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Mega Archive: Part XVII: From Desert Strike to Uncharted Waters

By Mento April 21, 2020 0 Comments

Hey there, we're back with the Mega Archive again this week. I was planning to write this whole thing on Deck13's The Surge instead, but once you start digging into Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games it's hard to stop, you know? As was the case with the Genesis in 1991 (and pretty much every year for any console), the release schedule of the first half of 1992 was a relatively barren place. In fact, it will only take three of these entries total before we catch up with the year's midpoint, each covering approximately two months apiece. I'll probably take a break after the next one, since working on fifteen wiki pages in one week is a lot, even during The Lockdown.

We actually have a star-studded line-up this entry. Two of the most instantly recognizable Genesis franchises made their debut in this time frame, and I guarantee you'll have heard of at least five more. The rest are your semi-obscurities and Japan-only types, but as always it's an eclectic bunch now that the Genesis has finally shaken off its awkward "arcade shoot 'em ups and nothing but arcade shoot 'em ups" phase. We still do have several shoot 'em ups though, so don't think old habits die easy.

Speaking of old habits, be sure to check up on previous entries here:

Part XVII: (March '92 - April '92)

256: Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf

Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
JP Release: 1993-04-23
NA Release: March 1992
EU Release: March 1992
Franchise: Strike
Genre: Shooter/Sim
Theme: Modern Military
Premise: In this fictional sequel to the Gulf War, as opposed to the real one from 2003, the player is tasked with completing missions across the Middle-East in a Super Apache chopper. Watch out for Scuds!
Availability: Nothing more recent than the 2006 PSP compilation EA Replay, which also has the sequel Jungle Strike. You'd think they'd stick the whole series on Origin.
Preservation: Long before EA's favorite pastime became eating up companies and spitting out their bones like a Mortal Kombat fatality, they proved themselves indispensable to Sega of America and its North American/European market chokehold during the 16-bit era with a procession of unmissable hits. The Strike series was one of many franchises that EA debuted on the Genesis to great acclaim, each packed with a versatility behind its mission design and a non-linear structure that had players exploring their options and determining the best order to complete their objectives. My favorite part is when you blow up an entire building to rescue the POW trapped inside; I sometimes suspect the actual US military took the wrong lessons from these games.

257: Kid Chameleon

Developer: Sega Technical Institute
Publisher: Sega
JP Release: 1992-05-28
NA Release: March 1992
EU Release: May 1992
Franchise: N/A
Genre: Platformer
Theme: If You Die In The Game, You Die For Real!
Premise: Meet Kid Chameleon, the coolest dude around! Or so he believes. His middle-school peers have a secret Discord channel where they talk about how lame his shades are and how he dresses like an extra from Grease. A current meme on the channel involves everyone calling him "Danny Suck-o". Kids can be so cruel.
Availability: Available on the Genesis Mini (NA only) and in the Sega Genesis Classics collection (and standalone on Steam).
Preservation: The second game from Sega Technical Institute, who at this time were still focusing on original first-party properties. Kid Chameleon feels like Comix Zone (also an STI game) or NiGHTS, in that it feels like half the Sega playing world has dedicated a lot of their energy trying to convince the other half that this game was ever any good. A platformer with a shapeshifting protagonist gimmick, I found the platforming is frequently too swimmy and the game overall not particularly challenging. Most of the reviews online are effusive though, so who am I to cast aspersions on this little dork. It's no Chameleon Twist, I can tell you that much.

258: The Duel: Test Drive II

Developer: Distinctive Software
Publisher: Ballistic
JP Release: N/A
NA Release: March 1992
EU Release: 1992-05-06
Franchise: Test Drive
Genre: Driving
Theme: Car Go Fast
Premise: The sequel to one of the earliest "realistic" driving sims to really take off, Test Drive II adds more features to tinker around with including an CPU opponent to race against.
Availability: Nope. The Test Drive franchise is still alive and kicking though, or at least it was as recently as 2012.
Preservation: I played a considerable amount of Test Drive 1 on the Atari ST back in the day, and my enduring impression is how relatively sedate it was compared to other racing/driving games of the era (especially Super Mario Kart, which might as well be its diametrical opposite). The Duel tries to gin it up with some additional conflict but I think people appreciated this series at the time because it was the closest you were going to get to driving a Ferrari or Lambo for real. Hence, "Test Drive". The Mega Drive version lacked the expansion discs of the Amiga original, which meant its starting three cars were all you were going to get, but at least it had a faster frame rate and in-game music to listen to.

