With a focus on taking a start-up airline from humble beginnings to success against three rival airlines, it’s got a unique premise and – true to form for Koei’s excellent strategy titles – a clever intertwining of real historical events that can affect the performance of your in-game airline. Given their prominence on this list, it’s likely not a surprise that we find another nicely complex – for its time – console strategy title from Koei at the number one spot. The collection’s low quality keeps the value somewhat reasonable, with prices usually around the $80 mark for a boxed copy. Nonetheless, it stands out as a unique misfire – and curiosity value, along with its unlicensed nature and general scarcity, makes it a highly sought after title. The Genesis version is better, thanks to being in the hands of more experienced programmers who had a lot more time to finish the project, but it’s still held in poor regard from a critical standpoint.
Giving the few programmers he enlisted to create the original NES collection far too short a timeframe to create the 52 games, the resulting cartridge was a mess of buggy, broken games with plagiarised music throughout. The story behind the infamous multi-game Action 52 cartridge is fascinating the ‘brains’ behind the unlicensed (but legal) game collection, Vince Perri, saw his son playing an illegal 40 game cartridge at home – and set about making a legal version, without much knowledge of the games industry. Let’s see what the Rare SEGA Genesis games list has in store… 10. Please also note that rarity doesn’t always equal desirability, so the prices commanded may not necessarily decrease as we head down the list.
Rare sega games software#
What follows is a list of the ten rarest titles, though note that this will only cover games that released in the West (NA/EU) and won’t feature bundles, compilations (aside from one infamous example that I did include, as it wasn’t compiled of games that were previously available individually), strictly educational software or special, limited editions. With such a huge library of games, there were bound to be some lesser known titles that are more difficult or more desirable to get hold of today.
Somewhat unfathomably, games are still occasionally released on Genesis even today, such as the fantastic twin stick arena shooter Xeno Crisis by Bitmap Bureau.
On the Genesis, we saw the birth of franchises such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Streets of Rage, while even sports games such as FIFA and NHL Hockey (known initially as EA Hockey outside of North America) debuted on Sega’s console as the best SEGA Genesis games before being ported to other systems. The 16-bit generation of consoles are arguably the most influential and beloved machines of all time, with indie games to this day paying homage to the graphical styles, chiptune soundtracks and game design philosophies that the era is known for. Launching in 1989 in the US and in 1990 in all other territories, the Genesis was hugely popular in its day, selling more than 31 million units across its lifespan. Rare Sega Genesis games are increasing in number, thanks to the fact that it’s now 23 since it debuted in Japan as the Sega Mega Drive (the name it was known as everywhere except the US).