This cart actually has a bit of a wild story. The developer of this, Farsight Studios, was founded by Jay Olbernolte, who is now a congressman for California. Looking at his career he went to a technical high school and learned computers, founded Farsight at age 18, and must have done this immediately after he graduated college at 22 or so. The NES version had been done in 3 months (that's all they were given) by 4 young guys who were hobbyist programmers apparently still in college themselves. They were only given a single week of training on an NES devkit, arranged by the guy behind the project, who knew little about the gaming industry but was hoping for the Cheetahmen to become the next Ninja Turtles. Which all accounts for why that release was barely functional. To his credit, when Olbernolte's Farsight was brought in for the Genesis version, he insisted on a year's development cycle to work out the bugs. So this one for all its faults is vastly superior to the material he was handed.
As I was watching this video, my thought was, "they took all the demos of recent programming hires in the company doing dev training and released it, didn't they?" A few of the games here have the exact same background, character sprites, etc ..
Yeah...Farsight made the concept as functional as was possible with the material they were handed. These games would've been pretty interesting on the Atari 2600. But not on the Genesis.
I had this as a kid, mom got it off the shopping channel, and was thrilled to give it to us. 52 games! Go have fun! Didnt take my brother and I long to realize it was trash, we pretended to love it and stayed in the basement pretending to play it long enough that she didnt clue in we hated it, but we were done with it 2 minutes after starting it up.
Yep, as a kid I would know within seconds this was total crap. As a kid if you got certain games you would keep playing them because that's all you had but was something like this, no. You couldn't pay me to play this game.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu We'd pick it up and play it again, many times, for the reasons you said. We had like 8 games to pick from, eventually you get bored enough to put action 52 back in, and relive how terrible it was all over again.
@@FNHot I played some truly truly awful games back when I was a kid. All I had was game boy games too so when it was bad it was really really bad. But I have to say it really gave me a deep appreciation for anything even remotely good. Once you've played true trash you then know what a good game truly is.
I had the exact same experience, haha. Except I also remember seeing it on the shopping channel and laughing at it before my mom bought it! Surprise, she got it for us for Christmas anyway. We tried to like it, but didn’t pretend it was good for my mom’s sake. Thankfully we had enough good genesis games as well. But when I got bored of them, I remember playing quite a bit of Bonkers - the tile breaking game, Pong, and sometimes the vertical version of Pong: Dino Tennis. But it was a truly horrible cartridge. The graphics looked so fake, everything was boring and repetitive, and it just felt like it wasn’t a real game. I still have all my old games though, so this one is still hanging around!
This really reminds me of Public Domain games on the home micros. Usually quite basic and made by one person, but they were free or just the cost of a disk, and often made for experience rather than for commercial reasons.
Regarding compilations, I've often wondered if the Sega CD could have done better in the market if they would have done more with their compilations. The lower manufacturing cost and increased storage capacity could have been utilized alot better. Just imagine if Sega had included a pack-in title with 10 current gen, AA/AAA titles along with the Sega CD. Something like that could have easily offset the high price point. I feel like the 90s console war could have played out very differently if they had done something along those lines.
Compilations are certainly something that would have worked well at the time and there were a few good CD games such as sonic CD, but IMO the technology of home video game consoles during the 16 bit generation just wasn't advanced enough to make good use of cd-com technology. CD Drives were very expensive, the drives themselves were slow and at times unreliable, the video from a CD-ROM at the time wasn't great, and while there was a huge amount of storage capacity consoles such as the Genesis, TG-16, or SNES weren't powerful enough to benefit much from that storage capacity. It was kind of like draining a 10,0000 gallon swimming pool with a drinking straw.
@@julianborges1569 The average consumer isn't looking to pay a premium for old tech. A compilation of Genesis games wouldn't have changed a thing. The Sega CD was always going to be a near impossible sale (the design of the console sucked). If they launched it at $199 without all the extra b.s. that only 10% of the library used anyways. You could have had atleast tried to sell it to Genesis owners as one of the cheapest CD players available at the time. Then subsequent price drops would have made it a legitimate option for the average consumer.
When I picked up the original Sega CD back in the day, it did come with several games; -a compilation disc with Revenge of Shinobi, Columns, Golden Axe, and Streets of Rage -Sherlock Holmes, a detective mystery game which used FMV sequences -Sol-Feace, a horizontal space shooter that was also released as Sol-Deace on the Genesis -and some multimedia CD+G music discs. Later Sega CD hardware releases (Sega CD2, CDX) sometimes came bundled with other titles, this also varied by market. It wasn't as extensive as you suggested but there was an attempt. One of the main issues was that the Sega CD split up the userbase, devs prioritize the larger userbase; a game will usually appear on the Genesis first before showing up on the CD. Also such a compilation Sega might have been limited to the properties they wholly own, that's why the 4 game pack in included the games it did. It would be difficult/costly to amass 10 AA/AAA games that Genesis owners have not played already.
I think the biggest problem with Action 52 is that all of the games included have infinitely better alternatives elsewhere. For example, "Sunday Driver" is a way way worse version of "Outrun" when you really think about it.
That was probably part of the scam. To a well-meaning parent buying games for their kid, or a kid seeing still screenshots in a gaming magazine, they probably looked like acceptable alternatives to the real thing.
I am so glad you finally reviewed this! The first time I heard of Action 52 was when the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed it. Have you seen it? It is old, but definitely a classic episode! One of my favourites!
People love to hate on Nintendo (and to a much lesser degree Sega as well) for their restrictive licensing practices in the late 80's and early 90's. But junk like this would have been much more common in the US during the 8-bit & 16-bit era if those licensing practices weren't in place. Absolute crap games like this were a large reason why the North American video game crash of 83 happened in the first place as there was boatloads of absolute junk being released on the Atari 2600 and other systems in the early 80's!
