TL;DR: What are your most recommended games for the system that aren't on Wii, Wii U or 3DS Virtual Console? And why are they your faves?
List of Wii VC Genesis games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)#Sega_Genesis
See Q2 below for explanation if you have any understandable shock upon seeing a Genesis hooked up to an HDTV
On Christmas morning, my wife surprised me with a Sega Genesis, a couple controllers (the OG one is at the end of the other cord pictured above), Lion King, Mickey Mania, and accidentally a Game Gear copy of Castle of Illusion with an IOU from Santa for the Genesis version.
I've never owned a Sega system before. As a kid I have memories of watching a friend play Sonic once in first grade, and maybe the same friend play Sonic on Game Gear as well. This was somewhere murkily in the area of 1994-1998 so I'm not sure if the console Sega was Genesis or Saturn. I feel like a CD may have been involved, so I'm guessing that's Saturn? You can already see I know woefully little about Sega's consoles.
My extent of experience with Sega games (beyond a brief dabble in the Sonic Advance and Chu Chu Rocket games) mostly consists of playing Ristar on VC. I think I have Landstalker and a couple Wonder Boy games but haven't played much if any of them. I tried Sonic Adventure 2 one time on GCN and the Lost World demo on Wii U and I couldn't get into either. Billy Hatcher always looked cool but I don't know that I ever tried it.
Anyway, we played some Ristar in the latter half of this year. We found it charming but really, really tough, including the controls... this was on Wii VC, though, so maybe it's easier to control on an OG Genesis controller. We used the level select code in order to "save" after beating levels but still couldn't beat it. Fun game, though. Oh, and early 2015 (?) we got a used Retron 5 and didn't care for it at all, but tried maybe one obscure Disney platformer whose name is escaping me and it was ok but very hard, as well as Mickey Mania which was brutally difficult (though perhaps the Retron controller didn't help on that front.) We're big Disney fans, though, so of the couple levels we played before I sold the Retron were very fun to see in terms of Steamboat Willie et al. I have fond memories of standing in the Disney Main Street Theater at Disneyland watching the original Steamboat Willie and then of the recent Disney Short that riffed on that.
My wife's experience with Genesis is a bit different, as a kid she mainly played two games -- Lion King on Genesis and Rayman on PSX. Two punishingly difficult platformers! We both love The Lion King (in fact, one of my Christmas gifts to her was the Legacy Collection Soundtrack!) so she was psyched to share the experience of the game with me. It's super fun, and man, I did not know how hard LK was. We're mostly using level select to "save" (not having save features isn't my favorite, I know it's a product of the time though) and are on the last level.
So, I have several questions for Genesis peeps:
1) What are your most recommended games for the system that aren't available on Wii, Wii U or 3DS Virtual Console? And why are they your faves?
List of Wii VC Genesis games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)#Sega_Genesis
I ask this because any game I can own digitally instead I'd probably prefer to. I especially love platformers and adventure games a la Zelda, so, I'm most interested in those, but open to many others as well (I don't tend to like violent games or sports games though). I'm interested in hearing favorites in general, too.
2) What is the best way to play the system on an HD TV?
I know, I need a CRT. And we will get one, eventually. For the time being we're at an AirBNB playing on a 55" LCD TV and it really doesn't look that bad (using R/W/Y, which I believe is composite), and I'm sure it'll look a little better on our 35" home LCD TV, I know that's a bit of sacrilege to say, though. Is there a component or HDMI cord or adapter available?
3) If we want the ability to save games, is a GameShark our best bet or will most games have a level select code? Forgive my ignorance, but do any games offer a save feature?
4) What's the region locking situation? Can I play JP games on the system?
5) Are some of the Disney games that are also on SNES, i.e. Lion King, Aladdin, essentially identical to their SNES counterparts or are completely different games?
Thanks all so much in advance!
P.S. I know there's a Master System/Genesis appreciation/collecting thread and I plan to poke my head in there, but I thought this thread might reach a wider audience.