259: Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego?

Developer: Brøderbund Software
Publisher: Electronic Arts
JP Release: N/A
NA Release: March 1992
EU Release: March 1992
Franchise: Carmen Sandiego
Genre: Educational
Theme: Temporal Larceny
Premise: Combining two things every teenage gamer loves, cops and learning, Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? challenges the player's sense of history rather than geography. If you've ever wondered why there's a lady in a red trenchcoat in Da Vinci's The Last Supper, here's your answer.
Availability: There are new Carmen Sandiego games coming out all the time on all manner of scholarly subjects. She also has that Netflix cartoon. I hear it's OK.
Preservation: I have to admit that the whole Carmen Sandiego phenomena slipped me by. I would've been the right age for it, but for some reason the schools over here didn't prioritize the idea of catching criminals through geographical/historical information-gathering as much as they might've done elsewhere. I did play my fair share of Mario is Missing and Mario's Time Machine though, so take that as you will. Where In Time was actually both geography- and history-dependent, so it was kind of intense. Also, if you're wondering why this saw a Genesis port and not Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, that'll be showing up later in 1992. I guess Where In Time used its Chronoskimmer to jump ahead a few months and release first.

260: Steel Empire / Empire of Steel / Koutetsu Teikoku

Developer: Hot-B
Publisher: Hot-B (JP) / Flying Edge (NA/EU)
JP Release: 1992-03-13 (as Koutetsu Teikoku)
NA Release: June 1992 (as Steel Empire)
EU Release: July 1992 (as Empire of Steel)
Franchise: N/A
Genre: Shoot 'em Up (Horizontal)
Theme: Steampunk
Premise: Take to the skies in your gyroplane to stop the evil military dictatorship Motorhead. How could Lemmy do us like this?
Availability: Remastered for 3DS (in 2015) and Steam (in 2018).
Preservation: It's a shoot 'em up, but at least it has an unusual setting. It's all gliders, gyros, and zeppelins and some old-fashioned filmreels to introduce the game. Feels kinda like The Rocketeer. Hot-B are mostly known for their fishing games, but this foray into shoot 'em ups seems to have served them well because they keep bringing it out on newer systems (via their current incarnation Starfish).

261: Shining Force

Developer: Climax Entertainment
Publisher: Sega
JP Release: 1992-03-20
NA Release: July 1993
EU Release: September 1993
Franchise: Shining
Genre: SRPG
Theme: Fantasy
Premise: The evil Kane and his army are plotting to revive the Dark Dragon, and they can only be stopped by a ragtag group of knights, mages, archers, ninjas, dragons, centaurs, birdmen, werewolves, armadillos, robots, and a hamster wearing a football helmet. Usual generic fantasy stuff.
Availability: Available on the Genesis Mini (all regions) and in the Sega Genesis Classics collection (and standalone on Steam). There's also a GBA remake, Shining Force: Resurrection of the Dark Dragon.
Preservation: Now, Warsong was Genesis's first claim on the SRPG territory - a specific sub-genre of RPG not well-represented on the SNES, at least not yet - but Shining Force is what defined the genre to many and still does. Born from the same universe as Shining in the Darkness, thematically and artistically if not narratively or mechanically, Shining Force gave you a huge amount of characters to tinker around with to find ideal team dynamics and also incorporated class promotions and equipment: both of which might turn a weak joke character into something formidable (except for Jogurt, he'll always suck). Kudos to Sega for localizing this and its sequels; all the best SNES SRPGs (Fire Emblem, Bahamut Lagoon, Let Us Cling Together) remained Japan-only for a long time.

262: Thunder Pro Wrestling Retsuden

Developer: Human
Publisher: Human
JP Release: 1992-03-27
NA Release: N/A
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: Fire Pro Wrestling
Genre: Pro Wrestling
Theme: Pro Wrestling
Premise: Don't work your kayfabe into a shoot with this, the first of Human's Fire Pro games to make it to a Sega console.
Availability: Nope, but there are better modern Fire Pro options.
Preservation: Hey, that's cute. They renamed it Thunder Pro because it's Sega instead of Nintendo (for the record, they didn't extend this naming scheme to the Saturn/Dreamcast Fire Pro games). Usual business here: get into the ring (or, as we Fire Pro types call it, the Bouncy Diamond), pin some familiar-but-legally-distinct-from-actual-wrestlers wrestlers, and choose from any number of match types and special conditions for the next bout. Thunder Pro, like Human's previous Mega Drive game F1 Circus MD, felt like an experiment for the developer: they would ultimately stick with SNES and PC Engine for subsequent games in those series for the remainder of the 16-bit era.

