Finally got my Sega CD up and running! Game suggestions?

[Austin]

Yeah, the prices on Heart of the Alien are stupid these days.

[R.O.T.S]

I have been playing the SegaCD quite a lot recently and there are a few games i still enjoy just as much today as i did back then which obviously i consider to be the better titles, Final Fight ,Lords (Winds) Of Thunder ,Jag XJ220,Flink ,Android Assault (Bari-arm),Denim (Robo) Aleste ,Sonic CD and Chuck Rock II.I generally avoid anything resembling FMV stuff but would give AX101 an honorable mention,i have just started playing Heart Of The Alien as i never did get to play it back on its original release and as i have already completed Another World i am really looking forward to it.

[Arkhan]

CHUCK ROCK 2

 

SON OF CHUCK.

 

 

 

man, that game was sweet.

 

Not as cool as Bonk though.

[Austin]

It's cool to see that people enjoy Chuck Rock 2. I played it a lot way-back-when and enjoyed it. Not as much as other platformers, but it was still good. I was under the impression that it wasn't very well regarded though.

[+thegoldenband]

Some good recommendations so far. To be honest nothing on the Sega CD has really blown me away, but I'm still in the process of exploring the library & I don't really close the book on a game until I've beaten it.

 

Sol-Feace is actually quite good but punishingly difficult, and the designers made a big mistake: in the cart version you continue at your current stage, but in the CD version you're bumped back to Stage 5 whenever you die in Stages 5-7. This adds tons of frustration, especially on the higher difficulty (Mania), since you end up having to endlessly replay Stage 5 just to get a crack at figuring out the brutal Stage 6 boss. If they wanted to knock you back, it should've been to Stage 6.

 

Also, there are some Engrish issues in the CD version that were fixed in the cart version, and IIRC there's more flicker in the CD version. But the Redbook soundtrack is nice.

 

Other non-FMV games: Wonder Dog was cute, but very easy and very short. Chuck Rock was far less cute, with the same problems. Racing Aces is pretty terrible with a horrendous framerate, but there are a few people out there who swear it's a good air combat sim if you can overlook the technical flaws. Beat-'em-up Ultraverse/Prime seemed unfinished. After Burner III is loathed by fans of the series, but gave me modest entertainment though it's almost unplayable near the end. Final Fight is one of the system's killer apps. Dungeon Explorer was underwhelming at first, but its Gauntlet-lite gameplay probably deserves a second chance.

 

There are some Sega CD games that are probably better played on other platforms like the 3DO. Star Wars: Rebel Assault is kinda fun if you can get past the terrible opening level, but it falls apart on the hardest difficulty, since you're denied all the visual/HUD cues that compensate for the horribly color-compressed graphics. OTOH, I had fun with Crime Patrol.

 

Panic! is hardly a game -- more like a cross between Choose Your Own Adventure and a Japanese Monty Python -- but it's fun if you can get in the spirit of things. Dracula Unleashed, a graphic adventure with FMV, is frustrating and cryptic but somehow appealing; my fiancée and I got stuck on the game's second day, and we're hoping to get unstuck sometime around Halloween this year.

 

As for Japanese exclusives, a surprising number of them are RPGs, strategy games, and other genres that are impenetrable if you don't speak Japanese, but a dozen or so are playable without the language. I've played and beaten Earnest Evans and Anet Futatabi, which are the 2nd and 3rd entries in the trilogy that begins with El Viento. The former is an acquired taste (play the cart version first to see if you can deal with the quirky controls), the latter a terrible excuse for a beat-'em-up. Keep in mind that you'll need a flashcart with a BIOS replacement to play out-of-region games on your Sega CD unit, and some games still won't work without an ISO hack.

 

I'd definitely take a look at some of the LD games like Time Gal, Cobra Command and Road Avenger. If you like the Dragon's Lair type games those are pretty fun -- although relatively straight forward and easy to beat. My least favorite FMV game is probably Wirehead, it seems like the designed the game so that the obvious/logical choice was always wrong.

 

Aww, I liked Wirehead. But you have to be willing to commit to mapping it out systematically. For that reason it's a great game for two people to work as a team, one inputting and one mapping. There are even some secrets!

