Welcome once again to the Mega Archive, where we take a chronological look at the tinny MIDI wonder that is Sega's Mega Drive/Genesis one game at a time. Or ten games at a time, as is now the current system. What's been a great time-saver for me this week is that seven of the ten games featured on this list also came out on the SNES: a degree of overlap we'll be seeing more frequently now that Nintendo's 16-bit platform is available globally (it released in Europe and Australia in the summer of 1992). Since I've already completed the entire SNES library on the Giant Bomb wiki, that means most of the work for these pages has already been done save for all the Mega Drive-specific releases and screenshots.

This entry, which covers September 1992, is another one dominated by western developers. In fact, except for a single Koei game, it's all studios from either the US, Canada, or the UK. That said, we have some notable debuts to celebrate here from major EA and Acclaim subsidiaries that would go on to define the 16-bit era to many. This batch naturally involves even more annual sports titles, though there's a fair mix of platforming, puzzles, strategy, board, and educational games to keep things moderately engaging. Not a whole lot of surprises or obscurities this week but, hey, maybe covering games people have actually heard of could do wonders for the Mega Archive's SEO.

All right, that's enough table-setting for this entry. Now it's time to set up this table of previous installments:

Part XXI: 311-320 (September '92 - October '92)

311: Galahad / The Legend of Galahad

• Developer: Traveller's Tales / Psygnosis
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992 (as Galahad)
• EU Release: November 1992 (as The Legend of Galahad)
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Anime Knights
• Premise: The mythical Leander died trying to reach his lady love, but this Leander will probably be fine in his quest to save Princess Lucanna. Changing his name to Galahad helps his chances.
• Availability: Unless Traveller's Tales hid the entire game in some Lego title as an Easter egg and didn't tell anyone, we're looking at the original cart only.
• Preservation: Welcome to Sega, Traveller's Tales. The UK-based company is better known these days for their endless Lego platformers, but in the late '90s they would enjoy a close relationship with Sega and Sonic Team working on games like Sonic 3D Blast and Sonic R. Of course, those games weren't great, but what 3D Sonic games are? Galahad is actually Leander, a platformer that originated on the Amiga and Atari ST (no surprises there) and the first game TT ever worked on. The game's original publishers and all-round tech wizards Psygnosis may have helped port the game over with Electronic Arts's support, the latter now eclipsing every other game company besides Sega for the most contributions to the Genesis library. I wish I had more to say about the game itself, but it's the most Amiga platformer ever: ridiculous degree of unnecessary graphical detail, gradient fills everywhere, extremely surface-level interaction of "jump" and "slash" where each level involves finding an object and using it on the portal to move on (and the interstitial tutorial lady tells you where the items are, in case there was any confusion). It's not that bad though; kinda like a slower Strider with more bullshit Ninja Gaiden birds.

312: Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!

• Developer: Interactive Designs
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: September 1992
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Bodacious Surfage, Brah
• Premise: Cursed by Aztec gold after wiping out on a mondo wave, Greendog is informed by his deeply knowledgeable girlfriend that he must find even more Aztec gold to lift the curse. I guess the best way to get back at the thieving Conquistadors was to force them to steal even more of your shit.
• Availability: I'm sure copies of this wash up on beaches all the time, but it's not been rereleased in any official capacity.
• Preservation: I didn't think too much of this going in - surfer dudes were everywhere in the early 1990s, whether you wanted them around or not (I blame Spicoli), and second-rate mascot platformers were even more ubiquitous - but I guess there's a little bit of history to unwrap here. Inventor Ric Green created a board game all about his beloved pastime of surfing, Surf Trip, bringing in concept artist and fellow Californian Cam de Leon (who worked on Hollywood movies as a digital illustrator and designed a bunch of Tool album covers) to create a faceless mascot character based on Ric himself. That then lead to this mascot platformer by Interactive Designs, their first Sega game, and they would later that same year be purchased by Sega and turned into short-lived subsidiary Sega Interactive. The game itself is entirely whatever; its first level a combination of fish, vines, and frogs that seems to endlessly repeat. Like Windjammers, it seems to labor under the same delusion that a Frisbee can be thrown hard enough to seriously hurt someone.

