Four Games You Have to Play: Sega Mega Drive

Console-defining: Sonic the Hedgehog - Really you can't discuss the Mega Drive without mentioning Sonic in the same breath. The series arguably helped to sell the Mega Drive in the West more than any other title, and a generation of kids who chose Sega over Nintendo grew up to love Sonic. In the late 1990s to late 2000s Sonic seemed to have gone astray, but recent games such as Colors and Generations seem to be returning to the platformer's roots - fast moving, dynamic, tricky stages punctuated by colourful enemies and a character who admonishes you by tapping his foot if you put the controller down.

It's hard to believe in these days of cooperation at the Olympics, but in 1991, Sonic was a serious rival to Mario, and Sega and Nintendo were going all-out in a battle for living-room supremacy. Sonic's attitude helped distinguish him from the more established Mario, and positioned Sega as the "cool" company, whose console you wanted to be seen with. After all, "Genesis does what Nintendon't".

Most Outrage Caused - Mortal Kombat - Perhaps it's a misnomer to include this here. It wasn't an exclusive title, you could pick Mortal Kombat up on pretty much every console available at its 1992 release, especially its competitor the SNES. In the battle between these two, however, Sega had the edge - blood. While Nintendo's stringent guidelines forbade the depiction of blood and gore (replacing it with grey sweat), Sega's port of the arcade game contained, after the input of a cheat code, all the gore and fatalities of the arcade version itself. After all, who wants to see a man bleeding out grey? People have blood!

Mortal Kombat was considered so violent at the time that the US Senate mandated that the games industry create a ratings system to be applied to all subsequently developed titles. The result of this was the ESRB ratings system. While we use PEGI in the UK, our system is undoubtedly influenced by the US' decision to label all games according to their content. Now instead of a video of gameplay, here's the 1994 song Techno Syndrome. It's brilliantly awful.

Honorable Mentions

• Splatterhouse 2 - Sequel to the 1988 arcade game, It contained such an unabashed amount of violence and gore, it's one of the first games to be rated 'Mature'. It's not a particularly good game, though.

Best Use of Hardware: Gunstar Heroes - Treasure is a company that knows how to make some compellingly difficult video games. Their first step was Gunstar Heroes, a 2-player run 'n' gun. Unlike Contra before it, Gunstar revelled in the brightest colours, the most ridiculous weapons (Constant streams of homing fireballs were a common armament), and even more ridiculous bosses. What made the title impressive was the sheer amount that goes on at once - the screen quickly fills with enemies, bullets, and brightly-coloured explosions.

The bosses are frequent, and are made up of lots of moving parts, allowing for more fluid animation than drawing everything frame-by-frame.

Honorable Mentions

• Sonic 3 - A head above its prequels, featuring way better sound capabilities and a save function (Something pretty rare at the time!)
• Dynamite Headdy - Treasure's second title shows similar production style and skill, but is terrifyingly insane.
• Thunder Force IV - An incredibly hard shoot-em-up, but it gave the Mega Drive's soundchip a thorough workout.

Obscure Gem: Pulseman - Game Freak weren't always producing Pokémon titles. Back in 1994 they released Pulseman - a platformer taking heavy cues from Sonic and Megaman. Featuring a bizarre sci-fi plot where a scientist uses his own DNA and advanced AI programming to create Pulseman, able to travel through electrical systems and shock his enemies.

The graphical style of the game is immediately familiar as the work of Ken Sugimori - the Art Director for many Pokémon games. Indeed, the designs of several characters would later be incorporated as Pokémon. The actual gameplay experience is rather simple, but the ability to bounce off walls as a large ball of electricity, and ducking in and out of computer networks to get through the game stages are novel inclusions. While the initial release of Pulseman was Japan-only, it is now widely available as a Wii Virtual Console download. If you've played Pokémon Diamond/Pearl you may recognise the music in this video of Stage 1 having cues similar to your rival's theme!

Honorable Mentions

• Ristar - Produced by Sonic Team, it for an interesting mechanic with stretchy arms. You have Ristar to blame for the Werehog in Sonic Unleashed.

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