As I said I few months back, the Sega CD's fortunes are going to be picking up in 1993 and so we'll be seeing many more of these Mega Archive CD "gaiden" entries between the core Mega Archive installments. I'm totally cool with this new development: the Mega/Sega CD has been a fascinating platform to research due to how both sides of the Atlantic approached CD-ROM gaming completely differently, Sega having left Sega of America to their own devices given how much more successful they were selling the Mega Drive brand overseas (albeit as the Genesis instead if we're talking North America). Both territories dabbled in FMV of course, but Japan seemed far more insistent on making actual video games backed with the expanded storage and CD audio of the format while... well, I'll be diplomatic to the US and EU developers and say their better CD experiments tended to similarly involve taking good extant Mega Drive/Genesis games and injecting their Sega CD ports with new content and superior presentations. I think we're safely out of the Night Trap/Sewer Shark woods by this point, though I'm always down for more cheesy weirdness should it trundle along.

Part VI is a relatively short entry with just eight games to cover but this will bring us right up to the end of June and the mid-point of 1993. After this we won't need to revisit the Sega CD again until the main Mega Archive series hits September 1993, which will take three more entries. It's another exciting bunch of games this time and a near even split between those from America and Japan, with a pretty high standard of quality on average. One odd throughline this week is that almost every game has a noirish and/or sci-fi cyberpunk dystopian vibe. I realize many people spend their summers relaxing on their decks, but this isn't usually what they have in mind.

(I've since compiled all the Mega Archive and Mega Archive CD games and entries into their own spreadsheets with links, which certainly makes it much easier to find anything believe you me.)

Part VI: CD50-CD57 (May '93 - June '93)

CD50: Batman Returns

• Developer: Malibu Interactive
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: 1993-05-19
• EU Release: August 1993
• Franchise: Batman
• Genre: Platformer / Vehicular Combat
• Theme: Parents dead, parkour.
• Premise: Before there was BatGrubb, there was Batman. And then that Batman returned. Returned because the first movie did well.
• Availability: Licensed game so I doubt it. As Grubb et al recently proved on the Dark Blight Club, not all Batman games are created equal so preservation by its license-holders seems doubtful.
• Preservation: A dilemma that often comes up with the Mega Archive CD is whether or not to cover games that have already been featured on the Mega Archive. Ports are often so similar to be indistinguishable, as is usually the case with SNES and Mega Drive versions of the same game, but CD games frequently take advantage of the beefier medium in manners notable enough for these separate entries. Batman Returns for Sega CD is a perfect example of that, since there's a significant amount of new content added for the CD game. In particular, while the original was a side-scrolling brawler/platformer much like the Sunsoft NES Batman, the Sega CD version retains those levels but alternates them with Chase HQ-style vehicular combat levels in the Batmobile. Batman Returns is, of course, the second and much more untethered Burton movie that absolutely still holds up; its video games adaptations maybe not so much though, but sources in the know would say that the Sega CD game is the best of the bunch. (American-British dev team Malibu Interactive, formerly of the Malibu Comics group, have popped up a few times on the Mega Archive but this would be their Mega Archive CD debut. We'll see them a few more times after this with some other comic/movie adaptations.)
• Wiki Notes: So, my good moderator pal and yours Marino managed to save the body text for this page after it got accidentally wiped by someone working on the credits (hey, shit happens). As a scrub-tier wiki mod I can reverse edits but only to an extent so I'm glad for the assistance in recovering the work others had done. With that restored, there was very little to add besides a PAL release since I'd already checked it over once for Mega Archive (and previously when working on SNES games).

CD51: Devastator

• Developer: Wolf Team
• Publisher: Wolf Team
• JP Release: 1993-05-28
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: D-1 Devastator
• Genre: Shooter / Shoot 'em Up (Horizontal)
• Theme: Sci-fi / Mecha
• Premise: In another dimension, talented human pilots fight the titular monstrous Devastators to prevent them crossing over to our world.
• Availability: Licensed game, again.
• Preservation: I'm in obscure anime video game adaptation scouting mode right now due to resuming one of my other features, Game OVA, so seeing this pop up immediately raised some flags. D-1 Devastator is a two-part OVA released a little before this game that concerns a test driver Ryo who, while looking for his missing friend, discovers a shadow war humanity is hosting with monsters (the titular Devastators) one dimension over. To access this world he has to pull a Marty McFly and drive his vehicle to a certain speed under certain conditions. Without having seen it, it looks to appeal to both fans of mecha and fast cars—more or less the same audience of gearheads—and has a bit of an unscrupulous corporation conspiracy type angle to it for those who enjoy thrillers. The game alternates between on-foot mecha action levels that vaguely resemble the Assault Suit series and those where you're flying, which are much closer to a traditional horizontal shoot 'em up. Every time Wolf Team comes up I'm tempted to add a "countdown to Tales of Phantasia" year/month count because it really did turn around the fortunes of that company and completely change its output (Phantasia would've been around two-and-a-half years off, for the record).
• Wiki Notes: Release, body text, a few more screenshots.

