The best Sega Genesis games of all time

Eat your heart out Marvel. There’s no doubt superhero video games have littered the landscape since the beginning, but few of them reveled in the artistic aesthetics of comic books quite like Comix Zone. The quirky title, developed by Sega Technical Institute and introduced during the last wave of Genesis games, revolves around starving artist Sketch Turner and his rat companion, Roadkill. Turner is essentially trapped within his own comic book by the villainous Mortis, thus forcing the would-be writer to battle through six stages of Mortis-sketched enemies and environments to survive. However, Comix Zone‘s merit doesn’t lie in the storyline or the title’s beat-em-up gameplay; it’s the visuals and overall artistic design making that title a standout, adorned with gorgeous, hand-drawn comic book panels and chat bubbles through which Turner must navigate. Although the game only has two alternate endings, each level features branching paths, providing a higher replay value and variety of gameplay. Like most brawlers of the era, players must perform punch, kick and jump attacks within each panel to proceed, or solve a simple puzzle if they ever hope to move outside the frame. Special moves and inventory items are an additional bonus, along with Roadkill’s innate ability to discover hidden abilities given his keen sense of smell, but it’s still the unique artwork that makes Comix Zone the tour de force that it is. It’s available on the Sega Genesis Mini.

Ecco the Dolphin has seemingly been given a second shot in the hands of creator Ed Annunziata, but I doubt a next-gen rendition of Sega’s second-in-command mascot could trump the waterlogged roots of the series’ past. Ecco the Dolphin, the first in the Ecco series, oversaw the time-traveling escapades of a bottlenose dolphin — not to mention his hostile encounters with a group of marine-life-abducting extraterrestrials. Despite its childlike appearance, however, the title was one of the toughest on the console, offering little in the way of clues and helpful tips for spurring the initial storyline or navigating the maze-like crevasses spanning Atlantis to the Atlantic. The 25 stages were tropical and eye-catching upon the game’s debut, the controls novel and innovative given the four-direction mechanics, while additional facets like Ecco’s requirement for air added an even deeper level of difficulty. You can also ram schools of sharks, use sonar to communicate with a massive blue whale and destroy the Vortex Queen on a level named after a cut from Pink Floyd’s seminal 1975 album, Wish You Were Here. Not bad for a title that can be beaten within a mere hour if you know what you’re doing. The game is available on the Sega Genesis Mini.

The great fighting game bubble of the ’90s proved to be one of the crassest and obnoxious examples of speculation in the history of the video game industry. Publishers released wave after wave of derivatives and full-price updates, with the nadir being Street Fighter: The Movie (the game), a video game based on a movie based on a video game. In the beginning, however, the fighting game trend produced some truly exciting and inventive titles. Former Capcom rival SNK released Samurai Shodown in 1993, a 2-D title that eschewed the gritty urban environments of popular franchises like Street Fighter and Fatal Fury. Instead, Samurai Shodown set its battles in the storied past of feudal Japan. Shodown took the core gameplay of the genre — i.e., one vs. one battles on a 2-D plane — and adjusted it to focus on strong, fast attacks, rather than the lengthy combo strings popular at the time. As in a real swordfight, duels in Samurai Shodown tend to end quickly.  The game features a small but diverse roster of characters, including straightforward archetypes such as a wandering ronin and more oddball characters like Galford, an American cowboy turned ninja who can call his trusty canine into battle. Sadly, Samurai Shodown is one of the few classic fighting franchises that has yet to be revived, even if the first installment still holds up as one of the best in the genre.

The formative fighting game, Street Fighter II established many of the conventions of the genre, particularly the idea of linking combos together to prevent your opponent from being able to react. Street Fighter II also pioneered one of the most notorious trends in fighting game history: releasing several slightly improved iterations of the same game. All told, there are seven main releases of Street Fighter II, one of which was a recent remaster for the PlayStation Store and Xbox Live Arcade. Nonetheless, each iteration of the title introduced new characters and mechanics while tweaking older elements and retaining the core elements of the franchise. Super Street Fighter II, in particular, introduced four new characters — T. Hawk, Cammy, Fei Long, and Dee Jay — thus further expanding the series’ diverse cast. Each of the new characters had radically different styles of play and all four have become mainstays of the franchise ever since. SSFII also slowed the game speed down from that of the previous version, Hyper Fighting, a decision Capcom would later reverse with the release of Super Street Fighter II: Turbo. The increasingly long names also remain the most ridiculous part of the franchise’s production model. While it’s not as good as its follow-up, a game so polished they still play it at the most prestigious fighting game tournaments in the world, this version represents the best Street Fighter experience on the Genesis. Super Street Fighter II featured a full cast of SFII characters minus Akuma, improved animations, and introduced a combo scoring system that only brought it closer to perfection.

SNK was one of the most prolific fighting game developers in the ’90s — and Fatal Fury was the game that started it all. It was one of many franchises launched in an attempt to capitalize on the Street Fighter II zeitgeist. Like SF, Fatal Fury has players fight in one-on-one battles, using combos and special attacks to whittle away their opponents’ health. Players can choose from one of three characters (Terry Bogard, Andy Bogard, and Joe Higashi) and battle through a series of opponents, ultimately facing off against Geese Howard, the oddly named nemesis and aikido master. The three protagonists would become some of the most famous characters in the fighting game genre, appearing in subsequent Fatal Fury games as well as SNK’s mammoth King of Fighters franchise. FF made one big change to the fighting game formula by splitting stages into a front row and a back row. Whereas in many fighting games players battle on a purely 2D plane, FF allowed them to move back and forth between the two rows. This also enabled the game to have hectic two-vs-two battles, a novel idea at the time. While the rows didn’t alter movement in fights dramatically, Fatal Fury can be seen as a precursor to the 3D fighters that would eventually be made for subsequent console generations, which now often include eight-way movement.

Sega’s plucky mascot has had a rough few years. For nearly a decade, every new Sonic game has been a disaster, an unending parade of goofy characters, bad camera angles, and attempts at “hip” theme songs. It’s almost hard to even recall the halcyon days of Sonic when Sega took the standard platforming formula of the era and threw some N2O in the engine. Sonic’s big selling point was speed. Players could move fast, and environments were designed to emphasize this, with intricate systems of vertical loops to travel through and enemies to dispatch. Sonic 2 introduced Sonic’s sidekick, Miles “Tails” Prower, allowing a second player to join the game. The addition of a spin-dash move gave players another option for dispatching enemies, allowing them to better traverse a series of levels that each culminated in a battle against archvillain Dr. Robotnik. Sonic 2 feature some of the lushest environments of any platformer and the expansive, colorful environments are still a joy to zoom around in. Sonic 2 represents the zenith of the franchise in nearly every way, making it the perfect distillation of high-speed platforming. The game is available on the Sega Genesis Mini.

With more than 20 cross-platform titles donning his name, it’s safe to say John Madden has a good thing going for him. However, Madden NFL ’94 was introduced long before graphics were nearly lifelike. It was the first game in the series to feature a rotating camera during punts and interceptions, offer a fully-featured regular season, and — get this — official NFL licensing. It was an American football simulation at its finest, with game modes to match. However, being a sports game, Madden NFL ’94 lacked a propulsive storyline. Players can still dabble in a variety of game modes under a myriad of weather conditions, though, whether they want to try a normal exhibition match or even a sudden death overtime game.