Rufus’ Top 7 Genesis Games

Barely playable now, but back then the loop de loop was rad.

As promised last week this week’s Top 7 Tuesdays is for the Top 7 Genesis games. I owned a Genesis and it was awesome and I fell squarely into the “Sega does what Nintendon’t” camp. Looking back with my current distaste of fanboyism I shake my head. But hey I was just a wee one back then and Sega had Sonic as well as bad ass games like Streets of Rage. Also Hard Drivin’ had a stunt track. In First Person. In 3D. Yeah. Anyway lets get on with the show.

7. Robocop Vs Terminator, Interplay. 1993.

Okay. Click play. This is why I thought SNES was for punks back in the day. Their version had no blood and you were stuck with the wussy pistol and one other gun. Genesis you could ditch the lame starting gun, grab the freakin ED-209′s gun and recreate the boardroom scene in Robocop WITH EVERY ENEMY IN THE GAME! Yeah. In fact I could just stop with this game and be done with it. But it is a Top 7 list.

6. Gunstar Heroes, Treasure. 1993.

One of the best shooters ever made.

I played this game constantly. At first it kicked my ass. Then gradually I caught on using the different weapon powerups and combos. Then I discovered the joys (and sometimes frustrations) of playing multiplayer. I bought this day one when it came out on the Wii for download. Treasure constantly makes great games and made some of the best on Genesis.

5. Vectorman, BlueSky Software. 1995.

One of the best looking games on Genesis.

One of the greatest games for Genesis came during the last years of its lifecycle. I remember being excited for this when reading Game Players (remember them?) and then when I got it I wasn’t disappointed. You had different transformation powers (including a train) and had some of the sweetest graphics for the 16-bit era.

4. Streets of Rage 2, Sega. 1992.

Something so satisfying...

I played this game every weekend during my formative years. My friend and I rented it so many times from the video store we probably should have just pooled our money and bought it. Shaka and I still play this. Its that awesome.

3. X-Men 2: Clone Wars, Headgames. 1995.

I wonder who is going to win...

I used to reset this game until I started with Nightcrawler. I was so happy that this game was good. The first game was hard and almost all around terrible. This one allowed me to crawl around on walls and generally be awesome. I actually felt like an X-Man. Plus this was back when I read X-Men comics religiously and was psyched to see it tie into the Phalanx storyline. This is probably my second favorite X-Men game (next to Konami’s epic beat-em-up of course).

2. Earthworm Jim, Shiny Entertainment. 1994.

This game is twisted in so many good ways.

Easily one of the best games for Genesis and of the entire 16-bit era. Full of humor great gameplay mechanics it became one of my go to games. It is also full of style and great art.

1. Sonic Series. Sega. Entire Genesis run.

The hedgehog in its habitat. Eating its natural food. The Ring. His enemy? The Damn Monkeys.

I cheated and put the whole series up here. Why? Otherwise it would just become the Top 7 Sonic games. Mario is a great platformer sure, but he is slow and fat. Sonic is powered by blast processing! As I’m typing this the music is in my head and I still remember my way around all the levels. I’m even including Sonic Spinball here because it was just fun. Sonic & Knuckles? Come on! That was the best idea ever extending the games and even letting you play the older games differently! I loved this series until they killed it by moving to 3D. I can’t wait for the new 2D release. Give me back some old school blue streak please.