Lately I have been on a classic gaming kick. By doing so I have had a flood of memories coming back from the early 90’s and the console wars of that time. It was pretty much a feud between Sega and Nintendo. I was going to do this in one shot, but I guess I am long winded on the subject so it will be in a 3 part series.
Sega had a head start by a couple of years before the Super Nintendo was released. During that time though most of the games they had were ports of their arcade games. They were obviously much better looking than anything the original Nintendo had, but the genesis didn’t really catch on until summer of ’91 with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sega really tried to hit Nintendo hard with their advertising. The first Sonic commercial I remember was this one that featured a old lady complaining about sonic that reminded me of Dana Carvey playing the Church Lady on SNL. The other commercial I remember is this one with the famous slogan “Genesis does what Nintendont”. It was around this time that I decided to jump on the Genesis band wagon. I sold my original 8-bit NES and all my games and mowed lawns over the summer to earn the money. I think it was late July or early August when I finally bought my Sega Genesis at the J.C. Penny in St. George. I really enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog I think it took me about a month to finally beat the game. The other game I remember getting shortly after was Golden Axe. I loved that game in the arcades and thought it would be fun to have at home. For some reason though it was difficult to find. I finally picked it up at a game store in Las Vegas. My top ten favorite games for the Genesis would be
- Sonic the Hedgehog
- Golden Axe
- Revenge of Shinobi
- Altered Beast
- Streets of Rage
- Last Battle
- Phantasy Star
- Strider
- Sonic the Hedgehog 2
- Michael Jackson Moonwalker (It really is a fun game. Really!)
One thing though that I did notice about most Genesis games were that they seemed to be a lot easier than NES games were for me. Sometime I could rent a game and beat it in one day where a NES game would take me a month of play. After owning the Genesis for several months I found I wanted something a little different.
