After the FMV-fueled forays of January we're back to classic flavor Mega Archive this month, checking out ten more Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games from the autumn of 1993 as I ensure the Giant Bomb Wiki pages for them are up to snuff. What's odd about this quixotic little project I've embarked on is how nostalgic it's been, not just for the gilded age that these games hailed from but also whenever I find something that simultaneously launched on SNES and I'm reading the work I did back when that was the focus of my wiki tinkering. Probably doesn't bode well for my worries of getting older that I'm getting hit with several layers of this wistful shit just from reading up on some mid licensed platformer everyone's correctly forgotten about. I guess that's still better than paying $200 to some price-gouging collector's site for a copy of said mid licensed platformer because I have it in mind to collect the full console library. Those are the guys with problems, IMO.

Speaking of haunting, October is the time for scares and horrors and what's more terrifying than three whole not-great sports games to cover, including one hated sport of mine that had yet to be represented on the Mega Drive and I prayed never would? We also have a couple of actually scary Halloween games (though not actually scary), a mascot platformer also-ran, a classic of the strategy-RPG genre, and the usual customary batch of Eurotrash to enjoy. I know I enjoy 'em. One of them even has an accented character in the title! Ooh la la.

Check out the Mega Archive's Mega Spreadsheet for links to earlier entries and just a whole heckin' bunch of information about the Mega Drive and Sega CD in one handy place. Going to have to start adding the 1994 games to that eventually...

Part XXXVIII: 481-490 (October '93)

481: The Addams Family

• Developer: Ocean Software
• Publisher: Flying Edge
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: October 1993
• EU Release: November 1993
• Franchise: The Addams Family
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: "They're creepy and they're kooky", etc.
• Premise: Very loosely following the events of the 1991 movie, Gomez is tasked with rescuing each Addams family member from the villainous Abigail Craven and her allies. Or maybe just a big snowman.
• Availability: Licensed game based on a specific movie, so unlikely to be rereleased.
• Preservation: When you think "movie tie-in platformer developed by British licensed shovelware meisters Ocean Software" you don't foster any high expectations, but I don't recall any of The Addams Family games—based on a property that debuted as a comic strip in the New Yorker in 1938—actually being all that bad. You had this, a top-down one based on the (superior) movie sequel Addams Family Values, and Pugsley's Scavenger Hunt which I think was Nintendo-only and based on the animated show instead. Obviously, they're not innovative nonpareils either, but in addition to making them look half-decent Ocean kinda indulged themselves with some Castlevania aspirations when designing the Addams estate and made this game a bit more open: it's still stage-based, but you can navigate the hub-like lobby area to tackle the stages in any order (with the exception of the finale) and there's a few hidden rooms and optional areas leading to permanent health upgrades to discover too. I guess, much like the movie itself which was one of many Boomer-TV-to-movie reboots of the 1990s, it's better than it had any right to be. Anyway, this is our first Ocean Software game on Mega Archive—which is weird, since they're usually all over any system popular in Europe—but we'll be seeing many more to come. (Flying Edge was an Acclaim label they used for their Genesis games for legal reasons, if you needed a reminder.)
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip so just some minor edits.

482: Aero the Acro-Bat

• Developer: Iguana Entertainment
• Publisher: Sunsoft
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: October 1993
• EU Release: July 1994
• Franchise: Aero the Acro-Bat
• Genre: Platformer
• Theme: Moving Through the List of Rodents in the Search for Another Sonic
• Premise: Aero the Acrobatic Bat and his circus friends are attacked by the evil industrialist Edgar Ektor and betrayed by their former colleague Zero the Kamikaze Squirrel. How much suspense could a trapeze act possibly generate if the performers can fly, anyway?
• Availability: We have or are going to have Bubsy and Gex reboots, but the Aero camp has been very quiet. The license changed hands from Sunsoft to Universal Interactive to Vivendi Games to... oh no, Activision Blizzard. Well, I guess that means a reboot is possible if they can figure out how to stick lootboxes in there. Aero the Gacha-Bat?
• Preservation: I don't remember what age I was when I began the transformation into my deeply cynical present day self, but I want to say it was probably around the time I noticed all the Sonic clones popping up after the inescapable success of the blue 'hog (we'll be getting one next month too). To be fair, Aero's more about the verticality of being a bat than it is the alacrity of Sonic, but I never found this guy or his games particularly endearing. One issue is that opening the exit requires some arbitrary jumping through hoops, sometimes literally; it's not enough to reach the end of the level, but to have fully explored every square inch. This is the Texas-based Iguana Entertainment (later Acclaim Studios Austin) making a more confident debut with their own IP after porting Midway's arcade football sim Super High Impact [MA XXI], and the studio would go on to find greater acclaim (so to speak) with the NBA Jam home console ports, NFL Quarterback Club, and Turok: Dinosaur Hunter. We'll bump into them several more times yet on Mega Archive, including two more games set in "the Aeroverse".
• Wiki Notes: Another SNES double-dip. Added EU box art and release.

