Sega Genesis Black Console

I got my Sega Genesis from my younger brother who bought it at a yard sale, didn't want to play it anymore, and knowing yours truly is a collector and an old school gamer gave it to me. I have never had a genesis took it in. While I like the Sega Genesis during the era I was a Super Nintendo fan boy, and after owning the genesis I still am.

History of the console.
 The Sega Genesis was launch in late 1989 to compete with Nintendo's NES. It was Sega 2nd console after the huge disaster that was its master system. They manage to get there foot in the door and tread water by a good marketing campaign that was pretty much poked fun at the 800 pound gorilla in the room Nintendo (Sega's slogan was Sega Does what Nintendon't). Also Nintendo took its 90% share of the market place for granted and didn't launch its SNES for a full 2 years after words.

Meanwhile Sega shook up its USA office and put in a man named Kalinski who worked for Mattel in. Kalinski did things that radically changed the way Sega operated. He slashed the price of the console and following Nintendo's lead he got rid of the crappy pack in game Altered Beast and put in the game that was the best is company had to offer in a game called Sonic the Hedgehog.  Sega took off and despite Nintendo's new console being more powerful Sega was able to fend them off with cheaper and sometimes uncensored version of games. Nintendo did take the lead in the end when games like Final Fantasy 3, Donkey Kong Country, and Yoshi Island came out but Sega manage to grab the behemoth by the horns and hold on to the market place for several years, a remarkable accomplishment at the time.

Graphics.
Graphically if you put them side to side the Genesis really doesn't hold up to the SNES. Its picture isn't has crisp, and not has many colors were on screen at a time. However what the Genesis did have that the SNES didn't have was better processing power. This meant that despite the picture not being has good the animation of the sprites could be smoother and more enemies could be on screen at a time without slow down. Also if your game was about a speedy hedgehog the game could move around the picture really fast without tearing. This gave Genesis a bit of an edge in some games.

Sound.
Sorry the sound on the genesis is pretty bland; this is one area where the SNES and its Sony sound chip just dominated. While you Legend of Zelda theme coming in crisp audio, Phantasy Star theme just seem to come to sound from a poor synthesizer in comparison.

The Controller.
Interesting note the Sega Genesis and the Atari 2600 controllers are interchangeable they have the same ends. That said the Atari 2600 makes a crappy controller for the Sega Genesis but it's an interesting fact. The regular Sega controller comes with a rather large circular D-Pad on the left and 3 action buttons going diagonally up the right. It has large hand grips and it's fairly confortable to hold. Later control pads were released by Sega with 6 buttons to help keep up with games like Street Fighter which benefited from the SNES controller.

Peripherals.
Sorry my Sega Genesis didn't come with any special add-ons or attachments. But there are the Sega CD and Sega 32X which had a few sleeper hits on them but go down in history has failures.

Durability.
All right maybe it's wrong to knock a whole console on one you find at a yard sale you don't know what it's been through. But starting this genesis up is even more hard then my side loading NES. Blowing, moving, reloading consoles in hopes that it hits the connection long enough and stays there for the game too load. While neither me nor my brother baby our consoles, we never treat them has a door stop either. And my SNES still works fine after 20 years with me, what's this Genesis excuse for being a pain to operate.
The Games.
Time for me to make a list of games I like and a few games I don't like. I will put a * for games I have not played on the Genesis itself, but from a port from the many (and I do mean many) genesis collections out there.

Games I recommend.

Sonic The Hedgehog.
While we can debate that Mario World was a better game than Sonic, Sonic was released before that and at the time Sonic took a lot of Mario's solid platforming and put some speed into it. Loopy loops, bouncing from walls, and spinning into spike enemies made this game a lot of fun. Add in some memorable music (note I said the Sega's sound processing was bad that doesn't' mean a game couldn't have good music)

Sonic 3.
Skipping 2 which had good platforming but added in Tails which just mucked things up Sonic bounced back with Sonic 3. This time Tails doesn't get in the way and if you have 2 players the 2nd person can pick up Sonic and fly him around for short distances. Add in the way Knuckles can come around and change the stage and Sonic 3 was a great game.

Aladdin
A lot of movie based games suck, but a few don't and Aladdin falls into the ones that don't. With a lot of smooth animation and colorful sprites that come off the movie it was closest a game could look to an animated movie at the time and Aladdin pulls it off with charm.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles the Hyper stone Heist.
Yeah this is pretty much a poor man's Turtles in Time but who cares it's still a great brawler. While there is plenty of reused and tone down sprites, and even a few reused bosses the stages are new and there are a few new bosses. Including Tatsu from the Ninja Turtles movies. While it's not has good has the SNES version of Turtles in Time it's way better then Turtles in Time Reshelled.

