Mega Archive: Part XLIII: From Lotus II: RECS to Winter Olympics

Welcome back to another edition of the Mega Archive, a chronological journey through the library of the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis as I continue to gussy up their Giant Bomb wiki pages for posterity's sake. Be assured that I treat every wiki page as sacrosanct, no matter how forgettable its subject matter might be to the broader video game fanbase. Of course, the more obscure it is the more work I gotta do, so I'll admit to secretly favoring the well-known ones despite treating their popularity with open disdain to uphold my image as an indifferent cool guy repping the underdogs. Man, we never truly leave high school do we?

The last Mega Archive entry had a few scattered highlights but I'm not seeing anything like that this time. This could be the most cursed Mega Archive on record, even, with the few games I've actually heard of being notoriously weak. We have a remarkable nine licensed games (if you also include celebrity and brand endorsements) and the only one that isn't based on an external intellectual property is still a mediocre mascot platformer. Also two Terminator games somehow? Of all the games in the December '93 deluge these are definitely the stocking stuffers of the bunch. I'd like to claim the final gauntlet that we'll meet in October's edition of Mega Archive will be better but... well, that's marginally true, I suppose.

Here's the spreadsheet that I keep updated for this feature. It's pretty busy but I'm sure you can find what you're looking for, provided you don't try to look into games made in 1994 and beyond. I'll get them on there. Eventually.

Part XLIII: 531-540 (December '93)

531: Lotus II: RECS

• Developer: Magnetic Fields
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: 1993-12-14
• Franchise: Lotus
• Genre: Racing
• Theme: Luxury British Car Brands Owned by the Chinese
• Premise: Time to quit envying all those Amiga owners you're friendly with because the newest Lotus game is coming to your Genesis and it's inexplicably bringing its track creation editor with it. Still no option to have sound effects and music at the same time though. You console owners are all so entitled.
• Availability: Licensed game. Get used to seeing that this month.
• Preservation: Our first game for this Mega Archive is the entirely acceptable Lotus II: RECS—actually the third game, since the Genesis skipped the first one—and its concomitant track editor which they backronymmed as RECS to be cute I guess: "if your RECS course is producing too many wrecks you might want to reconsider a few of those hairpins" or some other such tiresome gearhead banter. Beyond that it's the usual small smattering of improvements, tweaks, and content additions that I'm sure any fans of the previous Lotus Turbo Challenge (covered in Part XXVI) would appreciate. It also does long-time series fans a solid by offering a user-determined experience either closer to the first game (a more serious sim) or the sequel (a more arcade-style racer) as a means of bringing those two communities together in mutual harmony. Carmony. Whatever, it's a super dry racing game, I couldn't get any more invested than this if I tried.
• Wiki Notes: Needed some body text, screenshots.

532: The Ottifants

• Developer: Graftgold
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: December 1993
• Franchise: The Ottifants (Ottifanten)
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: If Rolo Can't Come to the Rescue, There's Always Ottifants
• Premise: The Ottifants are finally here in their very own video game! We here at Sega know how much the global community has been clamoring for more adaptations of Germany's third-favorite cartoon elephant family, so here you go. Did I say "global"? I meant "a very small portion of teutophonic Europe".
• Availability: Licensed game.
• Preservation: The creation of German comedian-musician Otto Waalkes, the Ottifants were some elephant doodles he came up with for album art that continued to grow in popularity eventually culminating in a short-lived animated TV show and a later movie. Despite the cute animals and family focus, both the comic and show frequently dealt with adult themes employing a cynical tone and some typically German deadpan humor, putting it closer to a Duckman than a Babar. The show aired around the same time this game came out so I suspect there was some manner of multimedia blitz happening, striking while the cartoon elephant iron was hot and all. That said, its cultural cachet is considerably more limited than the Smurfs or Astérix so that it was released all over Europe was probably more than the license-holders could've reasonably hoped for. The developers here are Graftgold, a UK company that we've seen on here twice before with Mick & Mack as the Global Gladiators and the Gods port, but if anyone working there had heard of the Ottifants before development started I'd be surprised. As to the game itself, well, if you guessed "graphically busy 2D platformer with annoying maze-like levels" then you're evidently familiar enough with platformers made in Europe back then.
• Wiki Notes: A little of everything.

533: Pelé!

