Popful Mail (SCD)
Originally released on the NEC PC-8801 home computer in 1991, Popful Mail is a side-scrolling action title with RPG elements which has gone on to become one of Nihon Falcom's most beloved '90s titles.
The Sega CD version – which, at one point, was almost part of the Sonic franchise – is the only one to get a Western release and is somewhat different to the Super Famicom port, which arrived around the same time.
Once again, Working Designs handled the localisation of the game for North America, and that version is now worth a considerable amount of money on the secondary market.
Comments 21
"these shiny pieces of plastic offered a whole new world of promise... give us actual music..."
ironically, it was pre cd consoles that ACTUALLY played music. cd based systems merely dumbly played back pre recorded audio files.
(but i know what you meant obv. just something i like to think about.)
long live sega cd, you were misunderstood in your time, and IMO continue to be.
thanks for the list!
Sadly, I haven't heard of most of these but wasn't into RPGs during the era. I have some thick nostalgia goggles for the Sega CD. While I didn't get a Sega CD until the PS2 days, I had picked up a model 2 to go with my model 2 Genesis. The combo is still one of the more sleek console designs IMO.
Games I'd have on the list that didn't make it on this one.
im working my way through the list, here. (great list.)
"What wasn't immediately clear was that Silpheed's 3D environments were being streamed directly from the CD, and weren't real-time. This technological oversight aside, it remains a solid vertically-scrolling shooter."
was it an oversight? they saw a vision in their head about what it should look like, and they used the new tech to get there. the new tech being high capacity storage allowing for prerendered backgrounds and/or FMV, which were as high tech as polygons at the time IMO.
to be honest, while starfox is a great game and maybe the better of the two, in terms of sheer presentation, silpheed beats it. what a looker! 👍
whoa random sol-feace slam! that came outta nowhere
"Titles like Sol-Feace promised much but ultimately failed to deliver, "
i liked solfeace! whats the deal?
I never had much interest in getting a Mega CD at the time since there were so few games that I wanted and the vast majority were simply Mega Drive games with and intro tacked on and better music or FMV games. We also seemed to get robbed again here in the UK with not getting any of the RPGs. I have one now but even then I only really played a small handful of games on it that ever interested me like Snatcher and Dune.
I never owned a mega CD but the Mega drive mini 2 comes with 12 games. They include some of the titles on this list.
Chris Scullion’s Mega Drive Encyclopaedia provides interesting context on each release. It includes Mega CD and 32X games.
I’ll look up the other games on this list.
Where's Tomcat Alley? As a kid that game blew me away!
One day when I'm feeling splurgy I plan to upgrade to a Mega Everdrive Pro so I can just play all this stuff on my Mega SG. It's nice that this entire piece of hardware can now be spoofed by a flash cart.
Shame there's no way to do the same with the 32X. I'd love to mess around with that catalogue a bit more.
In the UK, the Mega CD wasn't released until 1993. The following year, all game related talk was about the 32 bit systems. It never stood a chance in the UK.
Even the Commodore Amiga CD32 managed to out-sold the Mega CD in 1993.
Final Fight CD was my main go to for the Sega CD. Although I did enjoy the Sega CD version of NBA Jam and Mortal Kombat. That was due though as those were the first home ports I played.
About Shining Force CD requiring a Backup RAM cartridge (which is crazy pricey these days)... I was shocked to learn that the Sega CD only had 8KB of internal RAM. I was mistaken in thinking it had 128KB (which apparently was how much the Backup RAM cartridge had). $300 for the add-on console, and Sega could only include as much RAM as the typical Famicom cartridge? For many games to share/fight over?
Wow, one of the last games (not THE last) released in Japan was a JRPG released in 1995, that looked barely better than a Famicom game (maybe a very early, like 1991 era, 16-bit game) yet wanted the entire RAM to itself. Did Victor Entertainment mistake it for a Famicom game and develop accordingly? (as much as their first JP MCD game, which they actually released in 1991, looked like)
@UK_Kev The NTSC CD32 though has got to be absurdly rare. Some say it was only released in Canada.
The only game I saw EGM review for it was James Pond II. Unsurprising, that was a game that seemed like it was ported to nearly everything out at the time (except the NES).
Really nice list. I've recounted this story before here and on NL in more detail but basically as a huge Sega fan but with little money I lusted over the CD and 32X in magazines reading about all the games but thinking I could never afford them... but then because they both failed so quickly and everyone moved on to PSX & Saturn, in 95 it was extremely cheap to pick them up second hand, and the games were all on extreme clearance - I think the most I paid for a single game was £5, and most were £3-4 each. Easily the best Summer holidays of gaming in my life was picking up all these incredible titles and playing through them, when just a year before that would have seemed like an impossible dream! I'll never not be fond of them, and stand up for the good games that are available if you can sift through the dross.
@Ganner Yes Tomcat Alley was far and away the best FMV game on the system at the time of its release - they'd improved the video quality exponentially but also it was far more interactive than most previous titles, I actually felt like I was controlling a movie, not just playing "Simon" while watching some unrelated video.
