Similar to my Nintendo Flashback. This covers all of my SEGA games, which I played incessantly from about mid-1994 to late 1998. While the Nintendo review was fairly fresh in my mind, I did this SEGA tour about a year ago. As usual, I work off of memory and might miss a fact or two.

Sonic the Hedgehog CD
This came packaged with my CD-X. SEGA's version of Mario and a great time waster.Alot of the obstacles revolve around timing your momentum just right. I used to finish this thing routinely, but this time around I was stuck on the annoying pinball level. You're stuck in an electririfed pinball machine and have to bounce on top of the "level boss".

SEGA Classics Arcade Collection
The second CD that came with the CD-X. Contained five old timey SEGA (circa 1992) games on one disc. They were:
-Golden Axe, the 3-D version of "Gauntlet", without all the annoying shit. I played the dwarf guy and kicked ass.
-Streets of Rage, sorta' like Double Dragon. You can call in the big BAZOOKA back-up-- a police car pulls up three blocks behind you and shoots a big frickin' bazoka shell! I got to the end, but foolishly agreed to side with the "boss". He dropped me in a pit and I had to start all over.
-Columns: a Tetris rip-off. Too much detail was put into the actual column blocks/gems. Fun for a bit, but quickly hurts your eyes.
-Revenge of Shinobi: oh crap...I belive I was confusing this with "Ninja Gaiden 2" from my Nintendo review. Similar game. Never finished it.
-Super Monaco GP: Boring, shitty version of "Pole Position". I could never successfully get past any race above the "beginner" levels. Some of the turns are downright impossible.

Ecco the Dolphin
Third CD that came with the CD-X. I still had a passcode taped inside the CD case. Still stuck on the same level-- I have to lift some boulders before my air runs out. 12 years later, and my air was STILL running out. Actually a visually pleasing game and has a very relaxing feel to it.

CD Games I Actually Went Out and Bought:
I worked at a catalog retail store during this period, so I would pick up alot of games when they went on Clearance. My rule was: nothing over 20 bucks. The CD games were big on adding cinematic effects....which were nice to look at, but they were shitty overall gameplay. The trend at the time was to create interactive movies, not necesarily "video games". At the time, there was a competitor's system called "CDV" or something, which had a huge promo campaign with Phil Hartman as their spokesman. It was advertised "CD for your TV", which is what most of the SEGA CD games tried to do.

Batman Returns
Not too bad, as it combines sideways fighting with a "RoadBlasters" type of racing game. The racing portions are great-- you get to drive the Batmobile and blow the crap out of circus weirdos. The firetruck "boss" is a monstrous pain in the ass. Never finished it, but it IS better than the movie.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein
Terrible. The first level has a bit of strategic role playing to it, but after that it's a nonsensical mess. You wander around on a map and, due to the overly detailed features, it's not apparent where you're supposed to go, or what to do. Awful game, but includes a few scenes from the 1994 movie with Robert DeNiro (which I thought was kinda' okay).

NHL Hockey '94
I had a saved season of the Penguins. Back from my short-lived hockey-craze of summer 1994 (which disippated when the NHL came to town the next year, surprisingly). Annoying, slowwwwww voice introductions of each game, where some announcer talks about each team's strengths and weaknesses, position by position. When you win the Stanley Cup, there's nothing special.... you can see one of your guys carrying a small cup in the post-game celebration/dance. Game play's decent, but the extra roster stuff is a mess.

Jeopardy!
Very cool, but having to key in and spell out your answers with a controller is incredibly frustrating. I would play this with my dad, but he was too lazy to spell things out and always had me do it. This game benefits from being on PC, but is annoying on a console system. The depth, variety and overall quantity of questions ("answers") is very robust, though.

Ground Zero: Texas
Fun, interactive cinematic game. Was a big breakthrough at the time. It's basically a shooter game, with movie sequences thrown in between. I got up to about the second level and got bored. I'm sure this could be a total day-waster, if you get all geeked out and have nothing better to do.

Star Wars Chess
Yeah...it's just CHESS. But with Star Wars guys. Everytime you take out a piece, you get a little animated sequence of the characters fighting.
That's the entire appeal of the game. There's one sequence where Darth Vader looks a little TOO excited to take out the voluptuous Princess Leia. Eww..fondling your daughter is SICK.

I also had "Joe Montana's NFL Football", which sucked big time. Since I worked at the store, I was able to return it for a full refund.

Cartridge (Regular SEGA) Games I Acually Went Out and Bought:
Sonic the Hedgehog 2
I remember getting this with no manual or box for 2 bucks! Found it behind a fixture when I was remodelling the store in late 1995. Never finished it, but it's about the same as Sonic CD.

Superman: The Man of Steel
Really, not much better than the Nintendo Superman game (which wasn't much better than the old Atari Superman game). You fight Brainiac's underlings...on a train. I had hoped this was the same as the 1988 arcade game, but it wasn't even close. Again, my video game weakness of buying comic book tie-ins.

