Retro Gaming Australia

John Madden Football is the game which really put Electronic Arts on the map as a viable developer of sports games. The first release for the Genesis and Mega Drive is actually the second game in the series – a series improvement over the original DOS release. It’s interesting to see that, once upon a time, Madden didn’t need official licenses or real players to sell.

Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs is EA’s first basketball game for the 16-bit era (though it launched on PC a year before it launched on the Mega Drive), and launched the NBA Playoffs series, which would eventually be surprassed by the NBA Live series. Unlike future entries in the series, Lakers vs. Celtics and the NBA Playoffs isn’t based on who contested the NBA Finals in the year of release, but rather a celebration of the rivalry between the two biggest teams of the 1980s, the Los Angeles Lakers lead by Earvin “Magic” Johnson, and the Boston Celtics lead by Larry Bird.

In 1993, all of EA Sports’ games introduced four player support. Of course the Mega Drive only offered two controller ports, so players had to pony up for the EA Sports 4 Way Play, which added two more ports to the system. The annoying thing is that it was separate from Sega’s own four player adaptor – EA games didn’t support Sega’s adaptor, and just about every non-EA game didn’t support the EA Sports 4 Way Play adaptor. Way to fragment the base, guys!

A lot of people blame consumer fatigue from failed addon consoles for the Saturn’s failure in the West, but the rather confusing early promotional campaign wasn’t exactly brilliant either. Here we have Ice Cube preaching the merits of the system.

FIFA Soccer 97 is the first game in the series to use full polygonal models for its players. FIFA Soccer 97 also introduced the awesome indoor soccer mode, which sadly was cut by the time FIFA 99 came along. It’s not quite as polished as 96 or 98 – EA Canada seemed to have a few issues with collision detection and animation quality in this release, which lead to FIFA Soccer 97 getting some pretty average reviews from critics at the time.

Secret of Evermore is a somewhat unfairly maligned later SNES release from Squaresoft. The name got a lot of people’s hopes built up, with a lot of them foolishly thinking that it was a sequel to Secret of Mana. When it was revealed that Secret of Evemore was developed for the United States market, obsessive fans automatically assumed the game deprived them of the sequel to Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3 and declared it terrible, regardless of its actual quality. It’s a common misconception – the reality was that Secret of Evermore was developed by a newly assembled Squaresoft team based in the United States.

WWF War Zone is Acclaim’s first wrestling game to use 3D graphics. Initially well-received, WWF War Zone developed quite the following for its create-a-wrestler feature. Many criticised WWF War Zone‘s use of fighting game like movements for basic wrestling moves – one would have to spend quite some time learning a wrestler’s moves before they could play the game effectively. Also interesting is that the game featured Bret Hart, despite coming out in July 1998, nearly 8 months after his unceremonious exit from the WWF.

Christmas 1993 played host to what I call the Battle of Street Fighter II, with just about every system in the console war boasting some kind of version of the game. Street Fighter II Turbo was the second version of the game available for the Super Nintendo, and arguably the best of the three that were eventually released. It probably didn’t have the same level of impact when compared to Special Championship Edition on the Mega Drive due to the earlier release of The World Warrior, but it’s still a damn fine game.

Automobili Lamborghini is a relatively bad racing game developed by the kings of crap, Titus. At least it’s not their worst game.

Sunsoft’s other Beauty and the Beast game was a beat ’em up intended for a male audience. Entitled Beauty and the Beast: Roar of the Beast, this game had players taking the role of the Beast, who had to kick the snot out of anything that got in his way. It’s not very good at all.