 

(Hmmm, for some reason whenever I try to picture the protagonist of Wirehead in my mind, I keep visualizing James Rolfe...I know it's Skippy from Family Ties, but the AVGN keeps overruling him.)

 

BTW I find Cobra Command pretty challenging, though I haven't really tried systematically to beat it. Some of the hitboxes are very fussy.

 

As for other FMV shooting titles, Tomcat Alley was fun, but its unofficial sequel, Midnight Raiders, takes the "shaky targeting" thing waaaaay too far.

[number six]

Aww, I liked Wirehead. But you have to be willing to commit to mapping it out systematically. For that reason it's a great game for two people to work as a team, one inputting and one mapping. There are even some secrets!

 

(Hmmm, for some reason whenever I try to picture the protagonist of Wirehead in my mind, I keep visualizing James Rolfe...I know it's Skippy from Family Ties, but the AVGN keeps overruling him.)

 

BTW I find Cobra Command pretty challenging, though I haven't really tried systematically to beat it. Some of the hitboxes are very fussy.

 

 

Wirehead definitely requires mapping There's pretty much no way you can get through that game without a lot of trial and error and keeping copious notes. It's one of those deals where if you see a bottle marked poison in this game you are supposed to drink it because it's actually the antedote or something. Totally illogical so it really just becomes trial and error. Of course they also mixed in actions that did have logical solutions so you couldn't just play it like bizarro Dragon's Lair either. I guess I didn't like it because of that. On more straight forward games you still need to figure out certain sequences but you can at least get through a decent portion of the game using common sense.. not so with Wirehead!

 

One thing I'll say about all the FMV games on those early CD systems.. at least you can still enjoy them for the cheesy acting / dialogue. An old sucky 8-bit game just sucks.. but at least with Double Switch you can enjoy Corey Haim and Deborah Harry hamming it up on top of a sucky game. Just gives it that little extra something.

 

That said I still honestly enjoy the odd game of Sewer Shark, dogmeat.

[Austin]

Sewer Shark definitely has its charm.

[Kid Chameleon]

Ground Zero Texas is my favorite of all the FMV games. I think it's actually pretty decent, and the cheese factor is off the charts. I've always like Sewer Shark as well.

[+Cafeman]

I hooked up my Sega CD a few days ago. I have a model 2 Genesis on a model 1 CD; my model1 Genesis' RF output is terrible and I assume the thing is shot.

 

Played Ecco the Dolphin CD, from the beginning the whole way until the first alien world level at the end, called "The Tube" . at this point, the gameplay is different and too punishing / hard for me so I stopped there.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed going through the levels - Ecco's home, the open sea, the arctic, meeting the blue whale and present-day Asterite, going to Atlantis and then to the Jurassic period to deal with the prehistoric Asterite. It's a big game, but not as hard as I remembered - I guess I remember how to play & how to solve the puzzles because I remember it took a long time , back in the day. Some great animations and music and I really enjoy the gameplay of Ecco. The CD version offers more checkpoints (and a few new sunken-ship levels) than the Genesis version, which really helps. If you never did it, let the game sit at the title screen a minute, to prompt an animated intro unique to this version.

 

One of the levels had pretty ingenious puzzles - I think it was a CD-exclusive level with the sunken ships. Sometimes Ecco has to follow sinking boulders or sinking turtles to go DOWN to the next level. But you also have to go back up and fight the down-current because the Key Glyph is at the top, near the surface, yet there are like 3 locked barrier glyphs as you go down. The way Ecco goes back UP is to move a sunken barrel over an "air Clam", then sing to the clam until the bubbles fill up the barrel and make it rise. Then Ecco has to push the barrel to the left until he reaches the down-current path and follow it up - all without running out of air. Once you get to the top of the down-current path , Ecco can charge the barrel and consume the air in it! Classic tough puzzle from the 8bit/16bit era.

 

I also played Delphine's Flashback: Quest for Identity CD. I just found this for like $12 at The Exchange a month or two back. I played through level 1 which took a while, then half way through level 2. The sound FX are clearer, there is actual recorded voice acting along with the on-screen text (some of the text is well nigh unreadable on my setup!), the cool polygon "cinemas" of the cart are replaced with actual quick-loading little FMV seqences which work better than you'd think, and the CD redbook audio is really nice over the silence of the Genesis version.

