[Toasty]

Exclusives:
Toe Jam & Earl
Streets of Rage 3, 1, and 2 (in that order)
Aladdin (also on different platforms, but different games)
Golden Axe
Road Rash
Revenge Of Shinobi
Altered Beast
Comix Zone
Shining Force
Berenstein Bears ITS A GREAT GAME SHUT UP
Phantasy Star II

There were games that were good that were also on SNES like The Lion King and Rockin Roll Racing, but the SNES versions were almost always better.

[winterhell]

Toasty, on 19 May 2015 - 10:10 PM, said:

Berenstein Bears

Wow I havent even heard of this game and I know several hundred games for the system...

[SpeedStarTMQ]

I know you've already gotten quite a few, but I'm throwing my hat in anyway:

Streets of Rage - A Beat-'em up in the style of Final Fight for the SNES, only way better and with a timeless soundtrack. Awesome with 2P.

Streets of Rage 2 - A Beat-'em up which took the original and added arcade-style graphics and a larger roster of characters with varying attributes. The best 2P game on the system.



Golden Axe - The classic arcade-style hack 'n' slash. Great with 2P.

The Revenge of Shinobi/The Super Shinobi - An excellent action platformer, with pixel-perfect precision. Quite a punishing game.

Shinobi III - Action platformer. easier than the prequel, but more cinematic with a more varied and fluid moveset. An epic game.

Space Harrier II - Third Person Rail Shooter. Not as good as the arcade original, but pretty damn good still. Challenging.

Comix Zone - A unique Beat-'em up game, where you have to jump between the pages of a comic to fight the bad guys. Awesome music and good combo-system make this a really satisfying game.

Super Thunderblade - Third Person Rail Shooter but with a helicopter twist, bitches. Hard as nails and best with a joystick.


Super Hang-On - An Arcade Racing Game, quite like OutRun or Rad Racer for the NES. A fine classic.

Dune II - If you've ever played Command & Conquer, then you'll recognize this. The daddy of the modern RTS, this version actually improved somewhat on the PC original with certain features that have been RTS staples ever since. Wildly addictive and hugely time-consuming.

[360]

The two rare ones are Monster World IV and Golden Axe III. Both Japan only as far as I remember. Why the hell Sega didn't bring those two localised to the West is beyond me. Golden Axe I can understand because it didn't review well and was weaker than the previous two games but the Wonderboy game is the best in the series. I played almost everything the Genesis had back in the day but those two evaded me because of their Japan only release. I ended up emulating them something like seven years after the Genesis had died. Monster World IV came quite late in the Genesis' life after Sega had made the infamous decision to abandon their console hence the Japan only release.

Golden Axe is worth checking out just to say you've played it whilst Monster World IV is all kinds of amazing and you'll love it. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Oh and before I forget; one game that people almost always miss: Shadow Dancer. Awesome and underrated Shinobi game.

This post has been edited by 360: 20 May 2015 - 04:16 AM

[Toasty]

winterhell, on 20 May 2015 - 12:17 AM, said:

Toasty, on 19 May 2015 - 10:10 PM, said:

Berenstein Bears

Wow I havent even heard of this game and I know several hundred games for the system...

It's a great game. It sounds and looks stupid but it's a fun platformer. I still play it sometimes. It's probably not too interesting for the older crowd but it has a good balance of difficulty for the kiddos.

[JumpingRyle]

360, on 20 May 2015 - 04:13 AM, said:

The two rare ones are Monster World IV and Golden Axe III. Both Japan only as far as I remember. Why the hell Sega didn't bring those two localised to the West is beyond me. Golden Axe I can understand because it didn't review well and was weaker than the previous two games but the Wonderboy game is the best in the series. I played almost everything the Genesis had back in the day but those two evaded me because of their Japan only release. I ended up emulating them something like seven years after the Genesis had died. Monster World IV came quite late in the Genesis' life after Sega had made the infamous decision to abandon their console hence the Japan only release.

Golden Axe is worth checking out just to say you've played it whilst Monster World IV is all kinds of amazing and you'll love it. Hope this helps.

EDIT: Oh and before I forget; one game that people almost always miss: Shadow Dancer. Awesome and underrated Shinobi game.

MWIV came out in early '94, so it wasn't quite at the point where Sega was abandoning anything. There are a few reasons that it wasn't localized. Mac Senour, a producer at Sega of America, described the rather arbitrary process to determine which games were localized. A producer at SoA would take a look at the game, and if they thought it would sell well they would recommend it for localization. Famously, Gunstar Heroes went through 12 producers and assistant producers who all refused it before Senour decided it had potential. The way he describes it, the decisions were based almost entirely on the marketability of the games, not their quality. Apparently nobody liked Gunstar Heroes because it had small sprites. It's easy to see how MWIV was rejected: The "IV" meant it was nothing new (which is why Thunder Force IV was changed to Lightning Force in the US); the game looked too "cute" and had a female protagonist, which clashed with the target demographic of male teenager in the US; and it looked like just another ordinary platformer. At this time, also, Japanese games were not selling well in the US. If you look at US sales charts for the Genesis, most of the top 10 games from that era were sports titles. SoA was marketing the hell out of those, while Japanese games were, with a few exceptions, afterthoughts. Of course, this only applies to games localized by SoA. Third party developers were free to do the localization themselves.

http://www.sega-16.c...iew-mac-senour/

[doc eggfan]

Pier Solar is also fantastic, though not sure whether it can be flashed to a rom.

