Old Sega CD games are unlikely to impress sophisticated fans of modern computer graphics. However, some games will remain in the hearts of old-school gamers who enjoyed a happy childhood. Who says you can’t go back to your childhood? We can suggest a little excursion into that happy time by telling you about the best Sega CD games.
10th place: Heart Of The Alien
Heart Of The Alien is a sequel to Out of this World (Another World). You start playing not as Professor Lester but as his alien friend Buddy. The story begins just after the end of the first part. The inhabitants of the village, where our friends have arrived on the pterodactyl, are still in zombified condition, so the brave newcomer Buddy rushes into the fight to save them. You also have one more mission: to find a way to send your Earth friend Lester home. The gameplay is similar to the one in the first part but easier. Buddy also has some new moves, especially with his whip.
9th place: Samurai Shodown
The plot of Samurai Shodown unfolds during the feudal era in Japan. The game is known for its fast-paced combat. The combat system is based on fast and powerful single strikes. As a result, the fight ends in just a few seconds. This is the main difference from other fighting games like Street Fighter or Fatal Fury, allowing you to combine moves. The control is performed with four buttons: weak weapon kick, medium weapon kick, weak leg kick, and medium leg kick. Pressing the soft and medium weapon buttons simultaneously results in a hard kick. You can knock the weapon down from your opponent’s hands during the fight. As a result, they lose all the techniques associated with using the gun. At the bottom of the screen, there is a POW scale. It fills up if the character has been damaged. When this scale is complete, the character’s beats become more vital for a short period.
8th place: Shining Force
The ancients slayed the Dark Dragon about ten centuries ago and sealed him in another dimension. He swore he would return in a thousand years and avenge the entire human world. Over time, everyone forgot about the Dark Dragon and the dark power in general. These days, when nothing foretold trouble, the kingdom of Runefaust began to attack civilians to free the lord of darkness and conquer the entire world. All those few who could fight only hope for one hero who can defeat the forces of evil, a hero who may be reading these lines.
It is a tactical role-playing game where the player controls a group of characters. During combat, the entire space is divided into squares where you can move horizontally or vertically.
7th place: Ecco: The Tides of Time
The story continues from where Ecco the Dolphin ended. It turns out that Vortex Queen is not defeated. She has followed Ecco to create a new nest on Earth.
The control system and a high level of difficulty have not changed since the first game of the series. A new quest was added, such as following another dolphin and pseudo-3D levels. One of the innovations was metal spheres, transforming Ecco into other creatures. Transformations depend on the level of the metasphere and allow you to change into a seagull, a jellyfish, a shark, a school of fish, and a Vortex drone.
6th place: Lunar: The Silver Star
The game is set in the fictional world of Lunar, orbiting a barren blue planet. If we draw an analogy with the real world, the world of the Lunar and the Blue Star is in the same orbit as the planet Earth and its natural satellite, the Moon. The Blue Star was uninhabitable one hundred years before the game began because it had been at war for years. The powerful and benevolent goddess Althena moved the entire population to the Silver Star. She entrusted four dragons with guarding the new world’s elements (darkness, light, fire, and water). From that moment on, those who wish to use the power of dragons to serve the goddess and protect the world from evil are called Dragonmasters. But there was no wiser hero than the Dragonmaster Dyne, a legendary hero who once defended the goddess and became a victim by the will of fate. The stories of Dyne’s exploits became a cornerstone for a young boy named Alex, the game’s protagonist, who dreams of becoming a Dragonmaster.
Lunar: The Silver Star is a traditional Japanese role-playing game with two-dimensional characters and locations. The player needs to explore different cities, forests, and caves to progress through the story, communicate with non-playable characters who help the heroes better know the world, and reward valuable items.
5th place: Sonic CD
Sonic, the Hedgehog CD, is a platform game made in two-dimensional graphics. The story is set after the events of Sonic the Hedgehog and before Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Dr. Robotnik discovers that there are so-called Time Stones, capable of affecting the passage of time, on the Little Planet. The villain chains the planet to rock and turns it into his giant fortress. Sonic the Hedgehog, seeing this, travels up the chain to explore the Earth. There he meets Amy Rose, a pink hedgehog, who falls in love with the protagonist, but she is soon kidnapped by Metal Sonic, a robotic version of Sonic. Sonic must rescue Amy and collect the seven Time Stones to defeat Dr. Robotnik and Metal Sonic and free the planet.
4th place: Snatcher
The Snatcher narrative is divided into acts and stylized as a feature film plot. Hideo Kojima, the screenwriter, planned six actions, but the original game was released with only two shows due to haste. Later re-releases of the 1990s had the third act, but Snatcher’s story was still untold. The game’s events occur in the middle of the twenty-first century in high-tech Neo Kobe City, located on an artificial island in Japan. Fifty years ago, on June 6, 1991, a catastrophic event happened: a dangerous biological weapon Lucifer-Alpha leaked from a bio laboratory in Moscow and killed 80% of the entire population of Eurasia.
Snatcher combines a graphic adventure with elements of a visual novel. There is no point-and-click concept; control is done by selecting a control verb, such as Look, Explore, Talk, etc., and the revealed screen element. The puzzle solving and dialogue trees are elementary and aim for straightforward storytelling.
3rd place: Sewer Shark
The goal of Sewer Shark is to travel from home base to Solar City without crashing or running out of power while maintaining a satisfactory performance level, as observed by Ghost and Commissioner Stentchler. Like other rail shooters, the ship mostly flies, leaving the player to shoot at ratigators (mutant crossover between rats and alligators), bats, giant scorpions, and mechanical moles. Along the way, Catfish gives the player directions. If the player makes a mistake or misses a move, they end up deadlocked and fall, ending the game. Later in the game, the Catfish is replaced by a “crazy looking thing,” visually leading the player through the sewer. The ship has limited energy, slowly expanding during the flight and when firing. Scorpions deprive the ship of power if the player fails to shoot them down. This energy can be partially replenished at refueling stations. In later areas, the boat encounters random pockets of hydrogen. Using them, the player must detonate Catfish to pass safely.
2nd place: Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf
Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf is a two-dimensional turn-based grand strategy based on the life of Temujin, the historical Mongol leader known as Genghis Khan. The gameplay is similar to Koei’s other significant strategy games, such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Nobunaga’s Ambition. Several scenarios are available, from Mongol conquest (unification of the Mongol nation) to world domination (up to six playable factions). Players set up their provinces on a world/country map divided into sections, give orders to their men, form alliances, and recruit troops. Battles are presented in a separate mode where players command their armies.
1st place: Earthworm Jim: Special Edition
Earthworm Jim is a platformer video game developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Virgin Interactive. The protagonist of the game is the earthworm named Jim, dressed in a robotic Super-Suit and fighting evil. The action takes place on various surreal planets. Jim was originally an ordinary earthworm, doing what earthworms usually do: eating humus and escaping crows. One day in outer space above Earth, the villainous Psy-Crow caught up with a spaceship piloted by a rebel who stole “the-ultra-high-tech-indestructible-space-cyber-suit” designed by Professor Monkey-For-A-Head. The suit was intended for The Evil Queen Pulsating, Bloated, Festering, Sweaty, Pus-filled, Malformed, Slug-for-a-Butt, wishing to continue her galaxy conquest. As a result of a space battle, the Super Suit got to Earth, and, by pure chance, Jim got inside its collar. As a result, he mutated into a large and intelligent superhero.