CD52: Genei Toshi: Illusion City

• Developer: Aisystem Tokyo
• Publisher: Micro Cabin
• JP Release: 1993-05-28
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: RPG / Adventure
• Theme: Cyberpunk / Supernatural
• Premise: Hong Kong is all but destroyed by a demonic uprising but the corporation SIVA manages to save the city and announce it an independent state. Tianren, a HK citizen and demon hunter, takes to the streets to rout out demons and discover their mysterious connection to SIVA.
• Availability: Contemporary home computer ports but that's it.
• Preservation: This seems kinda cool, a combination gritty detective adventure game and a turn-based RPG in the Phantasy Star mold. Going around a massive city world map talking to witnesses, hunting for clues, and fighting demons and corporate assassins on the side. Definitely feels Shadowrunny. The RPG elements appear robust as well, letting characters improve skills—such as those relating to weapons or magic—with constant use, similar to how Elder Scrolls does it. Some good art and worldbuilding, even if I couldn't read the latter (there's a translation patch, but it's for the original MSX version). Aisystem Tokyo handled the port and they tended to bite off more than they could chew, so I imagine you'd want to play one of the original home computer versions if the choice was available. Then again, the CD music might add a lot to a supernatural cyberpunk game like this with atmosphere to spare.
• Wiki Notes: Needed both body text and a deck. Everyone knows you can't go around being a cyberpunk without a proper deck. Its only screenshots came from fellow mod ZombiePie back when the wiki was new. I should ask him about it sometime; I'd never heard of this game before this week.

CD53: Night Striker

• Developer: Aisystem Tokyo
• Publisher: Taito
• JP Release: 1993-05-28
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Shoot 'em Up (Z-Axis)
• Theme: Cyberpunk
• Premise: Like if someone put OutRun and Space Harrier in the Brundle teleporter.
• Availability: It's one of the few Sega CD games on the second Sega Genesis Mini.
• Preservation: Taito's Night Striker was perhaps one of the few worthy competitors to Sega's super sprite-scaling tech in the arcades, where it debuted in 1989, switching out the silly fantasy zone nonsense for a gritty sci-fi thriller vibe where the hero takes their flying DeLorean knock-off through (and over) the mean streets of this dystopian city hellscape. Sadly, the Mega CD port—which, despite the game first coming out in 1989, is actually the first home version—had to sacrifice the graphical quality in order to make the super scaling smooth enough. What you got was a heavily pixellated mess that's a little hard to look at. However, to compensate somewhat for this the Mega CD version received a brand new arranged soundtrack by Taito's in-house band Zuntata, so if you happened to be significantly far-sighted with excellent hearing to compensate this may be the version for you (since it's going to look pretty blurry to everyone regardless). The rest of us might be better off with the next-gen versions that released for PlayStation and Sega Saturn a few years later. (Incidentally, this and Genei Toshi will be the last time we feature Aisystem Tokyo on either version of Mega Archive; they stuck around long enough for a couple more arcade shoot 'em up conversions for Saturn but went defunct around 2005.)
• Wiki Notes: Body text, a slightly modified deck, a Mega CD release, and some unfortunate Mega CD screenshots. The intro scene of the dude getting in his flying car was one of the few not to be heavily compromised by the mosaic-ass graphics, so that's the header image.

CD54: Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. II

• Developer: ICOM Simulations
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: June 1993
• EU Release: November 1993
• Franchise: Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective
• Genre: Adventure
• Theme: Crime (investigatin', rather than perpetratin')
• Premise: The streets of London are once again thick with fog. The fog that is near-unsolvable criminal activity! But also actual fog.
• Availability: The first Consulting Detective game got remastered versions of its three cases, all sold separately on Steam. This one wasn't so lucky.
• Preservation: The game is afoot! And also in this case an actual video game. This would be the second of three Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective titles made by adventure game pioneers ICOM Simulations but the last to be released on the Sega CD. Like its brothers, it features three unrelated cases that players are free to sleuth their way through in whichever order they choose, using the clues available to investigate a crime and eventually move the story forward to the next FMV cutscene. Like many adventure games from this period, you kinda needed a notepad open next to you to get anywhere with its information-based puzzles, though at least you could give the graph paper a rest. Man, the inconveniences games put us through back then; had to walk both ways through the snow, I tells ya. Anyhoo, as I probably mentioned with the last one of these (what am I going to do, check?) ICOM were more invested in the TurboGrafx-CD around this time (hey, they made their choice) and so these two Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective ports and some campy looking Dracula FMV thing (looking forward to that) are the only games they developed for a Sega platform.
• Wiki Notes: This was a TGCD double-dip, so it just needed some releases and screenshots. Love some scratchy FMV.

