Latest news with #MegaDrive
Metro
10-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
Road Rash Is the best Sega Mega Drive racing game - Reader's Feature
A reader looks back at Mega Drive classic Road Rash and its unique blend of racing and beat 'em-up action, set to a classic soundtrack. Released in the early '90s, Road Rash for the Sega Mega Drive (known as the Genesis in North America) wasn't just another racing game. It was a gritty, rebellious, and pulse-pounding thrill ride that threw out the rulebook and rewrote what gamers could expect from a motorcycle racer. EA's Road Rash remains a cult classic, not just for its chaotic gameplay, but for its adrenaline-fueled soundtrack that still stands as one of the greatest in 16-bit gaming history. At its core, Road Rash is a motorcycle racing game. But it adds a glorious twist: combat. The game drops you onto long stretches of open road, weaving through traffic, dodging cows and potholes, all while trying to punch, kick, or bludgeon your fellow racers with chains and clubs. It was this fusion of high-speed racing and beat 'em-up action that made Road Rash more than just a test of reflexes. It was a dirty street brawl at 100 mph. Each race feels like a mini-epic. There's strategy in knowing when to strike an opponent or when to focus on dodging incoming attacks. Cops would chase you and if you crashed too many times, you were arrested or hospitalised, costing you time and money – both precious in the pursuit of better bikes and higher-tier races. The simplicity of the controls – accelerate, brake, attack – hid a much deeper level of nuance. You had to learn each course, anticipate tight corners, and time your attacks. It was endlessly replayable, brutally difficult at times, and always a blast to pick up, even for a quick race. For a 16-bit game, Road Rash looked great. The bikes had a chunky, satisfying look to them and the scrolling backgrounds, while repetitive, had enough detail to create atmosphere. From rural highways to urban sprawls, each track felt distinct. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. The character portraits were particularly memorable, as you faced sneering punks who looked like they belonged in a Mad Max movie. These visual cues gave the game its own identity – a raw, anarchic feel that perfectly matched the gameplay. But while the visuals helped set the tone, it was the sound that elevated Road Rash into legend. Ask any longtime gamer what they remember most about Road Rash and chances are the music will come up immediately. The Mega Drive's Yamaha sound chip wasn't known for subtlety, but the developers managed to squeeze out a soundtrack that was nothing short of iconic. Gritty, distorted guitar riffs. Thumping bass lines. High-energy rock anthems that made you feel like you were playing through a music video on wheels. Each track captured the rebellious spirit of the game. Whether you were hammering down a desert road or weaving through a rain-slicked city street, the music pushed you forward, amping up the tension and excitement. It was loud, it was dirty, and it was absolutely perfect. Even today, the Road Rash soundtrack holds up. Fans have remixed and covered its songs for years, and retrospectives often cite it as one of the best examples of early game music that went beyond beeps and bloops to capture real musical energy. It wasn't just background noise – it was part of the experience. What makes Road Rash still fun today is its unapologetic style. It doesn't try to be realistic. It doesn't care about physics or fairness. It's about the rush. Few racing games have ever captured that outlaw feeling so effectively. And while later entries added FMV cut scenes and licensed music, the original Mega Drive version still reigns supreme for many fans because of its perfect blend of raw gameplay and that unforgettable chiptuned rock. More Trending In the pantheon of Mega Drive classics, Road Rash deserves its place. It was loud, it was wild, and it knew exactly what it was: fun, fast, and fuelled by an unforgettable soundtrack. By reader BaldB3lper The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Why is Nintendo trying to make the Switch 2 seem so unexciting? - Reader's Feature MORE: The video game that made me fall in love with gaming - Reader's Feature MORE: Sony should stop making PlayStation consoles while they're still beating Xbox - Reader's Feature