483: Astérix and the Great Rescue

• Developer: Core Design
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: June 1994
• EU Release: October 1993
• Franchise: Astérix
• Genre: Platformer / Brawler
• Theme: Francophonic Satire
• Premise: The druid Getafix/Panoramix has been abducted by the Romans and, given he's the only reason Astérix's village has yet to be conquered, he needs to be rescued. Greatly.
• Availability: Licensed game. I can't think of anyone who would have the Gaul to rerelease them today.
• Preservation: Getting back to the subject of games based on comic strips invented long before any of us were born, Astérix is the brainchild of the French writer/illustrator team of René Gisconny and Albert Uderzo about a small village of Gaulish barbarians able to hold the Roman Empire at bay due to a superpower-enabling magic potion, the most courageous of whom are the titular blond warrior and his invincible best bud Obelix. While it sounds like a semi-serious historical comic (besides the magic potion part maybe) it's really anything but; the French creators mostly used it as a vehicle to mock every other country and take jabs at modern politics and trends. Those original creators have now passed away but the comic itself has been inherited by new artists and writers and last saw a publication as recently as October of last year. Most of Astérix's video game appearances tend to be Europe-exclusive because that's about as far as his cultural cachet reaches, though Astérix and the Great Rescue did also see an American release (not the case for its 1995 follow-up, Astérix and the Power of the Gods, however). Most Astérix games are pretty similar: you run around beating up Romans and maybe a wild boar or two (Obelix's favorite food) and probably have a showdown at the end with Julius Caesar or one of his generals. This game has an original plot that's largely just bits and pieces taken from other works (including the 1989 animated movie Astérix and the Big Fight), which is probably the smarter way to go about adapting the material: more of a vibe match than a 1:1 translation.
• Wiki Notes: Skeleton, so needed almost everything. There was a SNES Astérix released around the same time but it's a completely different game.

484: Boxing Legends of The Ring

• Developer: Sculptured Software
• Publisher: Electro Brain
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: October 1993
• EU Release: N/A
• Franchise: The Ring
• Genre: Boxing
• Theme: Punching People
• Premise: People Are Getting Punched
• Availability: Nah, another licensed game. Sure are a lot this month.
• Preservation: There's something linguistically amazing about the fact that you only needed to add one word to the title "Legends of the Ring" to make an RPG fan like me utterly uninterested. We have our third game this episode from an Acclaim or future Acclaim subsidiary (yaaay) and despite the subject matter there's a few interesting facts I dug up about this one. The first is that The Ring in question is a famous long-running boxing periodical of the same name, the game having licensed the magazine. The second is that it was rebranded for its Mexican launch to instead feature national boxing hero Julio César Chávez: it was renamed Chavez II, the first Chavez being a reskin of the SNES game Riddick Bowe Boxing. This apparently also makes it the only Mexico-exclusive game ever put out on a Sega system, though a little further south Brazil saw all kinds of late-era exclusives for both the Mega Drive and its predecessor the Master System.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip. Releases, box art, and screenshots.

