Gaming off the Beaten Path

After lamenting the almost two decade drought of F-Zero titles last week, it looks like there could be hope for the franchise yet. This week’s entry will take us to Sega’s Streets of Rage franchise, a series of beat-em-up title that defined the Genesis.  The original game even came as part of the “Sega 6-Pack” cartridge, which to me was always such a definitive collection of the most popular (not best, most popular) series on the console.  It was a landmark franchise for the company…until it wasn’t.  After the third game released in 1994, it fell off the face of the Earth.  No SOR on the Saturn.  No SOR on the Dreamcast.  No SOR on any other console once Sega switched to software only.   Fortunately, that was finally remedied this year, with Streets of Rage 4 hitting modern consoles a few months ago.  It’s great to see the dormant franchise receive new life, but that isn’t the game we are going to discuss. Many Sega fans have told me they believe the second game, released in 19

Oh great, another racing game.  By now you all know exactly how this is going to go.  At this point I think I’ve made it clear that I don’t like racing games, I hate driving, they usually don’t appeal to me, etc. etc.  This is just going to be more of the same, right? Not so fast.  This futuristic racer isn’t like the “realistic” racing games I covered before, nor is it a random entry in a series that has nothing else to do with racing.  F-Zero GX, released for the GameCube in 2003, is an absolutely phenomenal game from what many consider to be Nintendo’s forgotten first party franchise. Most gamers know series protagonist Captain Falcon from Super Smash Bros., but F-Zero has had little love thrown its way by the big N other than a few references in that series.  How little love?  This week’s game was the last one released on a non handheld console in the United States.  Remember, this came out in 2003, which was 17 years and almost three console generations ago.  And it really is an

It’s back to the Sega Genesis this week.  What can I say, I ignored it for too long, even in my younger years. It’s no secret that the Super Nintendo was regarded as a haven for great RPGs while the Genesis was widely considered a wasteland for the genre.  But was that really the case?  The first part was certainly true.  There are dozens of really good to great RPGs for the SNES, especially if you include Super Famicom games.  But was it really that much better than the Genesis’ RPG library? Honestly, yes.  But that doesn’t mean the Genesis was the RPG wasteland it was made out to be.  It had a number of solid entries in the genre, mostly from its two main RPG series’.  I already discussed the amazing Phantasy Star IV, a game I never realized was as classic as it was.  That inspired me to look into Sega’s other oft discussed RPG series: Shining Force. Released in 1993, Shining Force was actually the second game in the series, a follow-up to Shining in the Darkness a few years ea