Welcome to another action-packed installment of the Mega Archive: a chronological exploration of the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive as I continue to work on its representation in our Wiki. This Mega Archive pushes us past the halfway point of 1993 and into the latter half of that year, and largely focuses on western games released across July. In fact, it's probably the case that most of the entries moving forward will have a heavier emphasis on western-developed games: the Mega Drive was getting pummeled in its native Japan—the aging NES was outselling it in 1993—but was making up for that deficit and more overseas, especially in the States, hence the greater presence of western studios.

As for the games this time, well, there's one particularly cursed furry elephant in the room we'll need to address but otherwise it's a fairly solid assortment, including an unexpected port of one of the best PC sims, a couple major arcade properties seeing third entries that were exclusive to the Mega Drive, and the debut of one of the system's most beloved multiplayer racing game franchises. If nothing else, the eclectic nature of this week's releases highlights how versatile a system the Mega Drive is becoming, not settling on any one genre or any chase-the-leader business as it inches closer to the era of its peak popularity. Best of all? No sports this time. A rare oasis. (They'll be back in force come the fall, not to worry.)

To consult past entries or just to see how far we've progressed through the Mega Drive's library, be sure to check out The Official Mega Archive and Mega Archive CD Spreadsheets™. I plan to include the rest of 1993's release schedule (and several upcoming Mega Archive entries) just to ensure nothing gets left behind again.

Part XXXIV: 441-450 (June '93 - July '93)

441: Golden Axe III

• Developer: Sega
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1993-06-25
• NA Release: 1996-05-01
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Golden Axe
• Genre: Brawler
• Theme: Kicking Gnomes to Get Your Shit Back
• Premise: Enchanted hatchets and powerful magic are flung around with reckless abandon in a grim fantasy world that definitely doesn't have a "don't axe, don't spell" policy.
• Availability: The English version once belonged exclusively to the Sega Channel, but these days you can buy it via the Sega Genesis Classics compilation on last-gen consoles or directly from Steam.
• Preservation: For a long while, Golden Axe III was the "lost" Golden Axe, talked about by the western Golden Axe fanbase in hushed tones regarding its new, expanded cast and other features gleaned from magazine previews. It's not clear why Sega didn't release the third game in their reliably popular (albeit maybe not as popular as Streets of Rage) brawler series—rumors were they weren't satisfied by it—but it did eventually see an official NA localization via the ephemeral Sega Channel service, hence the long delay between its JP and NA releases. The original cast is gone, though the substitutes for Tyris Flare and Ax Battler more or less look identical, and you have some anti-hero types in the mix like the pantherman Chronos "Evil" Rait and the giant Proud Cragger (also my Tinder handle). It also has a new branching path system to its level progression, and an alternative final boss depending on your actions.
• Wiki Notes: Mostly just needed text. Releases and screenshots only required minor edits.

442: Eliminate Down

• Developer: Aprinet
• Publisher: Soft Vision
• JP Release: 1993-06-25
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Shoot 'em Up (Horizontal)
• Theme: Invaders Must Die
• Premise: Mankind is finally ready to start colonizing space, but we get ambushed by an alien race called the Amuleto who clearly don't want to share. Our salvation can only come from humanity's greatest starfighter with the awe-inspiring name of "Steel Pylon". Aren't most pylons made of steel?
• Availability: A Japan-exclusive game with no rereleases. Supposedly a pretty hard find.
• Preservation: Another visually sharp if all too busy Mega Drive shmup, a holdover from a time when the MD was getting a game just like it every other week. Eliminate Down shares a gimmick with a few other shoot 'em ups like Toaplan's Hellfire [MA IV] in that you can alternate weapon modes and each is best suited for enemies approaching from certain directions. For instance, your main weapon fires a beam directly ahead but you also have those that can fire behind as well as a spread shot that covers both vertical directions, maximizing your reach albeit not all at once. The alternative modes can also be upgraded along with the main weapon, and as is typical with the genre you'll lose those upgrades if your ship is destroyed. We have sorta met Aprinet before—they assisted Varie in programming one of their Nakajima Satoru F1 games, Nakajima Satoru Kanshuu F1 Super License [MA XXVI]—but this is the only game for which they have the main developer credit. They later merged with another company to form Planning Office Wada (or POW), which had a couple of Saturn games.
• Wiki Notes: Very little work needed, and a pretty detailed page too for one so obscure. Just some minor clean-up.

