lot of similar game interests which at that time was a ton of sports games, fighters and action/brawlers.

For the next several months I was over at Rich’s for countless sleepovers and going nuts with fighters like Mortal Kombat II and Evander Holyfield’s Real Deal Boxing. Real Deal Boxing blew away Buster Douglas Boxing with more authentic boxing gameplay and an insanely thorough career mode where we would take a created boxer and move him up the ranks as champion until his skills gradually weakened with age to force his retirement. We absolutely ate up the sports games at that time. We played what seemed like an infinite amount of Madden NFL ‘97. A much wiser 13-year old Dale was no longer befuddled by the intricacies of Madden and we had so much fun with it. We would create many players to deck out our teams and keep running blitzes to try and injure the players because there was an intense bone-breaking injury sound effect that we ate up. It was like the equivalent of Favreau and Vaughn going nuts in Swingers when they made Gretzky bleed in NHLPA ‘93.

Mutant League Football was another favorite of ours that made that injury sound effect in Madden child’s play. EA also made MLF and it was the equivalent of NFL Blitz at the time with larger-than-life mutants and animals literally killing each other on the field with over-the-top hits. It was possible to force a team to retire due to killing off too many of its players which was always our desired objective! If you have not played its spiritual successor follow-up, Mutant Football League on PS4/XB1 I give it the highest of recommendations because it perfectly capture the sensation of the Genesis game while bringing it up to contemporary standards.

We also played a lot of EA’s violent driving game, Road Rash II. Being able to race motorcycles and knock out your competition with chains and nightclubs while trying to evade the cops seemed revolutionary when playing it for the first time! We later discovered EA’s take of Road Rash on rollerblades in the awesome rollerblade stunt/racing game Skitchin’! Fun fact about Skitchin’ is that the competitors you race against have gnarly nicknames like ‘Thrasher’ and ‘Jackal’ and thus in ’96 was the origin of how I came up with what wound up as my online handle but at the time was my radical Skitchin’ username, ‘Gruel’ to blend in with the rest of the pack and have stuck with it all these years later!

After spending several months devouring a good dozen or so Genesis games with Rich, it did not compare to the summer of ’96 when Rich signed up for the Sega Channel! I remember it launched in 1994 and seeing commercials for it at the time where it seemed too good to be true where for about $15/month would net the user a Genesis cartridge that would connect to a cable line and get the Genesis online streaming access to a rotating 40-50 Genesis games a month. That is right, decades before services like OnLive and Playstation Now, the Genesis did streaming gaming back in ’94 and it worked like a charm! Check out this pristine archival footage of the menus to see how it all worked. Sega Channel essentially was what Xbox Game Pass is today, and I am surprised to hear how little it is discussed when people reminisce about the Genesis.

We discovered so many new games this way and for that entire summer I was over at Rich’s about three to four days a week binging on Sega Channel games until Rich’s dad got on my case because I was over so often. I remember discovering new sports games on there like the innocuously titled Super Volleyball that we became somehow addicted to and the surprisingly awesome Tiny Toons ACME All-Stars that had its own killer spin on arcade basketball and soccer that it played like NBA Jam but filled with crazy Tiny Toons power-up attacks. Sega Channel is what additionally exposed me to co-op games like General Chaos, the Streets of Rage sequels and Gain Ground and classic single player games like Shadowrun, Comix Zone and Vectorman that Rich and I took turns trying to keep progressing through. Sega Channel also was my first exposure to the classic Bomberman franchise with many nail-biting rounds played of Mega Bomberman!

It came as no surprise to me when I finally bought a Genesis a few years later in 1999 that the first games I hunted down for it were those same games I first discovered on the Sega Channel! In April of 1999 shortly after I turned 16 I got my first after-school job and after a few paychecks I went to Wal-Mart to determine what should be one of the first games to buy on my own! This was around the time when Majesco re-released the third, mini-sized Genesis model at a discount price of around $30. I was legit stunned at that price for a brand new system, even if it was for a ten-year old platform at that time I could not help but instantly snatched it up!