Metro
09-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
The video game that made me fall in love with gaming - Reader's Feature
A reader reveals how Shenmue on the Sega Dreamcast completely changed his attitude towards video games, after growing up with a Mega Drive. Gaming has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. Like many kids in the '90s, I grew up in the middle of the great console wars. I had the SNES, my best mate had his Mega Drive, and we'd visit each other, playing our favourite games. I truly got to experience the best of both worlds. How could it get better than this? October 1999 comes along and Sega releases the much-anticipated Dreamcast. At this point, I have been paying attention to its release, but it wasn't doing anything to make me look away from my Nintendo 64. Sonic Adventure looked great (for the time), Sega Rally was always a winner, but I could play that in the arcades. So I thought there was nothing for me here, and I looked forward to the upcoming Perfect Dark. Then suddenly everything changed, something caught my eye. What is this strange game with its even stranger name? What even is a Shenmue?! A weird name, a mysterious vibe, and visuals that looked like nothing I had ever seen before. The story sounded like an old-school martial arts movie (which I loved watching, thanks to my dad) and they were introducing so many new technical advancements into the game that it was, at the time, the world's most expensive game. I just had to play it. My sister and I joined forces and we bought ourselves a second-hand Dreamcast, and soon I was gifted a copy of this mystifying game. This… this is the moment that changed everything for me. Sign up to the GameCentral newsletter for a unique take on the week in gaming, alongside the latest reviews and more. Delivered to your inbox every Saturday morning. Sat in front of my small 14' TV, I was transported to 1986 Yokosuka, Japan. I was no longer playing a game, I was Ryo Hazuki. On the search for the murderer of my father, I wandered the streets; chatted with strangers about a black car; wasted money on capsule toys, hoping to finally complete the set; and hung around vending machines buying cans of drink, hoping in vain to finally win that prize. I never did. None of this made any sense. This is meant to be an action game, so why, when I'm meant to be chasing the man who killed my dad, am I playing in the arcade and feeding this homeless cat? Alright, so I need to speak to somebody about sailors, but nobody during the day has a clue, right, I'd need to waste some time before night settles. I know, I'll just pop to the local park and practice my moves. And yet, the more I played, the more it all started to click. What first felt confusing, became oddly compelling. With every small action, every quiet moment, I was being pulled deeper into its world, into Yokosuka, into Shenmue. Shenmue wasn't about rushing or trying to beat high scores. It made me slow down, be observant, and immerse myself in a living, breathing world. Even now, after all these years, Shenmue still stands out. Games have come a very long way since 1999, but very few have drawn me into its world like Shenmue did. All of this combined to be something special, something unique, that truly captured my heart. More Trending It didn't just entertain me. It made me fall in love. By reader Mike Wilson The reader's features do not necessarily represent the views of GameCentral or Metro. You can submit your own 500 to 600-word reader feature at any time, which if used will be published in the next appropriate weekend slot. Just contact us at gamecentral@ or use our Submit Stuff page and you won't need to send an email. MORE: Sony should stop making PlayStation consoles while they're still beating Xbox - Reader's Feature MORE: Middle-Earth: Shadow Of Mordor is the best game that's never getting a remake – Reader's Feature MORE: Nintendo has got as arrogant as Sony and it's hurting the Switch 2 - Reader's Feature
Stuff.tv
21-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Stuff.tv
Sega killed a bunch of mobile games. Here's how to save them.
