Random Gaming Memories

[Leo656]

The latest AVGN episode has me in a fairly nostalgic mood, and the part where he describes frantically trying to beat Contra before the school bus came had me thinking back to times where I had almost the same experience (our town was only one square mile or so, so there was no buses for the elementary school; your parents drove you or if you were most kids you walked).

Specifically, it reminded me of the time I was in 8th Grade, either couldn't sleep or woke up early (I had awful insomnia until I started smoking pot in my 20s, then it cleared up immediately), and decided that That Morning was the time I was finally gonna buckle down and beat Bill & Ted's Excellent Video Game Adventure (NES). That's a terrible game, but we kids were less savvy back then. So I grabbed one of my NES guidebooks that had a map showing you where all the Historical Items were - it was misprinted, though, so I still had to essentially "do it all myself" and write my own corrections in the margins, but at least I wasn't flying completely blind; that game is 100% unbeatable without a guide - and got to work. Suffice to say, it was far from my favorite gaming experience, but there was still a deep satisfaction in finally seeing the ending to a game that had been the bane of my existence for so many years. Seeing Bill and Ted rock out at the concert was good enough for me to justify all the time wasted on such a lame game, and it sent me to school in a great mood.

And as James alluded to in his anecdote about selling his original copy of Contra for a sandwich, beating Bill & Ted on NES is the ONLY thing I remember at all about that day, aside from having walked to school. I don't remember if it was snowing or sunny, Fall or Spring, if my Mom still lived with us or anything. I remember absolutely nothing about the school day or what I did when I got home. ALL I remember was that it was the day I finally beat that game. He really isn't kidding that some moments really become part of who you are while others just slip away, lost in the ether.

I have a ton of awesome (and less awesome) gaming memories, far too many to list in one shot.

One of my earliest-ever vivid memories is bonding with my Dad over the Atari 2600 version of Frogger and Donkey Kong. I wouldn't have been older then 3. I remember him saying Donkey Kong might be "too hard" for me, but very soon I got better at it than he was. For a while those were the only games we had, until we got Ghostbusters. And then shortly after that one of his friends gave him a whole big box of Atari games and joysticks just to be rid of them; this would have been in the time between The Crash and the NES saving the industry, so a lot of people figured games were "done" and were either throwing out or giving away their stuff, so we really lucked out in that. Tons of great games in that collection, really awesome memories.

I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module. A "regular" 2600 with the wood-grain finish was in the box of stuff my Dad got from his friend, but it didn't work right. There were a ton of third-party joysticks that were much better than the standard tiny Atari sticks, though. I wore them out but they were awesome.

My Dad wasn't actually much for video games - "Too complicated", he said - but he always thought they were neat and he could play really simple ones. We spent a ton of time on Atari Pinball, Baseball, Football, and that kind of stuff. Obviously they look awful to anyone who's younger than me but at the time they were pretty special. My Dad and I didn't have a ton in common either so anything and everything that could help us spend time together really meant a lot to me. I still remember the first time I ever got a higher score than him on Atari Pinball; he had this visible and odd mix of pride and disappointment. That might have been the last time we played any game together, come to think of it.

Starting in 1988, my sister and my cousin would spend every Summer vacation and Christmas break at our house until we moved in 1995. They were both 8 years older than me, so again, one of the few things we had in common was video games. They weren't anywhere near as into it as I was, but we still spent almost every night playing various Atari games (mostly Megamania, I remember we all loved that one to death) or Super Mario Bros. on NES. We'd stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning playing those games sometimes.

Christmas 1992 was incredibly special, as I got the SNES (and Game Genie). That whole vacation, my sister, my cousin and I took turns playing the absolute hell out of Super Mario World, finding almost every possible secret. I managed to find (and conquer) the Star Road before either of them did so that was a huge point of pride. We rarely turned it off; we'd leave it on pause to go eat, then come right back to it. Again, that was pretty much the very last game with which we ever had that kind of an experience together, but that week still sticks out in my memory when lots of other things about that Christmas break are just a blur.

I could drop a million more anecdotes, and I'll inevitably do more later. What are some of your favorite and/or most vivid gaming memories, either from childhood or more recently?

[neatoman]

One time I intended to shut off my Gamecube to save a lifw when I was about to fall into the abyss under pianta village, but instead I opened the disc lid. That's how I discovered a really weird thing, turns out if you do that, the abyss will register as a floor, meaning I was able to walk around on it, really weird.

Another time, I was on vacation with my mother on Grand Canaria. Many the shops there are... Weird, shall we say? Like endless rows of shops with no problems showing off merch with nudity printed on it, pretty wild. Anyway, so we went into a shop selling games, I wanted to buy a copy of Pokémon Leafgreen but the clerk recommended some weird copy with hundreds of other games on it. I was skeptical and wanted to buy the normal copy instead but my mom insisted that I should buy the "hundreds of games" copy, because to her ignorant mind that sounded like a good idea. Turns out the Leafgreen ROM was a ****** fan translation from Japanese someone had given up on halfway through, meaning much (if not most) of the game was in Japanese. One the only four actual GBA ROMs was a crappy Power Rangers game I didn't care, while another was a real translation of Pokémon Sapphire and the fourth I can't even remember. The "hundreds" of other ones were a bunch of NES games and while it did include some decent ones like the original Metroid, most were garbage and quite frankly got repeated. Oh, and this is fun, it's literally the only Gameboy cartridge where the save battery ran out while I was still actively using it, so like less than a year after I bought it, which is something you absolutely don't want to happen when playing Pokémon. I did eventually get a legit copy but it might be what made me realise my mom... Might have been kind of a naive person well into her 40's.

[Leo656]

Glad someone had something to say. :tgrin:

I can see where your Mom would have fallen for that. Mine is the first "older generation" that understands video games at all, and that's because we're among the first generation that never knew a time when they didn't exist. To our parents, though, something like that bootleg cart or Action 52 would legit have sounded like a great deal. We obviously know better, but we were able to gain a type of wisdom they simply would never have.

Like I could see potentially having to explain to my Dad how something like that would clearly be a scam. Thankfully, he generally knew enough to trust that there were some topics where I knew more than he did.

It reminds me of the time we went to a flea market gaming store, and the clerk was trying to convince me to get Tag Team Wrestling on NES. They almost had my Dad convinced, but my gut told me to get the game next to it - Tecmo World Wrestling - instead, even though I'd never seen or heard of it. It was a little bit more expensive, so Dad was like "...You sure you wouldn't rather get the other one?", but I trusted my gut and so did he. I ended up dodging a huge bullet there, as Tecmo World Wrestling is one of the greatest wrestling games ever made - even though it's f*cking impossibly hard - and Tag Team Wrestling is a giant pile of sh*t.

