You know, I should be more excited about a second Sega Genesis Mini. I should be, but what we're actually getting in October isn't as thril...
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Gotta be honest with you, I'm not feeling the Genesis Mini 2. I was excited about this system at first, but really, where do you go after the first one? It encapsulated the Sega Genesis experience pretty well, offering a well curated sample of games throughout its history. Most of the titles were good, a few weren't, but overall, it gave you a good feel for the machine... its strengths, its weaknesses, its quirks, and the trends of the time. By contrast, the Genesis Mini 2 feels a little extraneous. Strained. Desperate, maybe? The Sega CD was an underappreciated machine doomed by its association with full-motion video, and it's good that its games will be given a chance to shine. While they're at it, maybe they can chuck Robo Aleste in there, and probably some other titles that aren't coming to mind at the moment (NOT Revengers of Vengeance).
However, on the Genesis side of things, we're getting choppy ports of SuperScaler games and an obscure puzzle game from the PC Engine that doesn't look particularly entertaining and The Ooze, which had some innovative ideas but mostly just serves as a showcase of everything that was wrong with Western-designed Genesis games. And then there's Spatter. Of all the freaking games to port to the Genesis, Spatter? Sega pretty much said that it wasn't worth including in the first Genesis Mini, so getting it here feels like you're being served sloppy seconds. Sloppy seconds for a system that's double the price of the first Genesis Mini, and unlike the Genesis Mini will never go down in price because Amazon is holding the reins. The TurboGrafx-16 Mini is outlandishly priced partially because it was an Amazon exclusive, and I suspect we'll see the same thing happen to the Genesis Mini 2.
The difference is that the TG16 Mini has a buttload of essential games running the gamut from HuCard to CD to SuperGrafx, and the Genesis Mini 2 just... doesn't. It's Sega CD games and floor sweepings.