CD55: The Terminator

• Developer: Virgin Games
• Publisher: Virgin Games
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: June 1993
• EU Release: February 1994
• Franchise: The Terminator
• Genre: Shooter
• Theme: AI threatening humanity (I know, big stretch)
• Premise: Tyrant supercomputer Skynet sent one of its footsoldiers back in time to assassinate the mother of the future human resistance. It absolutely will not stop unless it runs out of continues.
• Availability: Licensed game.
• Preservation: Similar case as Batman Returns, above. The Terminator was an earlier Mega Drive game but when it came time to port it to the Sega CD it saw heavy modifications and a substantial increase in new content. In addition, the game also benefits from a new CD soundtrack (composed by notorious internet braggart Tommy Tallarico; a genuine achievement in a career full of same that makes you wonder why he had to invent so many) and... well I don't know if it's a benefit to have FMV cutscenes clipped from the movie that are so heavily compressed it looks like you're watching a scrambled PPV channel but they're there for flavor anyway. It's the best of the games based on the original The Terminator from most accounts, albeit still kind of a whatever side-scrolling shooter. My one complaint is that, while you can acquire a number of different guns while playing, the game never calls them "Reese's pieces".
• Wiki Notes: Just a PAL Mega CD release and a few screenshots because we were missing a title screen. Already did most of the work when I stopped by for the Mega Drive and SNES versions.

CD56: A-Rank Thunder Tanjouhen

• Developer: Telenet Japan
• Publisher: Riot
• JP Release: 1993-06-25
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Adventure (with RPG fights)
• Theme: It's cyberpunk again?
• Premise: Yutaka is the victim of experiments by a shadowy organization looking to overthrow Japan's government, turning him into a biological weapon. He decides he'd rather destroy his tormentors instead while hoping they don't have any S-Ranks on hand.
• Availability: I guess Sunsoft owns this now (they bought all of Telenet's IP) but it's anyone's guess if they intend to do something with it. I don't think this made it to A-Rank on their list of priorities.
• Preservation: I like The Guyver as much as the next enjoyer of tokusatsu body horror so I was curious to see a Mega CD-exclusive adventure-RPG hybrid (couple of those this time around) show up on here with a very similar vibe. A-Rank Thunder Tanjouhen has all the traits of a manga- or anime-to-video-game adaptation—showy presentation and expressive character graphics by a mangaka ringer, an emphasis on narrative and worldbuilding, a half-assed combat system that uses cards and RNG—but as far as I know this is a property that only exists in the form of this one game. Telenet Japan and its subsidiary Riot (which I can't tell is the developer or a publishing label Telenet often used; I believe it's the latter this time) were big on making anime-styled video games and fully embraced the CD-ROM format for the benefits it offered to those with big animation budgets, so I can believe that they'd throw together a Guyver ersatz on a lark. Naturally, the game's a bit tough to play without Japanese fluency: the first twenty minutes of gameplay is just dudes talking at you, and given the quality of the combat the story is really the reason you're here.
• Wiki Notes: Body text and screenshots.

CD57: Mega Schwarzschild

• Developer: Kogado Studio
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1993-06-25
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Schwarzschild
• Genre: Strategy (Real-time)
• Theme: Sci-fi / Spaaaaace
• Premise: Wouldn't you know it? Everyone built too many spaceships, so now the only solution is a long, drawn-out internecine war that'll get rid of most of them. Like interstellar spacecraft grow on trees or something.
• Availability: The series might get a new entry or some modern remake but I wouldn't hold your breath. Well, unless you're actually floating in space right now.
• Preservation: Schwarzschild is one of those big thinky strategy games that usually come to home computer platforms and skip the consoles, but in this case Kogado felt like stretching their muscles a bit and modifying the second game, Schwarzschild II, to the PC Engine CD-ROM platform (a.k.a. the TurboGrafx-CD) with the new name Super Schwarzschild. That friendlier console port then begat another in Mega Schwarzschild, which at this point is a modification of a modification. One big new change was turning it into a real-time thing: you don't control what your ships do so much as they fight automatically but you can command them to change their range and formation, which might turn the tide in your favor. Schwarzschild is also just a badass name (it means Black Shield in German, but maybe that was obvious) and I imagine was a choice inspired by the similarly-themed Legend of the Galactic Heroes, given half its cast had gratuitous German names too. (Or, more likely, it could refer to the Schwarzschild metric, which is a fancy scientific equation involved in calculating gravity wells of celestial objects, or indeed the astronomer/physicist it was named after.) Kogado Studios is new to both the Mega Archive (where they won't appear) and the Mega Archive CD alike: they primarily developed for Japanese computers like the Sharp X68000 and MSX but would dabble several times with the PC Engine CD-ROM including Super Schwarzschild and its direct sequel. Kogado's still around: they just put out remasters of their cosy Atelier-esque vendor-sim Tristia on Switch and Steam, but they're mostly known for their visual novels these days.
• Wiki Notes: As a heavily reworked port I was in two minds about making a new page for it. Instead I integrated it into the mostly empty Super Schwarzschild page so I'd also have less to do whenever I got back around to PCE-CD games. That's thinking fourth-dimensionally like a true space commander.