Some of my fondest memories of being a kid are of actually being able to buy (or rather, have my Dad buy) a game. We didn't have a ton of money, so most of what games I owned was stuff people gifted me when they were sick of it. Outside of Christmas, it was rare to actually just go to a store and buy a game, so whenever we did it was a Big Deal. I still remember coming home from the store with Ghostbusters for the 2600, and Centipede for the Coleco-Vision (one of the only two Coleco-Vision games we had, the other being Donkey Kong).

But one of the best times was when I got Zelda II: The Adventure of Link for NES. There used to be a store chain called Best; it went out of business in 1997 apparently but our local one shut down several years earlier than that, probably 1990. But my Dad used to go there a lot and sometimes he'd take me. When they were closing down the one by us, they had one of those "Everything Must Go" sales, so he took me there to look at some marked-down NES games. Out of a sea of stuff I didn't care about, that gold box stood out, and even though I'd only fumbled my way through the first Zelda game once and only ever half-finished it, something told me there was nothing else on that rack that was going to be worth it more than Zelda II, so that's what I picked.

It was years before I'd ever get farther than the very first Castle and even more years before I'd finally beat the game, but again, to this day the memory remains. I had hours of fun with that game even when I had no goddamn idea what I was doing.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

The Contra episode was awesome, especially the ending. I have similair experiences with another video game. The Super NES version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time.

[Andrew NDB]

I didn't actually have a 2600 before that; we had the much sexier Coleco-Vision with the 2600 add-on module.

Yeah, that was my first. Though I don't remember about an "add-on module"?

Also a Texas Instruments console. I remember playing "Hunt the Wumpus" on that.

[Leo656]

Turtles in Time was one of the first games I ever bought at FuncoLand. Pretty sure it's still in its green FuncoLand sleeve, actually. I know at least one of my SNES games is.

Before that I'd rented it so many times that I probably should have just found a way to buy it.

The NES TMNT game was one of the first games I ever rented. There was this little Mom & Pop electronics place down the street from us called Jasko's, they were ostensibly a TV and electronics repair place, but if you just walked in there unawares you'd think they were just a video store. It was a small place, but they had everything you'd ever want on VHS and NES. They were only a short bike ride away so my and my friends used to go there all the time. Back then even a lot of the Mom & Pop rental places required a credit card, but this place just let you pay cash for rentals, a dollar a day.

Anyways, yeah, the first game I explicitly remember renting from there was TMNT. Even then, I was underwhelmed. I loved the music, and the first level was good, but after that it was just... eh. When the Arcade Game came out it was like "Yes, yes, This is what I actually wanted, thank you."

But yeah, I practically lived at that place, and that was the first time I got to play many NES games. You may remember how in the early-90s, a lot of rental places like Blockbuster stopped including the manuals with their games and would either have nothing, or some homemade mock-up that explained the bare-bones basics of the game controls, because Nintendo threw a fit about copyrighted materials being misused, or some such. Well this little Jasko's place was ahead of the curve by a few years on that; the owner got fed up with kids either not returning the games' manuals with the game, or otherwise returning them in such horrible and torn-up condition they were unusable, and so they started making their own one-page "manuals" and gluing them to the inside of the clamshell rental case.

That was another way I'd occasionally get a cheap game or VHS tape, if something older was no longer being rented out often and was just taking up space they'd usually just sell it off for $5-10. They had no sentimental value for the stuff or any care about what it was "really" worth; it was just clutter to be gotten rid of, so I got a couple nice things from them here and there.

Sadly, right when the SNES era was getting into gear, the place abruptly stopped doing all rentals, either games or VHS. My Dad knew the owner a bit, and supposedly, the place was a father and son operation with the father doing the TV and VCR repairs and the son running the rental side of the business. They had some kind of huge falling out and the son took his half of the business (and all the stock) and left. So after that they were "just" a TV/VCR repair place... but to be blunt, I almost never saw a car parked there ever again.

Oddly enough, the place is still there, exactly as it was. It looks completely abandoned - I swear there's a bunch of old 80s and 90s TVs stacked to the ceiling in there, but it's hard to see through the windows when you drive by - but sometimes you'll see a car parked there and it looks like someone is in there doing stuff. I kind of suspect it is/was a front for some Mob-related activity. Regardless, with real estate being such a premium and the fact that it's one tiny little building in the middle of a big otherwise-empty grassy lot, I'm shocked it's still even there. There's gotta be a reason; it hasn't been a "business" since like 1993, yet it's still there, exactly as it was.

Every time we go by it, I remember all the times me and my buddy rode our bikes there to rent stuff. Oddly, I live a lot closer to it Now than I did Then.

[Leo656]

Yeah, that was my first. Though I don't remember about an "add-on module"?


Really? The add-on module was a huge reason anyone even had the ColecoVision, since it was quite literally like owning two consoles in one. There were a ton of great games for the ColecoVision BUT a ton of the more well-known games people already loved were on the 2600. This upgrade module immediately gave the ColecoVision the largest gaming library in the world for the cost of practically nothing, since now one could play ColecoVision games as well as the hundreds upon hundreds that had already been released for the 2600.

This is the basic ColecoVision. Note the giant 8-track tape-sized plug-in port on the front right-hand side:
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51SaZrYtvKS._SX522_.jpg

And this is the "fully-formed" ColecoVision, complete with "Expansion Module #1", aka "The Atari 2600 Expansion":

https://www.gamerterra.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/colecovision-expansion-module-1.jpg
Clearer picture, Spoiler'ed for size:
https://www.the-liberator.net/site-files/retro-games/hardware/ColecoVision/ColecoVision-Expansion-Module-No-1-Atari-2600-Adapter/ColecoVision-Expansion-Module-No-1-Atari-2600-Adapter-003.JPG

There were several other Expansion Modules, including a steering wheel, trackball controller, and one that basically converted the ColecoVision into a fully-functional ADAM computer. But the main point of even having an expansion port on the console at all, was to have a 2600 clone console that plugged into the ColecoVision.

Atari sued them over this, as you can imagine. They settled out of court with Coleco becoming a licensee.

All controllers and inputs that worked with the 2600 also worked on the Expansion Module. The games played and ran exactly the same as they would on a real 2600. This entire concept was a bit ahead of its time and the first example of "backwards-compatibility" in a home console (even Atari 5200 consoles didn't play 2600 carts, something that cost them a lot of market share among disgruntled Atari fans).

It's a fascinating piece of history that shows you just how much like the Wild West the gaming market was back in those days. Can you imagine if, like, Sega had released an "expansion module" for the Master System or Genesis that played NES games? Obviously that never would or could have happened, BUT, to a lot of kids who didn't understand the legalities of such things, it was actually something we expected to see. Why? Because a lot of us had the ColecoVision with the Atari module, so we figured stuff like that was feasible. We didn't know it was an extremely-shady, borderline-illegal thing that Coleco had actually gotten in some trouble over.

But yeah, that's what I had as a kid, the console plus expansion module. Until someone stole it. My wife got me a Coleco-Vision for Christmas some years ago but not the Expansion Module, that I still need to replace. I do have a 2600, though, or rather, one of the fancier "clone" ones sold at Sears under a different name.