Sega Forever was a brilliant idea in theory. Tap into Sega's rich back catalogue. Lovingly repackage each title for smartphones. Let fans enjoy the classics with cloud saves, leaderboards, and support for virtual and physical controls. And let everyone play for free – or bin adverts with a small one-off payment. In reality? It fizzled. Most of the collection comprised a bunch of Mega Drive/Genesis titles in a creaky emulator. Beyond that, Virtua Tennis showed up as the half-hearted mobile version rather than the Dreamcast great. However, the odd title shone, such as a cracking mobile-optimised Crazy Taxi I still play, and a Super Monkey Ball remake that felt right at home on mobile devices with gyroscopes and accelerometers. Sega is now axing even these highlights. Open a remaining Sega Forever game and you'll see a notice that support is ending. Hardly a shock, since the most recent Sega Forever release arrived in 2019. But it's still a gut punch that the range would have been better named Sega For About Eight Years. My take is that while gamers obsess over the new, the industry's rich history deserves equal attention. It's worth preserving. Yet unlike with music, film and literature, it's hard to legally access more than a small selection of titles. And those are resold time and time again. Sega Forever could have been different – a window into the deeper cuts of Sega's history. But it never quite got there. There are probably solid business reasons for that. But it also again highlights the ephemeral nature of digital games. Buy something on an app store and you can download it on multiple devices – until the day you can't. There's no guarantee of permanence, which in Sega's case stands in stark contrast to the cartridges and discs these games originally appeared on. My Sega Forever games really are forever. So there. Save state Fortunately, there are ways to safeguard mobile games. Connect an iPhone or iPad to a Mac or PC, and use iMazing. Go to Tools > 'Manage Apps', click Library, and download games as IPA files to later sideload on to compatible devices using the same Apple ID. (That's how I resurrected old App Store games on a first-gen iPad Air.) Android's easier. Install Cx File Explorer, tap Local and Apps, pick a game and tap Backup. Squirt the APK+ file to another device using something like Quick Share (again, use Cx File Explorer to install it). And whether you favour Apple or Android kit, stash copies of your exports in the cloud or on a backup drive, so you don't lose them if a device dies. So it's good news that Sega Forever (and other) games can be saved, but preservation shouldn't mean jumping through hoops. The games industry must be better about safeguarding and making accessible its own history. 'Netflix of retro games' Antstream Arcade makes a valiant effort regarding accessibility, but still only has 1300 titles and lacks true ownership. Permanence for classic digital games remains vanishingly rare. And when a service winks out of existence, gaps in gaming history reappear with no guarantee they'll ever be filled again. Of course, there is one (legally grey) way to access old games that the industry hates and yet actually works: emulation. Maybe it's time to stop fighting it. Publishers could repackage old games however they like and simultaneously give us access and personal-use rights to old ROMs and disc images, to use as we please. Then a name like 'Sega Forever' would mean something, and the classic games we care about really would be able to legally live on in our lives, forever.
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
《邊緣禁地4》真的要賣80美元？執行長：如果你是粉絲就想辦法買下去
2K Games 旗下 Gearbox Software 開發中的新作《邊緣禁地4》（Borderlands 4），此前 Gearbox 執行長 Randy Pitchford 才表示不清楚遊戲該賣多少。但最近 Pitchford 卻被發現，先前回應網友關於《邊緣禁地4》的售價問題時，就表示：「如果你是《邊緣禁地》粉絲就會買」。 此前，一名玩家擔心《邊緣禁地4》的售價會高達 80 美元，在 Randy Pitchford 的 X（推特）留言，希望他們不要冒險，否則很多玩家不會願意花 80 美元買這遊戲，因為會助長價格上漲的風氣。並認為 Pitchford 是開發商執行長，肯定在售價上有一定的發言權。 但對此，Pitchford 卻不認同這說法，回應：「A) 這不是我能決定的。 B) 如果你是真粉絲，你就會想辦法買下它。我在 1991 年時，家裡附近的電玩店有一片 SEGA Genesis（Mega Drive）主機的《星際航艦》（Starflight），售價 80 美元，我才剛剛從高中畢業，在皮斯摩海灘的冰淇淋店打工，領最低的薪資，但我還是想辦法買到了。」 A) Not my call. B) If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen. My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen. — Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) May 14, 2025 而 Pitchford 的回應卻不被網友們買單，有人嘲諷《邊緣禁地4》80 美元，但玩過這系列的都知道，後面還會推出季票，或是各種造型：「這絕對是近期最糟的執行長回應」、「我等不及看到這款遊戲失敗」、「別用通貨膨脹那一套，我們的薪水可沒有」。 緊貼最新科技資訊、網購優惠，追隨 Yahoo Tech 各大社交平台！ 🎉📱 Tech Facebook： 🎉📱 Tech Instagram： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 社群： 🎉📱 Tech WhatsApp 頻道： 🎉📱 Tech Telegram 頻道：
