SEGA Tribute

So, while Ravi tearfully takes a nostalgic walk down the Kid's TV Memory Lane, I'm going to remind us all of the games we got for Christmas before the heady technical heights of Battle Raper II.

The first electronic gizmo I remember being addicted to was my SEGA Master System, it was an innocent age when games didnt have age ratings, graphics were bright and two dimensional and music was shit.

Games didnt really have a point, you played purely for "points" and nothing more, and the plots were thin at best. Alex The Kid for example, was a game where you played Alex, who was a kid.. and thats all I got from it really.

Much like Ecco the Dolphin, what was the point? I remember feeling as if I'd dropped acid as these dolphins started "talking" and plotting together, and then I remember growing panic as I couldn't maneuver my dolphin out of a small pool.

Then I came into possession of the iconic games system of the early '90s. The SEGA Mega Drive, or Genesis if you're American. I still actually have mine, and it works. The games all seem thinly guised as innocent but all contain some seriously questionable moral material. I had an Ice Hockey game [which still contained the USSR as a country], in which 95% of the gameplay wasn't hockey related and mainly consisted of punching an opposition player in the face until he fell over.

Then I got "Streets of Rage", given all the noise being made over GTA, I'm surprised that in the era of a conservative government, a game that encouraged you to bottle women dressed as dominatrixes in the face while being supported by a squad car armed with a heavy repeating rocket launcher at age 5 wasn't banned entirely. Same goes for the ever popular, Road Rash, an illegal street racing game involving motorcycles and hitting opponents in the face with a chain or a baton or a metal pole until they fall off and get injured.

Later on, I got the essential purchase of Sonic the Hedgehog, only in the '90s could a series of games involving a blue hedgehog be deemed worthy of release. I can imagine that concept meeting, I just can't imagine what sane person would commision a game knowing the centrestone of the plot was hinged on a large blue hedgehog.

After a short traiterous jump to Nintendo shortly after and th epurchase of a SNES, I became engrossed with the rival to the speedy blue critter, again my mind boggles at the concept meeting for this one. How do you rival a supersonic pointy mammal? simple, create a game based in a strange world where the hero to end all heroes is a fat italian plumber in dungarees. If only game plots could be so simple today eh?

Stupid games were all but killed off by the Sony Playstation, with the exception of Tekken which allowed you to fight as a man with a tiger's head for no real reason.

The question though is this;
Will game makers ever show this kind of imagination again?
Will there ever be a gun cooler than the one in Lifeforce Tenka?
Will there ever be a semi-decent and original "Aliens" Game?
Will Battle Raper II ever be beaten?

Microsoft seem to think so.. we aren't so sure.