[Wesley]

Nice, interesting thread. Thanks for making it Leo656. It’s brought back good memories for me.

I’d say:

Getting my first console in 1996 when I was 9 and loving it. My mother bought it for me. It was a Mega Drive II. She didn’t know II was a second model and neither did I. Came bundled with Mega Games 1 (Super Hang On, Columns and World Cup Italia 90) and Sonic the Hedgehog. It used cartridges with no load times and the picture was so clear. What a difference from a Commodore 64 I got handed down from a cousin. We tried to get it to work, but it never did. The games we both liked playing were Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Micro Machines.

Playing ChuChu Rocket for the Dreamcast and Yugioh games for the DS online in the past.

My mother and I playing Pokémon Gen IV games and me helping her to beat Blue in HeartGold.

[Leo656]

Thanks for chiming in! I'd love to hear a lot more from people, I'm sure we all have a lot of great gaming memories, Big and Small.

I don't talk about it a ton but games are and always have been one of the most important things in my life. I'm sure that's true of a lot of us here.

[Icebot]

Let’s see, my first console was the NES, my parents bought it, at first I wasn’t really interested in trying to play but my parents insisted. Once I started I didn’t want to stop. The first game I played was Super Mario Brothers. The other games I played and got to know are:

Duck Hunt
Tetris
Super Mario 2
Kid Icarus
Zelda’s 1 and 2
Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
T&C Surf Design
Wheel of Fortune

A short time later I heard about Super Mario Bros 3 and once I played it I fell madly in love with it! It belonged to my cousin (who unfortunately passed away last December). A short time later my father told me he has a surprise for me, it was Mario 3. But he told me I had to hold the family pet dog to play. I was afraid of dogs at the time but I decided to hold the dog because my love for the game overtook my fear of dogs. Over time I got used to the dog and my fear started to go away.

I have a ton more memories, I’ll probably share more later when I have time, maybe in 20 hours at the earliest.

[Andrew NDB]

Definitely didn't have that expansion module for the Coleco. I do remember a trackball, though. Possibly the steering wheel... that sounds familiar. There was certainly some kind of driving game I'd play on it.

[Prowler]

My earliest life memory is of playing SNES Star Fox next to my older brother while sitting on his bed when I was like 4 in 1994.

For all I know, that might have beje the first game I've ever played? But I'd like to believe it was either the original SMB or the original TMNT NES game.

Dunno what else to say as far as random gaming memories go, but I'd say the Star Fox games and Super Mario World were the two games that inspired my creativity the most. I remember drawing maps of those games worlds on my free time back then. Or drawing maps clearly based on those games but with different locations and characters. Such characters could be stuffed toys or my Action Man toys.

[FredWolfLeonardo]

I was introduced to Sonic via Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Being new to the Sonic franchise, I made some wrong assumptions about the characters which I think are funny looking back.

Most notably, I thought that Dr Eggman wasn't a villain but a crazy mad scientist who helped Sonic and his gang with inventions. I also thought that Shadow and Vector were the main villains of the franchise, with Shadow being the serious big bad and Vector being his goofy sidekick.

[Prowler]

I was introduced to Sonic via Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games. Being new to the Sonic franchise, I made some wrong assumptions about the characters which I think are funny looking back.

Most notably, I thought that Dr Eggman wasn't a villain but a crazy mad scientist who helped Sonic and his gang with inventions. I also thought that Shadow and Vector were the main villains of the franchise, with Shadow being the serious big bad and Vector being his goofy sidekick.
As someone who still vaguely remembers a time where Sonic was a big deal and as someone who certainly still remembers when Sega was in the console market, that's kinda funny to read. But yes, I've noticed many people who are younger than me don't seem to know much about Sonic. Some even have trouble grasping how massive he was in the first half of the 90s.

[Andrew NDB]

As someone who still vaguely remembers a time where Sonic was a big deal and as someone who certainly still remembers when Sega was in the console market, that's kinda funny to read. But yes, I've noticed many people who are younger than me don't seem to know much about Sonic. Some even have trouble grasping how massive he was in the first half of the 90s.

I remember Genesis owners as a kid were largely elitist pricks. At least in my neighborhood and school. I remember routinely they would scoff at Nintendo owners and say stuff like, "You think Mario is cooler than Sonic? Pffffft!!!" "Mario is a gaylord!" "Mario and Luigi are butt brothers!"

I admit, when Sega fizzled out as a console player after Dreamcast the 12 year old me smiled a little as a result.

[Prowler]

I remember Genesis owners as a kid were largely elitist pricks. At least in my neighborhood and school. I remember routinely they would scoff at Nintendo owners and say stuff like, "You think Mario is cooler than Sonic? Pffffft!!!" "Mario is a gaylord!" "Mario and Luigi are butt brothers!"

I admit, when Sega fizzled out as a console player after Dreamcast the 12 year old me smiled a little as a result.
Here not so much because Sega was way more popular than Nintendo back then. The Mega Drive outsold the SNES quite significantly. If anything, a lot of people here are just ignorant of Nintendo and just view it as the Game Boy, Pokémon and Mario company. Most people grew up playing the Mega Drive when they were kids, and then moved on to Sony consoles after they realised the Saturn wasn't going to be as good as the previous Sega console.

I didn't really know there was competition between Sega and Nintendo until I read about it online around 2006 or so though. I was only 5 when the Saturn came out. I had no idea about console wars or what system sold the most. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where I've been exposed to both Nintendo and Sega. My brother got the SNES and N64 at launch and both MD and Saturn when they were already cheap. So if be playing Sonic the Hedgehog one moment and later I'd be booting up Super Mario World on the SNES in 1995. It never came up to my mind that those two were at a war. I liked both Sonic and Mario.

The first "console war" I took notice off was during the early 2000s. I found it odd how I was the only kid at school with a GameCube and everyone else had a PS2. By then I was old enough to know more or less what was going on and quickly discovered that the PS2 blew the GC out of the water in terms of sales. Other kids telling me the GC sucked annoyed me and made me insecure. Until then I had never cared or even knew about console wars. The fact there were even Sonic games for the GC and the GBA in the early 2000s didn't make me bat an eye.

I didn't really notice Sega leaving the market until it was too late. I remember reading someone ask in the mail section iif a gaming magazine around 2001 why the Dreamcast died so quickly. That's when it dawned me that it had been a while since I last heard of DC and that Sega was no longer making consoles.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

Sega's aggressive marketing campaigns worked very well, at least for some years. Still today, wer'e talking about them more than any other video game commercials.

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[Leo656]

Nobody around here talked like the kids in Andrew's anecdote, thankfully. :lol: But the whole "Console Wars" thing was easily the most aggravating and annoying part of that whole era.

