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 5

Just like with PART 1 + PART 2 + PART 3 + PART 4, this 5th and final collection of 10 (more) games to add to your hacked Sega Mini does not attempt to claim 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 the final 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:

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#1 - PGA Tour Golf II (SEGA)

I am definitely not a fan of golf in real life — seems like way to frustrating and expensive of a sport to even attempt to get into — but, as a video game, it can provide you with a fairly relaxing play. One that goes especially well with multi-tasking with a podcast or audiobook on in the background (as there are a lot of gaps in actual gameplay beyond those few seconds where you have to concentrate really hard to make sure you time the hit meter & don’t shank you’re shot into the woods/water).

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#2 - Choplifter III (SNES)

Choplifter III has a similar concept to the NES game Jackal that I recommended in PART 1 — you go around shooting baddies & trying to avoid getting shot back, while also rescuing POWs and safely transporting them to the drop off points. Except now you’re in a helicopter instead of a jeep. Simple to get into and a lot less hectic than your typical airforce shoot ‘em up games (at least the first couple levels).

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#3 - Soldiers of Fortune (SEGA)

Soldiers of Fortune has a similar look to the True Lies and Skeleton Krew games I’ve recommended previously, and I suppose it also has a similar look to most of the action RPG games I’ve included in past lists, which I guess means I quite prefer that isometric/overhead view for games. It just makes things feel more open and less chaotic / claustrophobic (ie. like on a Contra or Gunstar Heroes). Soldiers of Fortune looks and handles quite well, although it is weird that you can’t shoot and move at the same time — but once you get used to that limitation, it’s pretty fun to play + it’s nice that when you’re playing solo on one player mode the second player gets controlled by the computer. Which makes me feel like I have a friend, and that’s priceless.

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#4 - E.V.O. Search for Eden (SNES)

E.V.O. definitely scores some points for being quite a different concept of gaming when compared to others — you start off as a fish and as you gain evolution points for eating other sea creatures you can choose different ways you want to evolve, eventually working your way out of the sea and onto the land to carry on evolving. It’s not quite a kick in the junk to all those creationists out there who don’t believe in evolution, as there is still is a god/creator element to the game, but E.V.O. definitely provides a unique gaming experience that I find myself getting caught in enough to keep trying and trying to beat the damn shark boss on the water level (which I finally did, thank you very much).

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#5 - 3-D World Runner (NES)

3-D WorldRunner first reminded me of one of the worst games that game pre-installed on the Sega Mini (Space Harrier II), so I went in with low expectations, but once I actually started playing the game I was surprised to find the 8-bit version of running head first into a “3d world” actually held up decently. It doesn’t look amazing or handle perfectly, but overall it provides a pretty fun and challenging play. And, like all the games you’ll play on your Sega Mini, since they don’t come with physical instruction booklets that you can refer to, it’s often worth watching some Youtube videos to see someone who knows what they’re doing play for a bit, otherwise you may never discover that if you run into the green tubes on 3-D WorldRunner you don’t die like when you run into the other things —instead, you can get power-ups and potions and stuff. And here I was trying to dodge everything in my path.

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#6 - Super Tennis (SNES)

It took me awhile to find an enjoyable tennis game to add to my Mini — and even though Super Tennis doesn’t come with any professional tennis player names, it more than makes up for it with the least frustrating gameplay. Because tennis is a hard sport to nail on a video game console, as the timing of your swing and the placement and speed of the ball can be hard to get right, and a lot of the other tennis titles I tried — the ones with the real professional players — all had me wanting to slam my controller/racket to the ground as I continued to “miss” balls that seemed to be right in front of me. Of course, that still happens a bit with Super Tennis, but once you get the hang of things, it happens a lot less.

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#7 - Flicky (SEGA)

If you’ve checked out the other parts of this series, you’ve probably clocked that I have an appreciation for simple games that are easy to just pick up & start playing for short burst of time — and Flicky is one of those classic arcade games that’s quick to jump in and out of. You run around collecting a train of yellow birds that you need to get to the exit without getting caught by one of the many pesky cats running around (who you can shoot with items you pick up along the way, although you can’t hold onto those items while jumping). And sometimes there’s little bonus games in between the levels. That’s it, that’s the whole thing — a good old fashioned time-killer that doesn’t require too much thought, just quick reflexes.

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#8 - Clocktower (SNES)

Just like the Flashback and Out Of This World games I mentioned in PART 4, Clocktower is another one of those games where the weirdness and the ‘not entirely sure what I’m supposed to do next’ nature of the game pulls you in more than the actual controls/gameplay. As you point a cursor around on the screen to make the main character slowly walk around and interact with parts of the scene, this one can feel especially slow at times (especially when your girl is walking up and down the stairs at an extremely leisurely pace)— but the whole feeling and story is coated in creepiness & it makes you want to figure out what all the different endings are (so far, I got the last ending where I drive off in the car and then the weird little guy with giant scissors pops up in the rear view after the credits role — so I guess that means that I beat the game but also died).

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#9 - B.O.B. (SEGA)

This is not the greatest game, and sometimes the controls can be a bit frustrating (especially when jumping between platforms / over dangerous things), but overall it’s a pretty decent looking left-to-right-to-left platformer where you can get a bunch of different weapons & abilities, but never get completely overwhelmed with way too many things to shoot on the screen all at once. I’m not the biggest fan of games where you have to not only make it to the end without dying, but you also have to beat the clock (I prefer taking my time on levels, especially ones that have different areas to check out), but for the most part B.O.B. is decently enjoyable play (and apparently there are like 80 levels, which I’m not sure whether that is a good thing or a bad thing given how many other titles I also have on the go vying for my limited attention).

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#10 - Yoshi (NES)

I never knew about the character Yoshi until Super Mario World, but I guess that is probably because I never had a NES growing up, because apparently the green dinosaur had its very own puzzle game long before Mario started catching a ride on his back. In Yoshi the puzzle game, you control Mario to move around columns of characters trying to either line up two of the same, or getting the top of a Yoshi egg to land on a column where you have the bottom of a Yoshi egg already in place (which will get rid of everything in between). In a way, just another typical puzzle game — but, personally, I find those typical puzzle games to be a nice relaxing time kill. I guess it’s kind of like when old people play Sudoku to relax. Also, as far as the 8-bit NES titles go today, it’s the games in the puzzle genre that have probably aged the best & Yoshi is another good one that still holds up.

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Ok, that’s it for my final 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 trying to figure out which games to add to my mini).

If you want more than the 10 recommendations about, you can check out PART 1 and PART 2 and PART 3 and PART 4…

…and then you can let me know whether you think my overall list of 20 Sega, 20 Super Nintendo + 10 Nintendo games is a totally rubbish or a kinda decent list of titles that are still worth playing all these years/decades later. Also, I can fit way more than 50 games on my hacked Sega Mini, so I’m also interested in hearing about any titles that you think I may have missed / might enjoy adding as well (regardless of whether you think my lists are rubbish/decent).

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Jeremy / @HI54LOFI

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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!)