20 Megadrive Games You Must Play Before You Die
The best of the best on the SEGA Megadrive
With the Megadrive, SEGA managed to finally claw some of the videogame market from Nintendo in the later 1980s and early 1990s, doing so on the back of great arcade conversions and a little blue hedgehog that has fairly recently celebrated his 25th anniversary and is still going pretty strong to this day,
That wasn't the only reason for the console's success though. The Megadrive truly embraced third party developers to such an extent that the console managed to build a massive library of great games that fans could enjoy for hours. Without the restrictions placed on them by Nintendo's 'Seal of Quality', developers had a little more freedom to work on titles for the Megadrive, which meant that the software library had plenty of variety.
While the Megadrive may still have eventually been beaten by Nintendo's SNES in that generation's console war - thanks in no small part to the pure quality that was pouring out of Nintendo at that time - the Megadrive still holds a special place in the hearts of the nearly 30 million who bought the console.
With such a great line-up of classic games, it's hard to go wrong with the Megadrive. However, these are the games that you absolutely have to play if you own the console.
20. Golden Axe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7VRP_mg8PtMDeveloper - SEGA AM1
Genre - Scrolling Beat-em-up
Release Date - 1989
Current Price (Approx) - £5 - 10
SEGA's earliest marketing efforts - particularly before the unveiling of Sonic - revolved around the quality of the arcade conversions that were available on the Megadrive.
While Altered Beast did a pretty good job of proving the company's claims, it was with Golden Axe that they achieved a game that was as close to arcade perfection as anything else from the time.
It helps that the game is also a damned good scrolling fighter, offering the player the choice of three characters with different skills and magical abilities as they combat the evil Death Adder and his massive army.
Happily, the game is also easy to get your hands on these days as it is available for digital download and is fairly common if you want to get the original cartridge, especially if you're happy getting it as part of the Mega Games 2 compilation.