Nostalgia is a hell of a thing. I was born in 1986 right when the NES was huge. And the Master System existed. By the way. My Dad had gotten into games before I was born because my Mom had bought him an Odyssey when it came out originally. He then bought a Colecovision (a system that had better graphics than the Atari 2600 but used the absurd number pad controllers the Intellivision used). After that, because he thought the graphics looked better, he bought a Master System instead of an NES. So, I should have grown up playing a Master System. But, I actually spent all my time playing the Colecovision instead.

For those that have never played an older system, pre-8-bit era, the game design was really different. Most games didn't end and the goal was to get the highest score. The games themselves were really one trick ponies. Pitfall had three to four platforming puzzles and one goal; collect gold. Tapper was about serving drinks to customers before they reach the end of a counter and collect tips along the way. The games were great but they are a far cry from modern game design. They are what one might expect from mini-games in modern games. Then the SNES and Genesis came out.

I went straight from the Colecovision to the Genesis and what a huge difference. Not just technically but in terms of design. Games had multiple mechanics, stories and endings. They were long and detailed. That change led me to dive head first into longer, more detailed oriented games. Games like Shining Force, Phantasy Star and Dune II. I became obsessed with games that required focus over reflexes because, with the Colecovision, nearly every game was reflex based. But the Genesis wasn't exactly a breeding ground for the types of games I really gravitated towards. If I would have had a PC I would have been locked to that monitor 24/7. But, instead, we got a Sega-CD. Which, oddly enough, has more in common with the PC then some people might expect.

The Sega-CD gets a bit of a bad rep as a FMV box. Games like Prize Fighter, the Scottie Pippen game, Sewer Shark and Night Trap set a tone for a lot of games that came out on that system. As a result, those are the games that are remembered minus a few exceptions like Sonic CD and Snatcher. But what people over look are the PC ports that came to the system and the original games that may as well have been PC games because of their design. How many of you have heard of Thunderstrike? Thunderstrike was an action game made by Core Design, pre-Tomb Raider, where the player controlled a helicopter from the cockpit taking out objectives within a mode-7 like 3D environment. The helicopter had multiple weapons, objectives took many forms and there were side objectives as well and the graphics were top notch...for a Sega-CD game. Like Colecovision to Genesis, this was a jump in design that couldn't have been realized to this extent on the Genesis.

What about Dune? Dune is still one of my favorite games because it is just so weird. It was a PC port based, kind of sort of a little bit, on the David Lynch film. Except the story, characters and events are different. Basically they got to use film clips here and there and had the likeness to Kyle Maclachlan. The game was a mix of a first-person point and click adventure with a resource management sim. It was hard, very PC like and minus graphical and sound differences was a perfect port of the PC game on Sega-CD. It was great and offered an experience that would have been so hard to do on the Genesis.

Games like Thunderstrike and Dune pushed what that system and what 16-bit design was capable of. The original Sega-CD games (Lunar, Blast Corps, Soul Star) along with the PC ports (Wing Commander) and ports from other consoles like the MSX (Snatcher) the Sega-CD offered players experiences that allowed for game design and worlds that consoles rarely saw. I remember Jeff saying that a huge number of European developers had adopted the Genesis and the Sega add-ons and I have to wonder if that different perspective is what lead to the change in design language (at least for me as a consumer in the US). Regardless, the Sega-CD was more than a FMV box and did what Sega's second add-on, the 32X couldn't do minus a few exceptions that prove the rule (Metalhead, Shadow Squadron). It pushed the console beyond what it could have been capable of prior to its creation. And, to me, mimics, to a very small degree, the type of design you see in games on current systems and the PC.

But like I said, nostalgia is a hell of a thing. I'm mostly writing this because I found myself feeling nostalgic and went down a youtube rabbit hole looking up old Sega-CD games and was pleasantly surprised by what I saw My memory served me better than I had hoped. Or I'm blinded by nostalgia. Either way, I love the Sega-CD and I'm not ashamed to admit it. And to celebrate my remembered love of that system here is a bad ass song from the Sega-CD version of Terminator that I used to think was the coolest song in the world.

Eternal Champions was pretty great, with some bad ass FMV.

And oh, hey, I'm a year older than you.

@csl316:

Hey old man! EC also had some brutal fucking finishers exclusive to the Sega-CD version. That game was ok.

Oh yeah the Sega CD also had Snatcher, Sonic CD, Lunar and Lunar 2. And a bunch of weird sidescrolling anime-ey RPG's.

