What SEGA games do you appreciate outside Sonic? (and why)

[Hawki]

I wouldn't be so quick to write off all their titles as mediocre though. Golden Axe and Streets of Rage are still brilliant to play through. Shenmue was excellent for the time. And many of the others are a question of whether you like quick arcade style titles that you can easily dip in and out of. House of The Dead and Crazy Taxi are perfect examples of this.

Crap, I forgot about Crazy Taxi and Streets of Rage. With the latter, I only played Streets of Rage 3, and never really got into it. Crazy Taxi I got on my Dreamcast though and had a blast...at the time. Doubt it would appeal to me much now, but it was 'da shit' back in the day.

Looking at my quoted post, I saw I made a mistake - should have said Sega is more of a publisher to me now, not developer. And...yeah. There's a plenthora of Sega games that I did enjoy, but very few of their franchises outside Sonic have had any real staying power for me. I mean, if something like Bonanza Bros 2 or Streets of Rage 4 was announced today, I'd be pleasantly surprised, but I'd hardly be in a rush to go out and get them.

 

[Kyrian007]

I would have loved Valkyria Chronicles but I consider it sort of meh as it is. The combat system is great but the story is SO STUPID, so full of broken, nonsensical, and contradictory messages it makes my head spin, not to mention a main character death that makes No-Phoenix-Down-For-Aeris look smart.

I liked Valkyria Chronicles, but don't disagree about the story. What I do disagree about is all the complaints about Aeris and Phoenix Down.

Phoenix Down is an item that "reverses KO status." It's smelling salts, not the freaking holy grail. I'm not even an apologist for FF VII (I had more fun with VIII) but I didn't even realize this complaint was a "thing" for years until someone brought it up and I countered it in 3 seconds with "Phoenix Down never brought anybody back to life, what the hell game were you playing?"

 

[immortalfrieza]

I would have loved Valkyria Chronicles but I consider it sort of meh as it is. The combat system is great but the story is SO STUPID, so full of broken, nonsensical, and contradictory messages it makes my head spin, not to mention a main character death that makes No-Phoenix-Down-For-Aeris look smart.

I liked Valkyria Chronicles, but don't disagree about the story. What I do disagree about is all the complaints about Aeris and Phoenix Down.

Phoenix Down is an item that "reverses KO status." It's smelling salts, not the freaking holy grail. I'm not even an apologist for FF VII (I had more fun with VIII) but I didn't even realize this complaint was a "thing" for years until someone brought it up and I countered it in 3 seconds with "Phoenix Down never brought anybody back to life, what the hell game were you playing?"

It probably has something to do with the fact that Phoenix Downs are able to revive people from K.O.... which is the end result of those people being cut up, stabbed, shot, blown up, set on fire, frozen, electrocuted, hit with giant frickin laser beams, stepped on by building sized abominations, hit with the force of a nuke, and countless other things that should be way beyond the point of fatal even with how superhuman the cast of Final Fantasy 7 is, and somehow it can't revive Aeris from a simple stab through the stomach? Call it K.O. or death, there's nothing except plot that allowed Aeris to die and stay dead with the existence of something like a phoenix down and life magic around. Not to mention that Aeris herself should have been resilient enough at the point that it happens to survive if not tank the stab to begin with without a phoenix down or life magic even entering the picture.

 

[dscross]

With the latter, I only played Streets of Rage 3, and never really got into it.

SoR3 is the worst one by a country mile - i wasn't that keen on that one either. I think the other two games are classics that everyone should play at least once. Man I love the music in those games.

 

[nickpy]

Spiral Knights. By gaming standards, its now a very long in the tooth F2P co-op tactical shooter. Some of the F2P mechanics are pretty grindy, but overall the gameplay is a hoot and the community (what's left of it anyway) is also great. Technically its not a Sega game anymore, but it was published/owned by them until about a year ago I think.

 

[Kyrian007]

I would have loved Valkyria Chronicles but I consider it sort of meh as it is. The combat system is great but the story is SO STUPID, so full of broken, nonsensical, and contradictory messages it makes my head spin, not to mention a main character death that makes No-Phoenix-Down-For-Aeris look smart.

I liked Valkyria Chronicles, but don't disagree about the story. What I do disagree about is all the complaints about Aeris and Phoenix Down.

Phoenix Down is an item that "reverses KO status." It's smelling salts, not the freaking holy grail. I'm not even an apologist for FF VII (I had more fun with VIII) but I didn't even realize this complaint was a "thing" for years until someone brought it up and I countered it in 3 seconds with "Phoenix Down never brought anybody back to life, what the hell game were you playing?"