• Developer: Radical Entertainment
• Publisher: Accolade
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: June 1994
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Soccer
• Theme: Soccer
• Premise: Pelé! is apparently not a musical but a soccer game featuring the legend himself. That legend being Pelé. The one the game is named after. Did you know his real name is Edson Arantes do Nascimento? It has a Mento in it, just like mine.
• Availability: Licensed game. Pelé passed away in 2022 so I'm not sure he'll be signing off on any remasters. Like, 70% sure he won't.
• Preservation: It's Pelé! Remember Pelé? He scored a brazillion goals for the Brazilian national team and is one of the most famous soccer players around the world, or was back in the 1990s. EA even wheeled the poor dude out in one of those interminable E3 showcase things we used to have when the world was still bright and full of hope. Pelé got his own Genesis-exclusive soccer game that focused on contests between major clubs across the world (albeit only known by their city names) and incorporated input from the man himself to design the intricacies of its uncommonly elaborate gameplay, or gamepelé as it were. Looked like it was a bit too oblique for soccer fans however since it saw middling review scores across the board. It sold enough to earn it a sequel though, with 1994's Pelé II: World Tournament Soccer and its focus on the 1994 World Cup. This is also our first encounter with Radical Entertainment: at the time they were just a small outfit recently founded by ex-Distinctive Software staff (as Distinctive had just become EA Canada and underwent some restructuring) that worked on several bad licensed games like this. Radical would much later find recognition with well-regarded open-world games like The Simpsons: Hit & Run, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and the Prototype series as well as some of the latter Crash Bandicoot games. As a part of Activision (it followed with Vivendi after the Blizzard merger), the studio apparently still exists despite almost a decade of inaction as it was named as part of the package Microsoft picked up in that huge acquisition we never stopped hearing about. Could Microsoft already be gearing up for a Prototype 3? Probably not, right? I can dream, at least.
• Wiki Notes: Bit of everything again.

534: The Ren & Stimpy Show Presents: Stimpy's Invention

• Developer: BlueSky Software
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: March 1994
• Franchise: Ren & Stimpy
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Happy Happy But Not Necessarily Joy Joy
• Premise: Nickelodeon's Ren and Stimpy arrive on your Genesis with their controversial boundary-pushing social mores, like spreading an exploded invention's parts across the neighborhood, solving problems with violence, or dating and abusing 16-year-olds.
• Availability: Licensed game. There are certainly enough Ren & Stimpy games out there to fill a remastered compilation, but...
• Preservation: This is really a case similar to last month's Home Alone 2 where the Genesis saw way fewer Ren & Stimpy games (in fact, this is it) but the overall quality is much higher due to Sega taking the reins themselves. Sega of America commissioned BlueSky, at this point in time a second-party studio that was usually their go-to whenever they needed a new football game, to create a platformer that could capture the chaotic energy of Nickelodeon's hyperactive hit. BlueSky also took a leaf from one of the more popular Sega platformers, Sonic 2, by having both characters active simultaneously where the partner is CPU-controlled in single-player. The two have team-up attacks when together but can otherwise act independently; to avoid split screens in single-player, your distant companion is always ferried back to your position by the starchangel himself, Powdered Toast Man. Stimpy's Invention is also another graphically busy mess like The Ottifants but in this case it feels more authentic to the undiagnosed ADHD spirit of the show. Despite how common Nicktoon adaptations were on Nintendo consoles (especially the Game Boy Advance) the Genesis only ever saw two of them, and the other won't be showing up until 1995. I'll let you all guess what show it's based on but it's the one with monsters going to monster school. Should helpfully narrow it down.
• Wiki Notes: Minor edits to screenshots and releases. Also had to cut an impromptu review from the page's body. Sure, let's just turn the whole wiki into Yelp why don't we.