@csl316:

Here's a video of those finishers I was referencing. Not quite as nuts as I remember but they used to be really brutal and as a 10 year old boy I found them amazing.

Lunar 2 was awesome. It looked awesome and I remember the music was great too. Did both of you guys play the first person adventure games on the Sega-CD? I referenced Dune as a first person adventure game but eventually it became more of a resource management game instead. Snatcher was a good example of these games. It's not quite like a PC adventure game exactly. They were actually more like menu management games. But at the time they were really cool because of the atmosphere they created. Other than Snatcher I remember really liking Rise of the Dragon and The Space Adventure.

I have a first-gen Sega CD home in an attic somewhere. The one that's a huge box that sits under the Genesis. My fondest memories are of Lunar which I rented and finished in one weekend (that was tiring), the packed-in Streets of Rage 2 and of course the music to Sol Feace.

I also remember hours of fun and frustration at the hands of The Adventures of Willy Beamish, which was a Sierra published point and click adventure game that was absolutely impossible and controlled terribly.

@sinusoidal: Sol-Feace music blew me away when I first heard it. That passage at around 30 seconds was the coolest thing I'd ever heard in a game, with that production level and everything.

Willy Beamish, my god. I remember that game stumping me to no end, but I figured I just wasn't good enough. The Sega CD convinced me I need to be better!

Am I the only one that convinced himself to buy a Jaguar XJ220 one day because of Jaguar XJ220? Oh, those bass lines...

Sol-Feace was just bad ass all around.

I used to stare at pictures of Mega CD games and wish I had one so bad. I even remember the screenshots and review of Thunderstrike ( I think it was called Thunderhawk here because I have the sequel on the Saturn... It's bad) It was always my intention to get one. I thought Sewer Shark looked awesome and I had a demo disc of Puggsy the platformer from EA I got from the official Sega magazine. I'm pretty certain it had a song by some band on the CD too.

When I was weighing up buying a Saturn a couple of years back, I was definitely interested in getting a Mega CD too, but there just doesn't seem to be enough to justify the price.(They've become pretty pricey these days in the UK) I'm sure I'd spend half an hour with that Dragons Lair-esque car game where to drive cars into helicopters, and mess with some stuff, but I doubt it'd be anything more than a minor novelty.

@gunstarred:

There are some really neat games on the system. I might add onto this blog with a list of my favorites. But I wonder if it would be hard to appreciate what made those games so great to me if you never played the system when it was new. It's a different medium but if you can appreciate older films for what they tried to do then you could probably find enjoyment playing the Sega-CD. Minus the 10 games I'll list later on.

As for how to buy it, in the U.S. there was a version of the Genesis and Sega-CD released by JVC called the X-Eye (a very dumb name) that was pretty cheap. If they have an equivalent to that in the UK it might be the way to go.

Anyone play the original Silpheed? Still one of my favorite space shooters, with some astounding battles for the era.

And no surprise, some sick tracks.

I have fond memories of the many hours I spent playing Robo Aleste.

So, to finish my thought on the Sega-CD I decided that I should list my ten favorite games on the system. But instead of ten I'm going to make it eleven because I really want to mention one game that wouldn't crack the top 10 but I still really like it, it is a game that has been lost to time and it's my list and I'll do whatever I want.

11) Dark Wizard

Dark Wizard, aside from being a terrible name for a game or anything else really, is a turn based strategy game in the Japanese fashion (think FF Tactics and Shining Force). But it was fucking brutal and set a cool tone and atmosphere that felt adult to my 10-ish year old brain. It felt like I was playing a real-ass strategy game like I would have played on a PC had I had a PC at the time. In hindsight, it really wasn't that type of game nor did it have much in common with PC strategy games at the time. But it felt that way to me! And it had a few more resource management and leveling up mechanics that went beyond what I experienced in other Japanese strategy games at the time. And it had Anime-like FMV which at that time wasn't played out and was still really cool.

10) Battle Corps

Another Core Design game, pre-Tomb Raider, and like Thunderstrike players controlled a machine from the first person perspective. The game was a FPS from the perspective of a mech. It was fucking cool. In retrospect it isn't as impressive as it used to be but boy it used to be really cool. And even still, it is more than just a novelty if played today. It is actually fairly functional and considering this is a 16-bit FPS we're talking about that's pretty impressive.

