Jump to content
IGNORED

Genesis 1st Games Line Up?


A2600

Recommended Posts

I knew this from memory. I was very excited when this system came out.

 

Altered Beast

Last Battle

Space Harrier II

Super Thunder Blade

Super Hang-On

Ghouls N Ghosts

Super Monaco GP

Truxton

Phantasy Star II

Herzog Zwei

Alex Kidd: Enchanted Castle

Thunder Force II

 

None of the sports games were launch titles, they were released in one big wave about four months after launch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What where the first games released by the genesis??

(those on the black checkerboxes' date=' and picture labled carts)

[/quote']

 

The black checkerbox graphics were used for years, so if that's what you really mean its a lot of games. Actually I didn't realize they ever stopped using those.

 

The list the last person posted sounds about right. I had an advertising poster from early on, and I think Super Shinobi was on it. Not sure if it had actually been released yet though. When I got the system, there was a promotion where you could send in your receipt and UPC code and get a free game and an SMS adapter. I don't remember Phantasy Star II being on the list, but maybe that's just because it was worth too much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here's all the 1989 games, AFAIK...

 

Altered Beast

Mystic Defender

Space Harrier II

Last Battle

Thunder Force II

Ghouls N' Ghosts

Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf

Golden Axe

Forgotten Worlds

Tommy Lasorda Baseball

Zoom

Herzog Zwei

The Revenge Of Shinobi

Phantasy Star II

Truxton

Alex Kidd In The Enchanted Castle

Super Thunder Blade

Super Hang-On

 

Games like Super Monaco GP, After Burner II, and Columns often get mistaken for the first games out, these weren't released until 1990.

 

One way you can tell games from '89 and '90 apart is by looking at the front label. The '89 labels don't have the "16-Bit Cartridge" phrase on the bottom of the Genesis logo, and the background of the Genesis logo below the Sega logo on top is dark grey, and not the same color as the background of the little Sega logo like it is on the '90 labels.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There were a couple of Mega Drive titles ready for the Genesis launch. But I think the u.s. titles that actually came out at launch. (This is possibly erroneous but is my recollection of the time..)

 

Altered Beast

Super Thunder Blade

Space Harrier II

Alex Kidd: Enchanted Castle

Rambo 3

Ghouls N Ghosts

Last Battle

Thunder Force II

Hydlide

Tommy Lasorda Baseball

Super Hang-On

Herzog Zwei

.. and that Golf game.

 

I am pretty much sure Shinobi, Phantasy Star II, and Super Monaco GP were definitely NOT launch titles. However they did come out very shortly after launch for sure.

 

I got the Genesis at launch. And was well into playing it when I read about Shinobi in EGM. I visited Toys R' Us daily after that waiting for it to come in and it came only a few days later.

 

Also Phantasy Star II I remember very vividly because 1. I was a huge PSI fan. And 2... I broke my leg! I was in the hospital with a broken femur and my girlfriend brought me my Genesis to play on the hospital tv (playing Shinobi! :lol:), and a Gamepro magazine. The Gamepro magazine had PSII on the cover. So I was waiting for that game anxiously. To be quite honest for all the accolades PSII got, I was somewhat dissapointed with it and it's overhead dungeons. Also Super Monaco GP came a bit later as well.

 

Columns was not a launch title either.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not a single sports game was released at lauch. I have located an old ad which announces the sports games plus Spiderman as Coming Soon in the fall, about 3 months after launch.

 

Hydlide was not released at launch.

 

I now agree that Super Monaco GP was not a launch title, not sure about Shinobi, and I still think that PSII was.

 

We should be able to find a game mag to confirm this. I looked around but didn't see anything that settled it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the kind of shit that just obsesses me.

 

According to all the ads I've found, these appear to be the first 15 games which were actually available. I don't know if all 15 were out on launch day, but if not they followed very very soon afterwards:

 

Altered Beast

Last Battle

Space Harrier II

Super Thunder Blade

Super Hang-On

Ghouls N Ghosts

Truxton

Phantasy Star II

Herzog Zwei

Alex Kidd: Enchanted Castle

Thunder Force II

Rambo III

Forgotten Worlds

Zoom

Mystic Defender

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One way you can tell games from '89 and '90 apart is by looking at the front label. The '89 labels don't have the "16-Bit Cartridge" phrase on the bottom of the Genesis logo' date=' and the background of the Genesis logo below the Sega logo on top is dark grey, and not the same color as the background of the little Sega logo like it is on the '90 labels.[/quote']

 

I was about to say that, I almost always look for that when I go to buy Genesis games nowadays.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is the kind of shit that just obsesses me.

