Action 52

20 months after the NES abomination, Action 52 made it to Sega's Genesis in May 1993.

Here's the list of Genesis games:

The game contradicts itself in the first screen after booting up, as it claims that it was licensed by Sega, but on the next screen, it states that it was not licensed by that company. It is obvious that the game is unlicensed by looking at its awful quality, which wasn't even good enough for Sega to actually give the license to Active Enterprises to be authorized to publish the game for their console. Sunday Drive also uses the word "Segaville" on every single endlessly appearing panel as you scroll through the game. The problem with it is, since Sega is also the name of a Japanese company that works in the video game industry and that this game is published on their Genesis console, it might mean that Sega can easily sue Farsight and Active Enterprises for unauthorized usage of such word.

This version of Action 52 improves a certain amount of the mistakes the NES had, like being far less buggy, having more variety, reducing the number of space shooters, and being more playable, but, unfortunately, the games in this port have many of the same problems present in the NES port, with some of them going even worse: terrible and generic with unresponsive controls, bad and ear-bleeding music, constant non-sense, misleading titles, dying from falling hard into the floor in platforming games (similarly to dying in mid-air in the NES version, but actually more visually appealing), etc. Since this is ported on a console from a later generation than the NES, all of the problems could have been easily fixed in this port of Action 52. The graphics still are extremely ugly, have stiff animations, and lack many colors even when compared to the NES version and despite being on a 16-bit console. In addition, the developers even had the nuts to recycle the graphics from a game to another as well, like Sky Avenger which has the exact same background as Bombs Away.

Many of the sound effects in this port such as the grunt, collect and scream sounds are recycled to most of the games on this port much like some of the graphics, which is beyond lazy for a multicart. Not even animal characters in this game get different voice actings despite obviously having different voices than humans, and still reuse the recycled sounds despite the screaming and grunting noises clearly sounding like they're from humans. They are also poorly made just like the graphics. Some of them are even ear-bleeding like some of Action 52's music, like an unfitting explosion-like sound that plays if you land on the floor on platforming games. The numeration is broken in the sound test mode found below Challenge, as it first goes into numbers, then letters, symbols, glitched tiles, and finally black letters from F to J. This should actually work properly as the game scores, but for some reason, it doesn't.

Despite this port having the same title as the other existing one, there are actually 51 games (or 50 if 1st Game is not included, which is just an average port of classic arcade game Pong) along with a Challenge mode whose goal is to finish the most difficult levels of every game of the compilation, which is false advertising. Knowing how lazily made the game graphics and sounds are, it might also be a possible reason as to why the developers did not add the 52nd game. Speaking of the Challenge mode, it's also horrendously broken. It has false advertising as well, as it says that it brings you to beat the last levels of each game, but you actually have to beat the non-existent 9th levels of every game which, to make it worse, are practically unplayable. These games are so fast that you might be so slow to kill/dodge the enemies to finish each game. Also, the biggest problem with the Challenge mode is that Bonkers is the game that makes it totally impossible to beat, because the ball is so fast that it can't even pass between two gray blocks, making it not able to destroy all of the other blocks which is the normally the goal to beat a level in this game.

Many of the games, including those in an arcade or survival style, use "levels" to try to make themselves look like "adventure games". They are, however, completely pointless because they instead force you to wait for so long before getting on the next level while reading a pointless message showing your current score which was instant in the NES version. The level difference is also bland as it just mostly increases the speed of enemies, or sometimes doesn't affect anything at all. 2-player games also use "levels", when these also clearly look rather like rounds since they are mostly focused on two players fighting against each other using the same weapons. And speaking of weapons, a lot of weapons in Action 52, mainly the NES version, are stupid. For example, in the game Lollipops, your weapon is a lollipop, rather than a sword or something else. This is weird, especially to the player who played many games where your weapon is a sword.

There's an incredibly awful and gross gory theme, with most of the death animations being just characters blowing up with rotten-looking blood showing up, no matter what species they are: even the Tank in Norman explodes into blood despite clearly being an object.

• On Freeway, a clone of an Atari 2600 game of the same title where you control a dog instead of a chicken, if the dog gets crushed by a car, they get cut into pieces and their organs are visible!
• Also, in Norman, the soldiers even have yellow blood rather than red, which makes absolutely no sense, since humans have red blood, not the yellow one, like if a yellow paint or mustard covered them.
• Even in Skater, the obstacles you are trying to avoid are dead cats! This is another awful and gross roadkill theme. What makes it worse is that there were other logical choices of road obstacles that aren’t unnecessary dark themed, like mufflers, puddles of oil, traffic cones, or open manholes.

Some games, like Cheetahmen, Depth Charge or Mousetrap have the exact same levels as level 1, just with more enemies and different music, which is just to prove how the developers were too lazy to make a different level, just to make another level the same as level 1 with more enemies and different music.

Some games even have nonsensical logic, such as the tank exploding whenever it touches a solider. Why shouldn't the solider be run over instead like how it does in real life? Also, some characters jump ridiculously high for some weird reason, as if they’re wearing spring shoes or jumping on a trampoline.

Some games are just reskin on other games. For example, Spidey is just a reskin of Mousetrap, just with a spider as a protagonist, blue spiders being enemies instead of cats, different backgrounds, and cheeses being replaced with flies. This can make people say that there are actually less than 51 games (as mentioned before) on this port due to the reskins.

Some games don't even qualify as games at all. There's a coloring program as the 9th number called Sketch, which just doesn't qualify as a game. All you do in it is just draw, and nothing else. This also looks like an inferior version of Microsoft Paint(brush). And on top of that, you have to draw with the D-pad, since it doesn't have the mouse at all. This is pretty awkward, especially for people who used Microsoft Paint(brush) with a mouse.

Just like on the NES version, you cannot continue from a game's level after getting a Game Over. Again, the games are very hard due to the poor level design and controls, which makes them extremely tedious with always going back to the beginning after getting Game Over'd in all of the games. And while the NES version brings you back to the menu after quitting a game which makes sense, the Genesis port brings you back to the title screen, which becomes annoying over time. This basically forces you to press a button to get past the title screen before actually selecting a game again.

It is a very rare game and despite its horrible quality, it is valued among game collectors. Copies of the game can go for hundreds of dollars, even more if the box is included. Because of its infamy, there have also been attempts to create polished remakes of the games, including a complete remastered version of it titled Action 52 OWNS (development is possibly currently in hiatus as of now). While this version can cost around $50 to $250 (compared to the NES version overpriced at $199), it has a free game version for computers on the Internet Archive.

Is this version worth playing instead of the NES version? Well, I dunno...probably not.