For one thing, Every Single One of those kids who "jumped ship" to Sega for the Genesis had an NES in their house at some point very recently. My parents were not the type to play the "If you want a new system you have to get rid of the old one" game, my parents understood from the Atari-to-NES transition period that different consoles played different games and they weren't about to deprive me, especially after we'd given away the ColecoVision to my older brother when we got an NES, only to immediately regret it and ask for it back within months. They weren't thrilled about having to buy a SNES, but they understood it.

But some kids' parents, if you wanted a new console you had to sell the old one. I get that. But whether that kid's new console of choice was a SNES or a Genesis, they 100% had an NES up until "figuratively yesterday". And NOW they're talking about "Nintendo is for babies" and "Sega is for Cool Kids"? Dude, you were playing Super Mario Bros. 3 last f*cking week, stop acting like a big shot because your Daddy bought you an expensive new toy.

And that's what it ultimately was, too, that "loyalty" bullsh*t. At the end of the day, you had what your parents bought for you. That's it! Your "loyalty" was based on what they deigned to give you, and so teasing other kids about it seemed incredibly f*cking stupid, to me.

Obviously, kids liked Sonic, and the commercials made Sega seem "cooler" than Mario and Nintendo, but in my experience what made Daddy go along with it enough to buy a new console was the fact that Sega had all the sports games. Daddy doesn't give two sh*ts about Sonic, and he doesn't give a sh*t about Mario, either... but John Madden, well, there's your tie-breaker. A lot of kids' Dads bought them a Genesis under the theory that they'd get some miles out of it, too, thus further justifying the expense. And that totally makes sense and worked in Sega's favor, absolutely. But again, these kids were STILL only getting whatever their parents bought, and so "brand loyalty" seemed incredibly silly.

The rich kids I knew had both. ANY kid who was honest would have wanted both, no matter what they said. But most kids couldn't have both, so whatever you had, that was "better". Bullsh*t. The Genesis was on the market for two whole years before ANYONE gave a sh*t about it, it was a complete non-factor in the marketplace until Sonic showed up, but suddenly "Everyone Knows" that Sega and the Genesis are "better"? :lol: Okay, I guess they were all just asleep for two whole years?

Thankfully, nobody I knew was THAT insufferable about it. The SNES kids went over to play Genesis at their friends' houses, and vice-versa, and most of the time it never got too tribal. It was only really a few kids, and they tended to just be Dicks In General about any old thing. Most kids were honest, "I wish I had ______ too but I can only have the one."

I liked the stuff I played on Genesis just fine, but nothing ever blew me away to the point I regretted having a SNES. Even back then I saw through Sonic 1 as not quite being as good as everyone says it is (it really isn't), and I didn't give a sh*t about sports games. If I were a big sports guy, I might have wished more for a Genesis, because they had the better sports games. But I mostly was into platformers and wrestling games, and those tended to be better on the SNES. So I never felt like I was missing anything.

My Dad did ask me once if I'd like a Genesis, but we were not doing well financially and I told him sincerely that if he had the money to spend I'd rather he just get me some SNES games, since I only had a couple at that point. That made more sense to me than having two consoles but still having to rent to play anything on either one. So I told him I'd rather just get more games for the console I already had. Just made more sense.

As an adult, I'm glad to finally have a Genesis but I can say I feel even better about how things went as a kid. Playing some of the same games on both consoles, the ones that were released multiplatform by and large did turn out better on the SNES, thanks to the larger color palette and better sound chip. I do not feel like I missed out at all by not having a Genesis as a kid. But I am glad I have one now.

Now if only I could get this goddamn Master System fixed. :tgrumble:

[Prowler]

Yes.

I do like the Mega Drive, but I don't see how anyone cna seriously suggest it was superior to the SNES. Most of the people I've met who genuinely believe that are people who didn't get the chance to play the SNES until emulators were a thing. So there's definitely nostalgia bias there.

I just think games like A Link to the Past, the Donkey Kong Country series and the Square RPGs plus Earthbound just give the SNES the advantage. The games equivalent to those in the MD just aren't as good. Not to mention, as Leo said, whenever a game came out for both systems, the SNES version was almost always superior.

The SNES has also aged better in terms of graphics, mechanics and sound. Which is understandable. The MD is 2 years older than the SNES. It came out in 1989! And it didn't have Mode 7 incorporated in it nor a sound chip made by Sony.

I mean, I grew up with both the Saturn and the N64. I love my Saturn. It gave me so many precious memories. But you don't see me saying it was superior to the N64 and the PS1 do you? Just like I don't claim the GameCube was better than the PS2.

Anyway, I do love the 90s Sega. They were in their prime and were the kings of arcade games and Sonic was also huge for several years. I also think Sega, at their best, could be crazier and more creative than Nintendo. I just don't see Nintendo coming up with games like Daytona USA, Virtua Cop, Nights and Fighting Vipers.

A Sega in her prime would be great for today's market. The problem is, the company seemed to be ran rather poorly, and thus it ceased to make consoles after the Dreamcast. Hell, they have even handled Sonic, their own mascot, poorly. There was a time where Sonic's reputation got so bad that it was honestly just depressing to see. It seems to have recovered a bit in the last 5 years or so, though.

I'd really love to see Sega becoming awesome again and bringing back iconic series from the grave and giving them great modern day entries. But I know that will never happen.

[Leo656]

Well when it came to 2D fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom, the Sega Saturn WAS far superior to anything else on the market at that time. I personally would not have cared much at that time, since I almost never played fighting games back then, but if you were a fighting game fan in 1997 and didn't have a Saturn you were totally missing out. The PS1 ports of those games were horrible by comparison, and the N64 barely had any fighting games at all.

Every console had its own specialties and that's why anyone with a well-rounded taste would try and get their hands on everything, somehow. The SNES was all about platformers and especially RPGs; if you were a hardcore RPG fanatic (I wasn't yet), the Genesis had very little for you at all but you could literally drown in excellent RPGs on the SNES. Conversely, the SNES had mediocre sports titles but a baseball or football fan would be extremely well-met with the Genesis library. In either case, even if you only liked One Genre of games you'd be set for life on your system of choice. It went a lot deeper than just Mario vs. Sonic; that was just about differing tastes in platformers, but the broader libraries of either console played to entirely different types of people.

For some people, it was as simple as which genre they preferred. An RPG fanatic would have been crazy to own a Genesis; a football fan would have been crazy to own a SNES. And so on and so forth.

This continued into the next generation, to a degree. Ironically, this time it was the N64 that RPG fans would have been crazy to own, as the PS1 had all the greats due to the N64 cartridges' limited storage capacity. 3D action platformers, rather, were the genre the N64 excelled with, due to smoother graphics and no loading times compared to the Saturn or PS1, as well as any type of game that was catered for multiplayer. The Saturn, as mentioned, was far and away the choice for fighting game fans, as well as people who were heavily into the import scene (as some of the very best Saturn games never came out outside of Japan). They also had some great shooters as well. The PS1 was definitely the most well-rounded system, and it more or less had no glaring "weak spots"... outside of 2D fighters, which were far better on Saturn, but there were so many other things to play that only the real hardcores were very upset by that.