 

According to all the ads I've found' date=' these appear to be the first 15 games which were actually available. I don't know if all 15 were out on launch day, but if not they followed very very soon afterwards:

 

Altered Beast

Last Battle

Space Harrier II

Super Thunder Blade

Super Hang-On

Ghouls N Ghosts

Truxton

Phantasy Star II

Herzog Zwei

Alex Kidd: Enchanted Castle

Thunder Force II

Rambo III

Forgotten Worlds

Zoom

Mystic Defender[/quote']

 

Shame on you for forgetting to list the World Championship Soccer game!! ;)

 

Ah, 1989....the year the glorious Genesis was released in the USA!

I bought mine in the early summer of 1989 from Toys R Us the first day they were available. I can tell you for certain that only a handful of games were available that month with a bunch a more released in September.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I got a couple of magazines from that time :) I'll take a look tonight and hopefully scan a couple pages.. although tonight I'm going to be busy packing for my trip to NC. So we'll see

 

But PSII was not a launch title, I know that for 100% sure :P

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

(still wondering how I got 14 replies in less than a day!! You guys do love your genny's!) :D ;)

 

It was a glorious era of gaming. The Genesis was a huge step up from the types of games we were used to playing on our NES systems back then...to have near-arcade quality conversions of titles like Altered Beast, Golden Axe and GNG was unheard of at the time.

 

We early adopters were pioneers...the brave ones who took a chance on this new platform and witnessed the birth of a new era. Exciting times they were and they will be remembered fondly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You guys forgot Ghostbusters

 

Not a launch day game, but it was with the second wave of early release titles(Rambo III, Forgotten Worlds), and certainly before Phantasy Star II. PSII was on the tail end of launch games, everyone was waiting around for that thing. Heck, we had all those sports games before PSII was released.

 

I remember the next big thing after PSII was the release of Sword of Vermillion...and then the big kahuna Strider at a whopping 8 megs($79.99!), Sega bragged. Strider is a great arcade conversion, but it has flicker like Super Castlevania IV(snes) has slow-down.

 

Look at that amazing list of games though...the Genesis has the best launch games ever, especially when they were new. Now we notice the flaws of the games but back then those games were out of this world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That pretty much sums it up. 1989 thru 1992 was the era of awesomeness when it came to the Genesis.

 

1993 and on were sort of meh if you ask me.

 

I can certainly agree on that, but you know why 1993 on was meh?? we had the SNES and many other games where being overhyped or just didnt show up in our minds at the time!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That pretty much sums it up. 1989 thru 1992 was the era of awesomeness when it came to the Genesis.

 

1993 and on were sort of meh if you ask me.

 

I can certainly agree on that' date=' but you know why 1993 on was meh?? we had the SNES and many other games where being overhyped or just didnt show up in our minds at the time![/quote']

 

I don't know, perhaps because this was the beginning of when Sega began to lose their focus thanks to the CDROM and so forth. It seemed to me that, by and large, the games started to lose their sense of impact that we came to expect and love in the first few years of the system's lifetime. Also, the weaknesses of the Genesis were really becoming apparent with the later releases...things like the garbly voices and limited color pallette were very noticeable which was not really the case earlier on.

 

When I look over the 1993+ releases, there ARE some good games, but few seem to have that "wow" factor that made the Genesis such a great system earlier on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One more interesting tidbit I recall:

 

Looking at an early issue of EGM (I think like issue #3 or #4...one of the later 1989 editions) there is a two page ad for the Sega Genesis (one of the first one's I believe and direct from Sega!).

 

Listed amongst the thumbnailed screenshot ads for the first few titles, there is a screenshot for the game Hollow World.

 

What was Hollow World? Well, it turns out that it was an early name for the game that became Super Hydlide which was released in the US later on by a now defunct company called Seismic. Interesting to see that Sega was considering releasing this early on themselves under a different name...possibly to fill an adventure game/rpg hole in their library until Phantasy Star II was ready.

 

Eventually, I did buy Super Hydlide for my Genesis in the Summer of 1990. For those who haven't played Super Hydlide, the graphics and jerky movement will likely turn you off. We're talking microscopic sprites and slideshow-esque animation...it was that bad! But, persevere a bit and you'll soon discover what made this game so addictive....a great quest, some decent fighting, and best of all, a simulated real-life system with a day/night cycle, a requirement to eat and sleep, as well as a realistic weight/encumberance system. Pretty phenomenal stuff for a console game at the time as most games dumbed down a lot of things for simplicity's sake. The audio soundtrack was quite good too...probably the best usage of the Genesis sound hardware in that era, especially when playing it in stereo mode.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe hat list of 15 games I put are are absolutely the first ones released. I have found several ads which either feature these games alone or show every other game as COMING SOON. I also found an ad for those first sports games announced as coming soon after the Genesis was launched.

 

So those 15 are where it begins, but there may have been two or three release waves there. I was sure that when it was launched in the midwest there were 12 or 13 games available. But in the original East Coast launch I understand there were fewer available.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...