[DerZocker]

Devil's Crush/ Dragon's Fury
One of the best pinball games ever made with an awesome sountrack. It has some graphical improvements over the PCE version. As for the music, I wouldn't say it sounds better or worse on any system. It's more a matter of personal preferance.

Zero Wing
Don't laugh, the game has more to offer than just great justice. It's a pretty good Shmup with some badass music. My only gripe is that the lack of an extra boss theme makes the fights a bit anticlimactic.

Gaiares
Another Shmup, also a nice soundtrack and a cool weapon system which allows you to snatch enemy weapons. There are also some very nicely drawn boss sprites

Turtles - The Hyperstone Heist
Not quite as cool as the SNES version of Turtles in Time but the music sounds much better through the MD than the slightly muffled SPC tracks.

Most of the others which come to my mind were already named, like Maui Mallard, Cool Spot (one of the few games were the music actually sounds much more like real intruments than on SNES), Thunder Force IV or Ranger X

[Flygon]

doc eggfan, on 20 May 2015 - 06:28 PM, said:

Pier Solar is also fantastic, though not sure whether it can be flashed to a rom.

Well, it does have a dirt cheap PC release. Not sure how it compares to the Mega Drive version, however.

[BSonirachi]

Castle of Illusion
QuackShot
World of Illusion
Mickey Mania
Pulseman
Monster World IV (M2's English translation recommended)
Earthworm Jim 1 & 2
Streets of Rage trilogy
The Lost Vikings (MD version has 5 levels the other versions don't have)
Mega Bomberman (inferior port of Bomberman 94, but still a great multiplayer game)
Micro Machines 2 & 96
Puggsy
Super Fantasy Zone
ToeJam & Earl
Socket (a rather dodgy Sonic clone, but it has some great music)

[Vangar]

BSonirachi, on 24 May 2015 - 08:47 AM, said:

Castle of Illusion
QuackShot
World of Illusion
Mickey Mania
Pulseman
Monster World IV (M2's English translation recommended)
Earthworm Jim 1 & 2
Streets of Rage trilogy
The Lost Vikings (MD version has 5 levels the other versions don't have)
Mega Bomberman (inferior port of Bomberman 94, but still a great multiplayer game)
Micro Machines 2 & 96
Puggsy
Super Fantasy Zone
ToeJam & Earl
Socket (a rather dodgy Sonic clone, but it has some great music)

This guy gets me. Quackshot is a great game but not very difficult. How could I forget Super Fantasy Zone, great game.

[Ritz]

Unmentioned, I think:

Twinkle Tale
ResQ
Mega Turrican
Battle Mania Daiginjō (not the greatest, but very cool)
M.U.S.H.A.
Atomic Runner
Gley Lancer
Sub-Terrania
Red Zone (haven't played yet, but it's a technical achievement and must be noted)
Animaniacs (Konami's Dynamite Headdy)
Mamono Hunter Yohko

Vouching for MUST PLAY:

Contra Hard Corps
Alien Soldier
Panorama Cotton
Dynamite Headdy
Micro Machines 96/Military (probably the best multiplayer game on the system)
Ranger-X

This post has been edited by Ritz: 16 June 2015 - 12:57 PM

[Ell678]

Micro Machines and Micro Machines Military are worthwhile. Many hours of my childhood were spent playing that.

I think I only completed them once...

[Slicar]

You should really try out Puggsy, it's puzzle game but it's truly amazing :D

Some other good games:

Super Fantasy Zone
Mr. Nutz
Fantastic Dizzy
Radical Rex

[vectrexian]

Subterrania is a great game for the system. It gets a lot of hate for being overly difficult, but the difficulty can be lowered and it's actually quite reasonable on easy. Like Zyrinx's other titles, the music and graphics are excellent.

I saw Red Zone (another game from Zyrinx) mentioned earlier in this thread and I'd like to add that while it is a rather impressive technical achievement, the gameplay is pretty iffy. Definitely worth checking out though, it's quite cheap.

Also, I figured it would be worth mentioning Lotus II: RECS. It's a Genesis port of Lotus III for the PC/Amiga and it's a pretty good racing game. Much Better than Lotus Turbo Challenge, the previous game in the series.

This post has been edited by vectrexian: 14 July 2015 - 06:47 PM