That was pretty much the last generation where console preference could truly be divided up by genre, though, as with the next generation most of the Big Games went fully multiplatform (outside of obvious publisher-exclusives). RPGs were still pretty much the primary domain of the PS2, but the Xbox still had some good ones (although the Gamecube sadly continued the N64 streak of not having very many at all). Outside of that genre, though, as things went more multiplatform, which console you preferred mostly came down to your preference in exclusives and graphics, and that's continued to this day.

By the PS2 era, I was working and so I was able to get the PS2, Gamecube, and Xbox, and spent a ton of time with all three (although I had fewer games for the Xbox). I will say, the Gamecube has outlived the others by very many years and I can put up with the slightly-blurry graphics in exchange for simply being able to play some games on a more stable platform. Both my PS2 and Xbox died ages ago, and so I've bought as many games as possible for the 'Cube so I could be able to finally play them again, and I can't speak for everyone but to me the graphics don't look THAT much worse. Plus, the Game Boy Advance player was a huge boon for the 'Cube, essentially opening up the possibility to play hundreds more games on your TV with one inexpensive little add-on.

Nowadays, Nintendo consoles are so cheap and their library so unique compared to the others it really makes no sense not to own one. And whether you have a PS or Xbox system mostly comes down to how much you want to play Spider-Man or God of War; otherwise, the libraries are 99% identical and we've reached a point where graphical fidelity is about even between them, as well. We're as close to parity as we've ever been.

But back in the 90s, genre preference was a huge factor, and many people made their purchasing choices based on that. Looking back it's really fascinating to me how every console had its own specialty of sorts. I hadn't really noticed it then, since my tastes weren't as prolific as they'd later become.

[Original TMNT Cartoon Fan]

The SNES has also aged better in terms of graphics, mechanics and sound. Which is understandable. The MD is 2 years older than the SNES. It came out in 1989! And it didn't have Mode 7 incorporated in it nor a sound chip made by Sony.

Console release dates:

Nintendo Entertainment System
Japan: 15 July 1983
North America: 18 October 1985
Western Europe: 1 September 1986 (1987 in some countries)

Sega Master System
Japan: 20 October 1985
North America: September 1986
Western Europe: June 1987

Sega Mega Drive-Genesis
Japan: 29 October 1988
North America: 14 August 1989
Western Europe: September 1990

Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Japan: 21 November 1990
North America: 23 August 1991
British Isles: 11 April 1992
Western Europe: 4 June 1992

Most people I know upgrated either from NES to Super NES or from Sega Master System to Sega Mega Drive-Genesis.

[Prowler]

The Saturn definitely had great fighting games. I loved its fighting games. No console beats Saturn and Dreamcast when it comes to homem ports of arcade games, really. Sega were clearly the kings of the arcade machine.

I was too young throughout the 90s and early 2000s to decide which console to buy. My brother chose all of them, pretty much. I'm guessing he mostly went for Nintendo because he grew up with the NES and thus felt the most comfortable with Nintendo exclusives. I do know he was pretty undecided between the PS1 and the Saturn and he followed news about both very closely. He probably just ended up going for the Saturn because it quickly lowered its price a lot due to rather underwhelming sales.

I don't think it was a bad decision anyway. Sure I wish I could have grown up with the PS1, but the N64 and the Saturn were both awesome to my eyes as well. They had enough games for me to occupy myself with.

The first time I felt jealous of the competition was during the PS2 era. I liked the GameCube but the PS2 had countless games and so much cool stuff that the GameCube wasn't getting. Eventually I did get a PS2 Slim and played some of those games I had no chance of playing on the GC. Also, Sunshine and Wind Waker are two of my least favourite major Mario and Zelda games to this day. I know it was very tough to follow up Mario 64, OOT and MM, and I give credit to Nintendo for trying something new, but I wasn't a huge fan. The Mario Galaxy games on the Wii and BOTW on the Switch are much better.

The problem with the GC was never its graphics. Its library and third party support was just somewhat limited. I guess the very small discs the games came in didn't make developing games for the system any easier.

Perhaps the GC did age better overall. It helps a lot of its exclusives were games with cartoonist graphics instead of games aiming for more realistic graphics like GTA. I do think SSB Melee and F-Zero GX aged very well as did Mario Kart Double Dash. But Tekken 5 on the PS2 aged pretty well too, for example.

As for modern day systems, I only have a Switch. Don't think I'll end up getting a PS5 ever. The Switch has good enough exclusives and older 3rd party games for me to play. It's the domestic Nintendo console with the most 3rd party support since the SNES. That's sufficient for me.

[Leo656]

Sadly, the Master System was a complete non-factor over here, and that's a shame. It didn't have the big exclusives the NES had, but in many ways it was a technically-superior console and thus games that came out for both were leagues better on the Master System. The Nintendo marketing juggernaut was just too great in North America, plus they played some dirty pool with retailers and threatened to pull their stock if those stores sold Sega products. Nobody was going to risk losing Mario and Zelda in exchange for Alex Kidd, and most American kids wouldn't have cared anyway.

It's a shame, because the Master System really does have an impressive library with a lot of gems, and they mostly all look and sound great compared to their NES counterparts. Not knocking the NES, it's just sad that we were deprived of a pretty stellar 8-bit system over here for no reason outside of corporate greed. I mean, it existed, you could buy one... but nobody wanted one, very few places sold games for it, and it wasn't going to impress your friends.

Unfortunately, the Master System's innards are prone to corrosion, as I found out the hard way, so it broke down a lot sooner than most cartridge-based systems and finding someone to repair it, I'm learning, is a real bitch. If it breaks you're more or less better off just buying one that's been tested and proven to work. At least, so far I haven't found anyone around here who can fix mine. The few places I've seen online that advertise that particular service (out of state, of course), once again after repairs and shipping it would be cheaper to just buy another one. I'm still looking, though. I really wanna play this damn thing, I have some awesome games for it.

[Prowler]

Honestly I'm very ignorant about the Master System.

I can't name any games for it except Alex Kidd and Sonic.

The MS even outsold the NES in Europe, surprisingly. For some reason Sega just invested more in the European market than Nintendo did. Nintendo back in the 80s and 90s mostly focused on Japan and the US. Funny enough Sega didn't really invest much in Japan, its country, until the Saturn came along. Both the MS and the MD sold very poorly in Japan. While Saturn outsold the N64 in Japan and the Dreamcast still got a bunch of homebrew games made for it in Japan.

Sega itself probably doesn't market MS as much. They just seem to focus on the Mega Drive, since it's their most successful and well-known system. Even the Game Gear got games in the 3DS Virtual Console ffs.

[Leo656]

All of Sega's previous products had initially debuted - and bombed hard - in Japan, so while they were still headquartered there they knew that their bread and butter was going to lay in other markets. They obviously never wrote off Japan completely but by the time the Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive were out, they knew they weren't going to penetrate very deep into Japan. It was never their biggest or most successful market even at their peak; Japan got some great Saturn games that were never released elsewhere, but neither the Saturn or Dreamcast ended up doing incredibly well over there.