263: Turbo OutRun

Developer: Tiertex
Publisher: Sega
JP Release: 1992-03-27
NA Release: N/A
EU Release: June 1992
Franchise: OutRun
Genre: Racing
Theme: "Rush a Difficulty"
Premise: The little red convertible is back to burn rubber across the US, plowing into every landmark along the way. Sorry for crashing into Roosevelt's giant head, you guys. Guess I should "Rush less" huh.
Availability: Nope. Sega's never put Turbo OutRun on any compilations, not even the arcade original.
Preservation: Hilariously, despite being set in the USA and having the star-spangled banner right on the title screen and box art, the Mega Drive version of the game was not released in that country. You weren't missing much; the home versions couldn't handle the super-scaling so they didn't quite capture the original's spirit. Sega seems to have completely forgotten about this sequel - it doesn't quite have the nostalgic throwback appeal of the original, I guess - but in many ways it's the superior game. The new turbo boost can really make or break your chances of making it to the next checkpoint in time, and I can always appreciate a racing game with an "easy mode" automatic transmission option. Too bad it didn't keep the original's branching paths; that really helped keep the original fresh through multiple playthroughs (which, full disclaimer, I did to earn a Yakuza 0 achievement).

264: Cadash

Developer: Cyclone System
Publisher: Taito
JP Release: N/A
NA Release: April 1992
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: N/A
Genre: Action RPG
Theme: Fantasy
Premise: The friendly citizens of Cadash are big into footraces and they challenge you, the player, to keep up with the Cadashians. Actually, it's just knock-off LOTR.
Availability: Nope for the Genesis version. The last time the arcade original appeared anywhere was on Taito Legends 2, for Xbox and PC (Cadash wasn't on the PS2 Taito Legends 2 for whatever reason).
Preservation: To make up for the above, here's a game that only North America got. Taito's arcade game Cadash is like a side-scrolling Gauntlet almost, or those Capcom Mystara games, with multiple players assuming various D&D classes and making their way through action stages while leveling up and finding new gear. The Mega Drive version might be the worst of its ports, which is impressive given its competition was the TurboGrafx-16: it cuts half the playable classes, messes with the brightness, and removes at least one boss.

265: Jordan vs. Bird: One on One

Developer: Electronic Arts
Publisher: Electronic Arts
JP Release: 1993-09-24
NA Release: April 1992
EU Release: May 1992
Franchise: One on One
Genre: Basketball
Theme: Slamming and/or jamming
Premise: Jordan takes on Bird and the winner... gets to play the same match again with the same opponent. And no, the "Bird" is not Tweety. Get outta here with that Space Jam shit.
Availability: Nope. The Mega Drive version is as new as you're going to get.
Preservation: One of the grandfathers of modern basketball games is a little two-player contest called Dr. J and Larry Bird Go One on One, and this is its sequel. It's seen a few improvements in the time since its 1988 release on the C64 and NES, but still consists of Michael Jordan and Larry Bird playing one-on-one hoops. Just those two guys. Locked in some kind of b-ball purgatory from which there is no escape. Forever. (I might just interrupt this "Dunking for Godot" skit here to mention, by the by, that Midway's NBA Jam was only a year off.)

266: Sol-Deace

Developer: Wolf Team
Publisher: Renovation
JP Release: 1991-12-12*
NA Release: April 1992
EU Release: 1993-04-02*
Franchise: N/A
Genre: Shoot 'em Up (Horizontal)
Theme: Sci-fi
Premise: Flip a coin, it's either a rogue AI or aliens that have taken everything over (it's an AI this time). Do Sol-Deace fans call themselves "Sol-Deace Nuts"?
Availability: Nope. Sunsoft owns it though - it was published through Telenet Japan, and Sunsoft acquired all their IPs in 2009 - so they might find their way to rereleasing it.
Preservation: Sol-Deace is our third game on the Mega Archive to have launched first on the Mega-CD (though it was originally an X68000 game) but received a later cartridge release because the Sega CD still hadn't launched in the US yet. Kind of makes you appreciate how much of a gimmick CD-based gaming was at this time that a new release can have its CD audio and cutscenes removed and still be perceived as marketable. For all the fuss, it's another run-of-the-mill shmup from our friends at Wolf Team, albeit one that was widely liked at the time.

