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Good sega arcade ports


Dangerous Dave

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All of Tengen's ports for the Genesis are worth pursuing, in particular, Paperboy, RoadBlasters and the Japanese-only Marble Madness. The other version of Marble Madness by E.A. is decent, but the Tengen port is better. There are other Tengen arcade games that you may also take an interest in, like Hard Drivin', Steel Talons and KLAX. For some reason a lot of Tengen ports shied away from using digital audio samples, which made a couple of their ports not as good as they could have been. This is noticeable in RoadBlasters, but KLAX especially suffers. The rest of the game is good, though.

 

Sega's arcade ports generally left a lot to be desired, in my humble opinion, mostly because the Genesis just didn't have the hardware to do all the smooth sprite scaling which Sega's arcade games were famous for at the time. There was also the issue of most of the Genesis games actually being sequels, like Super Thunder Blade and Space Harrier II, but even the straight ports like OutRun are kind of "meh" to me. However, if you get a 32X, definitely seek out Space Harrier and After Burner.

 

If you like fighting games, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 and Super Street Fighter II are the best iterations of those series available on the Genesis, and both are quite decent.

 

There aren't a whole lot of "classic" arcade games made for the Genesis, but most of the ones that did make it are good. At the top of the heap is Midway's Williams Arcade's Greatest Hits cartridge, featuring five of the games they were porting to just about every console and computer at the time, games like Joust, Defender and Robotron 2084. Then there is Majesco's Frogger, which is also just about arcade-perfect. After that there is Sega's own classic arcade compilation, featuring Centipede and Missile Command, neither of which are all that hot here. More recently a decent homebrew version of Berzerk was put out, even though it seems to be based more on the Atari 5200 version than the actual arcade game. And of course there is Tengen's Ms. Pac-Man, the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink version of the game which fortunate you can strip down to just the arcade original if you want, as long as you're willing to accept a scrolling maze.

 

Konami released a few of their arcade games for the Genesis, including Sunset Riders and the light-gun games Lethal Enforcers and Lethal Enforcers 2. All are pretty good, though Sunset Riders takes a few liberties with the story. Sadly neither of my two favorite Konami arcade games, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons, made it to the Genesis. As a consolation prize, though, Konami did release Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyper Stone Heist for the Genesis, a side-scroller similar to the arcade game, with a lot of the same mechanics.

 

Along with the "Mortal Kombat" series, Midway released other ports of their arcade games, like NBA Jam, Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Revolution X. Some fare better than others, and pretty much all of them are better elsewhere.

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Truxton

Strider

ESwat

Ghouls n' Ghosts

Golden Axe

Virtua Racing

Outrun

Space Harrier II

Super Hang On

Street Fighter II: Championship Edition

Gauntlet IV

Mercs (at least I think that's an arcade port)

 

I can probably give you a few more when I'm standing in front of my Genesis games.

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Sega's arcade ports generally left a lot to be desired,

 

Really? Yeah the scrolling stuff like Thunder Blade/Space Harrier left something to be desired.. but the whole amazing thing with the Genesis were the crazy "perfect" (yeah they weren't but they sure felt like it at the time) ports of Altered Beast, Ghouls and Ghosts, and Legendary Axe.. all of which came out relatively recently to each other. Those games were amazing for their time when those games were still pretty current in the arcades as well. Just saying. On that note Strider was an amazing port as well although that came out a lot later.. it definitely followed that tradition.

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Really? Yeah the scrolling stuff like Thunder Blade/Space Harrier left something to be desired.. but the whole amazing thing with the Genesis were the crazy "perfect" (yeah they weren't but they sure felt like it at the time) ports of Altered Beast, Ghouls and Ghosts, and Legendary Axe.. all of which came out relatively recently to each other. Those games were amazing for their time when those games were still pretty current in the arcades as well. Just saying. On that note Strider was an amazing port as well although that came out a lot later.. it definitely followed that tradition.

 

I'll grant you I base my opinion more on the 3D game ports, since those were what I had the most fun with. I never really did get into the Golden Axe or Altered Beast series. OutRun, Space Harrier and Thunder Blade were more my thing. And Power Drift, but that one didn't make it to the Genesis.

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Really? Yeah the scrolling stuff like Thunder Blade/Space Harrier left something to be desired.. but the whole amazing thing with the Genesis were the crazy "perfect" (yeah they weren't but they sure felt like it at the time) ports of Altered Beast, Ghouls and Ghosts, and Legendary Axe.. all of which came out relatively recently to each other. Those games were amazing for their time when those games were still pretty current in the arcades as well. Just saying. On that note Strider was an amazing port as well although that came out a lot later.. it definitely followed that tradition.

