Collection Additions Volume 4: 80's movies and other Genesis wonders

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. For this week’s addition of collection additions corner, I’m taking us back to the late 80’s when action movies didn’t need to have much substance or even make much sense, because as long as they were violent it was all good. And this translated to video games pretty well, because hey, violence in video games has never been an issue with anyone, right?

Anywho, I have admittedly always been a Genesis person all my life. Yes, I’m aware Nintendo always had the superior consoles and better games, while the Genesis is repeatedly the source of much internet mockery these days. And that’s fine, it may be the cool thing to do nowadays but I still will always have a soft spot for the Genesis and its cheesy marketing campaign about whatever it did that Ninten-didn’t.

So, while I was having a look at my collection yesterday I decided that I didn’t own nearly enough notable Genesis games to talk about while I defend the black hunk of plastic and that I needed to change that. My Genesis in mind at the local video game watering hole, I picked up four of what I estimated to be “higher end” Genesis games (honestly, based on their price tags) to hopefully help round out my collection a bit. So let’s take a look at what I got.

That's Predator 2, Robocop Versus Terminator, Shadow of the Beast, and Sub Terrania, four fairly uncommon Genesis games that I've never played before. I gave them each a quick test, so here's my thoughts after 10 minutes of each:

Predator 2

So I'm a huge fan of the original Predator, and I even enjoy the inferior sequel a lot too (yes, even with the perpetually pissed off Danny Glover). I wasn't expecting much from a movie based game, but honestly this one was unexpectedly a lot of fun. As Glover's character Lt. Harrigan from the movie, you run around in an overhead 3rd-person view gunning down every gang member and drug dealer in sight in search of hostages throughout stages. Where's the predator, you might ask? He pops up occasionally, shining his little red target down and blowing away hostages if you aren't fast enough. The controls are responsive and despite a lot of enemies flooding the screen at once, their bullets are fairly easy to dodge. There's also plenty of health to retrieve to save yourself before you die if you are hit too many times. If the predator kills too many of your hostages it's game over..and I honestly wasn't able to figure out how many "strikes" you get, so to speak, before that happens, but I'm sure a quick look at the manual would probably tell me. One funny thing is that when enemies die, tons of drug paraphernalia spills all over the street and you pick it up for points, kind of like "Narc" for the NES, and a big "no drugs" sign appears on the screen. Yeah, for you younger readers out there they were really pushing these anti-drug things on kids back in the 80's and 90's. Another weird thing about this game is the music. It's just...really unfitting, given the plot of murderous drug gangs and killer alien assassins. I don't know, just listen for yourself. I don't even know what kind of game that would be appropriate for. Anyway, anti-drug narratives and odd musical choices aside, this is a really fun game. I was a little disappointed to find out that it's only one-player, as it would've been a ton of fun to play with someone else. Regardless, I'll definitely revisit this one sometime in the future. Oh, and one more fun thing about this game- check out the cover:

Now that's violent. Awesome, but violent. Weren't parents making a big stink about Mortal Kombat during this era? Why wasn't anyone crying about this game?

Robocop Versus Terminator

Besides an endless barrage of anti-drug messages, another thing that was big in the 90's were these so called "versus" comics. Many of them were by Dark Horse comics, but I'm sure there were others I don't know about. Anyway, these comics usually pitted some unlikely foes against one another in ultimate battles to the death, for example Alien vs Predator (which spawned two movie adaptations) and even Batman vs. Predator! Don't believe me? See for yourself! Isn't that fucking metal!? Anyway, another big one was Robocop Vs. Terminator, the two big sci-fi cyborg movies of the 80's (and as an aside, wouldn't that have made a sick movie?). And what better than to make a video game adaptation of such a radical concept. So, Robocop being the "good guy," you take control of him in a side scroller where you just point, shoot and duck, simple as that. The graphics are really nice, and enemies explode in a nice fountain of blood when shot (again, with the gratuitous violence). Controlling Robocop is a bit stiff, since he doesn't jump very well and can only point his gun forward or at a downward or upward angle. it's also pretty easy to die, which I did several times in the first stage. Not the best side scrolling shooter, but nice to look at and you can't deny that the concept is awesome, at least.

Shadow Of The Beast

Now we're getting into some weird territory. I've never even heard of this one, but it looked interesting based on a few screenshots on the back. I also find it kind of interesting to check out games made by Electronic Arts, who were most well known for making sports games. Anyway, it is most definitely weird. You take control of some sort of unidentifiable purple creature just running to the right. The first thing you encounter is a large well, with huge flashing letters saying "IN" and arrows pointing toward it. So naturally, you enter. After a short text box appears telling you to descend a ladder, you go down...only to hit a dead end. Nothing is there blocking you, you just can't go down any further. So with literally nothing else to do you go back up, and the text box appears again telling you that you need to find a key for the bottom. What the hell is the point of that!? So, after this very pointless moment, you just head right, dodging all kinds of odd enemies who you'll find have ridiculous hit boxes- you need to be literally having to be touching pixels with them to punch them, in which case they'll almost certainly damage you first. You get 12 hits, but after getting hit again and again, you die...and that's it. No lives, no continues, nothing. One life, and you're back at the beginning with the well. I tried again, made it a tiny bit farther, but still found no well key anywhere. So at that point, I decided to move on to the last game.

Also, just a note on the back of the box...what exactly is "psygnosis artwork?" 

Sub Terrania

An interesting one for fans of shoot 'em up games. It's sort of like that, except instead of being locked in one direction, you're free to explore a level in your little ship. However, no objective is given, and you also run out of fuel. Pretty fast, too. So after attempting once or twice, I got bored and decided to go back to playing Predator 2.

So that's it for now, thanks for reading. Stay tuned for more gaming nonsense from me and as always, game on.