 

There was one puzzle that had me stumped until I remembered what to do (in the first level). Conrad Hart needs to raise a center-screen elevator lift and return to that screen to go down the hole/path previously covered by that lift. I ran around for half an hour until I finally realized you could go down there, then I quickly beat level 1.

 

I also played a few rounds of Sewer Shark and Tomcat Alley. I hated 'em back in the day, but the novelty of these 16-bit CD FMV games can be pretty fun to be honest. It takes a few plays for my eyes to adjust to the horrible resolution, but it works.

Edited November 12, 2012 by Cafeman

[Gecko101]

I'm guessing everyone here dislikes FMV games, but I know a really good one. it's called Mansion Of The hidden Souls, its short, but its really fun. It's kind of an early horror game. It's not scary, but there's some eerie music in it.

[OldSchoolRetroGamer]

I'm guessing everyone here dislikes FMV games, but I know a really good one. it's called Mansion Of The hidden Souls, its short, but its really fun. It's kind of an early horror game. It's not scary, but there's some eerie music in it.

 

Nope I actually like them, to me they were an interesting attempt at realistic games, flawed but interesting. I really like them on my 3DO though as those versions look great!

[+Cafeman]

I just realized that Robert Costanzo, the short and heavy-set guy in Sewer Shark who breaks into your transmissions now & then, is the voice for Batman's Harvey Bullock. ha!

 

So now I know how to steer and how to recharge when those paths come up, in Sewer shark. Its a fun FMV game, IMHO. It's basically a shooter.

[Jagosaurus]

I really like Eternal Championship: Challenge from the Darkside. The programmers used some nice tricks to make lots of colors be on screen. Also, it's a "sequel" to Genesis EC. Much different. Great fighter, cool characters, crazy fatalities.

 

If you want to drop cash check out the Working Design RPGs. You'll need a backup save cart (goes in Genesis cart slot, acts as memory card) if your internal battery doesn't hold saves (can bypass it using reset button).

 

Chunk Rock II is good. Reminds me of a Turbo16 game.

 

Rise of the Dragon. Great cyberpunk "Bladerunner like" graphic novel game. I call it poor man's Snatcher

 

Soul Star really shows off the S-CD hardware.

[+Cafeman]

I'm off work so have some free time, I got to play several sessions of Batman Returns CD. It's been years since I really sat down and tried to beat the various driving levels. I have come to the conclusion again, this game was set TOO HARD! You can use the level-select cheat to skip to each level category, but if you want to (for example) fight the 6th stage boss, you will still need to beat stages 1-5 to get there. It would take a lot of retries to beat the entire driving game. I played this game tons when it was new so I had some latent skills and finally got fight the Penguin's skull boat in the sewers level. After that I played the platform game which now seems easier to me. I got pretty far on my first attempt. The game is really cheap at times - blind jumps and easy falls, and if Penguin's chasing razor ball touches the fringer of Batman's cape, you die!

 

I do enjoy the challenge and the "Sega Scaling" feel of the driving levels. Its too bad there couldn't have been a bit more color used or a higher resolution so that you can see more clearly whats going on at times. Any BRCD fans?

[+Cafeman]

Wow. Wow Wow Wow. I finally got around to spending some quality time with the hack/homebrew entitled, "Sonic the Hedgehog Megamix". We've had a burned CD of it for almost a year now but only now did I really sit down and take my time with it. This is a MUST-HAVE for Sega CD owners. Figure out how to burn a copy from the online ISO's, it isn't that hard. Although it has more bugs than a real production Sega Sonic game, it still plays excellently and you will overlook the sometimes occurrences of graphics / control glitches. It locked up for me once but not since that time and I've played it for hours.

 

What this game is, is what Sonic 4 should have been. You can play as Sonic or Mighty or Knuckles or Tails. I've really only played as Sonic however. Imagine a creative hacking of Sonic1's levels mixed with the animation, different shields, and some ideas and graphics from Sonic CD and Sonic 2/3/S&K. And it has the move where you press your button in-air and lock onto an enemy, and you can also Ring Dash like in the more modern 3D games. However, in this game it actually works WELL. Wow does it work. Lots of fun to play this one. The graphic style is like an augmented version of the original game, often with new color schemes and different parallax backgrounds. Levels are lengthy and there is plenty of fun platforming and challenges, but not too hard.

