Shut Up and (Mega) Drive
Nintendo has added a handful of Sega Mega Drive/Genesis releases to its ever-expanding retro library, which is available to all Nintendo Switch Online subscribers. The new 16-bit hits are available to download onto your Switch hardware from today.
First up is the Sega Mega Drive port of Capcom’s Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition. Released over a year after the SNES port had dominated the market, Sega’s take on the biggest game of the day was a fair port of the coin-op classic, and necessitated the development of the Sega Mega Drive six-button controller for anybody who wanted to play the fighter with any degree of compatibility. While still not a patch on the SNES edition of Street Fighter II Turbo, Mega Drive fans were incredibly grateful to finally receive the Capcom hit on their platform of choice.
The second release in the line-up is another arcade port, albeit one of a much older release. Flicky is the home edition of Sega’s own 1984 arcade release, in which a mother bird must gather up all of her chicks and lead them to safety, while staying one step ahead of a sinister kitty cat, as well as dodging various environmental hazards. Flicky was Sega’s effort to enter the “dot eating” market, and was loosely designed after Namco’s similar hit, Mappy.
The third title is the totally-tubular-dood platformer Kid Chameleon, which was released as a Sega Mega Drive exclusive in the day-glo days of 1992. Players guide rad kid Casey, sucked into a video game world, who must battle through an array of different zones and titles in order to rescue his friends and return to the real world. Upon release, Kid Chameleon was praised for its varied environments and characters, and was considered one of the better-conceived releases of the post-Mario platforming boom.
The final title in the new update is GameFreak’s latter-day adventure Pulseman, which launched on Sega Mega Drive in 1994 and only found its way west via the short-lived but pioneering Sega Channel. In Pulseman, players guide a Mega Man-esque “future boy”, conceived of a love between a human and an A.I. (no, really). Pulseman is understandably rare, given its limited release, so this Nintendo Online edition will give many players their first chance to check out this anomaly.
All four titles are available to download now for all Nintendo Switch Online subscribers.
