10 (MORE) Retro Games To Add To Your Hacked Sega Mini (If You're Also An Old Millennial With Similar Gaming Tastes As Me) | PART 4
Just like with PART 1 + PART 2 + PART 3, this 4th collection of 10 (more) games to add to your hacked Sega Mini does not attempt to claim that these are the best games you can get on the NES/SEGA/SNES systems. Instead, these are the games that, to me, still feel the most appealing to actually spend time playing in 2020, especially given all the other ways one can distract themselves in the modern world (ps - if you’re wondering what a Sega Mini is and how you can hack it to add any NES/SEGA/SNES game you want, I wrote a blog post about how I hacked mine over here).
So, with that in mind, here’s my fourth list of 10 games that I think are definitely worth adding to your hacked Sega Mini… if you happen to also be spending some of this quarantine in a similar retro video game rabbit hole & have similar elder millennial tastes as me:
#1 - FIFA 96 (SEGA)
I didn’t get into soccer (aka the real football) until I was living in England / travelling around Europe in the 2000s / 2010s, so I don’t quite have the same nostalgia for all the players on FIFA 96 like I did with the hockey/baseball/football (aka American football) games from the mid-90s I recommended in the previous lists, but FIFA 96 does do a good job of packing in all the teams / leagues / countries that anyone who half pays attention to the sport will recognize. And I guess 1996 was that small window when my home-away-from-home home team Nottingham Forest were back in the Premier League, so I might just f*ck around and try to win them a title + maybe I’ll see if I can get Canada into the World Cup (once I get done winning my Edmonton Oilers the Stanley Cup over on NHL 98).
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#2 - The Lost Vikings (SNES)
The Lost Vikings is a fun little mix of a puzzle game + a platformer, and graphically it looks quite nice. You have 3 vikings to switch between, each viking has different capabilities (one can jump, one can shoot arrows, one can block with a shield, etc) and you have to use those skills strategically, in the correct order, to get all the 3 of your vikings to the exit and then you do it all over again on another level. Addictive and enjoyable.
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#3 - Flashback (SEGA)
Flashback is one of those games where the main appeal is not so much that it is a fun game with smooth controls, instead the game is so much weirder and more confusing than your usual 90s video game that you end up being most intrigued to play on just so you can figure out what the hell is going on. It can be a bit frustrating at times, and it’s not always clear on what you’re supposed to be doing, but somehow that almost becomes a positive — especially when compared to the barrage of other games where you just move right and jump on the heads of the bad guys while collecting coins.
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#4 - Out Of This World (SNES)
Take everything I said about Flashback and multiply it by 20, because Out Of This World is a whole other level of weird and ‘not really knowing what the hell you’re supposed to do next’. And just like Flashback, the confusing/frustrating gameplay somehow intrigues me to want to keep coming back to figure things out and see where this story is going (and thank god for being able to check Youtube for play-thru examples on what to do next, because this game will have you getting stuck often). On paper this shouldn’t work, and in a way it kinda doesn’t, but at the same time, I keep finding myself wanting to keep going / return to move the story along a few more weirdly animated cut scenes.
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#5 - Dr. Mario (NES)
The best puzzle games are the simplest puzzle games, and in Dr. Mario you just move/rotate pills around to match coloured viruses with the same coloured pills until you’ve removed all the little viruses from the screen. If only dealing with actual viruses was as simple and fun.
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#6 - Secret of Mana (SNES)
Another well-done action RPG game on the Super Nintendo where you are a person who comes into possession of a sword and gets pulled into a story of fighting evil. I haven’t gone back to this one since my first attempt at playing, but Secret of Mana looks and controls nicely & I can see how the story can pull you in — so I will definitely be returning to carry on the journey at some point.
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#7 - NBA Jam T.E. (SEGA)
How can you have a list of games to add your Sega Mini and not include an all-time classic like NBA JAM — even if the cartoon-y gameplay experience maybe has not aged that well now that you’re an adult who is usually playing on your own against the computer? As I said in PART 2, I now lean much more to turning on the more realistic gameplay of NBA Live 97 (or Coach K) if I’m looking to jumping into some 90s basketball gaming, but NBA JAM is still a fun nostalgic ‘pick-up-and-play’ arcade port and I think it’s an especially good addition to the collection whenever you’ve got friends over wanting to re-live their 90s youth (ie. the re-learning curve is pretty quick with this one).
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#8 - Arkanoid: Doh it Again (SNES)
Arkanoid is a game concept you probably know better as Breakout, or best described as breaking blocks with a ball and a pong paddle, but sometimes simple and familiar game styles are the funnest to pick up and start playing whenever you’re looking to kill a small window of time. A nice thing about this one is that you seem to get infinite continues, which is a nice feature that more games should have — I mean, who has got the time/energy to keep going back to the start (although, a nice thing about the Sega Mini is you can save games at any point and return to those save points — but, still, infinite continues is great). Also, the Easter Island head boss level I’ve currently on continues to get the best of me.
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#9 - Boogerman (SEGA)
So, Boogerman definitely has some immature kid humour to it, what with the burping and farting and booger powers, but when you get down to gameplay, it’s a pretty smooth looking/feeling platformer (which is not something you can say about the similarly immature Beavis & Butthead game). And the more games you try out from the 80s/90s, the more the really well-made ones start to stand out as far as just being enjoyable to keep playing beyond the first couple tries — and Boogerman, so far, seems like one that’s worth sticking to.
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#10 - Kirby’s Adventure (NES)
Kirby is definitely one of the best looking and smoothest handling platformer games on the NES (which makes sense given how late in the lifespan of the NES this game came out), my only qualm with Kirby is that it almost feels TOO easy. And I like easy games, especially at my age of not wanting to have to look up instructional manuals online, but sometimes it feels a little too simple to just be able to swallow up any bad guy I want from a safe distance or just fly/float through most of a level. I’m sure it gets more challenging as you go, but even if it doesn’t, I’ll still take a well-handling game like Kirby than one of the many NES platformers where the deaths come fast and cheap. Also, I could see this being a great title for introducing a young kid to the retro video game experience, so I might just try that when my little nieces are allowed to visit the province again.
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Ok, that’s it for another list of 10 games that I would recommend making sure you add to your hacked Sega Mini… if you’re an old millennial with similar gaming tastes as me (ie. these are the lists that I wish I stumbled upon when I was searching the internet for tips on which games to add to my Mini).
If you want more than 10 recommendations, you can check out PART 1 and PART 2 and PART 3, and then I will be back with the fifth and final part later this week (so by the end of all my list making I’ll have 50 recommended retro video games in total — 20 Sega, 20 Super Nintendo, and 10 Nintendo).
But, until then, feel free to holler at me with whichever NES/SEGA/SNES games you think I should definitely have added to my hacked Sega Mini collection—I mean, I’ve kinda got my Top 50 figured out, but one of my favourite parts is the first few minutes of testing out a new title to decide whether its a game that’s worth spending any more time with / making room for in my hacked Mini library + you can get way more than 50 games on a hacked Mini, so I’ve got plenty of room for a nice ‘overflow’ section outside my Top 50 + the original 42 games that come pre-installed on the Sega Mini.
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* For legal reasons, I suppose I should add that this post is entirely a work of fiction and I would never actually hack my Sega Mini with games I did not acquire in whatever the proper legal manner is for acquiring old 90s games in 2020 — in fact I would never even hack my Sega Mini, period, because hacking is bad, kids. "Follow the rules and always do things the way you were told to do them" — that's my motto. SEGA! (also NES! and SNES!)