So thanks to a visit from a magical bird, I somehow ended up with another one of those multi-game cartridges which are coming out of the woodwork now.
Awhile back I talked about some others I had: an RPG four-pack for SNES, and two NES carts (one for Mega Man games and the other for Dragon Warrior).
This one for Sega Genesis is wild compared to those, as its just 196 Sega Genesis games.
This cart has three different titles: Top of the label calls it "16-Bit the Best 196-in-1," the front of the label calls it "Best of 80s and 90s," and the on-screen menu calls it "Super 196-in-1." At the moment I'm incapable of taking pics, but this guy's video shows the same cartridge
And since you're wondering, here is a list of all the included games, in the order they appear on the in-game menu
Only three of them are "repeats," and I'm not sure if they would fit everyone's definition of such... see, the cart has Decap Attack, Mean Bean Machine, and Mega Man the Wily Wars... as well as their original Japanese versions (Magical Hat Daibouken, Puyo Puyo, and Rockman Megaworld). Considering how different two of those are in the west, I'm not sure if this really counts as repeating.
For the rest of the games, usually whoever put this together preferred English versions, tho there's two times (Bare Knuckle III and Contra Hard Corps) where they preferred the Japanese version... which indicates to me that it wasn't just a random list, someone actually thought about this (Streets of Rage 3 was apparently botched in English localization).
As far as I can tell, any game in English here was an official release, not a fan translation. I say "as far as I can tell" because two of the games--Golden Axe III and Chiki Chiki Boys--are in English even though I thought both were Japan-only released (or in the latter case, the game is using the Japanese title yet all the text I saw was in English anyway). Any game that was only officially released in Japan will use the Japanese text... so if you want an english translation of Monster World IV, look somewhere else.
There is one other caveat, and its a BIG one:
There is no save battery.
In all fairness, the magical birdie I got this from warned me that this would be the case--there was no lies or misdirection on their part, so I went in knowing full well that the RPGs would be basically unbeatable and I would not be seeing Wily Tower. However, anyone else who looks at the list of included games and is interested should go in knowing this. If you're buying this for Crusader of Centy, look elsewhere.
In my case, my interest was actually on Mega Turrican and the Splatterhouse games, everything else was a bonus. I'm also sure you can mod the cart somehow to add a battery but I wasn't able to get the cart open (there's two obvious screws on the back, but the thing was still tightly closed after they were removed so I suspect another screw hides under the label), but even if I'm not just an idiot, its probably still easier to just get a different cart for the games that need saving. Or become a master speedrunner.
Once again, list of all included games
....
Okay, I wasn't gonna post about the individual games, but since its the very first listed I figured why not, cuz something bugs me:
001. After Burner 2
Okay... on this version, your plane's main gun is always firing, and the controller buttons are used for speeding up or slowing down (After Burner has a speed throttle?) and the last is for firing missiles when you lock on. The only other versions of After Burner I've played have been in the arcade and on NES, and they didn't play this way at all. Like... was the Genesis AB2 always like this, or is this cart using some weird hack?
Comments on other games later on, if I feel like it.