The Guardian
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Farm Simulator: 16bit Edition review – the simple joy of ploughing your own furrow
When I got my first job in games journalism 30 years ago, I arrived just too late to review games for my favourite ever console: the Sega Mega Drive. Although a few titles were still being released for the machine in 1995, the games magazine world had moved on and all anyone wanted to read about were the Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn. It was a bitter blow. Fast-forward to 2025 and a resurgent interest in producing new games for vintage home computers and consoles has led to Farming Simulator: 16bit Edition – a Mega Drive instalment in the hugely successful agricultural sim series. The passion project of Renzo Thönen, lead level designer and co-owner of Farming Simulation studio Giants Software, the game has been written using an open-source Mega Drive development kit, and manufactured in a limited run of genuine Mega Drive cartridges. Slotting this brand new release into the cart of my dad's ancient Mega Drive II console felt ridiculously moving and I thought the game could only be a letdown after that. But I was wrong. Farming Simulator: 16bit Edition takes the basic rhythms of its stablemates – sowing, harvesting and selling crops – and puts them in an isometric environment where workable fields are interspersed with useful buildings such as fuel depots, seed stores and garages. You begin with basic tractors and harvesters, but as you carefully work the land, you grow and sell wheat to earn money, thereby opening the prospect of upgrading your machinery and buying more powerful vehicles. Eventually, you make enough money to unlock new farm areas, but the basic game play is always the same: you slowly and carefully drive your tractors over your land, ploughing and sowing and harvesting as the seasons pass. In this reduced format, the sedate pace of the farming simulator games should become a dull repetitive chore; robbed of intricately detailed 3D visuals, real-time weather systems and supplementary activities, all you're doing is effectively mowing the lawn. Over and over again. Let's be honest: transferring the complex, multilayered 3D sim into a console that launched at the same time as the world wide web and the first mass manufactured Nokia mobile phone was always going to be a technical challenge. But somehow, the system still works. Perhaps it's the nice chug-chug sound effects of the tractors, or the amusingly precarious steering that often sends you crashing into a tree; or maybe it's the sheer nostalgia of the rugged 2D visuals. I don't know. I just know that I've kept playing. Veteran Mega Drive owners may be reminded of the Desert, Jungle and Urban Strike games or the isometric strategy delights of Populous or General Chaos. But what's really fascinating is seeing a modern game genre on this old machine and wondering, what score would it have received from contemporary gaming mags such as Sega Power or Mega? Perhaps, this is one for Mega Drive nuts like me who thrill at the idea of running something new on their beloved artefact – like playing a 4K Blu-ray movie on a Toshiba video recorder. It's also going to be tough to secure one as only 1,000 are being made. However, Giants has previously released a Commodore 64 version of the game, Farming Simulator C64, which is now available to play for PC, and perhaps an emulated version of this one will also find a way to modern machines. And yet, like a deluxe half-speed remaster of some old vinyl album, there is emotional value in the format itself. This is why Giants isn't alone in producing new carts for the old consoles. The excellent puzzle platformer Tanglewood appeared for the Mega Drive a few years ago and a promising shooter Earthion is coming later this year. Limited Run games has also made a whole range of new SNES carts for classic titles. I wish my dad were around to see me reviewing a new release for the last console we played on together. As someone who spent all his boyhood summers staying on a farm, he certainly would have loved this game. For now, I will keep ploughing these fields and selling wheat, enjoying the tranquil cycle of nature as rendered on a machine as out of date as an ox cart. Farming Simulator: 16bit Edition is available now, £43
