Comix Zone

Well, this game has two factors holding it back from perfection, those being how short it is and its profound difficulty as the former leaves you wanting more provided the latter doesn't offput you from progressing through the game.

The reason why I criticise its short length is due to how much I adore its premise, even to this day, we haven't seen many games that take place in a comic book, let alone one that was originally created by our protagonist who’s fighting one if his creations for freedom. With only four short chapters, the game really feels like it's over before you know it which is a shame because it has the storyline of a self-aware comic book series (think Deadpool or pre-Disney she hulk.) Of course, there's a good chance most people have never cleared the first chapter without using an emulator (I certainly haven't) due to how brutally difficult it is. It's very trial and error which would be fine if you didn't have to start the game all over whenever you died (although if you're lucky, you can restart a chapter instead of starting the game over if you die.) I say it's a game ahead of its time as like I said, this problem goes away if you're emulating the game rather than playing it from a genesis cartridge. The controls are fairly basic as we have the standard beat em up style gameplay, the ai is very responsive to your move set which encourages you to experiment with the move set that of course adds to the challenge of the gameplay. There is an item management mechanic here, although it's pretty basic as the items are usually placed not to far away from when you need them.

Give this game a go if you haven't already, it's hard even with emulation, but totally worth it.

It's not exactly Streets of Rage in terms of gameplay, but damn does it look and sound great. The lumber-y stiff controls are the biggest issue, but the game feeling heavy actually kind of works with the whole 'living comic book' theme, and the lead character isn't supposed to be a nimble Spider-Man type anyway. Great level design and just one of those extremely "SEGA" SEGA games where the amount of creativity and heart that went in allow you to excuse many flaws in execution.

When I got my much begged for SEGA Channel in 1995, this game on the "test drive" channel was the big selling point. Played the hell out of that demo level.