535: RoboCop Versus The Terminator

• Developer: Virgin Games
• Publisher: Virgin Games
• JP Release: 1994-05-28
• NA Release: March 1994
• EU Release: December 1993
• Franchise: RoboCop / The Terminator
• Genre: Sci-fi / Crossover
• Theme: Hasta La Vista Baby Food
• Premise: RoboCop, a.k.a. Alex Murphy, switches the target of his corporate antagonism from Omni Consumer Products over to Cyberdyne when the latter produces SkyNet, a supercomputer capable of ending the world. He might just be a small-time cyborg policeman from Motown but someone needs to stand up to this thing.
• Availability: Licensed game. Twice over, even.
• Preservation: RoboCop Versus The Terminator started as a limited comic book series but I guess the potential for a video game was strong enough that Virgin Games went out and bought the license, intending to follow up the more family-friendly Aladdin game with something with a higher exploding-heads-per-minute ratio. For as exciting as all this crossover action might've sounded, RoboCop Versus The Terminator mostly just plays like every other RoboCop game only with more T-800 endoskeletons instead of crooks hanging out of windows. Looking at contemporary review scores this version of the game did a whole lot better than the SNES one (which was instead developed by Interplay): I guess that's another feather in the cap for the Segaheads back when that console war was heating up. Could also be that the SNES tried to over-sanitize a team-up of what were two of the goriest sci-fi movies of the 1980s. A foolish move in an era where blood codes were the currency of the playground.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Minor edits.

536: Tecmo Super NBA Basketball

• Developer: Sculptured Software
• Publisher: Tecmo
• JP Release: 1994-03-04
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Tecmo NBA Basketball
• Genre: Basketball
• Theme: Basketball
• Premise: Fresh from the football field, Tecmo continued to diversify their sports brand with this sequel covering the National Basketball Association. Time for some Dynasty Warriors/NBA crossover jokes: "From the Red Cliff!" "Is it the Shus?!" "Do not pursue Lü Boomshakalaka".
• Availability: Licensed game. Tecmo's busy with other things these days, mostly anime fodder.
• Preservation: Tecmo Super NBA Basketball is the next game from the Tecmo Sports series, following close behind the November '93 Genesis port of Tecmo Super Bowl. Tecmo Super NBA Basketball is a similar case where they just slapped "Super" on a 16-bit reimagining of the previous game: Tecmo NBA Basketball, a 1992 release for NES. Tecmo will keep making these sports games for a while yet, though this remains the only basketball game they ever published on the system. True to the NBA endorsement, there's a full roster of team and player names included here with the exceptions of the Bulls' Michael Jordan (who had retired, temporarily) and the Celtics' Reggie Lewis (who had passed away, sadly not temporarily). Plenty more of these Tecmo Super Sport games to come on the Mega Archive and, just to reiterate, sports games were the only things they ever put out on the Sega Genesis. No ninja.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Minor edits.

537: Terminator 2: Judgment Day

• Developer: B.I.T.S. / Acclaim
• Publisher: Flying Edge
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: December 1993
• Franchise: The Terminator
• Genre: Platformer / Shooter
• Theme: Little Boy Teaching a Robot Swears
• Premise: "Hey there. When we're not killing Sarah Connor (or RoboCop), we here at SkyNet adhere to our mission statement of crushing what's left of the human resistance while continuing to innovate in key technological avenues. For instance, what if we made a liquid metal guy? He'd be invincible, unless a Dragon Quest party decided to hunt him down for the experience."
• Availability: Licensed game. Try to sell it now and SkyNet will send from the future a Cease and Desistinator.
• Preservation: The fourth and last game to feature Terminators on the Mega Drive was this one, the B.I.T.S./Acclaim side-scroller that is structurally very different from the on-rails shooter, T2: The Arcade Game, yet is frequently mistaken for same. This one's worse. A lot worse. Still, though, aesthetically it captures the essence of the movie with its busy text-based HUD (since the Terminators see something similar all the time) and a series of shooter/brawler levels that vaguely follow the movie's script. Speaking of which, the movie probably doesn't require any introduction at this point (at least I'd hope it wouldn't) but for a movie that was famous for its special effects you'd think they would spend more on its video game adaptations. Wait, it's Acclaim, what am I even expecting here? B.I.T.S. was a UK company that, I believe, dropped the acronym shortly after this game and just went by Bits Corporation instead, which is what they'll be known as for their remaining two Mega Archive appearances (both of which are bad movie tie-ins also, imagine that). Guessing they got tired of people asking what it stood for.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Screenshots and releases.

