PixlBit

30 years ago today, Sega's blue blur made his debut.

By 1990, Sega was enjoying newfound success with their new 16-bit Genesis system. It quickly became a competent competitor to the NES with popular titles like Golden Axe, Phantasy Star II, and Revenge of Shinobi. But despite the rising success of the Genesis, the platform didn’t have a brand character that could rival Super Mario. Tasked with creating such a mascot, character designer Naoto Oshima came up with Sonic- a blue anthropomorphic hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog was released on June 23, 1991- two full months ahead of the Super Nintendo’s debut in America. It was a big summer for Sega, and today marks the 30th anniversary of the moment that made them an icon in the home console gaming space.

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Jump Around

Developed by Masaya, published by DreamWorks (no relation to the movie studio), and released in 1990, Trampoline Terror was quite the unique title if you managed to find out about it somehow. I’ve got to hand it to the design team-- they had me fooled with this game. Thanks to my youthful first-time impression of the game many moons ago, I always thought I was playing an overhead action title. I had so much fun with the game, that I didn’t even notice that I was really playing a puzzle\strategy game sneakily dressed in an action game’s clothes (more or less). I’m not sure why it didn’t click with me until now- some 20 years later- especially when most of the gameplay elements practically scream “this is a puzzle game”.

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Lightning strikes thrice.

A while back when I officially started collecting retro consoles and games, I swore that I’d never become one of those elitists in the gaming community who always makes a big deal about his vast, all-encompassing knowledge of video games; at least not in public. However, in my own mind, I was the master of all things retro.  Well, that all came to a screeching halt in recent years thanks to Wikipedia when I discovered that, aside from owning the fifth game in the series, I knew next to nothing about the Thunder Force saga.  As I learned of its existence on Sega's 16-bit console, it became painfully clear that I had barely gotten my toes wet with Technosoft’s  bread and butter.  How I missed it back in the day, I will never know.  But after playing Thunder Force III, I soon realized that there was a whole ocean I was missing out on: the Genesis was the system for shoot-‘em-ups.

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Takin’ it back to the old school ('cause I'm an old fool).

As an SNES kid, there’s a sizable selection of Genesis classics that I’ve never had the opportunity to play. With the exception of the first game, the Shinobi series unfortunately falls into that category. However, thanks to Sega’s recent efforts to 3D-ify some of their classic Genesis titles, I’ve finally been able to give Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master a shot. I’m happy to report that not only is this title still fantastic today, but that M2 has done a phenomenal job in bringing this game to the 3DS.

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New “Retro Game Vault” section lists new PowerUp rewards for members.

Visitors to GameStop’s PowerUp Rewards website may have noticed a new section called the Retro Game Vault.  It would appear GameStop is getting into the business of selling classic games for reward points for systems dating all the way back to the Atari 2600.  There are even some accessories listed for future availability such as the Nintendo Power Pad and the infamous NES Power glove, which come with World Class Track Meet and Super Gloveball respectively. 

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