brad's Experience

Greetings. I’ve been playing Sega Genesis games for about 13 years now. I got my first Genesis in 1992. I should note that it is not the same model as shown here in the stock photo on Epinions. It is the original Genesis model. I sold my Genesis and all of its games not long after its hey day, and at the same time as I bought my Sony Playstation. Well, after all these years, I decided to pick up a Genesis again, and I bought some sports games to go along with it.

I had a whole lot of fun with the Genesis. It was a system ahead of its time. I can remember reading about this monster of a machine back around 1990. In those days, there wasn’t an Internet and so glimpses of flashy new things spurred a lot of rumor and conversation. I would see advertisements for the Genesis in gaming magazines or in store catalogs.

I was an avid Nintendo player (still am) and I never sold my Nintendo games. I guess I always thought that the Nintendo, even at 8-bit, had such a huge library of playable games, games that were simply timeless and those that I would like to play forever. I was right about that. But the Nintendo was not powerful enough for sports games. Ah, that was a very, very big niche that came into true being because of the Sega Genesis.

My first sports game for Genesis was the original John Madden football game. The original Madden is nothing but stick figures compared to its later editions, but at the time it was an incredible improvement in game play and features, even over the existing Tecmo Super Bowl.

Of course, new sports games came along and they stole the show. People were buying Genesis consoles simply because of the games. NHL Hockey was another huge title, as were Lakers versus Celtics, Lakers versus Bulls, and a slew of other titles.

The Super Nintendo came out not long after I got my Genesis, but it never really had the power to push the sports genre to its limit. While the Super Nintendo was capable of showing more colors in its games, it simply lagged in speed to a point where the game play was noticeable. The same titles were released for both platforms and the games on the Genesis were more playable, at least from my experience.

So anyhow, just this month, I decided to comb eBay and find a Genesis console and a bunch of sports games. I got the original Genesis model, just like the one I first had. As a bonus, it came with a bunch of games, although the only one I wanted was Virtual Racing. Anybody remember Virtual Racing? I sure do, if only because I paid about $80 for the cartridge when it first came out! (I was a real sucker for the latest and greatest).

I went gangbusters trying to find out what were the highest rated sports games in each category. So far, I think I have them. I have NHL Hockey '98, Madden '98, NBA Live '98, PGA Tour '96, Triple Play Gold Baseball, and Tecmo Super Bowl 2 and 3. Oh, and I forgot that the console also came with Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2. I like the Sonic games, but I really got the Genesis again for the sports games! For the heck of it, I also picked up an old favorite, NBA Action '94. Love that game!

See now, the only thing about these sports games to me, that bothers me, is that the rosters are not current. But even that isn’t a big deal, since some of my favorite teams played during these years. The one exception is that NHL '98 does not include the Minnesota Wild hockey team, because the Wild did not begin play until 2000. Oh well, I can’t have everything.

But as far as playability goes, I like these sports games just as much as their counterparts on the Playstation (Playstation 1). And of course, there is a huge jump in technology from Sega Genesis to Sony Playstation.

The latest of these EA Sports games include many, if not most, of the features of editions of the same games that came several years later. By 1997, when these games were published, EA Sports had done a lot of refining.

Well, basically I wrote this review to share an experience. The Sega Genesis is an awesome gaming platform. It has an impressive game library, far beyond sports. Although it does not have the 3-D experience, I have to say that that is one thing that really bothered me about the Playstation. Everything had to be 3-D! Just give me my scrolling from left to right or up and down, please!

And another great thing is that you can build a nice library of games for yourself for well under $100, if you are just patient on eBay. You probably won’t find original game boxes and such if you go the cheap route, but how badly do you need those? Only if you are collecting.

With football, hockey, and the World Series coming up, what a great time to get a bunch of awesome sports games. That’s what I did. Look into the Genesis if you want some great sports games at pocket change rates.

Cheers, brad.