After the middling success of its preceding home console Master System, Sega came out swinging in 1989 with the Sega Genesis. Known as the Sega Mega Drive outside of North America, the console provided Nintendo with its first serious competitor in the console market space. The console featured some of the most prominent video games that defined 16-bit gaming while introducing franchises that still thrive today. If you were a gamer in the ’90s, you probably have a lot of fond memories of the Genesis and its titles like “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “Streets of Rage.” But you probably don’t have many fond memories of the Sega Genesis games we’re going to cover here.
We’ve already gone over the best Sega Genesis games of all time, so now it’s time to look at the other end of that quality spectrum. We’re highlighting the games officially released for the Genesis that you could probably avoid revisiting or adding to your collection. These titles run from uninspired level design to janky controls that heighten the frustration in all the wrong ways. Here are the five worst Sega Genesis games of all time ranked down to the console’s most mediocre.
5. X-Perts
Powered by popular franchises like “Double Dragon” and “Final Fight,” the beat’em-up genre thrived during the 16-bit era. Of course, not every beat’em-up game could live up to the same heights as “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” or “Knights of the Round.” One of the worst beat’em-ups on the Sega Genesis was one of the console’s last titles, “X-Perts.” Released in 1996 after the launch of the Sega Saturn, the game is a spin-off of the “Eternal Champions” fighting game series. The story involves three playable characters teaming up to stop a terrorist syndicate from destroying the planet with a nuclear superweapon.
While the game featured slightly more impressive looking character sprites and backgrounds compared to its contemporaries, “X-Perts” handles like garbage. The controls are non-responsive, the level design is as repetitive as it gets, and the game finds a way to make beat’em-up combat feel boring. And once those characters get moving, those detailed sprites don’t look anywhere near as good anymore, underscored by how sluggish their animation is. A reminder that looks aren’t everything, “X-Perts” is a late-stage Genesis game that was better left unreleased.
4. Rise of the Robots
Fueled by the success of “Street Fighter II” and “Mortal Kombat,” the industry was flooded by fighting games. But of all the ’90s video games that tried to copy “Street Fighter,” one of the worst was “Rise of the Robots.” A sci-fi fighting game originally released in 1994, the title was ported to the Sega Genesis by Acclaim Entertainment in 1995. As the title suggests, the game has robots battle each other in melee combat in a cyberpunk setting. But despite the presence of pre-rendered graphics to bring its characters and environments to life, the game handles like an unfinished project.
The pre-rendered graphics don’t look as impressive as contemporaries like “Killer Instinct” and, without that selling point, “Rise of the Robots” has nothing going for it. The gameplay mechanics are overly simplistic and still struggles to work, from clunky inputs to sluggish movement. And like “X-Perts,” the advanced graphics mean that the actual animation of the characters’ movements look terrible, featuring dropped frames and unresponsiveness. Easily the worst fighting game on the Sega Genesis and somehow worse than its port of “Pit-Fighter,” “Rise of the Robots” is a travesty.
3. Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt
Another popular game series that saw plenty of pastiche attempts was Sega’s flagship franchise “Sonic the Hedgehog.” The ’90s were replete with retro video games that tried to copy “Sonic the Hedgehog,” several of which on the Genesis itself. This includes 1993’s “Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt,” a platforming game with an emphasis on recycling the items that Awesome Possum picks up. Awesome Possum is periodically asked trivia questions about the environment in between plot beats on his quest to defeat the nefarious mad scientist Dr. Machino.
“Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt” is one of those video games that only could’ve been made in the ’90s, and that isn’t meant as a compliment here. The game looks and feels like a “Sonic the Hedgehog” rip-off by way of “Captain Planet and the Planeteers,” with neither sensibility handled well. The game looks and sounds laughably low-rent and its titular protagonist tries too hard to seem cool with an edgy attitude. Very much a product of its time but inferior to virtually everything else that it drew inspiration from, “Awesome Possum… Kicks Dr. Machino’s Butt” feels like an industry self-parody.
2. Dark Castle
The original “Dark Castle” had started out as a game for the Macintosh in 1986 before being ported to the Sega Genesis by Electronic Arts in 1991. The game combines platforming and puzzle-solving as the protagonist, Prince Duncan, as he ventures into a sinister castle to save his kingdom. Duncan traverses four different levels, facing generic enemies like bats, evading them or hitting them with thrown rocks. This culminates in the duel against the Black Knight presiding over the castle, long after you’ve been navigating crummy ladders and other obstacles to overthrow him from his throne.
In all fairness, every version of “Dark Castle” is a complete travesty, not just the Sega Genesis port. From thoroughly unresponsive controls, poor hit detection, and absolutely sludgy platforming, the game fails on virtually every aspect that it tries to pull off. To top it all off, the game’s repetitive music and sound effects are enough to drive any player completely mad if the unimaginative level design doesn’t do it first. As grating as it is just a slog to get through a single level, “Dark Castle” did not significantly improve when it came to the Sega Genesis.
1. Sword of Sodan
While Electronic Arts published a lot of great games for the Sega Genesis, especially the console’s sports titles, it also brought a lot of embarrassing schlock to the platform, too. The nadir of the publisher’s titles for the Sega Genesis is its 1990 port of the hack-and-slash fantasy game “Sword of Sodan.” Originally released for the Amiga in 1988, the game follows twin siblings Brodan and Shardan as they set out to save their kingdom from an evil necromancer. The game is played from a side-scrolling perspective on a single plane, with enemies coming in from the left and right as players advance.
“Sword of Sodan” dialed down its technical presentation in order to run on the Genesis, cutting entire levels and featuring less detailed sprites and environments. Given how terminally boring and unresponsive the game is itself, having to struggle through fewer levels actually feels like a blessing in disguise. If you thought “Altered Beast” was repetitive, “Sword of Sodan” gives it a run for its money and with somehow less intuitive gameplay. Virtually unplayable dreck, “Sword of Sodan” should be avoided at all costs, robbing any fun to be had from a simple hack-and-slash experience.