485: Haunting Starring Polterguy

• Developer: Electronic Arts
• Publisher: Electronic Arts
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: October 1993
• EU Release: November 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: I'm not sure. Spook 'em Up?
• Theme: Just Beetlejuicin' All Over the Place
• Premise: An obnoxious bougie family has just moved into the digs you're haunting, and you can't be having that. Better brush up on your Belafonte.
• Availability: It was part of the EA Replay compilation for PSP. Nothing more recent I don't think.
• Preservation: When I think of the Mega Drive and the irreverent personality pushed by Sega of America (and Europe) when promoting the thing, and how that went on to define the system in contrast to family-friendly rivals like the SNES, it's games like Haunting Starring Polterguy—where you play as a punk teen who died and came back as a ghost to troll the living—that really stand out as embodiments of what the console was all about. Speaking of embodying things, Haunting has you possessing regular household objects and transforming them into instruments of terror all in the service of booting out the well-off Sardini family, the patriarch of which was indirectly responsible for the protagonist's premature demise. Each of these haunt-able objects are color-coded and essentially work the same as traps: some can be set ahead of time and left to work their magic, while others only work best when manually activated as the target moves into close proximity. While you're undead and therefore invincible, there is still some peril in the game: running out of ghost juice, a.k.a. "ecto", will cause Polterguy to be sent to the underworld briefly where he can restock his supply. He can also he permanently killed there too though, so it's best to use ecto efficiently to avoid too many trips "down south".
• Wiki Notes: EU Mega Drive box art and release.

486: International Rugby

• Developer: Tiertex
• Publisher: Domark
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: October 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Rugby
• Theme: Gentlemanly Handegg
• Premise: Like American Football, only without the armor and the five minute strategy meetings.
• Availability: No. Whomst would even bother?
• Preservation: All right, so this thing. Let me begin by saying that my animosity for rugby far exceeds that for any other sport: I was forced to play it as part of my Phys Ed classes and it was always the one that led to the most injuries (superficial, thankfully) and mud dunks. No-one's probably going to be surprised to hear that someone who talks about Mega Drive games all day on the internet didn't perhaps care for sports, or indeed strenuous physical activity of any kind, but it's some necessary context for how little I want to think about this incredibly banal rugby game that manages to spell Zimbabwe wrong. All I'll say is that it's one of only three rugby games to come out on the system, soon followed by Rugby World Cup 95 and Australian Rugby League (both from EA). It was also based on an Amiga game: the two pages should probably be merged but my enthusiasm to do so is in the negative digits right now. Let's just move on to another, less PTSD-invoking game instead.
• Wiki Notes: Skeleton, so it needed a bit of everything.

487: Snake Rattle 'n' Roll

• Developer: Rare
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: October 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Action
• Theme: Isometric Snakes. Hissometric.
• Premise: Rattle and Roll, two snakes, want to navigate an abstract world of nebulous terrors in order to eat their favorite food: the Nibbley Pibbleys. Could you guess this game was British?
• Availability: The original NES version was included in Rare Replay for Xbox One and beyond.
• Preservation: I always thought of Snake Rattle 'n' Roll as a NES exclusive, but it appears that isn't the case. Can't say I ever saw too many MD copies of this in the wild (whereas the NES version was everywhere; I have one myself). It's one of Rare's originals for the NES, as opposed to the licensed stuff they were usually commissioned to make, and definitely feels like an older arcade game between its Q*Bert/Marble Madness style isometric perspective (which was common in other early Rare games too of course) and its silly-looking enemies like a giant foot and a vicious checker piece. Goal is to eat the balls that come flying out of various parts of the landscape, each of which causes your snake character to grow longer and confers power-ups like a longer tongue and higher jump. You can really rack up the points if you know the tricks, leading to extra lives. I liked the game but never made a serious attempt to complete it so I don't know how long it is. Knowing Rare, it probably gets very difficult quickly.
• Wiki Notes: NES double-dip (I think I worked on it for the sake of GDQ). There was absolutely no mention on the page about the Mega Drive port so I guess it wasn't that well-known.