If you read my GameBoy special from several weeks back you will recall my lamenting over its lackluster wrestling games compared to the superior ones on the 16-bit platforms. On Genesis, Rich and I played way too much Royal Rumble on the system. Other wrestling games I picked up for the Genesis over the years was the inferior predecessor to Royal Rumble in Super Wrestlemania. While I had a blast with Rumble way back when, it regrettably does not hold up well all these years later with its over-reliance on a button mashing grapple meter that obliterated thumbs that I have no idea how I tolerated at the time. Saturday Night Slam Masters was a unique wrestling game from Capcom. It is essentially Street Fighter II in a wrestling ring, complete with victory taunts, Mike Haggar from Final Fight in its roster and even has a few wrestling moves sprinkled in! I loved how they had over-the-top laser light entrances and larger-than-life character sprites at the time, and I recall enjoying the Genesis version more than the SNES. There was nothing else like it since, and on occasion I will still throw it in every couple of years. I continue to hope one day Capcom will release its sequel, Ring of Destruction in a random collection of arcade games because it never got a home port all these years later.

Sports games ruled on the Genesis! Pictured from clockwise at top left is Holyfield's Real Deal Boxing, NHLPA '93, Super Volleyball and Tiny Toon ACME All-Stars

I mentioned some of my favorite sports games for the system above, but it really needs to be emphasized how big sports games were on the Genesis. Both Sega and EA pumped out a seemingly endless line of sports titles for the system. I remember getting into silly speculation with Rich over how much extra memory that yellow tab on the EA carts allowed EA games to play better. For hoops titles I got my NBA Jam and Live fix on SNES, but on the ‘ol Genny my go-to basketball games were the oft-forgotten NCAA skinned version of Jam in College Hoops. I occasionally also threw in the hand-me-down street ball version of NBA Jam in Barkley Shut up Jam. I loved Madden, but Sega’s Joe Montana line of gridiron games were just a notch or two below too. For baseball, Sega’s World Series Baseball titles were in a league of its own when it came to gameplay and presentation with its larger-than-life hitter/batter perspective. For hockey EA’s NHL line was/is legendary! About four or five years ago my friend Derek gave me a ring to come over for some impromptu random gaming and he never played much Genesis before so when he got over I had the Genesis hooked up and laid out all my games for it and of that night we had the most fun playing a few rounds of NHL ‘94. At that point it was a 20-21 year old game and it still held up as one of the best hockey games of all time.

For brawlers I loved the Streets of Rage games, but I think it is my secret shame that I have yet to complete a single one. That must one day change! I did love the exclusive Genesis TMNT game, Hyperstone Heist! It was right up there with Turtles in Time and every couple of years my friend Matt and I make it a ritual to plow through that game. After many attempts we also conquered the Genesis port of the awesome arcade brawler, The Punisher! It does not have as friendly of a continue system as Hyperstone Heist so Matt and I had to learn to play a little more conservatively and not rely on mindless button mashing. It felt gratifying to have all that hard work pay off and beat The Punisher….until we got a copout ending screen of text saying ‘Now play like the Punisher and try hard difficulty.’ We did not, but I wound up looking up the ending several years later and at least Capcom made it worth your while because it had a far more intricate ending than many other brawlers at the time. The one Genesis brawler that always had our number was Captain America and the Avengers. It is a lot of fun to play, but it does not allow that many credits and by setting ourselves up with the max lives and continues that game was still a beast, and even playing conservatively and having so many attempts we only managed to make it to the final boss, The Red Skull, only once.

Let us fast track to about a little under 10 years ago when a co-worker approached me about being interested in buying his Genesis/Sega CD/32X along with a couple dozen games. He was saving up to pay off his upcoming wedding and he gave me a list of everything he had along with prices for everything he wanted going by what he saw off eBay auctions. I did some price researching of my own and made him an offer of around $250-ish for the ‘tower of power’ and about 20 games combined for all three systems. Looking back I accidentally lucked out with that offer because it was only a couple years later when 8/16-bit prices on the used market took a huge jump. I never had a must-have desire for a Sega CD or 32X, but there were always a couple of games I wanted to play on them that I eventually hunted down. I liked the versions of WWF RAW, Doom, Virtua Racer and especially Virtual Fighter the most out of my dozen 32X games. I recall as a then 10 and 11 year old being disgusted by early polygonal console games like Star Fox and Virtua Racer and was more on board with FMV games being the future, but remember being a little taken aback by Virtua Fighter indicating that there may be something to these 3D polygons. The 32X version is a surprisingly faithful version to its arcade counterpart.