538: ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron

• Developer: Johnson-Voorsanger Productions
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: 1994-01-16
• Franchise: ToeJam & Earl
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Starship Troopers (But Funkier)
• Premise: ToeJam and Earl recovered their ship parts from a strangely fractured Earth but upon getting home to Funkotron had found that several Earthlings had tagged along on the outside of their ship, somehow surviving the vacuum of space. I'm starting to think these aren't actually humans.
• Availability: It can be purchased on Steam and was included in the library of the second Genesis Mini (US/EU only). It was also on the Wii Shop but not the premium sub tier of Switch Online (yet).
• Preservation: ToeJam & Earl's first sequel made the classic Zelda rookie mistake of switching from a top-down view to a side-scrolling one, sacrificing the purity of the original experience for the sake of trying to innovate in a new direction. It's still a similar premise of running around worlds collecting all the plot-necessary items (in this case, Earthlings captured inside jars rather than ship parts) but going from a (what was then) novel procgen roguelike format to yet another 2D platformer scavenger hunt full of maze-like levels robbed the series of much of its ingenuity and distinctive charm. All you're left with are some unfortunately familiar Amiga platformer vibes and a whole bunch of aliens with hiphop-coded names like Sharla and Lewanda that I'm just going to leave to the Jesse Jacksons and Ta-Nehisi Coateses of the world to figure out whether that's cool or not. Still, I'll agree that title makes for a very smooth lyric. And, hey, at least it's not the worst game with the word "Funko" in the title.
• Wiki Notes: Whole lot of style errors and typos in the body text to fix but little else to edit.

539: Tom and Jerry: Frantic Antics

• Developer: Beam Software
• Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions (NA) / Altron (JP)
• JP Release: 1994-12-16
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Tom and Jerry
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Animal on Animal Violence
• Premise: Tom and Jerry, under scrutiny from parental advisory spoilsports, called a truce and worked together to help their new human friend Robyn stay one step ahead of her evil foster family in the 1992 feature film Tom and Jerry: The Movie. This game is marginally based on that movie, even if it's not named after it.
• Availability: Licensed game. Try to illegally resell it and you'll be playing a very different kind of cat-and-mouse game with the lawyers at Warner Brothers.
• Preservation: Man, I hate to look down on game developers who invariably work their hardest on any licensed project that they're fortunate enough to have pass their desks, but everything about this Tom and Jerry movie tie-in just feels so thrown together from the generic (and arbitrarily cruel) platformer gameplay to that subtitle. "Frantic Antics". When are antics ever not frantic in a cartoon? At least go for some kind of "Fur-antic" animal pun. They managed that much with the N64 game's title, Fists of Furry, which is unfortunate for entirely different reasons. The famous cartoon series Tom and Jerry, otherwise known as the only good thing Hanna and Barbera ever created (though I'll brook arguments for Hong Kong Phooey), is centered on the cat's (Tom) mission to absolutely murder a mouse (Jerry) and how frequently the tables are turned. None of that's really in here though since it's entirely a cooperative affair, so that's a missed opportunity. (Did you know they've made 15 direct-to-video Tom and Jerry movies since the 2000s started? I bet they make this game look like an exercise in impeachable quality control.)
• Wiki Notes: Needed work in all areas. Ditto the game.

540: Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94

• Developer: Tiertex
• Publisher: U.S. Gold (NA/EU) / Sega (JP)
• JP Release: 1994-02-11
• NA Release: December 1993
• EU Release: December 1993
• Franchise: The Olympic Games
• Genre: Sports
• Theme: An International Sports Contest Founded on Two Honored Principles: Sex and Juicing.
• Premise: Athletes across the world flood to a little snowy town in Norway for the biggest wintry-themed sports competition since the 1988 one.
• Availability: Licensed game. Maybe if the Winter Olympics are ever held in Lillehammer again they could just rerelease the game and change all the numbers without anyone suspecting a thing.
• Preservation: Just in time for the 1994 Winter Olympics, held in the February of that year, Winter Olympics: Lillehammer '94 is exactly what you think it is: a mini-game collection based on a smattering of events held at the titular contest, most of which either involving tapping a button really fast or steering some fearless dude around a course without crashing. British studio Tiertex were fortunate enough to be handed the license and they got to work on producing many iterations simultaneously, creating a sort of disconnected feeling as each port got its own development team working with different parameters despite sharing a similar aesthetic. Of course, we have no idea who worked on what since Tiertex had a thing about not crediting their staff. I try not to come down too hard on Olympics games because there's only so much you can do with the material, plus I know Ryan Davis was a fan of them and the event does hold an optimistic political significance (even if it saw more attention from right-wing culture war nutcases than usual this summer), but... yeah, I'm not really the target audience for this. At least give me an SSX or an Amped 3 where I can have fun with the whole cool person attitude of snowboarding, rather than some overly serious goober from a country I'd struggle to find on a map.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Screenshots and releases.