Sega Genesis, Part Deux

You've seen the rest, now see the best! Here's the final ten listings of my Top 15 all-time favourite Sega Genesis games. If you don't agree with them, then you're a fuck face.
Enjoy!


#10 CADASH
Aside from the classic Zelda, this was one of the first medieval hack-n-slash games I've ever played. You could be either a generic fighter guy or an old wizard. The wizard was slower and weaker, but I always picked him because his magic attacks were more powerful. I could never beat it as a kid because of its difficulty. But it's actually a really short game, so I'm eager to take a crack at it today.

#9 MORTAL KOMBAT
To this day, MK still holds up as one of the best fighting games ever made. The newest game in the series, Mortal Kombat Armageddon, boasts a shitload of characters. But the one that started it all had a lot to offer too. The characters were great, the realistic animation looked awesome, the moves were fun and easy to learn, the arenas were well-detailed, and the bosses were freaking scary (Goro, I'm looking in your direction!). Plus, this game introduced the concept of Fatalities, something other fighters have copied over the years. I mean, who didn't love uppercutting some sum'bitch off the Pit and into the sea of spikes that lay at the bottom?

#8 THE LION KING
Another great Disney game. I remember getting this for my birthday and being uber-psyched to play it. What was cool was that you could control Simba through both stages of his life, cub and adult (and, keeping with movie continuity, cub Simba couldn't roar very well). There was a nice little change of pace with the Stampede level. At the end, though, this game started getting insanely hard, particularly the last three levels. The lava level is a bitch, especially because it wasn't in the movie at all. And unless you know exactly what to do and how to do it, good luck fighting Scar. This game has some sentimental value for me, because it's the first game that I beat before my older cousins did.

#7 DYNAMITE HEADDY
This game was just plain fucked-up, but it was a LOT of fun. You play as Headdy, some weird little orange bird-creature, whose head could shoot off of his body as a weapon. Along the way, you pick up upgrades that can make your head go through walls, give it super-strength, allow it to shoot ninja stars, or even turn it into a biplane so you could fly. The last boss is some douchebag named Dark Demon, and if you don't get a pen & paper and write down his attack pattern so you can remember how it goes, then you will not beat him. Seriously. But there was a basketball mini-game! Boom-shaka-laka!

#6 X-MEN
What an awesome Marvel comics game. But what a fucking hard one to boot! Controlling either Wolverine, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, or Gambit, you must lead the X-Men through five or six levels filled with more enemies and pitfalls than you can imagine. What was awesome about this game was that it came straight form the Fox kids cartoon, so all of the characters were there. Five of the other X-Men help you out in battle, and you get to take on a crapload of villains, like Mojo, Apocalypse, Sabretooth, Juggernaut, and eventually Magneto. Not like I've ever made it up to Magneto or anything. Did I mention that this game is really, really hard?

#5 ALADDIN
Let's face it, every boy wanted to be Aladdin after watching that kick-ass movie. Thanks to this game, they could very well be Aladdin. Not only did you get a sweet scimitar to slash your enemies with, but you could throw apples. Yeah, apples. The only weird thing is, you needed apples to kill Jafar, which made no sense because he was a giant fucking snake! You could also fly your magic carpet at breakneck speeds through a cave that is boiling with red-hot lava. But of course, the biggest rush of all is, once you beat Jafar's ass into submission, you get to bone Princess Jasmine. "Arabian Nights" is right...

#4 MAXIMUM CARNAGE
Whew! This game took me so long to beat, that it became like a personal test of endurance! But what an amazing beat-em-up game it was! You could play as both Spidey AND Venom, patrolling the mean streets of New York and kicking the snot out of Carnage, Shriek, Doppelganger, Carrion, Demogoblin and a shitload of ambitious street punks! It was amazing! Plus, as if that weren't enough, you get help from other Marvel characters, like Captain America, Iron Fist, and Deathlok. I mean, in what other game can you ask for help from DEATHLOK?!!? Hell, before I played this game, I didn't even know who the fuck Deathlok was! Just for the record, when I finally DID beat this game, I did it with Venom. Venom rocks.

#3 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
Unlike with the Mario franchise, Sega made sure their mascot character had a great sequel to their first starring title. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 delivered a bigger, faster and more action-packed game than the first, with a bunch more stages, cooler enemies, and the introduction of Sonic's wimpy little buddy, Tails the fox! The hardest part was having to get past the second-last boss: Metal Sonic. Not only did the guy have a nearly unpredictable fighting style, but you had to fight him with zero power rings at your disposal, meaning one hit, and you DIE. Metal Sonic took about ten hits to kill. Fair? Nope.

#2 SONIC THE HEDGEHOG
What can I say? I've got a weakness for the classics! No Sega Genesis game has more sentimental and nostalgic meaning to me than the original, platform-launching Sonic the Hedgehog (with the possible exception of that Mickey Mouse game). Sonic could run fast and he could kick ass. Every level of that game was long, fun and challenging. I've played it so many times, I've actually memorized every single piece of music in the game! Sad, I know. but that's what makes this game so good: you COULD play it over and over and over. And I did. Oh, I did. I played it at home. I played it at my cousin's house. I played it at my other cousin's house. I played it when I got home from church. I played it after school. I played it before school. Sonic the Hedgehog rocks my fucking world.

#1 SHINING FORCE
I like role-playing games. I also like medieval fantasy games. So when I first played this, I was blown a-goddamn-way. Shining Force is a tactics game, much like the popular Fire Emblem series, except this one was really old school. It was just SO much fun. You start off with a group of about five characters, trying to bust through this temple. As the game goes on, you expand your number of allies. By the time I got about 80% through it, I had literally 30 different characters to choose from! Every character had their own cool powers, weapons & abilities. And when you reach level 20, they get promoted: their weapons change, their stats go up by an insane amount, and they even get more badass-looking clothes. The only reason this game tops Sonic on my list is because it's so fucking big, with so much to it that you could probably play it for a straight year. I want to play it right now.
In fact, I think I will.

Game Over.
;)

"SE-GA!"
-announcers at the beginning of Sonic the Hedgehog