@KingMike IIRC it was never released in the States because they legally weren't allowed to while Commodore was having financial problems. I heard some units were released in Canada but I've never seen one nor known anyone who had even heard of it (and I work in Canada quite a lot and have a lot of Canadian frirends).
I thought The Terminator would have made the list. It was such a big improvement over the original. Also, along with Thunderhawk, Soul Star and Battlecorps were also quite good. Core Design really made use of the Mega CD
@KingMike
From what I remember, Commodore went bust after they manufactured NTSC units for the US but were not allowed to import them into the US due to non-payment of debts.
"While the Sega CD included an application-specific integrated circuit graphics chip which allowed the system to rotate and scale sprites and backgrounds – very much like the SNES did with its Mode 7 graphics feature – it actually did very little to bolster the base power of the Genesis / Mega Drive."
Wait, wutt?
In addition to the new GPU, it added an extra 12.5mhz CPU (on top of the 7.6mhz CPU on the Megadrive, which was already nearly double the SNES**), added an extra 4Mb of main RAM, and added 10 new sound channels to the Megadrive for far more complicated real time music, not just streaming redbook.
The fact not many games really used the full power (if any?) there's no doubt that on paper its hugely more powerful than the SNES in every area except colour pallette and simultaneous colours on screen, which is annoyingly bottlenecked by the by the MD's video out. This was fixed by the 32X which re-routed the output and allowed for a full 32,768 colours which is why the CD32X FMV games have far improved video quality.
And as for the "very much like the SNES did with its Mode 7 graphics feature"... not really, it far surpasses it. Mode 7 can only scale and rotate a single background layer, not sprites. This is why when "sprites" use the feature, like bosses in Super Mario World, they are on a plain black background - they are actually a giant black square with the "sprite" drawn on it. Any actual sprite "scaling" on stock SNES games is faked with multiple frames of different sizes. The GPU of the MegaCD can of course replicate Mode 7 style effects on background layers, but also properly scale and rotate multiple sprites at the same time. The only way the SNES could do this was by adding a Super FX2 chip in carts, like Yoshi's Island.
** Though its not entirely fair to the SNES to directly compare Mhz as the arcitecture of the chips is so different, there's little doubt the MD's stock processor was already faster than the SNES, and then the MCD makes the combined speed 165% faster than the stock MD.
@Gerald Yes Core could make the Mega CD sing! One of the only companies to really get it to do "3D" games well, and far more impressively than was possible on other systems, including the Super FX 2. Thunderhawk was really pushed as the first "killer app" for the Mega CD at the time of release and really showed what was possible in the right hands.
Jaguar XJ220 from them was good too - obviously based on the Lotus series for the Amiga and Top Gear series for SNES, but exceeding both by using proper sprite scaling.
Its a real shame their 3 impressive looking 3D games for the 32X were cancelled (only releasing BC Racers) however as soon as they saw the writing on the wall, they moved straight to Saturn development, and started work on Tomb Raider - originally planned as a Sega exclusive!
Also, yes Terminator was a huge upgrade from the Megadrive game. While the CD was criticised for having many "slightly upgraded" ports of MD games, which didn't really push the hardware, there's no denying that if you owned the add-on, you were getting the best versions of many of the games of the time. Of course this article mentions Earthworm Jim & Batman Returns, I'd also give a shout to Mickey Mania as a significant improvement, as well as Mortal Kombat, Puggsy, FIFA, Ecco 1&2, Wolfchild, Pitfall Mayan Adventure, Chuck Rock II, and Road Rash... if that last one counts, its sort of its own game.
Thanks for the nostalgic list! Wing Commander, Final Fight CD, Batman Returns, and Jurassic Park were probably the most-played games on my Sega CD. Silpheed, Android Assault, Star Wars: Rebel Assault, Prince of Persia, Sol-Feace, and Time Gal are others I owned and enjoyed.
Sadly, my CD unit stopped working 3-4 years after I bought it, and young fool that I was, I traded in all my games for it. It was fun while it lasted!
I’m glad some of these titles returned on the MD Mini 2, at least. Silpheed was always accessing the disk (it’s probably what sent my Sega CD to an early grave) so it’s nice not having that concern with the Mini.
@Teksetter Rebel Assault and Time Gal were games I considered mentioning in my above posts too... I enjoyed them a lot at the time and again were a cut above the usual FMV games. 😀
I love the Sega CD, and I hate when it gets lumped together with the 32X as a "failure." It was a niche product at the time. While CDs would eventually become mainstream, they were pretty bleeding edge at the time. I wanted one badly, but when you're relying on birthdays and Christmases to get these big items, it just never happened back then.
I would disagree with a couple inclusions on this list, like Monkeys Island and Night Trap. Those were significant at the time, but I would not really recommend those to people trying the platform now. But otherwise, great list! The Sega CD is underrated, in my opinion. It just sucks how expensive some of these games have become today.
Popful Maaaaaail! Woo!
I'd put it at 4th-best SCD game (Lunar, Lunar EB and Snatcher) , and a must-play for every retro gamer for the script and voice acting! It has like 3 hours of audio, and it might be WD's best voice over work because of how much there is and how entertaining to boot.
If you find it too hard just play the Unworked Designs patch ver, which keeps the top-notch localization with the breezy JP difficulty.
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