Bad Games From Good Developers - Sega Edition!

Ever had a really good developer release a game that really let you down? Let's take a look at some of mine.

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Opening "Sega" jingle is from Astal for the Sega Saturn.

Ending Music during the credits is from Batman for the Sega Genesis.

SLX Logo
By: Jan Neves

Intro by Evan S.

Episode Notes:

1. SMS/Genesis/Sega CD games captured on the Mega SG. Saturn/Dreamcast/32X/PS2 games captured from real hardware. GBA game captured from emulation.

2. I don't hate all these games but from the standpoint of who made them, I was expecting them all to be a lot better.

3. Here's some remixed Sonic music for you to enjoy.

[OnionLancer]

Seeing a reverse of this idea would be interesting as well: Good games, from bad developers.

[silkysoy]

Damn. The opening scene where you show pages from the old Toys R Us catalog brings back memories!

[MrBluGruv]

Budokan has a STEEP learning curve, but it is intensely satisfying when you get the hang of it. The toughest part to get the hang of for me was coming to grips with how critical the direction buttons were to how attacks worked, since it does not at all work like any typical button-mash or arcade-style combo fighter. If you wrap your head around that, then get a feel for the timing gap of pressing the direction then the action button (block vs. attack), you can get pretty far. The tournament is absolutely unforgiving though, particularly since you are only allowed a certain number of uses for each style of combat to get through the tournament, plus after a certain number of losses you actually get pushed BACK a round, killing any momentum you have going.

[HatStackMike]

Great video as always!
Sonic 1 GBA still baffles me. I was really looking forward to having that on my GBA, but jeez, that did not turn out well at all. Man, being a Sonic fan in 2006 was tough…

[JamesChessman]

perfect topic, I’m always impressed that SLX is still thinking of NEW topics like this, even after all these years!!

[SpeedyGoneFroglegs]

I played Budokan on Amiga and enjoyed it, but it's absolutely a pain in the butt. In the time it takes to master, one could probably train to become a master of actual karate.

[lazarushernandez]

Some of those bad 3D versions are the result of the '3D must be better' mentality of the era. I recall having a PS2 Sega Classic collection that had several polygon remakes of some of their arcade titles (Sega Ages 2500 series). I definitely recall playing Space Harrier and Outrun (which weren't too shabby), the Golden Axe game you covered may have been a part of it as well, but I may be blocking it from my memory...😂

Things that pissed off about the Outrunners port (aside from what was mentioned):
-were the removal of the Virtua Racing Formula Car as an Easter Egg in the North American version (entering the code still registers a chime but nothing is unlocked),
-and the very severe 2 player rubber banding, you can actually test this by starting a 2 player game and leaving one of the players idle at the starting line, the other player's car will gradually degrade in performance/handling etc... until the car becomes undriveable.
It's a shame, the single player Outrun Genesis port would have been a great starting point for a single player Outrunners.
Heck if the Outrunners port we did get had just shut down the bottom half of the screen (like many of the Amiga and Atari ST ports back then did), a peppy, half screen, single player Outrunners mode might have been possible.

[sonicmario]

I think it's a real shame that Sonic's reputation ended up getting tarnished during the mid-2000s because of the poorly made games such as "Sonic The Hedgehog (2006)" for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 as well as "Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis" for the Game Boy Advance, especially since my primary reason for loving Sonic was because it was one of few on-going series with anthropomorphic animal characters that I love so much, and there was hardly anything else for me to enjoy around that time with better quality to enjoy.

(And, no, don't bother bringing up Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, or Ratchet as recommendations, since none of those alternatives appealed to me for personal reasons.)

[chungkingexpress]

Anetto Futatabi's biggest issue is that enemies go off screen and stay there for way too long, so many times you can't advance quickly just by killing enemies. You have to wait for them to get close enough to the center of the screen to be able to actually kill them without them disappearing off screen

[crisjohnson]

You are so right. I only ever got to buy a game once a year with birthday money. I was so desperate to buy the best game possible I’d spend at least an hour flipping over the cards at Toys R Us, going through all the games numerous times. I know it drove my mother & sister insane but if i bought a terrible game i was stuck with it until Christmas at the earliest.

[Zahir]

I always have a soft spot for that Annet Futatabi game. While I agree with the issues in the game and it sucks that it doesn't have 2 players (I would have loved to play Earnest Evans again), I couldn't help but be impressed by the soundtrack of the game. Also, being a 90s anime fan, I was so impressed by the visual cutscenes that I pushed it on despite the game's issues just to see those cutscenes. I had some great memories with it and it's a game I play from time to time.

[RetroJackal]

Sonic 1 got a "proof of concept" port to the GBA by Stealth, who would later go on to do Sonic Mania & the Sonic 3 remaster. It only contains Green Hill (and a barebones Labyrinth zone) but it's mighty impressive, and a good showcase of how the game could be done right on the hardware.

[PlasticCogLiquid]

Rastan Saga 2 is so weird. The first game was awesome so how did they make that garbage that was the sequel? The way the player sprite moves when hanging from a rope cracks me up. Some programmer was like "Yep! That's pretty good, We'll stick with that!"

[OldLebaneseNerd]

when my family got me my first NES games after the pack in mario/duck hunt, they were OP WOLF and TO THE EARTH, this whole thing explains why legal guardians should never get video games to their kids, it was the first and last time i let them buy me games blind and started steering them into what i liked, more mario games, more ninja games and more 1 on 1 fighting .

[retrojoe]

An episode 2 would be very appreciated, as a first one focused on the opposite topic "Good Games From Bad Developers".
Oh man, the shock of watching "Contra: Legacy of War" once again! 😵‍💫 It was so shockingly bad when it was released that I returned immediately at the rental store, just in time to choose...oh 💩, I took "Pax Corpus" by Cryo Interactive! That game made "Contra: Legacy of War" look and play like a real masterpiece in comparison, so my whole weekend was completely ruined! 😩

[DemomanX]

I swear Dashing Desperadoes concept was used for those games on Nick Arcade.

The game that decided what team starts with control of the board first.

[reagandow]

This is some really, really interesting deep dives. Thanks for always hitting it out of the park sir.

[Mitjitsu]

15:30 - Yuji Naka left midway through the games development and Sega didn't have access to the games source code. So no surprise why it sucked so hard. Stealth actually ported the Genesis game onto the GBA and ended up being a near perfect conversion.

[TellYouHwaet]

I love that Starlight Zone mix in the intro.

[megamanmarchek]

13:15 Dude! That background is from Vectorman 2! This game truly has no effort put into it!