Oh man, so many games I recognized on this list. This must have been the peak of my Sega playing days. Mutant League Football was and is one of my favorites, but seeing Virtual Pinball brought back memories of building terrible pinball tables that I haven't thought about in well over 25 years. Thanks, John.
Western developers in general came into their own. By 1995 most Sega Of America games were legitimate AAA caliber titles. People like to drag Western developers because lots of the early 16-bit output was very rough around the edges. The West ended up salvaging the last couple years for the the Genesis. When Sega of Japan at the end of 94' gave the middle finger to Genesis owners and completely moved on.
My nostalgia EA game was definitely Lotus Turbo Challenge. That was my Outrun. I was too young to really read magazines so I didn't know what Outrun was. But my family had a mega drive and Lotus Turbo Challenge which plays pretty much exactly like Outrun. I only found out recently that it's actually the second lotus turbo challenge game, but since it was the first one on a home console rather than a home computer (like the Amiga), they dropped the "2" at the end and just called it Lotus Turbo Challenge. It also had a banging soundtrack that I go back and listen to in RU-vid all the time Also James Pond II of course. Literally everyone either owned James Pond 2 or borrowed if from someone. Literally everyone in the UK played that game. And it's funny now because the game has an overflowing amount of ads in it for a British chocolate bar called Penguin which is kinda like an oreo with chocolate filling in the middle (what we call a Bourbon biscuit) and then cover the whole thing in chocolate, and you get a penguin bar. Also because the name is a rip off of robocop (the subtitle is "Robocod") they have an amazing rendition of the Robocop theme. Dunno how they got away with that, legally Also Road Rash as well. All these games had fantastic soundtracks. EA published games really knew how to make good music. I go and listen to the songs from these games on RU-vid a hell of a lot. They took advantage of the mega drives sound chip so effectively. They made rock songs with it, which it's still the best at. While the SNES was much better at orchestral music
General chaos kicked so much ass! My friends and I played it religiously when it first came out back in the day. It is tons of fun for something that looks so basic.
Seeing John review it briefly brought back so many memories. I love the videos man, such a burst of nostalgia. To be honest, general chaos had slipped my mind a little until I saw it here.
the guy that designed that game is Brian F Colin. I'm a big fan of his games, particularly the arcade games. discs of tron, spy hunter, rampage, sarge, zwackery, arch rivals, xenophobe, pigskin 621 AD ... were all games that featured his artwork and animations. General Chaos was designed by him and 1 other guy, Jeff Nauman. those 2 designed rampage:world tour as well
I've played a few of those games that you've mentioned. I was never really good at remembering names of designers and the crews that worked on games, needless to say I didn't know he worked on those other games mentioned. Nor did I know general chaos was made by 2 guys. Props to them for my memories lol.
2:16 Blades of Vengeance looks really cool. It kinda looks like Rygar with a little gore. You know, MetalJesusRocks introduced many hidden gems but you and JohnRiggs introduced many interesting gems as well. Thank you, Hancock.
Use to love metal jesus when he first started but about 8 years ago he got too flashy. Both Riggs and Hancock are very chill and do what they do outta pure passion
Here are the other three EA Ranking Videos I have done: EA 1990-1991 ranking video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-p4Zu9_MU3fo.html EA 1992 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-H7Lo7Eak1qI.html EA 1994 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-OXa_4zz_a6Q.html EA 1995 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cOItuPBx6XE.html EA 1996-97 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-iDm8YABUGnE.html
I always loved B.O.B. One of my favorite games that is NEVER talked about!!!! I love all the gimmicky weapons. Glad to see someone talk about it; even if only for a few seconds lol Also really dig Blades of Vengeance. Really enjoying this series. Good work 👍🏼
More great games, John. I thought BOB had a ton of potential and if there was ever a BOB 2, I'm sure it would have perfected the game. Thanks for the video.
Endless hours of fun with my Cousin and I with NHL 94' (and Jungle Strike.) We still play it once in a while 30 years later. What an amazing year to be a kid in every way, games, music, movies.
Thanks for taking the time for this John! Great rankings and review! Awesome game choices. I'm not really a hockey fan but you made NHL sound like a must play. This man can sell ice in a blizzard storm lol
I really enjoy the way you rate the games. EA really had some great games this year. I almost forgot about Mutant League Football. I was thinking Road Rash 3 came out this year but I think they took a couple of years to release. Awesome content!!
Mutant league fotball actually had a saturday morning cartoon. Mutants heads and limbs actually blew up in the series, I have no idea on how they got away with it.
What I love about your videos is this “Now there’s a rare cardboard box version of this game that was only sold at one Arby’s in Connecticut to promote a new sauce they were testing which was only available for a week….anyways here’s that variant” ha you have a lot of wild stuff
Almost everything EA put out after 93 except for a few was either a sports or racing game. They did put out some of the very best sports games of its time. I know how most people fell about retro sports games. Eagles fan, that I did not expect since you live on the west coast. There my team no matter what win or loose. My dad is from Philly.
So many awesome games here, NHL 94 is amazing such a great game, Blades of Vengeance is one of my all time favourite games. Bulls vs Blazers, I got for Xmas absolutely loved that game, it's the game that got me into the NBA and my team the Celtics. Could go on for days talking about these games, thanks for the upload Immortal 🙂
I was a nintendo kid, so most of these games have no sentimental value. Will check the 1 player games mostly. Also, thanks for your efforts and time invested on these countdown/ranking videos. Always a reliable source of information.