Captain America and the Avengers
No weakness here! This game is awesome. Based on the 1991 4-player arcade game. Sideways fighter game, but with a tremendous amount of variety. Typical street-fights, plus mid-air combat, underseas combat and even outerspace combat. You can pick between Cap, Iron Man, Hawkeye and the Vision. Each is more suited for a certain environment and opponent. Plus, you get cameos and run-ins from the Wasp, Wonder Man, Quicksilver and the Sub-Mariner. Great selection of villains, too. You fight the Grim Reaper, Mandarin, Crossbones, the Red Skull...and probably a few more that slip my mind. I was still able to get all the way to the end...where you stop the Red Skull's moon canon from blasting the earth (which is a little megalomaniacal for the fascist Red Skull, but whatever). Appropriately, I made sure I was playing as Cap when I finished.

NFL '95
The "Regular SEGA" version of the "Joe Montana's" CD game....and a 300% improvement. First game I ever had that featured FULL roster customization. In other words, you could trade, release and sign people. Released just before the 1994 season, I was amazed that it had all of that season's free agents with their NEW teams (i.e: the newly acquired Mike Pritchard and Anthony Miller were with the Broncos). In past games, you were always using teams, schedules and personnel from the previous season. I remember I picked this game over "Madden Football" because it had both the players and the teams. I think Madden just had the players at that point.

Deion Sanders Primetime NFL
The same game as above...but a year later. Released just before the '95 season it featured Sanders as "the ultimate free agent", since he hadn't signed with anybody at that point. This brought the ability to create your own CUSTOM players. I bought this about a year after it came out, in September 1996, and used all 12 of my custom slots to fill out the Broncos roster with guys like Byron Chamberlain, Tory James and Detron Smith. I also made a few significant creations, like Mike Alstott, Terrell Owens and Wayne Chrebet. I played this game religiously until late 1998, when I finally bought "Madden'99" for my PC.

World Series Baseball '95
Purchased right after the strike ended..and cool because it had Bill Swift on the cover! (Swift had just signed with the Rockies at that point). I quickly grew tired of this game, since I was into August and Jeff Bagwell had already hit 75 homeruns and was approaching 200 RBI's. Laaaaaame. Roeter customization, but it sucks because you can't just release a guy. You have to "trade" him into the free agent pool. Roster limitations quickly become a hinderance. The streak of Shitty Baseball Video Games continues.

Triple Play '97
With Tony Gwynn on the cover. Same as above, but the gameplay's a bit quicker and more lively. I never got into this game, as the inflated stats and unrealistic mood soured me on it. After this, I gave up on ever finding a good baseball game (a quest which sorta' ended in 2003 when I got Acclaim's
PS2 "All Star Baseball" as a freebie for ordering MLB Extra Innings).

Jeopardy! Sports Edition
Same gameplay problems as the CD version, but a very shallow list of questions. Play it once, that's it. Every game I played asked about Dale Hawerchuk's pre-game "Goofy" impression.

NBA Live '98
Definitely the last SEGA game I ever bought. For about 8 bucks at a MediaPlay closeout in June 1998. Tough to do anything but dunk, but it was a time killer. I had no allegiance to any NBA team, so I had the Nuggets with the game-created Raeff LaFrentz as my top scorer. I'm guessing I probably over-programmed his "skills". Played the Bulls in the Finals and got waxed.

I had that Sega Channel thing for awhile. I think that was the name, it came with your cable service or whatever. They were probably out there replacing the thing for the first 2 months until I got one that worked right.

That Captain America game sounds like a blast. Hopefully it'll be up for download on the Wii.

I had forgotten all about the SEGA Channel. I was thinking about getting it in 1994, but was skeptical and figured that I had what I wanted. Seemed a little too immature for me, anyways. I was a whopping 20 and had more important things to worry about--like used CD's, comics, chics and delivering tortillas.

Here's the WikiPedia Write-up on the Cap/Avengers game. It lists Juggernaut as a boss, though...I sure don't remember THAT.

It was ok once you got it working. It's funny that downloading a game took a couple of minutes where I could probably download it in a matter of seconds today. The only really crappy aspect was that the games rotated every month or two and you didn't know when it'd come back. My cousin also had it but as that was it as far as people I knew who had it. No wonder it didn't take off. The best feature though as you could demo games before they were released.

I also have Captain America and the Avengers for SNES. Great game.

Sega Channel was fun. I remember one morning my older brother or younger sister woke up early just to check out the new games. We had it for a good while, and the only thing that sucked was limited space to save games, and problems connecting.

ES, please tell me you have played the Shining Force and Phantasy Star series on the Genesis. You miss out on some good games. And don't forget Snatcher on the Sega CD.

The only reason I bought a Genesis was because of Phantasy Star. I remember I also had to mail aay for Shining Force back when Funcoland was still just mail order.

I remember I beat my cousin like 98-72 in College Football 95 or 96 one Thanksgiving.

My brother always beat me in Mutant League Football, mainly because he killed all of my QBs.

I had never heard of, or played, those games. I didn't want to become a video game junkie again. I was all over the old Atari 2600, but our house was robbed in February 1984 and the cocksucker took all of our 70+ games. I think I subconsciously made an effort to not get too attached to video games after that.

(The asshole robber also threw pool balls at my little 7 lbs. dog.... fuck, I'm getting pissed off just thinking about this!)

Interesting story there. I could come up with some SNES memories, but I doubt that I could remember a whole lot.

Now I have another idea to steal. Thanks chum--------p.