313: The Humans

• Developer: Imagitec Design
• Publisher: GameTek
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: The Humans
• Genre: Puzzle Platformer
• Theme: Prehistoric
• Premise: The Humans isn't afraid to say that, while lemmings are dumb, when it comes to suicidally inept species we're pretty much at the top when it comes to topping ourselves.
• Availability: There was a 2009 reboot for the DS called The Humans: Meet the Ancestors!, and Piko Interactive saw fit to release what I think might be an emulated version of the SNES port to Steam in 2018.
• Preservation: Back for the third Mega Archive entry in a row, Imagitec Design and GameTek's next Genesis release is this puzzle game inspired by DMA Design's Lemmings. The titular homo sapiens, still in an early stage of development, must band together to complete stage objectives with a limited number of tools at their disposal. My enduring memories of this franchise was in how often in leaned on the "human ladder" ability where the Humans stand on other Humans to reach higher locations. It's also another game like Cyber-Cop/Corporation (MA XX) where you run into conversion problems porting a game built for a mouse to a system that doesn't have one, but just about compensates with an automatic lock-on; since it's real-time though, having a mouse really helps the split-second timing the later levels demand. The Genesis version also only allows sound effects or music, not both, which seems like a dumb thing to mess up but possibly speaks to how little time Imagitec had to work on the port: don't forget, we've already had two games from them in as many months. Quick reminder: Imagitec is from the UK, which is why GameTek was kind enough to not release this port in any European territory despite the large extant fanbase for its original Amiga incarnation. Wise decisions like that are why GameTek are still trucking along today (they went defunct in 1998).

314: Monopoly

• Developer: Sculptured Software
• Publisher: Parker Brothers
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Monopoly
• Genre: Board Game
• Theme: It's Monopoly
• Premise: It's Monopoly
• Availability: It's Monopoly. Throw a stone in any Toys'R'Us (don't actually do this) and you'll probably hit a Monopoly Funko Pop Edition or some such nonsense.
• Preservation: It's Monopoly. This particular version by Sculptured Software (which was briefly Acclaim Salt Lake City before Acclaim went defunct and buried all its new subsidiaries with them like an Egyptian Pharaoh) also released on NES, SNES, Game Boy, and Game Boy Color, though I couldn't say if there are any significant differences between them all, purely because I don't care to play several more versions of Monopoly. The strength of a Monopoly adaptation, beyond everything working like it's supposed to (sorry Ubisoft), is in its pre-game options and how much freedom it affords you with house rules and the like. Sadly, this one does not provide any alternative rulesets, though you can have up to eight players and can change a player's initial cash and properties for a handicap/advantage (or if you're resuming a game, perhaps). The smartest feature, which became default in successors, is giving any human player the option to turn their in-game avatar into a CPU opponent once they inevitably get bored and ask to sit out the rest so they can go outside or watch paint dry or really anything besides playing more Monopoly.

315: NHLPA Hockey '93

• Developer: Park Place Productions
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: November 1992
• Franchise: NHL Hockey
• Genre: Hockey
• Theme: Bakalar Bait
• Premise: EA Sports powers up the annual sports franchise machine every harvest season,
• Availability: NHL 21 came out mere days ago. Just saying.
• Preservation: The second EA Sports NHL game misplaced the NHL license somewhere, so they had to contend with just the Player Association license for this sole aberration in the NHL franchise. That meant all the correct player names for the '92/'93 season but none of the team names, as if they would be difficult to figure out when you already have the city and the roster. I don't know if it's because of Mallrats or what, but the sports games I most closely identify with the Mega Drive are probably these EA NHL games. Either those or Mutant League, anyway. I always found them more agreeable than the other sports franchises, probably because real-life hockey moves so quick that it's a perfect format for video game adaptations.

316: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

• Developer: EA Canada
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: 1992
• Franchise: Carmen Sandiego
• Genre: Educational
• Theme: International Crime
• Premise: Carmen Sandiego has probably stolen the Golden Gate Bridge somehow, and it's up to ACME Detective Agency to find out where she stashed it. Seems like an easy thing to hide.
• Availability: It came out on everything in the late '80s and early '90s, but there's also a recent browser-only Google Earth edition based on the Netflix animated reboot if you felt like despairing at the current state of the world.
• Preservation: We've seen EA plenty of times so far, but this is technically the first sighting of their Canadian subsidiary from all the way up in sunny Burnaby, British Columbia. What would become a major pillar of the present EA juggernaut, EA Canada was (and still is, as EA Vancouver) responsible for many entries in the EA Sports franchises along with creating FIFA, SSX, Need for Speed, and Skate. They were originally Distinctive Software (we saw them for the first and last time with Test Drive II: The Duel (MA XVII)) and became the first of many studios EA would gradually absorb over the years, also taking on board its founder Don Mattrick (last we'll see of that guy, I'm sure). This is actually their first release on any system as the newly minted EA Canada, but far from their last. As for the game, it's the old educational Brøderbund classic about hot thieves and the location thereof, graphically adapted for 16-bit consoles (it also came out on SNES). A little strange that it came out after the port of its sequel, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? (MA XVII), though perhaps World took a little more work to "modernize."

