Retro Gaming Australia

Blasto is a third person shooter for the PlayStation that was marketed to death in North America. Sony spared no expense on the project, getting the late great Phil Hartman to provide the character’s voice. Unfortunately, the actual game didn’t seem to be as important as the ad campaign.

Jack Nicklaus licensed his name to Accolade for about 10 years, so just about every system released after that point had a golf game licensed by the Golden Bear. They’re not actually that bad, but EA’s were better.

Mickey Mania: The Timeless Adventures of Mickey Mouse is a platformer where each level is based around a classic Mickey Mouse cartoon released between 1928 and 1990. The game was later updated and brought to the PlayStation as Mickey’s Wild Adventure.

After the surprise success of Rampage: World Tour, Midway continued the series with Rampage 2: Universal Tour, but didn’t really take the time to fix the problems – namely the lack of variety – that affected the first game. Unlike World Tour, this one wasn’t released in the arcades, though a prototype exists.

History tells us that making a decent video game adaptation of Fist of the North Star is an impossibility with the sole exception being the Arc System Works/Sega fighting game that was never released outside of Japan. This version promises some burly brawls, but it’s a terrible 1 on 1 fighter with immensely shallow gameplay.

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest is a sometimes unfairly maligned side story in the series, designed mainly for a western audience. We received it here as Mystic Quest Legend, while it was taken back to Japan under the name Final Fantasy USA.

Masters of the Universe was the hottest property of the 1980s, and somehow Mattel managed to squander everything it touched outside of the original toys and animated series. Sadly, there has never been a good He-Man game, and there probably never will be.

G.I. Joe has been one of the most successful toy lines Hasbro has produced, so it was inevitable that it would get the video game treatment in the early 80s when the medium gained considerable popularity. Unfortunately, the game wasn’t entirely good – something that can be said of just about every G.I. Joe game, sadly. PAL release is known as Action Force.

It’s unbelievable when you think about what big business Madden NFL is for EA now, but once upon a time, the series didn’t actually carry the official licenses of the NFL or NFLPA – it had to make it on quality gameplay alone. John Madden NFL ’93 was the last 16-bit version to be released before EA managed to get an NFL license. A special Championship Edition of the game was released exclusively for rental in the United States and as such, a complete copy is among the rarer games on the system.

Mega Man X is set 100 years after the end of the classic Mega Man series, and focuses largely on the conflict caused by Mavericks (or Irregulars for the fans of the Japanese series), robots who feel that their kind is superior to humanity and wish to take over the world. You play as X, the original reploid created by Dr. Light and locked away for a century, who is tasked with the job of hunting down Sigma, X’s former Maverick Hunter commander who has joined forces with the Mavericks.