SEGA MEGADRIVE Movie tie-ins

Our generation is the first in history to grow up with home video game entertainment.

Back in the monochrome years kids would have picture puzzles, or hoops with sticks, or play variations of bowls (now consigned to old men in chequered shirts in the foothills of Southern France). All of these things would get boring fairly quickly, which meant that not long after commencing said game all the children would have the urge to go outside and socialise, most likely to play 5050 bunker in a peasouper, subsequently catching the black death and dying not long after.

Thanks to the modern age we're not forced to socialise anymore. Bloody hell- there's no need to leave bed. Why make real friends when it's much more fun to tomahawk a noob in the chops from halfway across a jungle map, then reap hell from the skies in a spinning 'Death Machine'? I don't know, maybe it's just the growl of Ice Cube that gets me wet, but there's something about laughing at how uncreative other people's playercards can be that's so smugly self-satisfying.

Of course, it all began for me with the Sega Master System (which I later tried to nick from some family friends when I deemed them too old to need one as much as me). Then I had the Nintendo Gameboy. Then the Sega Megadrive. Then the Nintendo 64. Then the Sega Dreamcast. Then the Ps2. Then the XBox 360.

The sum total of all of these circuit boxes, from new, probably comes to over a grand. That's not even including the games and the extra controllers and the memory cards and the keyboard/mouse for Dreamcast internet and the online fees and the wireless adapter and all that shit.

My life's not worth over a grand.

Anyway, the point I'm trying to get to isn't one comparing video games and cinema. That's an article I'll need a lot more time to write. My point is this (though I should have reached it in a more fluid way):

The Sega Megadrive had some very very good movie tie-ins.

Editor's Note: Blogger has malfunctioned. What was intended to be interestingly formatted has been reduced to... a list. The respective videos follow the writing.

1. Alien 3 was the first of the Alien movies I saw, though in retrospect it is certainly the weakest. Highlights included an exploding dog, the late Pete Postlethwaite throwing a flare at the alien shouting "come and get me you bastard", Dillon's sacrifice, and the birth of the Alien queen... through Ellen Ripley's chest.
   In true video game form, all of this is dashed in lieu of a standard- but surprisingly brilliant- 2D platformer. The aim is simple: save inmates who have been suckered to the walls by alien goop before the chestbursters call for breakfast. Of course, "saving" doesn't require any tactic more complex than just strolling by in a awkward two-dimensional style, leading me to question whether the lazy bastards could have possibly maybe 'moved a pixel' to wriggle themselves free then found their own bloody way out from the infirmary?

2. Disney tie-ins have gained a rep for being bollocks of late, but The Lion King was early proof of the potential in sucking the udders of a franchise sow. My favourite part was the struggle with all three of the control pad buttons to get adult Simba to throw a hyena off a ledge. Memorable also was the mini-game dashing Pumbaa left and right as Timon dropped various technicolour bugs from a log. Awimba-whey!

3. Occasionally game studios earned production studios vast amounts of money by developing their own bastardised version of a successful film. In this case, a game studio earned a production studio vast amounts of money by developing a hybrid freak cartridge which bastardised TWO successful films. Thank God for Robocop vs Terminator.

4. Prince Ali, fabulous he, Ali Abaaabaaaaaaaaa... Another Disney tie-in, okay, but Aladdin was bloody brilliant. So satisfyingly bold and colourful. Scrambling around Agrabah as a filthy handsome street urchin never felt so purposeful, though I bet he never had the foresight to think he'd be rugging princess Jazz in the moonlight that same week, eh?

5. In Jurassic Park you got to play as a velociraptor.

BYE!