443: Lethal Enforcers

• Developer: Konami
• Publisher: Konami
• JP Release: 1993-12-10
• NA Release: 1993-06-25
• EU Release: 1993
• Franchise: Lethal Enforcers
• Genre: Light Gun Shooter
• Theme: Dispensing GUNishment
• Premise: Pick up your own blue (or pink) Justifier and mow down hundreds of digitized, shades-wearing criminal goons in Konami's legendary arcade on-rails shooter.
• Availability: Surprisingly, nothing since the 1997 PlayStation port. Saw a couple of sequels also.
• Preservation: Lethal Enforcers is thought to be a touchstone of the on-rails shooter, popularizing the use of digitized sprites of actors getting violently dispatched for that genre in much the same way Mortal Kombat did the same for fighting games. Both Time Crisis and Virtua Cop, its 3D successors, were built on the mechanics and ideas Lethal Enforcers brought to the table. For its home versions, Konami went to the trouble of creating their own light-gun peripheral—the Konami Justifier—which was included with every copy of the game, making it hard to track down in mint condition. The default color was a sky blue, but the additional ones (which needed to be purchased by mail order) were pink, leading to no end of arguments between insecure boys who wanted to kill crooks with the manlier pastel-colored plastic revolver. For such a trendsetter it's odd that it's never seen any kind of rerelease or modern remake, but then it wasn't always the most racially sensitive game.
• Wiki Notes: Just MD-specific releases and box art images. It was a SNES double-dip, first in a while.

444: Bram Stoker's Dracula

• Developer: Traveller's Tales
• Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: July 1993
• EU Release: 1993
• Franchise: Dracula
• Genre: Vampies
• Theme: Literally Literary Horror
• Premise: A Wallachian count has kept himself young and spry over the years by regularly drinking health tonics, but now some uppity Brits have come along and demanded he stop. We're so demanding.
• Availability: Licensed game.
• Preservation: Coppola's 1992 Dracula movie, which starred Gary Oldman chewing the scenery (and necks) and Keanu Reeves attempting some manner of accent that a human being might theoretically employ, was produced through Colombia Pictures which means Sony had a stake (as it were) in its creation and as such would ensure that video games would soon follow. There were multiple versions of the Dracula game that all came out across 1993, with the Genesis and SNES versions being more or less identical spins on a classic 2D platforming Castlevania formula. After all, that series has vampires and other gothic monsters, so it probably made a certain amount of sense for future Lego-wranglers Traveller's Tales to follow Konami's lead. In this game, the optional sub-weapons of Castlevania—axes, stakes, at least two guns—correspond to boss weaknesses in a style similar to Mega Man, so a priority is to find the right one somewhere in the stage and hold onto it. Fortunately, your pal and mine Abraham Van Helsing is on hand to tell you which weapon will be most effective on the upcoming boss. The gameplay's a bit awkward and rushed-feeling but not abjectly terrible, if you're looking for something Castlevania-like for your Genesis but can't wait for 1994's Bloodlines. (The Sega CD version is very different, and we'll be visiting that in short order.)
• Wiki Notes: A SNES double-dip, so just some minor edits to the page's MD-specific details.

445: Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

• Developer: Al Baker and Associates
• Publisher: Accolade
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: July 1993
• EU Release: August 1993
• Franchise: Bubsy the Bobcat
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Smarm and Sarcasm. Smarmcasm. Ooh, I already don't like that word.
• Premise: The alien Woolies are here to steal everyone's balls. Yarn balls, that is, and as Bubsy has some kind of chemical dependency on them he decides to steal them all back. I guess no-one's actually knitting anything with them, then?
• Availability: I've got a guy who can hook you up with some Bubsy if you really need Bubsy. The guy's name is Steam: both of the old 2D platformers and several ill-advised reboots can be purchased there. The only game not currently available for sale is Bubsy 3D, I guess because the Geneva Convention can actually come through sometimes.
• Preservation: I knew if this feature went on long enough I would be forced to acknowledge the existence of Bubsy the Bobcat. Poking the sleeping lion, as it were. Accolade had a thinktank of the most annoying people in their employ (not factual; I'm sure they're delightful) come up with a mascot that... honestly, were you to put every '90s video game mascot character to follow Sonic the Hedgehog (including Sonic's own menagerie) into some sort of Tiermaker ranking of most irksome funny animals, Bubsy probably wouldn't be the worst of them by a long shot. He does have this reputation of meowing the meow but not walking the walk, the disparity between his unwarranted confidence and the actual quality of his games being more significant than most, so maybe that's why he's taken on this meme mantle of the ultimate tryhard. That terrible animated sitcom pilot and the suffering generated by Bubsy 3D no doubt added to it also. Anyway, the game itself is sort of like if you took a topographically-incomprehensible Amiga platformer and married it to Sonic's sense of alacrity; without Sonic's charm, though, you're just faced with the unfortunate business of frequently running full speed into enemies you couldn't possibly account for in time. I'll say that, visually, it doesn't look terrible at least?
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip, so it all needed was a PAL MD release.

