Sega Genesis Mini?!

I saw this at work yesterday and meant to post it when I got home, but that'd require functional short term memory

I'm really disappointed (but unsurprised) that the Working Designs localizations didn't make the list. And no Dark Wizard, because Sega.

The good:
Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf - back when EA made GOOD games. All of the Strike series were cool as hell.

Gain Ground - pretty good port of an interesting arcade game.

Golden Axe 2 - underrated sequel to one of my favorite games of all time. The Genesis port of the original is not great. This one is, though Guld is a wish.com Death Adder and not bringing him back like they did in the arcade sequel is the one real knock against it.

Herzog Zwei - The first console RTS game, and a spiritual prequel to MOBAs. Really a clever game.

Lightening Force: Quest for the Darkstar. Despite the nonsensical title, this is Thunder Force IV, and as a Thunder Force, is a top notch schmup.

Phantasy Star 2 - Legendary for it's grindy difficulty and ludicrously brutal dungeons, this game is still a stone cold masterpiece with some of the greatest plot twists ever, despite the ancient presentation.

Populous - surprisingly great console port from what I remember.

Ranger-X - wicked underrated gem. Well worth a play, if only to experience the most over the top gun you will ever fire in a Contra style run and gun.

Ristar - Another underrated gem. It's basically the missing link between Sonic and NiGHTS into Dreams. Worth a playthru.

Rolling Thunder 2 - another hard as balls game. I like the Rolling Thunder series, but dear lord they are up there on the rage quit scale.

Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi - The worst and hardest (BY FAR) of the Genesis Shinobi games, but still a good game. Ninja dog is awesome, the one hit KOs less so. Worth a play if you're a glutton for punishment/like hard games, but both Revenge (on this one) and Shinobi III (first Mini) are much better games.

Shining Force 2 - A classic, but my personal least favorite Shining Force.

Shining in the Darkness - Great dungeon grinder RPG. Despite coming out first, it's actually a distant sequel to the original Shining Force.

Splatterhouse 2 - gory, hard, fun.

The Revenge of Shinobi - Copyright Infringment: The Game. You fight Spiderman, Batman (or Devilman), Godzilla, Rambo, Bruce Lee, The Terminator and a disco ninja. What's not to love?

ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron - not as good as the original but still really fun and hilariously weird.

Truxton - Classic Toplan goodness.

VectorMan 2 - more of the same as Vectorman 1. Pretty good.

Viewpoint - As close to a Genesis version of Zaxxon as there was. Good game.

Warsong - One of my personal favorites. Always been salty we never got the rest of the Langrisser series over here.

Final Fight CD - Might actually be the definitive version of Final Fight. Better than the arcade version soundtrackwise at least, and I remember the gameplay being really accurate.

Robo Aleste - Compile shooter goodness.

Sewer Shark - So bad it's good. Also applies to Night Trap but I have a soft spot for this game.

Shining Force CD - One of the better, and definitely lesser known Shining Forces. Really 2 games in one.

Silpheed - another shooter classic, not sure how this one holds up though.

The rest varies between "eh, s'okay to not great" ports (Afterburner 2, the Outrun games. Why do we need two Outruns?), some other worth having games of varying quality and a bunch of obscure games that are hit or miss, which at least fleshes out the collection a bit and I approve of the weirdness of. I am annoyed we're still not getting Target Earth/Assault Suits Leynos though, especially since the TE localization is on Nintendo Switch Online now.

I'm gonna keep my preorder because there's enough on there for me to want it in my collection of Genesises (Genesii?) but there's definitely some wasted opportunity. I do love the continued trend of "new" Genesis games on there though.

Oh yeah, Haunting is another forgotten gem. That was a game I wish we saw more of, it was a great concept. Shadow Dancer is less of a port and more of an... adaptation? Like the mechanics are the same, and some of the levels are conceptually the same, but the layouts of those levels are often different, and a few stages are just completely different from the arcade game. Both versions are good (if stupid hard), but it's odd how much variation there is between them vs other ports that just see cuts due to hardware restrictions. 

They gave no shits until the lawyers showed up


Oh boy, settle in for some hilarious nonsense. Revenge is a favorite of mine and the revisions to this game are legion.

So basically, in the original version of the game pretty much nothing is TM'd/used under license. I know Japanese copyright laws are.. more lax than the US, especially back then, but the game's original US version was pretty much the same. 

But yeah, original "Spidey" wasn't actually Spider-Man, but very obviously him, except red and grey, not red and blue (and without the iconic white eyemask). When you kill him, he pupates like a bug into Batman, who they NEVER had a license for (more on this later) Sega then got the copyright for Spidey from Marvel for his own game, and put the "real" spidey in, in red and blue with the white eyes. Now when you beat him, he webs away out of screen and the second part comes in from "off camera". At some point, DC got wind of Bats being used and he was edited into looking like Devilman from the manga of the same name. When they re-released Revenge on the Wii Virutal Console, their license for our favorite neighborhood webhead was long gone, so version 3 of this boss fight has him entirely in a pink scheme, ironically making him look like a store brand Symbiote. I am curious to see what he's gonna look like on this version, if they're sticking with the pink one or what, probably 20% of my interest in the Mini 2 is seeing what's changed in Revenge. 

This website has a list of all the other changes to avoid law ninjas the game's gone through, though it leaves out a few of the other random for no reason changes (like the fact the ICBM carrier that serves as the round 5 boss randomly gets a different paint scheme at some point). 

Oh yeah, there is absolutely ZERO chance Disney allows Spider-Man to be portrayed as a villain working for a terrorist organization. I was just more curious if he'd stay M.U.S.C.L.E pink or if they'd gloss him into something else entirely.

But same, I've been wondering about the loading/emulation of the SCD games as well. I just wish there was more of the ones I really wanted in there. I figure it's worth grabbing if only for collection purposes, and because they did imply if this one sold decently we might see a Dreamcast mini (yes please) or a Master System Mini, both of which I would love to get.