Top Five Mega CD Shmups

With Sega at the peak of their powers in the early 90's, the Mega CD was supposed to consolidate their lofty position as well as herald a new age of home entertainment. What we ended up with, however, was an expensive add-on which few developers supported with much enthusiasm. Those that did release titles for it gave us either games with fancy graphics and FMV but little in the way of gameplay or games that were hard to distinguish from examples on a non-enhanced Mega Drive. Neither type did very well - the former because they weren't very enjoyable, the latter because they weren't the revolutionary titles gamers were promised. Looking back now, it is of course the second type which provided the better games and probably the most numerous examples were shoot 'em ups. Here are the best ones:

Games-Related Top Fives Disclaimer: I've traditionally stuck to the games I know and love so far, and these game-related top fives reflect that. One of the purposes of this blog is diversify my gaming experiences, to play games I haven't played before, so I will do new game-related top fives in a few years to see how different they are!

5. Silpheed (1993, Game Arts)

Every console has a 'showcase' game and this was often the one used to promote the power of the Mega CD around the time of its launch. At first glance it might look like a complicated space combat game of some sort but it's actually a pretty basic semi-3D vertical scroller, only with fancy polygonal ships over pre-rendered backdrops. The story is the same old stuff (although it's told in a decent rendered intro) but your nifty ship is equipped with a twin-shot and a shield to help it through the eleven tricky stages. Splendidly, when the latter expires, any further hits cause damage to your ship rather than just destroying it right away - first the engines go wonky, then the weapon power decreases, etc. There are of course also a tonne of power-ups and weapons to look out for. Silpheed is often dismissed as a glorified tech-demo, and it's perhaps not as great as it thinks it is, but it's still a mighty enjoyable blaster, and one with the kind of graphics and presentation MD owners has only previously dreamed of.

Gaming Memories - Part 9... umm, still...

Well, Sega tried what I can only assume was their best but the Mega-CD didn't really set the gaming world on fire, despite hype to the contrary. Mine was bought before all this though, of course. Back in those days, a good friend of mine and his brother used to buy all the latest consoles and computers as soon as they were released before (usually) quickly tiring of them and selling them on. It was via this source that I acquired several of my consoles including my MegaDrive itself and later my 3DO.

The lure of the Mega CD was of course too much for them and they duly bought one at the first opportunity. As usual, it didn't last long in their hands so I, helpfully, once again relieved them of the burden of trying to sell it! Shortly after haphazardly transporting it home on my wonky moped, I eagerly set it up next to my splendid and worn-out MegaDrive. It did come with a handful of (multi-named) games as well and they were thus:

Sega Classics Arcade Collection (1992)

Silly old Sega - they really didn't do themselves any favours by making this the pack-in disc for their new system, did they? As you may suspect from the 'collection' and 'classics' parts of its title, it's a disc containing a collection of some of their past classics - namely, Golden Axe, Revenge of Shinobi, Super Monaco GP, Columns, and Streets of Rage. As you may not suspect from the 'arcade' part of the title, however, all games are the normal MegaDrive versions bereft of any modifications or improvements! Good games they may well be (except for SMGP which I never really got into) but they were also pretty old by this point as well as being among the MD's most popular titles which of course meant a majority of new MCD owners had already played them, or in my case still owned them! Oh well, it got a bit more mileage out of some games that were indeed classics, and you never know - they might've been new to some gamers!

Gaming Memories - Part 9

Back in 1992, Sega were at the very height of their powers. Business was booming for their arcade division and they had turned around their initially faltering fortunes as a console manufacturer as well, releasing the mighty MegaDrive at the end of the 80’s which went on to dominate in most of the world’s territories. This period also unsurprisingly coincided with the height of my Sega fanboyishness too. Never was I more convinced of their superiority and it seems they bought into it somewhat themselves as well.

What should a company do when things are going so well? Expand, innovate, anything but stand idly by raking in the cash, however much of it there may be. It certainly wasn't their idea - many computer manufacturers were seeking to expand into the burgeoning world of CD-ROM based upgrades. One console had already been furnished with a flashy device of this nature - NEC's magnificent PC Engine, which had been making pretty good use of the format for some time already. Spurred on by this success, as well as the desire to prolong the life of their 16-bit wonder, it wasn't long before Sega announced their own CD-ROM upgrade, known as the Mega-CD (except to those perpetual name-changers in the US where it was simply called the Sega-CD) and there were high hopes for it.