317: R.B.I. Baseball 4

• Developer: Tengen
• Publisher: Tengen
• JP Release: 1992-12-18
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: R.B.I. Baseball
• Genre: Baseball
• Theme: Hittin' Some Dingers
• Premise: Swing for the fences in the newest R.B.I. Baseball game, now exclusive to Sega systems.
• Availability: Unless it blew up again, new R.B.I. Baseball games are still coming out every year as far as I know.
• Preservation: EA's not the only one trotting out their annual sports franchises, as Tengen is here with a baseball series they found after it fell off the back of a Namco truck. RBI Baseball 4 is almost unrecognizable compared to the melon-headed batters and pitchers of the first game for NES, yet this sequel did eventually go full circle and see a Japanese localization. I wonder if they recognized its Famista roots? It also marks the first time an R.B.I. Baseball game was exclusive to the Sega Genesis, which will also be the case for the next one, R.B.I. Baseball '93. R.B.I. Baseball '94, meanwhile, saw a Game Gear port and R.B.I. Baseball '95 was a rare 32X exclusive, and like anything else touched by the 32X the franchise (temporarily) died shortly thereafter.

318: Super High Impact

• Developer: Iguana Entertainment
• Publisher: Arena Entertainment
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: September 1992
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: High Impact Football
• Genre: Football
• Theme: Concussions
• Premise: We've had every other major American sport between this entry and the last, so here's some football why not.
• Availability: John Madden needs money for his turducken farm. Buy his game. Whichever the newest one is.
• Preservation: Here we have the introduction of yet another doomed Acclaim subsidiary - Iguana Entertainment! (Later, Acclaim Studios Austin.) Best known to Genesis fans for NFL Quarterback Club and the NBA Jam home ports, and maybe slightly less so for Aero the Acro-Bat and Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel (boy, the 90s were a time), Iguana was one of the few developers able to compete face-to-face with Electronic Arts and their ongoing domination of the sports game sphere. They were apparently founded by former members of Punk Development/RazorSoft, presumably because they grew bored of making terrible games that relied on boobs and blood to appease an audience of adolescents. I'm the furthest thing from a football expert so I can't tell you much about Super High Impact besides that it was a sequel to an arcade game, High Impact Football, which was sort of a precursor to NFL Blitz in how it leaned into the arcade sensibility of loud noises and frantic activity (and an overly passionate commentator).

319: P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations / Teitoku no Ketsudan

• Developer: Koei
• Publisher: Koei
• JP Release: 1992-09-24 (as Teitoku no Ketsudan)
• NA Release: August 1993 (as P.T.O.: Pacific Theater of Operations)
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: P.T.O.
• Genre: Strategy
• Theme: World War II
• Premise: I don't think any amount of PTO is worth a job where you're constantly getting shot at by battleships and fighter planes. Where would you even vacation to in the middle of World War II, Hawaii?
• Availability: P.T.O. IV for PlayStation 2 is the most recent game in the series. It wasn't one of Koei's strategy series they decided to keep around.
• Preservation: Capturing the excitement of WW2, this Koei strategy sim is all about maintaining port bases and long-term diplomatic solutions. Specifically with regards to the latter, you're working on keeping your allies (either Allied or Axis) happy while convincing those on the opposite side to join you, as I guess no-one was fighting for ideological reasons back then. Throw enough money at them and even the Brits will join the Axis eventually. Koei wasn't known for throwing softballs back then so you were expected to fully memorize the documentation to get anywhere with this, or any of their other strategy games. Its sequel P.T.O. II missed the Genesis, coming too late in 1995, but that made it ideal for a Saturn release insomuch as the Saturn was an ideal place to release anything (I'll get around to appreciating it eventually, I'm sure).

320: Alien³

• Developer: Probe Software
• Publisher: Arena Entertainment
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: October 1992
• EU Release: November 1992
• Franchise: Alien
• Genre: Shooter
• Theme: Disappointing the Michael Biehn Fans
• Premise: The Alien's back, and now it's cubed!
• Availability: There are newer and better Alien games. Not Colonial Marines.
• Preservation: This was one of many 16-bit games based on movies I was too young to see at the time, but got the gist from the game's content after renting it or reading about it in game magazines. Or, at least, that's what I thought: turns out movies undergo a lot of "massaging" to better fit a video game format. For years I simply assumed Alien³ was filled with xenomorphs and plasma guns, like Aliens, but there's just the one alien and there's no weaponry to be found on Alien³'s prison planet until the Weyland-Yutani commandos show up at the end. Fincher's downbeat sequel was the grim black sheep (well, until all the other sequels that followed), and a part of its darker tone was in how it played into the sense of danger, hostility, and paranoia already present in a prison setting before adding a xenomorph apex predator to the mix that nobody had the means to defeat: you don't get a whole lot of that sinister nuance here, as a bald Ripley runs around flamethrower-ing xenos in the hundreds while hunting for eggs and survivors.