9) Sonic CD

This is probably the most commonly cited 'good' Sega-CD game. For those that don't know, Sonic CD took the basic structure of Sonic 1 and added a time travel mechanic where players could allow for a good future if they did certain secondary tasks in the pasts of each level. If players did these tasks and collected all the 'time stones' from the bonus stages they would get the best ending. It was a cool idea wrapped in a game that had fun levels and memorable boss fights (particularly the Metal Sonic fight).

8) Wing Commander

This awesome PC game was ported to both the SNES, the Sega-CD and later the 3DO. The 3DO version is kind of its own thing. But between the two 16-bit consoles the Sega-CD was probably the better port. It looked better, ran better, had a fully voiced cast (including the voice actor who played Liquid Snake) and a new soundtrack. It was a pretty good port of a great game.

7) The Space Adventure

I'm going to list three adventure games on this list mostly because of their atmosphere and tone. Their gameplay, on the other hand, wasn't too great. They essentially boiled down to menu simulators. Players would select from a list of menu options on each screen within a given area, when each menu option had been selected on each screen in the right order the game would allow the player to progress and start the process all over again and every now and then an action set piece would pop up. It wasn't exactly a thrilling design. But what these games offered was story, characters and atmosphere.

Which is where the Space Adventure has a few problems in retrospect. The main character is a misogynistic pig, the bad guys are even worse and the women are only built up strong, independent characters when there is no danger around them. Once danger occurs, the 'men' take over. And the story is fucking gross. Three young women are being hunted by groups of bad guys because on their backs are tattoos of maps that are visible when the women are either hot (temperature) or excited (use your imagination).

BUT, I played this game when I was around 10-12 and the game has nudity, swearing, nudity, violence and nudity. So, to me, this game is very memorable. Just maybe don't play it now. Or do, I don't know.

6) Shining Force CD

This was a remake of the two Sega Game Gear games which in their own rights were pretty good games. This remake didn't really change them much they simply updated the visuals and soundtrack. But these games were more then just managing tactics on the battlefield. There was a resource management and leveling up component that was really engaging as well.

5) Snatcher

This is another menu management adventure game. BUT, this one was made by Hideo Kojima and is kind of nuts. It is essentially Kojima's take on Blade Runner. And the story...is just ok. And the gameplay isn't very good. And the characters are just alright and I kind of remember like a 14-15 year old girl being sexualized which is weird. But there are some memorable moments, it sets a cool tone and atmosphere and the main character's partner was the model for the MGS 4 little, camouflaged robot dude!

4) Rise of the Dragon

This is the last of the menu simulators. This was a PC port that was actually really well handled on the Sega-CD. It revolved around a private detective trying to find the source behind the spread of a new street drug that is killing users in large numbers. It's a dark and gritty game that takes the menu management gameplay and adds some nuance. The level design is open ended, there is some light puzzle solving and unlike the two previously mentioned adventure games players will either solve the case on the allotted time, along with keeping the main character's personal life in order, or they won't. There's no hand-holding which I found really exciting as a kid.

3) Thunderstrike

This was mentioned in the OP. I love this game.

2) Lunar 2

Nintendo kids had Square and Final Fantasy. Us Sega kids had Phantasy Star and Lunar. I really like Phantasy Star but Lunar was a step beyond in terms of presentation and atmosphere. That said, looking back, the game's story and atmospwhere is mad, mad, mad-ass Japanese-ass stuff. It is so Goddamn sincere and earnest. And the characters are all archetypes that are common (especially now) in Japanese games and though they aren't entirely flat they still kind of are. And I liked the battle system but it is a JRPG-ass turn based battle system. It just works well.

But I can't help it. I love this game. It's like my personal soul food. I put this right up there with Skies of Arcadia as a game that I can play through at any time and just have a nice, relaxing and fun time. It's not very challenging and it isn't incredibly remarkable. It's just really pleasant and sometimes I really need that. Plus the music and graphics were fucking amazing. The voice acting doesn't hold up very well now but at the time it was really impressive. The song I'm going to link to below is my personal favorite song on the soundtrack but the whole soundtrack is really good. I just really like this game despite the cynical, grumpy side of me finding faults with it left and right. It's just too Goddamn delightful.

1) Dune

I mentioned this game in the OP. It's just a really fun, engaging game. It was my first resource management game and it was so addicting. Even now I try to play through it once per year and it's still just as rewarding. It's nice seeing your resources build and seeing a risk taken with your army end up being worth it. It's just a really well thought out game that is satisfying throughout and is still one of my favorite games.