I need to dive into my SegaCD games more one of these months. I hunted down all the must own titles for it like the Working Design RPGs, Shining Force CD, enhanced versions of Amazing Spider-Man and Batman Returns and Snatcher which I hope to one day knock off my gaming bucket list. Regrettably now my only SegaCD games I invested a decent amount of time into are WWF Rage in the Cage (essentially Super Wrestlemania but with some FMVs and a bigger roster), Slam City with Scottie Pippen (a abysmal FMV-based street hoops title) and the underrated SegaCD exclusive brawler, Prime. I am a huge Ultraverse comic nut and I ate up Prime on SegaCD since it was the only game released featuring characters from that comic book line before Marvel acquired them and cancelled all their books within a couple years (yes, I am still bitter over it). It is only one player, but Matt and I spent a few attempts taking turns at beating levels until we finally vanquished it. We even had an attempt thwarted when Prime was loading the final boss battle when a flipping blackout halted our progress! As memorable as that moment is I will instead forever associate Prime with its unrivaled and unforgettable opening theme music (seriously….give it a listen!).

I need to give a shoutout to the official handheld Genesis, aka the Nomad! My brother surprised the hell out of me one year with it for a birthday present. My favorite Nomad memory is my brother getting hyped for getting his own version of Genesis Shadowrun and I told him I would come over and bring my Nomad and my version while he played on his television and we could both start off our own new game and exchange tips and hints in a friendly rivalry type of way. I think my brother must have gotten the Genesis version of Shadowrun mixed up with the completely differently designed SNES version because he tried to run around aimlessly and gun down everything which is not how you want to play the Genesis version. We were planning that day out for weeks and I remember being stunned after about 15 minutes when I was starting to sink my teeth back into Shadowrun’s cyberpunk action-RPG brand of awesome when my brother out of nowhere went ‘screw this, let’s play something else!’

As I wind down I want to give many thanks to Sega for keeping the Genesis relevant throughout this century with its gratuitous re-releases of physical and digital collections. I have no idea why, but I keep on buying them for the convenience of having them for the latest system. It started with the Sega Smash Pack on DreamCast seeming like a killer value in 2001 for 12 games for $40. Then a few years later on PS2 I snatched up Sega Genesis Collection which seemed like an even better value with just over 30 games for $30! Then in the 360/PS3 era along came Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection which offered 40 games for $30!! Sega also sold a lot of the games ala carte via each console’s digital storefronts. Then last year we got Sega Genesis Classics on Xbox One/PS4 with 50 games for $30!!! The last several years Sega also has been licensing out to At Games to release their own pre-programmed Genesis mini console with dozens of pre-installed games. I held off on getting those after hearing how awful its emulation and shoddy production quality is, but after hearing how Sega finally decided to manufacture their own Genesis Mini themselves this fall and handed off the emulation duties to the acclaimed emulation studio M2, I could not pre-order fast enough! I have no idea why I keep deep diving down this well, but hats off to Sega for keeping me coming back again and again!

Similarly with my GameBoy flashback piece, I had an unorthodox experience with the Genesis. I was not a hardcore Sonic or Phantasy Star player like the average Genesis owner. If you ask me any day of the week my answer to what my favorite Genesis game is, it could be either The Punisher, Madden NFL ‘97, Shadowrun, Hyperstone Heist, NHL ‘94 or Skitchin’. That is another thing that made the Genesis great was its mammoth library of diverse titles so there was no doubt something for everyone! With that I will put the kibosh on this look back of my favorite moments with the Genesis as I anxiously await for my pre-order of the Genesis Mini to arrive in a few months!

Want more Genesis Love from me in Audio and quasi-video form?

I was looking through my hard drive archives and a decade ago while I was still doing my videogame podcast, On Tap, we did a special 20th anniversary special on the Genesis where my co-hosts and I reminisce about the Genesis. I went ahead and uploaded it on YouTube so if you want even more Genesis takes then click here to give it a listen!

Also recorded throughout 2009 from the On Tap archives was installments from our history of comic book videogames series. In this next episode I uploaded to YouTube is the second part of series where we breakdown every single comic book licensed game on the SNES and Genesis! My co-host Matt and I did thorough research for this episode and played almost nearly every single comic book game from this era in preparation for the episode to give the most up to date research and to see if these games (of which a vast majority are beat-em-ups) still hold up. Click here to give it a listen!

My Other Gaming Flashbacks

GameBoy 30th Anniversary