 

Legendary Axe? That was a Turbo Grafx game, and not an arcade port if I recall.

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Twin Cobra is a fun shooter and a port of the Toaplan arcade game. It's one of my favorite shooters on the system, although it is pretty difficult. It's also not all that flashy, being an earlier shooter on the system, but it has a catchy soundtrack and addictive gameplay very similar to Raiden.

 

A few other shmup arcade conversions to the Genesis include Raiden Trad, Vapor Trail, Grind Stormer, Phelios, Sagaia (Darius II), Aero Blasters (Air Buster), Insector X, Task Force Harrier EX, and Viewpoint (to name several). The quality varies from port to port.

 

I'll have to second the recommendation for Altered Beast. I've always enjoyed it and still do to this day. It's not as sleek and colorful as the arcade one, but it provides a uniquely satisfying feel. It's been made somewhat redundant by modern emulation "ports" to platforms like the XBOX 360, but the Genesis version is still solid.

 

TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist uses some levels from the Turtles in Time arcade game, while chopping out others and introducing new ones. It's not strictly an arcade port but has some aspects of an arcade port. Highly recommended.

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MKII for the Genesis plays faster than the SNES version, at the loss of color, sounds, animation frames in win poses, etc. the 32x version is the closest youre going to get to the arcade version. the music in both versions, however is amazeballs if you prefer genesis music to SNES music.

 

Street Fighter II is very playable on the genesis. it looks and sounds better on the SNES by leaps and bounds, but playability-wise the two are on even ground.

 

ESWAT is a great arcade port, but sega changed a lot bringing it home, almost making an entirely different game. The did the same with Shadow Dancer, and Treco gave the same treatment to Atomic Robo-Kid (which is a great platformer itself.)

 

A lot of the Namco ports were great. I LOVE Burning Force and Phelios on the Genesis.

 

Pick up Grind Stormer/V-Five if you can. AWESOME vertical shooter that lets you change the play mechanics from the option menu.

 

The superscaler ports (AFII, OR, etc) leave a LOT to be desired. Theyre too slow/choppy for me to get a lot of enjoyment out of them. The old girl just couldn't keep up with the speed those games needed. get the 32x version of AFII NOW.

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The superscaler ports (AFII, OR, etc) leave a LOT to be desired. Theyre too slow/choppy for me to get a lot of enjoyment out of them. The old girl just couldn't keep up with the speed those games needed. get the 32x version of AFII NOW.

 

Considering the Genesis was supposed the "Arcade At Home" system and so many of Sega's flagship titles used scalling STILL leaves me wondering why they didn't incorporate scaling into the Genesis from day one.

Or, why they didn't start doing ports of those games for the Sega CD which DID have scaling.

Those Batmobile stages from Batman Returns should have been a port or sequel to Out Run instead. I'm pretty alone here, but I'll say I HATE those stages, however they would have been right on par for an Out Run game. Or Space Harrier or Thunder Blade or etc...

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Flicky is a great, if somewhat obscure arcade game that looks and plays great on the genesis. Also, not arcade ports but "sequels" that are really good are Space Invaders 91 and Ultimate Qix.

 

I played Flicky to unlock Fantasy Zone on Sonic's UGC and was really pleased with it. I also just randomly fired up Space Invaders 91 in a Genesis emu and really was surprised at how much I liked it.

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I found that where they may have lost something minor in translation, they often gained something unique as well. More levels in Golden Axe, scrolling playfields in Altered Beast, tweaked gameplay in most, etc. With a 14mhz modded system some of that missing smoothness of scaling and speed is brought back to many of those ports. Sega really brought it home with the two player coop fighting games and Capcom and Konami Arcade ports. The Golden Axe stuff and Bare Knuckle games are really fun and exclusive. Shinobi sequels were excellent and with a Power Base Converter you could get all of the Joe Musashi stuff up until Shin Shinobiden. Although, you did say

"other than Sega".

 

I really like playing Smash TV on my cabinet with two arcade joysticks. TMNT is extremely well done. I wished they would have kept a lot of the level design in Toki as it just looks like a lot of recycled background chunks in 'Going Ape Spit". The game plays well, though. Sailor Moon has some pretty big reductions in color and level design ,but is cute and fun. Williams and Arcade classics carts are really good in my opinion.

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