4 -in- 1 - Hard Hitting Action Packed Old School Megadrive Multicart
1I hope you are all healthy & safe wherever you are in the World right now and whatever challenges you are facing.
Time Stamps:
Streets of Rage: 00:40
Fire Mustang: 07:22
Street Smart: 09:55
Aero Blaster -link 20:40
Bonus CRT footage - 20:48
This is an old-school Multicart from back in the Day. There were tons of Multicarts (usually bootleg carts with many games on a single cartridge) on the original GameBoy, NES / Famicom & I have several on the Megadrive/Genesis
I've always been fascinated by multi-carts. There is always the wonder about how they even got made etc.
It uses the Power Button to select the games. I picked this up in the early 90's from a car boot sale along with a few others. Most have a number of smaller games on them & this is the case here with Streets of Rage (Bare Knuckle in Japan), Fire Mustang, Street Smart & Aero Blasters
Streets of Rage was Sega's response to Capcom's Final Fight (which had just received a rather lacklustre port to Super Nintendo). This is a brilliant game with 3 distinct characters with unique moves and attributes, a decent range of moves including the iconic "vault & suplex", the special attack where you summon a Police Car, team up moves, multiple enemies, the ability to land safely when thrown, 2 player action (unlike SNES Final Fight) crunching sound effects, ace game play, multiple stages, a good and bad interactive ending and that isn't even mentioning Yuzo Kushiro's iconic soundtrack. A true gem that spawned some of the best games in the genre with it's sequels. I first played this on a demo pod in WHSmith's a shop in the UK. Happy days.
Effectively it is a street themed variant on Golden Axe template (Police Attack being similar to the Magic Attack form that game) but with more moves & slightly more technical gameplay.
Fire Mustang is distinctly average. a WW2 themed shooter by UPL it was ported from the arcade by Taito and is uninspired to say the least - making little use of the Megadrive hardware (bar some nifty parallax scrolling here and there and I do like the clouds in one of the backgrounds). Bland graphics, pretty ropey sound & seemingly random enemy patterns make this one of the weaker games in a genre that had some stunning entries on Megadrive (still played it loads as a kid though)
Street Smart is like an early prototype for the game genre that would dominate the early 90's. It is a 1-on-1 fighter but using 3d scrolling playfields like a scrolling beat em up. Originally released by SNK in 89 (when companies were still working this stuff out) & ported by Treco. Gameplay is very limited - think the Duel mode in Golden Ace - but it does have the nice gimmick of upgrading your skills & betting on the outcome of the fight. I completed this back in the day but I'm terrible at it now :-)
Aero Blasters is another classic shoot-em-up on Megadrive which I've covered in another video as it appears on a 2-in-1 multicart alongside Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse so I'll not extend the video but be sure to check my other video.
I play it here on my CDX/MultiMega - the scanlines are added by a RetroTink as I normally play these games on a CRT (not the little one featured at the endt of the video - that is just one of my screens I use for quick testing etc) As a bonus at the end I show some quick footage of this 10inch JVC screen
Let me know what you think. Prefer videos with or without scanlines? Want to see footage recorded from a CRT screen (I have various screen from consumer sets to PVM's & a GDM)
As always - captured from genuine MultiMega although the cartridge is obviously an old school bootleg!
If you enjoy this video or want more content like this let me know.
As always this is uploaded under the Fair Use Policy - no money is being made from this video.
Stay strong, stay safe & stay healthy - Grey Fox