It probably has something to do with the fact that Phoenix Downs are able to revive people from K.O.... which is the end result of those people being cut up, stabbed, shot, blown up, set on fire, frozen, electrocuted, hit with giant frickin laser beams, stepped on by building sized abominations, hit with the force of a nuke, and countless other things that should be way beyond the point of fatal even with how superhuman the cast of Final Fantasy 7 is, and somehow it can't revive Aeris from a simple stab through the stomach? Call it K.O. or death, there's nothing except plot that allowed Aeris to die and stay dead with the existence of something like a phoenix down and life magic around. Not to mention that Aeris herself should have been resilient enough at the point that it happens to survive if not tank the stab to begin with without a phoenix down or life magic even entering the picture.

Well... when you can be revived by Phoenix Down... you have been reduced to 0 hit points and have passed out (you have KO status.) If any of those examples (from cut up to nuked) reduce a person's hp to 0 and they pass out... its reasonable to assume that a phoenix down can wake them up (within the context of the game.) That simply wasn't the case with Aeris and I never from the beginning assumed it was. Also in the context of the game, they deviate from reality by not treating just any stab... like any other stab. You have to factor in a character's strength and level and weapon which determines how much damage a "stab" does. At the time it happens there's no question that yes, Aeris shouldn't go down to a single stab from some random mob. But at that same time its also quite believable (again in the context of the game) that someone as powerful as Sephiroth (with Masamune) could one-hit anybody... perhaps even killing them, not just knocking them out.

Of course I was already old enough when I played FF VII that I could accept the tragedy of a character's death as part of a good story. Instead of the response of lots of the younger folks playing FF VII who responded "ahhh I spent so much time on heeeerrrrr! That's not fair! (cry cry sob complain)" Yup kid, sometimes life isn't fair.

 

[Goro_v1legacy]

Hi,

My best collection of Sega genesis games are Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Wrestlemania-The Arcade Game and International Superstar Soccer Deluxe. I still own two consoles. Only one works though. Lately, I've been using these games on my Android mobile phone.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I'm still holding out hope that one day Sega will let us have an Alpha Protocol 2. Obsidian made a mistake handing them the IP as part of the deal. And a good but not great metacritic was apparently all it took to kill any sequel. Obsidian should just make a spiritual successor modern-espionage RPG starring Mike Bourneton.

 

[Vanilla ISIS]

I've never liked Sonic.
I've played the shit out of Virtua Fighter 2 and 5 though.
Virtua Cop was great on the arcade, House of the dead as well (I love to take 2 guns by myself and go all Desperado on them).
I've enjoyed some Panzer Dragon 2.
Nights into Dreams wasn't bad at all.
Back in the day, Sega Worldwide Soccer '97 was better than Fifa '97.

That's all I can think of right now.
I've also played a ton of Sega games that were never released outside of Japan with difficult titles which I've forgotten, some of them were pretty good.

 

[dscross]

Shining Force, which I always found was a better game than Phantasy Star and criminally underrated by comparison.

I?ll second Shining Force, both 1 and 2 were (are) amazing games. I bought the Sega Collection when it launched on the 360 just for those games. Shining Force II was the first one I played and the first video game I spent literally DOZENS of hours playing, whether it was grinding out levels or trying to perfect a strategy for one of the many lengthy battles. It was just so much more strategic than the randomness of Final Fantasy encounters and so much more rewarding than the mindless button mashing of hack-n?-slash action titles of the time. I still go back and play those games from time to time.

Strangely, despite my love for classic SEGA games, I never played Shining Force. Your posts make me tempted to try it. Does it play like some of the Snes RPGs?

 

[Myria]

I always loved Sword of Vermilion, unfortunately it never seemed to have gotten widespread notice and is mostly forgotten today .

 

[Xprimentyl]

Shining Force, which I always found was a better game than Phantasy Star and criminally underrated by comparison.

I?ll second Shining Force, both 1 and 2 were (are) amazing games. I bought the Sega Collection when it launched on the 360 just for those games. Shining Force II was the first one I played and the first video game I spent literally DOZENS of hours playing, whether it was grinding out levels or trying to perfect a strategy for one of the many lengthy battles. It was just so much more strategic than the randomness of Final Fantasy encounters and so much more rewarding than the mindless button mashing of hack-n?-slash action titles of the time. I still go back and play those games from time to time.

Strangely, despite my love for classic SEGA games, I never played Shining Force. Your posts make me tempted to try it. Does it play like some of the Snes RPGs?

