Reviews / previews
Sega's finally caught the retro bug, and to generally
positive effect.
Its Smash Pack for Windows 95 and 98 consists of
eight varied Genesis games covering the period from
1989, when this first of the 16-bit consoles was
released, to its extended vanishing act in the
mid-'90s.
The 3D sideview
shooter Vectorman
demonstrates the
wonders that could
be extracted from a
fully exploited
six-year-old system.
Sonic Spinball from
1993 is a sweet
pinball game, with
the blue-haired hedgehog cast as the ball. Fans of
console role-players will be pleased to see the
classic Phantasy Star 2 (though I wonder why PSes
3 and 4 aren't included). And I can't seem to put down
the colorful (and supremely tuneful) Tetris clone
Columns.
Everything works,
and works well. The
games generally
have the feel of the
Genesis
originals--as well they should, since they're
running under an emulator--and it doesn't
have the guilty twinge of playing with images
of copyrighted ROMs.
That said, some games have endured better
than others. For instance, Golden
Axe--notable in its day for adding an extra axis to gameplay--comes off as
oddly wooden. While I was delighted to see Super Shinobi listed on the box,
this once-tension-filled side-scroller--an early classic on the console--simply
hasn't endured the 10 intervening years as well in fact as in memory. (Love
the music, though.) And I was never a fan of the blocky, shapeshifting
beat-em-up Altered Beast or the pseudo-3D
racer Outrun to begin with.
Moreover, these games don't take up even
30 megabytes on the CD, and with a library
of something over 800 Genesis games
(many of them Sega's own), you'd think the
publisher could be a bit more generous in its
selections.
Still, Sega's on the right track here, and we can only hope that this is just
Volume 1 of a series.-- Peter Olafson / GamePro
Got an opinion about Sega Smash Pack? Or maybe know a good cheat or strategy? Share it with the world!