The Master System didn't have a ton of "big name" games, just a lot of really great games most people never really heard of. Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone, Golden Axe Warrior, Phantasy Star, Space Harrier... there were a lot of really good "under-the-radar" games, and some great home versions of stuff like After Burner and Choplifter. Their version of Ghostbusters, while essentially the same game as the version for NES and home computers, was also miles ahead of any other with much better graphics, sound and controls. The NES version most people know was a huge piece of sh*t but the Master System version was surprisingly decent by comparison.

Phantasy Star went on to be a semi-revered franchise and is a pretty good RPG in its own right, from the days when the only real alternatives were Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. Golden Axe Warrior is the most blatant Legend of Zelda rip-off you'll ever see, but it was still a great game in its own right. The Sonic games weren't so much "ports" of the Genesis games, but rather built from the ground up for the Master System, and again, surprisingly good. And of course there's Alex Kidd, which not everyone cares much for but still came to be synonymous with Sega in the pre-Sonic era.

Lots and lots of good stuff on the Master System. Sadly, a lot of the better games only came out in Europe and South America, where the Master System was most popular (Sega always did better in markets where people weren't gaga for Nintendo). The Game Gear had quite a few games that were pretty much direct conversions of Master System games, but a lot of the better games didn't get ported. It didn't have a huge library, nowhere near as deep as the NES, but objectively, many of the games it did have were better, at least insofar as presentation. The Master System could produce graphics and sound that completely blew away anything the NES was capable of.

Without a "killer app" or better distribution, it ultimately didn't make much difference. But still plenty of fun to be had with the Master System, for sure. If it was the ONLY system a kid had... that would've been pretty rough, though.

[Prowler]

Sega definitely seemed to be more western oriented. I mean look at Sonic ffs. When I was a little kid, I think I thought he was American. Can you blame me? Just look at the title screen and that cartoon of his where he está chilly dogs.

Ah right the first ever Phantasy Star game came out on the Master System. Speaking of that series, I played some of Phantasy Star II on the Genesis Collection and boy is the game tough and rather cryptic. You need to get maps from the Internet to be able to guide yourself through dungeons. The game is good but rather rough. Perhaps I'd better just skip to Phantasy Star IV.

Oh yeah, apparently Master System was huge in Brazil or something. And the Neo Geo was huge in Mexico and South America as well, as were the King of Fighters games. Really funny how those things happen.

[Leo656]

Yeah, Sonic was basically focus-grouped into existence for the sole purpose of being a "Mario-Killer" in the Western market. It worked, but it was completely corporate. He was essentially Poochy, if Poochy didn't completely suck.

I don't think it's blasphemy or even controversial NOW to say that the Sonic games don't have anything on the Mario games, though. They were "faster" and graphically very impressive, but the gameplay was never as deep and the games simply aren't as fun. Even in the 2D era when the franchise was at its peak, no Sonic game holds a candle to Super Mario World. Maybe that wasn't something you would say out loud on the playground in 1994, but in hindsight it's pretty f*cking hard to argue with it.

I played some Phantasy Star II, and while I had fun with it, yeah, it was definitely very cryptic and tough for me to crack. I stopped playing it and swore I'd go back and play it with a walkthrough, but I never got around to it. I plan to, though! I don't think I played the first one, yet. I got the second one when it was available on Xbox Live Arcade.

Another console that never caught on over here that I'd still love to get my hands on was the TurboGrafx-16 (aka the PC Engine). Once again, not a very deep library - SO many shoot-'em-ups; talk about consoles having a "niche genre", that was definitely the "Shoot-'Em-Up System" - but some really awesome stuff like Splatterhouse and Bonk's Adventure, anyway.

I only knew one kid who ever had one, and he sold it for a Genesis I think.

[Prowler]

Yes, I agree. I mean, tbh the classic Sonic games are very fun to this day. But they're objectively not better platformers than the best Mario, Donkey Kong or Mega Man games.

They're very simple pick up and play games though. And they look colourful and have fun music. Nothing wrong with that. As for Sonic being a worthy rival to Mario, eh they kind of mirrored each other. Mario focused on jumping while Sonic focused on speed.

Was the Turbo Graphx 16 a success anywhere at all? I've never met anyone who had one either. Although I don't think it was a bad system. It had a small library with some decent games and that's it. Some even made it to the Wii Virtual Console. I guess it just couldn't find a place in the market to compete against the SNES and the Mega Drive.

I'd rather give it a try than give 3DO a try. Now that one just looks rather crappy, even though it has probably the best domestic port of Super Street Fighter II Turbo and with a great Ost.

[Leo656]

Sonic 1 PRETENDS to be "all about speed". That lasts for exactly the first level and then after that, you're slowly walking around trying not to get hit by spikes or poorly-placed enemies and only occasionally going fast ever again. It's such a drag. I don't hate the game but you can tell they put all of their effort into the very first level and after that the game kinda sh*ts the bed and starts going against its entire supposed raison d'etre. It punishes you for doing the very thing they tell you it wants you to do: Go Fast.

When people talk about what a "classic" Sonic 1 is, they mostly just mean the first level. Although there were still fun and memorable levels after that, but that's the only one that actually delivers fully on the premise. The whole game's kind of a bait-and-switch in that regard. It's a pretty "regular" platformer outside of the one or two places where you can actually cut loose. And those levels where you can't, the level design and enemy placement aren't great, so it drags the whole experience down.

Thankfully, the sequels immediately corrected on this and from the second game onward they actually delivered on what was promised in the commercials. The games' level were actually designed entirely around speed and they immediately got better for it.

I probably sound like I hate Sonic 1; I don't, honest, but when you've played all of them a lot for three decades you start to notice things.

Wikipedia tells me that the TurboGrafx-16 was very successful in Japan, and even outsold the Famicom, which makes sense since the Famicom was a bit of an older console over there when the Turbo came out in '87 and the Turbo was much more impressive on a graphical level. Just like with the Master System, any games that came out on both the Famicom/NES and the Turbo looked like sh*t on the Nintendo console. NEC also brought a CD console to home markets many years before anyone else did, although a limited library meant it didn't really catch on. Points for ingenuity, though.

Outside of Japan, though, it did struggle mightily because it's release was delayed. By the time it came out in America, the Genesis was already out and the SNES was on the way so it really never had a prayer, seeing it was a mere 8-bit console now competing against the newer and more advanced 16-bit consoles. Whatever licenses Nintendo didn't have exclusive deals with, Sega had, and Sega at least had SOME name recognition in North America by 1989 (a few people did have a Master System and they were always advertised in comic books even though their products sold less than 1/10 of Nintendo's), whereas nobody had any idea who "NEC" was.