List of Wii VC Genesis games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)#Sega_Genesis
See Q2 below for explanation if you have any understandable shock upon seeing a Genesis hooked up to an HDTV
On Christmas morning, my wife surprised me with a Sega Genesis, a couple controllers (the OG one is at the end of the other cord pictured above), Lion King, Mickey Mania, and accidentally a Game Gear copy of Castle of Illusion with an IOU from Santa for the Genesis version.
I've never owned a Sega system before. As a kid I have memories of watching a friend play Sonic once in first grade, and maybe the same friend play Sonic on Game Gear as well. This was somewhere murkily in the area of 1994-1998 so I'm not sure if the console Sega was Genesis or Saturn. I feel like a CD may have been involved, so I'm guessing that's Saturn? You can already see I know woefully little about Sega's consoles.
My extent of experience with Sega games (beyond a brief dabble in the Sonic Advance and Chu Chu Rocket games) mostly consists of playing Ristar on VC. I think I have Landstalker and a couple Wonder Boy games but haven't played much if any of them. I tried Sonic Adventure 2 one time on GCN and the Lost World demo on Wii U and I couldn't get into either. Billy Hatcher always looked cool but I don't know that I ever tried it.
Anyway, we played some Ristar in the latter half of this year. We found it charming but really, really tough, including the controls... this was on Wii VC, though, so maybe it's easier to control on an OG Genesis controller. We used the level select code in order to "save" after beating levels but still couldn't beat it. Fun game, though. Oh, and early 2015 (?) we got a used Retron 5 and didn't care for it at all, but tried maybe one obscure Disney platformer whose name is escaping me and it was ok but very hard, as well as Mickey Mania which was brutally difficult (though perhaps the Retron controller didn't help on that front.) We're big Disney fans, though, so of the couple levels we played before I sold the Retron were very fun to see in terms of Steamboat Willie et al. I have fond memories of standing in the Disney Main Street Theater at Disneyland watching the original Steamboat Willie and then of the recent Disney Short that riffed on that.
My wife's experience with Genesis is a bit different, as a kid she mainly played two games -- Lion King on Genesis and Rayman on PSX. Two punishingly difficult platformers! We both love The Lion King (in fact, one of my Christmas gifts to her was the Legacy Collection Soundtrack!) so she was psyched to share the experience of the game with me. It's super fun, and man, I did not know how hard LK was. We're mostly using level select to "save" (not having save features isn't my favorite, I know it's a product of the time though) and are on the last level.
So, I have several questions for Genesis peeps:
1) What are your most recommended games for the system that aren't available on Wii, Wii U or 3DS Virtual Console? And why are they your faves?
List of Wii VC Genesis games:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Virtual_Console_games_for_Wii_(North_America)#Sega_Genesis
I ask this because any game I can own digitally instead I'd probably prefer to. I especially love platformers and adventure games a la Zelda, so, I'm most interested in those, but open to many others as well (I don't tend to like violent games or sports games though). I'm interested in hearing favorites in general, too.
2) What is the best way to play the system on an HD TV?
I know, I need a CRT. And we will get one, eventually. For the time being we're at an AirBNB playing on a 55" LCD TV and it really doesn't look that bad (using R/W/Y, which I believe is composite), and I'm sure it'll look a little better on our 35" home LCD TV, I know that's a bit of sacrilege to say, though. Is there a component or HDMI cord or adapter available?
3) If we want the ability to save games, is a GameShark our best bet or will most games have a level select code? Forgive my ignorance, but do any games offer a save feature?
4) What's the region locking situation? Can I play JP games on the system?
5) Are some of the Disney games that are also on SNES, i.e. Lion King, Aladdin, essentially identical to their SNES counterparts or are completely different games?
Thanks all so much in advance!
P.S. I know there's a Master System/Genesis appreciation/collecting thread and I plan to poke my head in there, but I thought this thread might reach a wider audience.
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