Where’s the beef, indeed…
Where’s Sonic 2? Where’s Toe Jam and Earl 2? Where’s Batman 2? We know you’ve got them – we just want you to finish them up!…
Well, most famously, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 released simultaneously worldwide on the 24th of November, 1992, in a day that was officially recorded as “Sonic 2sday.” Even before that, the hype train was rolling, especially when the game was featured twice on the classic Nickelodeon game-and-quiz show, Nick Arcade. So, no surprises here, save for a very impatient Quartermann. (Come on, dude, the first Sonic the Hedgehog was not even a whole year old at that point. And we whine about “annual sequels” nowadays…)
ToeJam & Earl in Panic on Funkotron, on that note, was likely only barely in development at the time of this column. While unsourced, Sega Retro’s wiki says that developer Johnson Voorsanger Productions wanted to make their sequel as another overhead, random-level action game, until Sega of America suggested that they rework it as a side-view platformer instead. That incarnation of the game wound up releasing in the US sometime in 1993.
While Quartermann isn’t especially specific about which Batman game he’s talking about, I can only assume that he means Batman: Revenge of the Joker, the 16-bit remake of Sunsoft’s earlier NES title, Return of the Joker, which was not released until that November, and was decidedly not a sequel to the earlier Genesis Batman game (based on the 1989 Tim Burton film). I suppose Q could also have been referring to Batman Returns, the Malibu Interactive-developed tie-in to that year’s movie sequel, which was released not too long before Sunsoft’s: October of 1992.
But all that wasn’t really that interesting, if you ask me; it’s mostly just Quartermann whining about sequels that weren’t out yet. But what’s next in the column?
Speaking of new Sega carts, look for their line-up to get an additional boost later in the year from the sequel to Shining in the Darkness! Called Shining Force, this super cart weighs in at a hefty 12 meg! Other sequels to watch for include Monaco GP 2 (smart call Al!), and a new adventure within the Phantasy Star realm! Don’t expect the fourth installment of the Phantasy Star series, however, until sometime in 1993 and quit looking for the long-awaited Turbo OutRun altogether! The head honchos at Sega pronounced it DOA when it arrived on these shores…
Ah, Shining Force! If I might get a bit personal, here, that was the very first RPG I’d ever played, having bought it from a garage sale for…well, probably a lot less money than it was worth. But continuing with this chain of release date fact-checking, I find that Shining Force didn’t release in the States until mid-1993, where it had come out in Japan roughly the month this article went to press.
Monaco GP 2 – more accurately referred to as Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GP II – came out more or less as described, hitting US store shelves in September of 1992. Having never played it before, I can’t really speak much more on that subject.
Regarding Phantasy Star, considering that the third game in that series had come out the previous year, Quartermann can only be referring to Phantasy Star IV: The End of the Millennium, which he almost accurately predicted would hit in 1993 – in Japan. The US release didn’t hit until the next year after that.
And finally, Turbo OutRun: Q is by no means lying, as although there is a MegaDrive port of Turbo OutRun (developed by the ever-controversial Tiertex), said port had only released in Japan the same month the article was pressed, and never reached US shores. It did eventually surface in Europe and Australia, according to Sega Retro, but only a few months after the article was published. Despite the arcade version being well received in the States, it is likely that Tiertex’s badly-handled MegaDrive port (Mean Machines didn’t like that version – or the original OutRun, for that matter!) is the reason why America never received a version for their Genesis consoles.
Check out Aliens on laserdisc! There’s a boffo 15 minutes of extra footage – most of it at the colony before the bugs take over…
Um…wasn’t this a magazine about electronic gaming at some point? (And did anybody ever seriously use the word “boffo”? These mysteries, and more, on the next Sixty Minutes…)
Grinding the Rumor Mill 