The two "killer apps" the TurboGrafx-16 had in North America were Bonk's Adventure and Splatterhouse, and that's mainly because there was an extensive advertising campaign for them in every single comic book for months and months. For like almost two years you could expect to find the two-page comic-style insert ad for those games in any DC, Marvel, or Archie comic you picked up, which meant every kid in America at least knew about Those Two Games. They just couldn't convince their parents to splurge on a system JUST for that. The games got great reviews, but without any other big-name stuff they just couldn't crack the marketplace. To this day, most Americans can't name any other games that came out for it besides those two, and the sequels to those games got booted over to the Genesis where they predictably sold much better.

I've mentioned this many times but which consoles were hits (and misses) in various parts of the world just fascinates the sh*t out of me. What happened in one country or another was never even close to the whole story. The What and the Why just amazes me. In the pre-internet days, what you saw was all you knew. In the 80s, for example, the NES was all we knew and we figured it was like that everywhere. We had no idea that the Master System killed them in Europe, or that the TurboGrafx-16 outsold them in Japan. We just had no idea! There was always this whole bigger picture, this amazing gaming landscape that you were just totally ignorant of unless you somehow had a window into what was happening on the other side of the world.

As a kid, I felt fulfilled. Looking back as an adult, though, I/we were seriously deprived.

[Andrew NDB]

Honestly I'm very ignorant about the Master System.

I can't name any games for it except Alex Kidd and Sonic.

What? There was no Sonic game on Master System. Was there?

I enjoyed the Ghostbusters game on Master System. Alien Syndrome too.

[Leo656]

Two Sonic games on Master System, neither one a Genesis port. Totally different games, although there are parts that are reminiscent. But completely different level design.

Some people prefer Sonic 1 on the Master System over the Genesis counterpart. Objectively, a very strong case can in fact be made. It's essentially the same as the one for Game Gear.

Sonic 2 is also more or less the same as the Game Gear game and has even less in common than the 16-bit version than the first game did.

[oldmanwinters]

What? There was no Sonic game on Master System. Was there?

I enjoyed the Ghostbusters game on Master System. Alien Syndrome too.

I played through Master System Sonic 1 last night! Very impressive given the hardware. I think the jump from Wonder Boy/Alex Kidd to 8-bit Sonic might be almost as impressive as the jump from Super Mario Bros 1 to 3 on the NES.

[Leo656]

I played through Master System Sonic 1 last night! Very impressive given the hardware. I think the jump from Wonder Boy/Alex Kidd to 8-bit Sonic might be almost as impressive as the jump from Super Mario Bros 1 to 3 on the NES.

Yeah, the level design on 8-bit Sonic 1 is a lot less "F*ck You" than the "real" Sonic 1. It's a good game.

More people are familiar with having played it on the Game Gear but it's a lot more fun when you can actually see the screen.

I believe I first played it on the first Sonic Collection for Gamecube.

[Andrew NDB]

Two Sonic games on Master System, neither one a Genesis port. Totally different games, although there are parts that are reminiscent. But completely different level design.

Some people prefer Sonic 1 on the Master System over the Genesis counterpart. Objectively, a very strong case can in fact be made. It's essentially the same as the one for Game Gear.

Sonic 2 is also more or less the same as the Game Gear game and has even less in common than the 16-bit version than the first game did.

Damn, that's mind blowing. I had no idea Sonic had any games on Master System. Sonic's debut seemed like ages after I had a Master System.

[Leo656]

Most people had no idea! They were very late-release Master System games. Hardly anyone owned a Master System to start with but by the time Sonic came out - definitely by the time Sonic 2 had come out - anyone who'd cared had moved on to the Genesis. You still saw print ads advertising games that would be released "For both the Sega Genesis and Master System consoles" as late as 1993 or so, but they only ever showed off the Genesis versions, and often the "Master System" part would be in rather tiny font. It was clear everyone was moving on by then.

However, Sega still had a ton of unsold console stock and so in desperation they tried to piggyback on the Genesis success by re-releasing the Master System as a "budget" console, including with a redesign, but it didn't really take. Not up here, anyway. In Brazil, they were killing it. But yeah, in America it wasn't even an also-ran, and so most of the late-era Master System games, people only really know from their early Game Gear ports. Which were "fine", but not as good as the Master System versions.

Like I said, Video Game History on a global scale is f*cking fascinating. I learn more every day and I've been a fanatic for many years.

[Icebot]

When I got the SNES, I really got into Super Mario World, I got tired of it after about 2 months. I also got Super Mario All Stars so that got me playing Super Mario’s 1 through 3 again as well as the Lost Levels.

The other SNES games I had and got into are:

Mega Man X 1 and 2
F Zero
True Lies
World Heroes 1 and 2
Final Fight
TMNT Turtles In Time

[oldmanwinters]

Two Sonic games on Master System, neither one a Genesis port. Totally different games, although there are parts that are reminiscent. But completely different level design.

Some people prefer Sonic 1 on the Master System over the Genesis counterpart. Objectively, a very strong case can in fact be made. It's essentially the same as the one for Game Gear.

Sonic 2 is also more or less the same as the Game Gear game and has even less in common than the 16-bit version than the first game did.

There was also Sonic Chaos, Spinball, Mean Bean Machine, and (I think) Sonic Blast but only the first game got a USA release.

[Prowler]

Sonic 1 is like that because developers were afraid all that speed would have been too much for people at the time to handle. I'm not even joking. That was pretty much their reasoning. Which is why, after Green Hill Zone, you get Marble Zone, a place where you pretty much are unable to use the fast speed mechanic. They didn't want to overwhelm the player..

I guess it sounds ridiculous nowadays, but back in 1991, Sonic was the fastest game ever. Kinda like nowadays you just chuckle at bands like Iron Maiden and Black Sabbath being labeled heavy. Well, back then they were two of the heaviest sounding bands ever. And Metallica seemed even heavier. Nowadays with black metal and all the hardcore bands around, it sounds absurd to consider the bands mentioned above "heavy".

[Leo656]

Not bad reasoning, but a lot of the level design and enemy placement is still just plain Not Good even in light of that. Too many places where building even the slightest momentum throws you straight into an unavoidable enemy.

Thankfully, it all got a lot better very early on.

One of the reasons the Mario games are so revered is that they're just picture-perfect game design and the game does a fantastic job of gradually teaching you how to get great at it. They never feel "unfair", just challenging. Every time I die in SMB1 or SMB3, it feels like My Fault. When I die in Sonic 1, it feels like the game's being a dick.

I still like to mess with it but I find myself having way more fun with the sequels. Outside of Green Hill Zone of course which is altogether pretty well-done.

[Prowler]

Oh yeah, you gotta be careful where to jump into at times and when to stop speeding because you might fall into a hole or hit an enemy. Starlight Zone definitely had that issue. And that's the zone in the game besides Green Hill where you are allowed to go fast the most often.