Not sure how it compares to SNES RPGs (I was on the Sega side of the Great Console Wars of ?90s,) but I can best explain it as an RPG of chess. The stories themselves are your stock ?unlikely, no-name hero facing ancient, slowly resurrecting evil.? You?ll travel from place to place building up your party and progressing the story, and in between the story events is where the major battles take place. Your party of up to 12 characters is placed on a battlefield against an enemy army you?re ultimately tasked to defeat over the course of a protracted, turn-based battle. Each character has a fixed distance they can move per turn; this is also affected by the terrain they?re standing on (e.g.: a character who can normally move 5 spaces who?s standing on a sand tile might only be able to move 3 spaces their next turn, flying characters are uninhibited by terrain and can traverse water, etc.) The strategy comes in building the right party, knowing your various strengths and weakness, never letting the party drift too far apart/get surrounded, spreading the experience around to level up your favorite/most useful members and most importantly, keeping the main character alive throughout the battle as his death is a ?game over.? Some battles have boss characters who get more turns than any character on the field which makes planning and strategy paramount as you close in (i.e.: you don?t want to spend an hour advancing just to have the boss get two turns in a row and decimate your main character.) Battles can take a LONG time and both games have dozens of them which is why I got so much play time out of them. (Shit, talking about them makes me want to play them now!)

I really hope you check them out; everyone should. Like I said, you can find them both (plus a shit-ton of other great Sega classics) on the Sega Genesis Collection for the Xbox 360; it?s probably dirt cheap now considering it was only $30 when it was new like 5-6 years ago.

 

[Cold Shiny]

Three words:

BILLY. FRICKEN. HATCHER.

It's everything Sonic wishes it was. The controls are tight, bugs are minimal, and the platforming is awesome. Its also got an adorable soundtrack and elements of a collectathon.

The game had one printing and was basically buried because no one really cared about it. Once it was discovered that the game was awesome it became kind of a cult classic. To this day I don't believe it gets the recognition it deserves.

 

[sXeth]

Who out there still likes the classic SEGA games? Which are your favourites and why would you suggest that modern gamers play them, if you had to recommend them to future generations of gamers. Or tell me some modern ones if there are any...

Hell Yeah Wrath of the Dead Rabbit was an enjoyable little throwback game on last gen (and on Steam still). Pretty heavily influenced by Jazz Jackrabbit if you're at all familiar with that. A little bit over-90s with the humor and at times questionable controls. In an oddity for throwback-style stuff, it did boast at the time, full HD sprites and animation.

Not aware of any actual franchise to it. A cursory wikipedia run says Arkedo actually owns all their stuff, so it wouldn't necesarily be Sega if there was a 2nd go.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Valkyria Chronicles - well the first one anyway as have still never played the sequels due to them only being on handhelds and I did not like the sound of the change in setting for the 2nd one while the 3rd one I did like the sound of (i.e back to the first setting) but have never played it due to it being only in japanese and me not having gotten around to getting the english patch or even game yet (dont like gaming on handhelds of any type as a general rule) but the first Valkyria Chronicles is my second favourite game of all time loved almost everything about it from characters to presentation, story and gameplay.

Skies of Arcadia - really liked this game and it has the best world map of any game ever imo. Was great seeing the 3 main characters make an appearance in Valkyria Chronicles and squad mates and the medic.

Virtua Fighter - great fighting series that is up there with the best of them. Its desperately in need of a new entry but I am not sure we will ever get it.

Shining Force - Only played the odd ones in the series but the ones I have I really enjoyed.

Probably loads more but these are the ones off the top of my head. As for Sonic I liked 1 and 2 but didnt really care for him after that tbh so im not his greatest fan.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Bayonetta, Vanquish and Alien: Isolation, if those count. SEGA published them but didn't develop them.
And I never cared for Sonic.

 

[gsilver]

RE: Phoenix Down and Aeris:

Especially to make this Sega-related:

One of the things that I'm glad Phantasy Star 2 did was after a major character death, the main character tried to revive her, and they came up with story reasons why it was impossible Though it still could have been handled better: If it didn't work then for the reason specified, it shouldn't have worked at any point earlier in the game.

 

[votemarvel]

Streets of Rage 2 remains my favourite Sega game and I believe it still holds up well today.

Everything works for the game. The playable characters are different enough to give a different experience when playing as them. The music fits at every moment. The controls are tight and responsive.

I will never understand why they abandoned the franchise after the third game, which while a step back wasn't terrible.

 

[dscross]

Streets of Rage 2 remains my favourite Sega game and I believe it still holds up well today.

Everything works for the game. The playable characters are different enough to give a different experience when playing as them. The music fits at every moment. The controls are tight and responsive.

I will never understand why they abandoned the franchise after the third game, which while a step back wasn't terrible.

I still love the 1st one. The music. Ahhh the music is sooo goood!

 

[DarklordKyo]

As for more modern stuff:
Bayonetta, Valkyria Chronicles, Total War and the Yakuza series.

YAAAAAASSSS, [*high five*], and also the Persona games (since Atlus are, presently, a SEGA subsidiary).