 

I have hours more of playtime with this one. I can't say its worth the money, since it was free. But I can say it is worth playing. Any Sonic Megamix players here?

[Austin]

I do enjoy the challenge and the "Sega Scaling" feel of the driving levels. Its too bad there couldn't have been a bit more color used or a higher resolution so that you can see more clearly whats going on at times. Any BRCD fans?

 

Batman Returns was in the first batch of Sega CD titles I got as a kid, and it's still to this day one of my favorites. I've never managed to finish it though (made it to the final boss on multiple occasions), and I agree that the game is way too damn hard. The biggest problem for me is the sewers driving stage. Rather than it being focused around destroying enemies like the others are, it's like Battletoads where it's primarily about avoiding objects. It's far too long compared to the other driving stages, takes a lot of memorization and a wicked amount of endurance to be able to make it all the way through. Visually, it's really cool to look at, but overall I feel this last driving section was a bad design choice.

[sqoon]

Any tips for burning the CD's? I tried it once and made some nice coasters.

[Austin]

Any tips for burning the CD's? I tried it once and made some nice coasters.

 

Get ISO packages that have the ISO files as well as the .cue files. Edit the cue files to make sure it's pointing to the ISO and MP3/WAV soundtracks properly, as many of these packages you download will have this part messed up. When burning, do so at the slowest speed possible.

[+Cafeman]

Concerning Sonic Megamix - it is just one ISO file. No external WAV's. So it was just a matter of copying it to a CD - according to Cafeman Jr who did it (not me).

[Hakogame 箱亀]

Cadillacs and Dinosaurs:

The game itself is too hard in my opinion, but visually and technically, I found the game to be quite impressive.

[sqoon]

Get ISO packages that have the ISO files as well as the .cue files. Edit the cue files to make sure it's pointing to the ISO and MP3/WAV soundtracks properly, as many of these packages you download will have this part messed up. When burning, do so at the slowest speed possible.

 

So, exactly how does one go about pointing the .cue file to the correct ISO and MP3 files? Is there a .cue file editor, or just using a text editor like notepad?

[Austin]

So, exactly how does one go about pointing the .cue file to the correct ISO and MP3 files? Is there a .cue file editor, or just using a text editor like notepad?

 

Yeah, you open it in something like Notepad (that's what I use).

[+Cafeman]

I stopped in at The Exchange in Monroeville yesterday and found 2 Sega CD games I've wanted since the original days when I owned them - Final Fight CD and Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure CD.

 

Final Fight CD is one of those games that really shines. Big characters, good music, tough challenge, many if not all of the details from the coin-op original. This is the first time I've seen it in the wild. Somebody is tradin' in their stuff.

 

Of course I loved Atari Pitfall and Pitfall 2, and I was quite impressed by the 16-bit Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure. Years ago, I bought the Sega CD game upon release after reading reviews of the Genesis vs Sega CD versions. I love the humor, fluid animation and nice graphics, fun platforming challenges, the hidden Pitfall 2600 game (marked by a 2600-style Scorpion). I remember the deep surround mix of the music & jungle sounds of the CD. All in all I think I can play through the entire game in an hour (I already own the Genesis version), so every now & then I pop it in and play through it again. I'm just anxious to play it again with the CD quality music.

[Atariboy]

Another thing I loved about it was the ending (Pitfall Harry looks like a 3D version of how he looked on the 2600 games).

 

The Jaguar racing game on the Sega CD was pretty good if someone wants a racer. And there's a slightly enhanced CD release of Super Monaco GP as well. Stay away from the F1 game on the system since it's horrible despite looking like a halfway decent modernized version of Super Monaco GPI/II when you look at screenshots.

[+Cafeman]

Yep, I saw the Pitfall Mayan ending yesterday! I had missed the letter "L" once though and spelled PITFA_L , so didn't really beat it 100%.

 

I have been playing the Genesis version for years but I saw new stuff in the Sega CD version that I don't remember. I think there are a couple extra stages (quick internet check states Genesis 10 stages vs Sega CD 13 stages) and some of the stages might be expanded. The CD boots up with FMV from the game's TV commercial - pretty cool. Music and sound is excellent in this version too. I'm glad I found it, and recommend it !

Edited December 9, 2012 by Cafeman