Sonic 2 is definitely the best classic Sonic game. As for the best Sonic game of all time, that's Sonic Mania for me. It basically mixes levels and elements and graphics from the classic style Sonic games and also adds some new content.

Green Hill Zone... People complain it gets reused so often but that's Sonic's home and the most iconic place in the series. Not to mention it's consistently one of the best zones in the games and a great guide in how to play.

[Leo656]

I can't lie, the only one I've played that I absolutely can't stand is Sonic '06, and that game isn't even finished. It's pretty unplayable, though.

I spent a lot of time with Sonic Unleashed and while I don't think it's AS bad as people say it is, I don't see why the hell they made that game, specifically, and it has a ton of problems. I did have some fun with it, but huge chunks of it were tedious and/or frustrating, and after I died a ton on the final Boss I just rage-quit and never went back to it. I think a lot of the hate is hyperbole but I can't say I'd ever recommend it either. There's glimpses of a much better game in there though. Good luck having the patience to find them.

I know a lot of people love Sonic Adventure 2, but I just don't. Again, it WANTS to be a good game, but there's too much bullsh*t. The final sequence is incredibly aggravating to the point I think I only beat it twice, at most, possibly only once. The game has WAY too many spots where they fling you up a mile in the air at full speed, and rather than land on anything you just drift into space and die automatically (later games would "magnetize" you to a rail or other surface on the way down so you wouldn't die for no reason at all, which feels like mercy). And those Knuckles missions... oh GOD, those Knuckles missions. Just awful. It has a lot of ambition but the execution wasn't there yet. Everything SA2 does well, later games did way better, and with a lot less frustration. I can't think of any good reason to play it.

If I had to pick a favorite Sonic game I might have to say Generations. I'm of the minority that never outright hated the shift to 3D, I just felt like most games either didn't do it well or they would start to and then screw it up, like Unleashed. I really loved the way Generations used the best parts of the 2D and 3D games without any of the frustrating parts of either. Literally the best of both worlds. I played that game to death, and my thumbs hadn't been so sore since 1993. And for once, I had nothing but fun and pretty much no frustration.

Sonic Mania is great of course, I personally just found it a little bit one-note since it was more heavily focused on capturing the old school 2D feel. And that's fine, but as I said since I actually liked the 3D gameplay (when it was done well) I personally found more to like in Generations since it had more of a mix of everything. I know I definitely played it for longer. But Mania's a great game, no doubt.

[Prowler]

I think Sega just never truly figured it out how to make Sonic's transition to 3D fully work. I guess a game like Sonic that was initially designed to take advantage of Mega Drive being faster than the competitor's console wasn't meant to shine on a 3D console or game.

I know Sonic Adventure was well received when it came out but clearly it doesn't have the same legacy as Mario 64. And most people I've talked to who grew up with Adventure will tell you the game didn't age that well and that it was never a masterpiece.

Sonic never had a game like the Mario Galaxy games or Mario Odyssey either.

Also, Sega has lost some of its people working on their games throughout the years while Nintendo was a lot better at keeping a lot of employees they had from the 90s. They kept growing up as developers and as people throughout the years. Nintendo has always been a well run company. Even when their systems didn't sell that well like during the GameCube and Wii U eras, they still managed to make a lot of money from the GBA and the DS/3DS. Not to mention from Pokémon, their biggest cash cow. Nintendo never felt like it was run by monkeys like Sega did around the mid-late 90s.

[Leo656]

I think the problem is that none of the 3D Sonic games were "all good" like Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Galaxy or whatever. Stuff like the Sonic Adventure games or Unleashed would have a lot of good-to-great stuff in them... but there'd always be one or two things that were bad-to-awful, and so it would wreck the curve.

Like, I still love playing Sonic Adventure, but if you clip the stuff with Big entirely and do the Knuckles sections differently, it would be a MUCH better game immediately. And I don't even hate those parts as much as most people do, they simply have no real business being there and they drag the game down needlessly. Nobody wanted to play a fishing mini-game in a Sonic game; it felt like they only did that because everyone raved about the fishing mini-game in Ocarina of Time so they were like, "This sh*t's gonna be the future!" And the Emerald-hunting with Knuckles wasn't entirely bad, in that game, but it was tedious. SA is so close to being a "perfect" 3D Sonic game, but the junky bits drag it down and taint the memory of it. The Sonic and Tails parts are still very, very good, and they work to disprove the notion that "Sonic doesn't work in 3D". It CAN, it totally can and does... when they maintain focus. They clearly added the other stuff with other characters as a means to "add variety", but that's the thing, nobody really WANTED that. If that game had just been the Sonic and Tails levels, I'm convinced people would still be singing its praises today, instead of just saying "Well, it wasn't a bad first try". Because there's really nothing wrong at all with those parts.

Most people loved Sonic Adventure 2 better, and there are some improvements, but again, the bad stuff drags it down. The Knuckles sections are AWFUL in that game, and I swear that stuff by itself is gonna keep me from ever playing that game again. The final section of the game is also terrible. It makes sense having to play through as all the characters one final time but it just takes too long and the Robotnik and Tails parts are godawful. Again, there's potential there, but the bad stuff is REALLY bad.

Even Unleashed had a lot of great stuff in it... but Jesus, that Werehog stuff was a f*cking misfire. I gave the game a fair shake, and everything that was "regular Sonic" gameplay was fine, and I even thought the little side quests were neat, very Mario-and-Zelda-esque. I did have a lot of fun with the game... but only parts of it, and the final section was so infuriating I never finished it.

This is why I love Sonic Generations so much. It has everything that was great about the 3D Sonic games, with NONE of the sh*t that just didn't work. There wasn't one minute of that game where I wasn't having a f*cking blast. The 2D levels and 3D levels were pure perfection all the way around. And it shows that Sonic gameplay works GREAT in 3D, when done properly. So the old chestnut that "It just doesn't work" is bullsh*t." Total bullsh*t. They just need to NOT drag it down with a bunch of silly sh*t nobody ever asked for in a Sonic game, like fishing or digging around for rocks. When it's focused, it's great. But they lost focus more often than not. That was the problem. They pretty much nailed the 3D gameplay right out of the gate with SA but refused to commit to just that.

Sonic Heroes is also a pretty sweet game nobody really talks about much. But they should. I'd take a sequel.

[Prowler]

I remember being so frustrated when I first saw footage of Sonic Jam in that 3D section of the menu or something that's a small part of the game. THAT'S what the Saturn 3D Sonic game should have looked like. Not Flickies Island with better graphics.

I feel like Nights into Dreams was basically the Sonic game of the Saturn. Another issue with Sonic is... there seems to be a new Sonic game coming out all the damn time. Perhaps Sega should slow down a bit and work on a new Sonic game for a few years instead of trying to pump them out as quick and possible.

Sonic had a period in the mid and late 2000s where it became an embarrassment and pretty much tarnished its reputation forever. Sonic 06 being one of the main reasons for that, I'm sure.

Sega should never let its own mascot reach such lows.