488: Two Tribes: Populous II

• Developer: Bullfrog Productions / PanelComp
• Publisher: Virgin Games
• JP Release: N/A
• NA Release: N/A
• EU Release: October 1993
• Franchise: Populous
• Genre: God Sim
• Theme: Vulgar Displays of Power
• Premise: The Populous sequel has you rising through the ranks of the Greek pantheon in pursuit of your own divinity. Just gotta ruin a bunch of mortal lives in the process. So what else is new on Mount Olympus.
• Availability: Like the first, you can buy the PC version of Populous II from GOG.
• Preservation: Our third and last EU-exclusive Mega Drive game for October '93 is this sequel to the trailblazing god sim Populous, originally developed by Bullfrog Productions and its lead designer Peter Molyneux. The Mega Drive port was the only one to go for a Frankie Goes to Hollywood namedrop in its title: every other version of the game is known as Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods, relating to its story about a demigod defeating said pantheon to ascend to godhood. You can learn more about what Populous is all about from when the original was covered here [MA V]. From what I can tell the MD port work was mostly performed by contractors PanelComp with supervision from Bullfrog; we last saw PanelComp as one of the many contributors to flight-sim MiG-29 Fighter Pilot [MA XXXIV] and they'll be behind a couple more Amiga/ST/PC ports to come. Years after the Mega Drive's tenure they became Realism and were responsible for that Super Monkey Ball Jr. GBA game so beloved of the Arcade Pit and very few others.
• Wiki Notes: SNES double-dip so just minor stuff. One new thing was having to make a company page for PanelComp: I guess they were one of those mostly-unseen contractor types that GDRI only recently dug up (they definitely worked on MD Populous II though, there's a title screen credit and everything).

489: Wimbledon Championship Tennis

• Developer: SIMS
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1994-05-20
• NA Release: October 1993
• EU Release: October 1993
• Franchise: N/A
• Genre: Tennis
• Theme: Tennis
• Premise: Tennis
• Availability: Licensed sports game.
• Preservation: One last cheap tennis game to see off the undesirably robust sports section of this edition of the Mega Archive. Wimbledon Championship Tennis was put together by second-party studio SIMS (maybe first? I've never been clear on that) and was released on all three of Sega's extant consoles at the time, with this Mega Drive version inexplicably showing up last by about a year. It does have a few more features than its siblings, including female players (there's no real difference in the sprites besides that they're wearing skirts), so maybe that explains the delay. The game was officially licensed by the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club (why haven't we seen any croquet games on Mega Drive yet? The TurboGrafx had one) so it can use the Wimbledon name, the home of British tennis, but didn't spring for the ATP license so all the tennis players had to stay fictional only. Seems like an entirely OK game, but tennis fans probably had better options: this is the fifth MD tennis game so far, after all.
• Wiki Notes: Plenty of text and screenshots already, but they were all for the Master System version. Anything MD-specific on that page came from me.

490: Shining Force II

• Developer: Sonic Co.
• Publisher: Sega
• JP Release: 1993-10-01
• NA Release: October 1994
• EU Release: September 1994
• Franchise: Shining
• Genre: Strategy RPG
• Theme: Glowing Aggression and/or Luminous Belligerence
• Premise: A thief has stolen a gem that once sealed the demon lord Zeon and now a new Shining Force has to posse up to put Mr. Scary and Pointy back in his place.
• Availability: You can buy it directly from Steam if you'd like. It's also in many Sega compilations and on the Sega Genesis Mini 2.
• Preservation: We have a small batch of Japanese MD October debuts left over that I'll polish off in the next entry, but what a banger to end on. Shining Force II is perhaps the greatest strategy-RPG of the 16-bit generation, just about eclipsing its predecessor, and hides many deeper tactical mechanics behind its deceptively cartoonish veneer. For one, it's just not a series of linear battles like the first game, but instead offers more of an open-world structure (albeit still with story-mandated missions) closer to the genre paragons that came later like Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre. It's probably the number one MD game I've been meaning to go back and play in full: I bounced off it decades ago for reasons I don't remember, though I did complete the first Shining Force via its GBA remaster. Second-party studio Sonic! Software Planning, otherwise known as Sonic Co., was by this point the Shining franchise's sole custodians after taking over from original creators Climax Entertainment, which had moved onto the Stalker series. Sonic! would also make all future Shining games up to the end of the Saturn generation but nothing else: they were a very focused bunch. Since there weren't any more Shining games for Mega Drive this will be the last time we'll see them on here, but there is still a Shining Force CD spin-off for Mega Archive CD to check out.
• Wiki Notes: Just some minor release edits. A well-loved page for a well-loved game.