446: Micro Machines

• Developer: Codemasters
• Publisher: Codemasters
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: 1993-09-14
• EU Release: July 1993
• Franchise: Micro Machines
• Genre: Racing
• Theme: Just Tiny Li'l Guys
• Premise: Monte Carlo's done, Le Mans is boring, but what about racing on a kitchen table on a course made out of Cheerios? And what if instead of a proper race you just had to get five feet ahead of your opponent to win?
• Availability: Remakes as recently as 2003 (which was 20 years ago, damn) and a more contemporary iOS/Android port is about it. The spirit of the MM series lives in Indie micro-sized RC games to this day.
• Preservation: The title that possibly shifted Codemasters onto racing games forever, Micro Machines—based on the tiny car toyline from Galoob—is a top-down racer that imaginatively creates twisty, hazard-laden courses out of the quotidian: bathrooms, bedrooms, and backyards. Displaying a sheer variety that would even make contemporary racing games seem hopelessly limited, Micro Machines has you racing in all sorts of vehicles across all sorts of levels, each with their own pitfalls and obstacles. It was a huge multiplatform hit back in the day, spawning a sequel which we'll also encounter at some point, and one that was a particular favorite of my Mega Drive-owning pal and I. The "get far enough ahead, win a point" system is a little awkward to acclimate to but made sense given the top-down nature of the game: the alternative was a split-screen, and that would've made it tough to see too far ahead of you. This is also our first Codemasters joint on the Mega Archive: it wouldn't be until the PC rally games of the early '00s that they'd fully dedicate themselves to simulation-style racers, so we'll see them repping a bunch of different genres on the Mega Drive in the coming months and years. Some decent quality stuff too: they're one of the UK's better homegrown MD developers. (And, yes, it will mean me having to re-introduce the virtues of Dizzy the Egg to you all again. Look forward to that.)
• Wiki Notes: Yet another SNES double-dip. It was also a page that had seen significant work even before I got to it back then. Didn't need to do squat this time.

447: MiG-29 Fighter Pilot

• Developer: Domark
• Publisher: Domark (EU) / Tengen (JP/NA)
• JP Release: 1993-11-26
• NA Release: August 1993
• EU Release: July 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Flight Sim
• Theme: Dogfighting, Plane and Simple
• Premise: Taking down targets in a Russian jet fighter. Nothing controversial about that.
• Availability: Flight simulators, especially 16-bit polygonal ones, age in dog years. Actually more like hamster years.
• Preservation: An unfortunate burgeoning trend for the Mega Drive, once the destination of many arcade-accurate shoot 'em ups, is early polygonal flight sims that really have no business being on anything but the high-end PCs of the era. Like almost any game with 3D graphics, it runs like molasses on the MD's overburdened X68k processor. Sims like MiG-29 lean into that deficieny a bit though by presenting themselves not so much as twitch-action games but heavier simulations where you're considering tactics and your next move, almost as if adjusting for what is practically a turn-based game given its framerate. I simplified things here by saying Domark are the developers, but the game was a co-production of several internal studios and contractors. Domark's own The Kremlin, for instance, are credited for the graphics while externals PanelComp and Tiertex have credits for the game's coding and music, respectively. UK publishing house Domark were recently introduced to us with James Bond 007: The Duel [MA XXX]; we'll next see them in a developer role when we get around to October.
• Wiki Notes: Unlike most of the other western games this month, this was exclusive to the Mega Drive so the page needed some work. Releases, screenshots, box art, body text, and a header: the full set.