*Gunstar Heroes.
Contra on anime steroids is what Gunstar Heroes is. Save the world by blasting through stages and collecting colored jewels so you can try to defeat the legendary robot Gold Silver. With the ability to collect and combine weapons and lots of action makes Gunstar Heroes a game you can't miss.

*Streets of Rage 2.
While the original Streets of Rage had more content then Final Fight its bad animation and frame rate kept it from being the perfect brawler. Streets of Rage 2 changes that and tightens everything up from the original to make one of the best brawlers ever released period.

*Comix Zone.
This tough has nails brawler has an interesting spin; it takes place entirely inside a comic book. Play through the world has Sketch a comic book writer who has got sucked into his own creation by the villain he created. The only way out is to beat the whole army of bad guys and become the super hero Sketch has always wanted to be.

Games to avoid
Plenty of games to avoid on the Genesis and sadly a lot of the games on this list are made by Sega themselves.

Phantasy Star 2.
Yeah I know a whole lot of fanboys are screaming Tommy_lop hates Sega Phantasy Star boo hiss. Nope that's not the problem I have played through the original, 2, 3, and a good chunk of 4 (I still need to beat it) 1 had its problem but it was ahead of it's time for an 8-bit RPG. 3 was out there but did stuff differently. And 4 seem to take a lot of what other 16-bit RPG was doing and incorporate it smoothly. Phantasy Star 2 is just a mess from a somewhat confusing mess of a story with a ridiculous cliff hanger ending. Too confusing dungeons with over the top layout made worse that Sega decided to over decorate the foreground so much that you can't tell what is pipe hanging over the celling and what is actual wall just makes this Phantasy a skip.

*Virtua Fighter 2.
No not the arcade game the Sega Genesis version, comparing the Genesis version to the arcade version of Virtua Fighter is like comparing the Atari 2600 version of Pac-man too it's arcade original. And this one might actually beat out Pac-Man for worst home port I have ever seen. From crappy controls to stiff character designs this fighter is just not fun to play.

*Sonic 3d.
Ah yes you have to love the end of the 16-bit era where everyone was hopping on the 3d band wagon before there was actual 3d graphics. Nintendo had Donkey Kong Country, Sega before creating Vectorman tried to go 3d with Sonic 3d, an isometric over the head view that kind of looks 3d but really isn't. Worse it steals its idea from another dull game Flickey, the idea is to try to find and rescue all these birds and bring them back to the exit. Ignoring the bad camera and controls the game is just dull. Still better than most of the real 3d Sonic games (but then that's not saying much)

*Sword of Vermillion.
Yeah most RPG's I declare bad I at least try to get 10-15 hours into them before I declare them bad, a lot I even complete, and then there is Sword of Vermillion which I threw out my controller in a fit of rage in 10-15 minutes. Ok let's see where do I start with this turd, in village top down classic Final fantasy perspective. Out on the world first person pseudo 3d look of games of the time. In battle turns into a crappy action RPG with poor hit detection. Sega promised 300 hours of gameplay in this package, you don't want to waste 300 seconds (5 minutes) of your life on this game.

Altered Beast.
Last and in some ways certainly least on this list is Altered Beast. A lot of Genesis fan boys love this game, maybe I could see why in 1989 when the best looking games of the NES at the time were Ninja Gaiden and Zelda 2 why someone might buy a Sega Genesis for this game based on its graphics. The character models are huge and the backgrounds are great compare to NES games of its time. But how does it play, like a turd. You're stuck in an automatic scrolling world trying to collect orbs so you can turn into a beast and beat the crap out of Uncle Fester who seems to transform into a giant beast at the end of each world. You can take multiple hits at a time and there is no way to refill your bar, or get extra life's, and no continues. The game is also painfully short if you can get past the BS this game throws at you by the ton, you can beat it in 10 minutes. If I had a choice to wise from my gwave to play this, or just stay dead I would choose to stay dead.

Is it worth owning the Sega Genesis?
It depends on what type of old school gamer you are. If your happy with just Sega made Sega Genesis games you really shouldn't bother with their old console has Sega has released bundles and bundles of classic packs of old genesis games out there for all platforms possible. But if you're really old school and if there are 3rd party offerings you like then it's worth picking up a Genesis for.