A friend of mine has recently brought his megadrive back out of storage along with a host of old games titles. I admit, my eyes glazed over a little bit when I saw it, there is something about the console that radiates awesome. Either that or it was the console that for my generation, was their first experience of console gaming, and therefore the device that got them hooked.
One of my all time favourite games was on the megadrive in the form of "dungeons and dragons warriors of the eternal sun." This basically involved you having a 5 man party and wandering around a strange land defeating monsters and ultimately looking for allies. The story was simplistic and linear but the gameplay had a steep but manageable difficult curve, you could use a host of different battle tactics in turn based combat, or have to deal with being FPS in the dungeons. It was an altogether amazing game and one I have played several times before. Sure it did not have the size of say oblivion, or the reels of dialogue from dragon-age but I enjoyed it as much as any other game of its genre.
It got me thinking, we have come a long way in terms of game development but there is still a huge attraction in the old games of the megadrive. For one thing they seemed harder. (partially due to a lack of saves, a harsher game over, and also partly probably because gaming did not need to be so mainstream) They were simplistic, the graphics were often pretty awful, but they were great fun. Amazingly some of the franchises that made their name on the megadrive never worked when the graphics improved and gameplay became more complex.
Sonic is still *going* but nothing I have played has matched sonic 3 and knuckles combined. Micro-machines I believe is now dead, it was genius on the megadrive, right down to allowing you to create your own racetracks. Huge choice and selection taken away by the ps2 version. Even worms suffered when taken outside of the standard simple design seen on the megadrive, although armageddon and world party were both great fun games. Sega themselves struggled to produce a better console and in the end they lost the battle.
Ultimately the megadrive is still an amazing piece of technology and even though I have had a gamecube, a ps1 and 2 and an x-box 360 since, my eyes still light up at the thought of playing the megadrive again!
Micro Machines is still going, there's an iPhone/iPod version. Gameplay is more-or-less identical, but not having a physical D-pad is frustrating IMHO.
ReplyDeleteLikewise Sonic 4 for the iThing, which I haven't played, though from the reviews it would seem that Sonic 3 + Sonic & Knuckles still reigns supreme. I do think Worms Armageddon was the pinnacle of its series though!
Aww damnit, you've got me wanting to play Shining Force again :(