EA does it again!!!! Another great year of EA games! Man I miss these days. You never knew what new cool stuff was coming out. 89 to 01 was a golden age of consoles in my opinion. Console power went way up along with the capability of the games. I will always Remember those good times.
Appreciate you doing these ranking and reviewing videos John. I will know what to play and what F grade games to stay away from. As you Finish the Genesis library I hope you or other RU-vidrs consider doing rankings for pal and Japan exclusives as well as other console libraries too! Turbo grafx would be a great one to tackle next and you can get a lot of content out there in videos overtime.
Even though I've never watched a game of NFL in my life, Mutant League Football is the greatest sports game of all time. Also Jungle Strike was one of my favourites as well.
93 is such a good year for EA! I love NHL 94 still! And my battery save still works too! I just recently took the lead for the most wins on my cart lol. My brother and I played NHL 94 ALL the time! Mutant League Football is a blast too, but not as deep as the other games.
I never finished Jungle Strike. Whatever I tried, the last boss always got away off screen in his car. Still a great game despite my gaming ability coming up short!
Haunting: Starring Polterguy is a total S for me, just because I had it growing up though. Looking back now, the things I'd change are dialing down the difficulty of the final boss, making it a little easier to restore your health in the dungeon stages, and tighten up the controls.
Back in the day you got one game every 6 months and you were lucky if you got to pick out a game you wanted! Got Joe Montana sports talk football with my model one saga !so I played it hard core but I also got sonic 1992 was awesome!
What was really cool in nhl '94. Is after an infraction/whistle blow, you can wipe out other players for a brief amount of time. So i remember buying the next release, and they got rid of that, and it was a disappointment. I'm pretty sure it was the '94 that allowed this or could be even as early as '92 nhl. This was decades ago so my memory is a bit fuzzy
Man Madden was the shit then when NHL 94 came out me and the other guys in the barracks that had a Genesis or Super Nintendo jumped ship and held hockey tournaments. Still have it.
I remember getting super frustrated in Bill Walsh Football because any lead I had would evaporate in the 4th quarter. Random penalties, turnovers, can’t complete a pass. The computer would always catch up.
I've got copies of Jungle Strike, Haunting, and Technoclash on my shelf right now. I used to have a copy of Mutant League Football too, guess I must have loaned it to someone and never got it back.
I Remember Tony LaRussa baseball being fun growing up as a kid aswell and I also didnt expect you would rank B.O.B to be ranked as high, I own the SNES version and i thought it was great but really long , EA NHL games kept getting better and better 96 is still my favorite.
I actually like Night Storm, I was in to those flight sim type games. Once you get past the clunky framerate there was some fun to be had, especially launching guided missiles at enemy tanks 👍🏻 I also loved Jungle Strike!! I had all 3 of the collection, and yes I think you’re right, the second one is the best - you even get to fly a Stealth Fighter.
Haunting, honestly, would do well with a re-release or even a remake/remaster. (Also if anyone is looking for a more modern, and similar concept game, I hear Ghost Master for PC and PS2 is pretty good.)
Jungle Strike was the first game in that series that I played, and I loved it. The same with FIFA. I never played games of either series past the ones on Megadrive...
well just to let you know, Nuclear Strike and Soviet Strike were solid games on the PS1, so while the Strike series seems to be in retirement, i cant say that it was because the games got bad.
Incredible output EA had back then. To think this is just for the Genesis/Megadrive all the while they were developing games for other platforms as well. They really were the biggest gamepublisher and with good quality games. [/PRAISEGASM]
My brother and I played the heck out of General Chaos and Haunting starring Polterguy! Love both of those. I always enjoyed NHL 93 better than 94 but that’s just because that’s the one I had.
Of the two games on this list that I actually have played jungle strike and general chaos definitely have to agree I would ring jungle strike as an S also one of my favorite Sega Genesis games and I think he's right about General chaos it's in a even for me especially because it has a lot of replay value and I've never played it for player but I do enjoy playing it two-player in one player
That was a good year for EA, a couple of games I was not familiar with. Tony La Russa is deeper in terms of stats than some other baseball games, but it does fall short in gameplay these days.
F-117 was a game that I didn't play at the time. I loved sims so I wanted to play it, I saw it in magazines, but I didn't seem to see it in shops when I had the money to buy it. I got it years later and boy was I disappointed. I expected it to be like LHX but with an F-117, where you'd fly entire missions from take-off to landing, and the missions would be somewhat randomly generated. A game more like the old Microprose F-117 sim on the PC I guess. I can perhaps see the thinking behind restricting the missions to only the "exciting" bits, but it feels like another instance of sim gameplay being simplified for consoles where it probably didn't need to be (see Flying Nightmares on 3DO having the PC version's dynamic campaign and mission planner removed for a great example of this).
I really enjoy your reviews but since i know youve got all these game physical copies, it would be great if you showed the boxes both sides and the content too, and the different physical releases, kinda like cgq would do with egms.
TechnoClash isn't all that much like Gauntlet. It's more of an RPG. And you get 4 characters not just 2 (although 1 is static because he's the main character). Magic vs Technology, can't go wrong with this game. Definitely underrated and underexposed.
Pretty sure I got Mutant League football and General Chaos in 96 or 97 at a Funcoland used. My friends and I played them a ton. You could kill players from the other team. Wild. Even had the robot team with oil for blood.
