10 Most Underrated Mega Drive & Genesis Games Ever

8. Socket - Tokai Communications (1993)

Comix zone game
Tokai Communications (1993)

After Sonic and Mario got into a bit of a scuffle in the early 90s, a mascot war followed that lasted a majority of the rest of the decade. Seemingly every software developer around the globe wanted a piece of the anthropomorphic 2D platforming action (go ahead and google up titles like Mr. Nuts, Ardy Lightfoot, Rocky Rodent, Awesome Possum, Rocket Knight Adventures etc. for more examples).

Thing is, every once in a while one of these mascot platformers turned out pretty decent. Socket, known as Time Dominator 1st in Japan, is an example of one of the better ones. It certainly took graphical and speed cues from Sonic (if you're going to borrow, might as well borrow from the best) but added time travel to the mix a full month before Sonic CD.

Socket the character (an electrically charged duck) never gained the type of mass appeal to warrant cartoons and lunch boxes like developer Vic Tokai was hoping but it's a solid, relatively unknown platformer just the same.

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Jason Russell has been working in video game journalism since the early 1990s before the internet existed, the term "fanzine" had meaning and sailors still debated as to whether or not the earth was flat. The first time. More recently he has been the guy responsible for the Retrospective column for Old School Gamer Magazine, pens up a Game Skinny column on a plethora of video game topics. He's somehow managed to author nine novels, writes and runs the blog CG Movie Review, is co-founder of the science fiction publishing house Starry Eyed Press, and sometimes, when the planets align and the caffeine has fully left his system, it's rumored he sleeps.