448: Pirates! Gold

• Developer: MicroProse
• Publisher: MicroProse
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: July 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Pirates!
• Genre: Pirates!
• Theme: Pirates!
• Premise: Become a dread pirate or perhaps one that hunts same in Sid Meier's famous larcenous maritime simulation game. Did you know pirates just stole shit from other people?
• Availability: The Genesis port is long (John (Silver)) out of print but at least the PC port can be bought on GOG along with its predecessor. Any port in a storm, right?
• Preservation: Hoist the mainsail and open your torrent client of choice because we're about to embark on some piracy. Sid Meier's Pirates!, for which Pirates! Gold is an enhanced remaster with improved graphics, is a very broad simulation game that tries to recreate every activity a pirate or privateer might find themselves involved in, from swordfights to ship battles to recruiting able seamen at ports and selling your purloined lucre to even courting a lady wife looking to join a Fabio-type for romance and adventure on the high seas. There's many routes to take and thus a whole lot of longevity behind its construction. We also see MicroProse back for the second Mega Archive in a row; they showed up last time with F-15 Strike Eagle II and it'll be November '93 before we bump into them again. Best known for their PC RPGs and sims, Pirates! is one of MicroProse's more celebrated franchises and one of the few to see a console port. In fact, it got two, but for some reason the other one was for the short-lived Amiga CD32.
• Wiki Notes: Just a little sprucing up the text. I grabbed the header from its GOG store page.

449: Rolling Thunder 3

• Developer: Now Production
• Publisher: Namco
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: July 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: Rolling Thunder
• Genre: Side-Scrolling Shooter
• Theme: Spy Shit
• Premise: While Agents Albatross and Leila were off saving the world from Geldra, the leader of the terrorist organization Gimdo, some other guy was assigned to take care of Geldra's second-in-command. That's right, you're a second-string taking on some other second-string. The stakes done got raised!
• Availability: The only other place the third Rolling Thunder can be found besides Genesis is on the Namco Museum Mini Player, one of those micro-sized arcade cabinets My Arcade puts out.
• Preservation: Another Japanese-made American Genesis exclusive, this time from Namco. Rolling Thunder 3 is the last in Namco's side-scrolling spy thriller franchise though the only one to be exclusive to consoles (and to one console in one region specifically). They pulled something similar just a little while earlier with Splatterhouse 3 [MA XXXI], perhaps deciding that making some of their more "grown-up" franchises Sega-only would be a reconciliatory salve given their greater focus on the rival Nintendo and NEC systems of this era. Either way, it's a similar game to its predecessors, as you hurry to the right while shooting down goons, going through doors to look for any incriminating evidence as if all the armed robot soldiers weren't enough proof that these guys are up to nefarious business. Speed is the name of the game: spend too long in a firefight or poking through rooms and you'll come under fire from some kind of phantom sniper. Namco sourced this one out to their frequent collaborators Nowpro; however, this would be their last game for any Sega system. (Namco themselves, however, still have a few more MD games in the docket for 1994.)
• Wiki Notes: The page had no releases or screenshots, but we had a pretty thorough text section thanks to power user Nes. I'm glad, because that always takes me the longest to do.

450: WarpSpeed

• Developer: Accolade
• Publisher: Accolade
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: 1993
• EU Release: July 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Flight Sim
• Theme: Star Raiding
• Premise: What if Star Raiders, but Accolade made it instead and called it something non-litigious like "WarpSpeed"?
• Availability: Nope. Plenty of better modern interpretations though.
• Preservation: Accolade's not quite done with us yet. Their other game for July, the one that doesn't involve cats, is WarpSpeed: a somewhat shameless attempt to resurrect the old strategic space shooter Atari game Star Raiders for the 16-bit generation before Atari themselves could. Accolade was founded by former Activision folks, who in turn were ex-Atari people, so there remains a smoldering resentment for Atari and its refusal to credit its creatives back in the 2600 days. I suppose trying to poach their properties factors into that. WarpSpeed has you warping and/or speeding around star system grid maps taking down enemy fighter squadrons that pose the most threat to nearby starbases, which you need to keep around for resupplying. You can systematically clear the map of the other starfighters at your own pace, but the real-time aspect means you'll often receive emergency signals or new mission objectives that'll demand your attention. I played this a lot as a kid, probably because I was a huge fan of the similar Elite, though even back then the actual dogfighting was never the highlight. I guess I just liked having a big map of icons to wipe out. Explains why I play so many open-world games now...
• Wiki Notes: One more SNES double-dip for the road. Very little to edit this time.