267: A Ressha de Ikou MD

Developer: MNM Software
Publisher: Sega
JP Release: 1992-04-10
NA Release: N/A
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: A-Train
Genre: Business Simulation
Theme: Trains
Premise: A game where you not only create a network of trains to carry passengers and cargo but also indirectly create all the destinations for the trains to go to.
Availability: There's a few A-Train games on Steam, including a "Classic" one.
Preservation: A Ressha de Ikou, or A-Train as its known to the west, is a SimCity-like train simulator. Its popularity has also partially inspired the SimCity franchise itself: the fact that SimCity 2000 has an isometric perspective is largely due to A-Train taking that route. A Ressha de Ikou MD is a version made specially for the Mega Drive by a former developer at Artdink (the original A-Train developers), not unlike the special SimCity that appeared on SNES. I'm not familiar with the series, but it sounds like it takes after both A Ressha de Ikou 2 and 3 (3, meanwhile, would debut in the west this same year on PC as simply A-Train).

268: Devilish: The Next Possession / Bad Omen

Developer: Aisystem Tokyo
Publisher: Hot-B (JP) / Sage's Creation (NA)
JP Release: 1992-04-24
NA Release: April 1992
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: Devilish
Genre: Breakout
Theme: The Occult
Premise: What if I were to make a sequel to a Game Gear Breakout clone, but changed its Japanese name so no-one would know? Delightfully Devilish, Aisystem Tokyo.
Availability: Nope. It has a Nintendo DS sequel, but it's not so hot.
Preservation: Devilish is a type of game I've only seen a handful of times before - the vertical scrolling bat-and-ball game. Most games of that genre are strictly single-screen affairs: you break every block in sight, and then move onto the next level. Devilish instead has you moving up the screen towards the boss, not necessarily destroying everything along the way. It also gives you two paddles to play with: one locked at the bottom as per usual, and the other with an adjustable height if you wanted to get stuck in and trap the ball higher up the screen somewhere. It's not the most elaborate game and the playing field feels a bit claustrophobic - possibly due to it being the sequel to a Game Gear game - but I'm always into some novel game design. Especially if there's demons and shit, and an early Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy Tactics/Vagrant Story/Valkyria Chronicles) soundtrack.

269: Magical Taluluto-kun

Developer: Game Freak
Publisher: Sega
JP Release: 1992-04-24
NA Release: N/A
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: Magical Taluluto-kun
Genre: Platformer
Theme: Cute Magic Anime
Premise: Help the titular wizard through a series of action stages using his magic and jumping skills.
Availability: Nope. So-so licensed game, so no reason anyone would want to spend the capital needed to bring it back.
Preservation: Naughty Dog and Game Freak releases a few months apart? A lot of surprising cameos in 1992. Game Freak's propensity for cute goobers would serve them well when they finally get around to making their little monster-raising RPGs, but in 1992 they were content to work with licenses like Magical Taluluto-kun, which in short was a manga/anime about a normal kid getting constantly abused by this fucked-up tiny wizard baby who insists he's "helping" with all his crappy spells. Like the other Taluluto-kun games, it's a World of Illusion-style platformer with an item grabbing/tossing mechanic and big colorful sprites.

270: Uncharted Waters / Daikoukai Jidai

Developer: Koei
Publisher: Koei
JP Release: 1992-04-29 (as Daikoukai Jidai)
NA Release: November 1992 (as Uncharted Waters)
EU Release: N/A
Franchise: Uncharted Waters
Genre: Simulation
Theme: I'm On A Boat
Premise: Conquer the oceans of the 16th century as an explorer, trader, treasure hunter, smuggler, or pirate in Koei's broad naval sim.
Availability: Oddly enough you can buy both Uncharted Waters games on Steam, but neither of them have English localization. Surely there's a translation patch out there...?
Preservation: Uncharted Waters was Koei's spin on Sid Meier's Pirates!, offering you a number of money-making choices on the high seas once you'd gathered a ship and crew together (and, eventually, a whole fleet). As is typical of Koei's simulation franchises, there's a deep learning curve to the game and a whole lot of menus to navigate. The Age of Discovery theme is a lot more relatable to us than Three Kingdoms China or Sengoku era Japan though, and Uncharted Waters along with Aerobiz became one of Koei's more globally accessible franchises. I forgot to put a joke here. Unfarted Waters? Not when I'm taking a dip! Wa-pow! Badum-tish!

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