Yep and this is why restrictions are in a way, needed. Today, both sony and microsoft have litteraly refused to release games on their platforms because they are absolute trash
Nintendo was happy to publish junk all day long as long as the check for the licensing fee cleared and there weren't any boobies, crucifixes, or microwaved hamsters in the games. Lest we forget: Back to the Future, X-Men, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Heroes of the Lance, Taboo the 6th Sense, Mecarobot Golf on the SNES, etc. etc. etc.
@@chiroquacker2580 Agreed, as a teenager I soon realized that seal was complete and utter BS. While I do agree it kept crap like this A52 from being sold by regular retail, as a company like this wouldn't pay the fees. But many did, who released just as much crap, and Nintendo got paid either way, which was disgusting.
This game was released on a Nintendo console first tho 😂🤣 And both titles were unlicenced and needed to be bought through magazines. It was literally mentioned within the first 3 minutes of this video. Your post makes no sense other than to hate on people who think Nintendo's monopoly over the industry and strict licencing policies (among limitations, also included essentially pledging full allegiance to Nintendo or they'd bully retailers into discarding your games) is worth criticism. Or TL/DR, you believe if Nintendo wasn't as aggressive as it was, video games would've been exactly like Atari (because a lockout chip and having licences at all just isn't enough) and died. Rather than Nintendo making it as aggressive as it was so that they controlled the video game market and refused any competition.
Agreed. Some of these replies are lamenting about poor quality NES games, and yes, there were bad NES games released that were licensed. However, although games like Back to the Future and Taboo were bad, they were competently programmed and were fully functional. These unlicensed games are often completely broken. Sometimes the game itself won’t boot. Sometimes levels are impassible, collision detection is not present, or the games may even just randomly crash. As bad as the gameplay in Back to the Future might be, the game behaves the way it should. That is what the Seal of Quality guarantees. Without that, companies could have pumped out crappy software that was barely functional.
I think that the Cheetahmen was supposed to be the feature game of the bunch and the official mascot. When a tile sliding game is among the best on offer that's a big problem but it's to be expected that quantity over quality is going to be an issue on a compilation of all previously unreleased games like this. Those are trees on Slalom? They look more like patches of triangular artificial turf? Perhaps they should have given the skier a football helmet to wear. I'll say that the music you had going in Apache wasn't half bad for an 8-bit chiptune.
That Sunday Drive game reminds me of the driving section of the NES/SMS/C64/Atari 2600 Ghostbusters game, just, without the gas cans, drunk drivers, or vacuuming ghosts.
The most interesting thing to consider is that at one time in history, the department of Sega that granted Licences for their platform had to play this game...if they already had knewn the NES version I onöy can imagine the terror that the employees must have striked when they saw that now a Sega Genesis version was requested for licencing.
52 games reviewed in under 24 minutes must say something about the quality of the games… 😂 It reminded me of early (to me) computer games… at school we used to “collect” them and it was common to have hundreds of games in a single floppy disk. Of course those games were awesome for the first 10 seconds and we didn’t bother if the disk failed and we had to start “collecting” all over again.
It's so weird so many of the games on the school computer I remember where garbage. Then we got some new computers and they had some kind of Beetlejuice game I've never of heard or seen since. (Based on the cartoon I do believe not the movie) it looked cool the sound was good and it had some kind of very addicting puzzle type gameplay.
@@rafaeltogami of course! I was just playing and fooling around with words. 🙂 He's my main Genesis reference for games. I only got respect for the guy and his work.
I'm surprised you managed to make this into an episode without a language warning, but maybe it's just not as broken as the NES version. Octavious has a funny video about that Action 52.
I genuinely felt this game could possibly be hated unfairly. That it was just years of YTer's making fun of it that gave it a bad reputation. I wanted to review it straight. Boy was I wrong. It deserves all its hate and then some.
The biggest problem with action 52 was its $99 price tag. Because those games were barely acceptable at $1 each, charging $99 added insult to injury. Charging $49 for the game would have been bad enough.
Oh it started with the intent of being humorous, but after 52 games, I was crushed under a mountain of despair and depression. Perhaps if I had a partner to offload some of the burden I could have stayed positive, but I was all alone to weather this turd.
I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but Freeway is only fun for younger gamers until the see the brutal way the dog dies when the cars run it over. I'm fine with violent video games (in 1994 Doom was basically a second parent) but it's a lot more palatable when humans (or demons) die, and not cute animals.
The funny thing is, the Genesis version is MILES better than the NES version. I would honestly even say that some of the games on the Genesis version are fun in a phone app sort of way. I remember I played an emulator of this version and I got addicted to a few of the games on it.
Oh no, not action 52, lol i had it on the nes and cheetah men was the only kinda good playable game with maybe a handful of others that I played..ahhhh not wanting to getthrough this but let's see what genesis had over the nes on this game I always support the channel no matter what, even if it's about action 52 lol
I remember as a kid I got a 20$ handheld device that was only in monochrome and claimed to have 100 games in it. All the characters, vehicles, shapes were made of blocks. After playing a few games named like "destroyer, skylight, bomber, etc" you know, I started realizing it's basically the same games with different goals and scrolls in the opposite direction. I was poor growing up in the early 2000's and I played that POS because I couldn't afford a Gameboy. At least I had a nes :) but when we went places I had to play that ugly yellow handheld that I thought would be fun...
10:32 "But the core is really accessible to younger gamers"? Sega Lord X Sama, did you see the death animation of the player's character in this game? It's gruesome. :U
It's my belief that Active Enterprises went with 52 games to try and deceive people into thinking these were the same bootleg carts, which were becoming quite popular in 1991. 52in1's were being sold in MANY shops in New York, and other big cities at the time., as well as 110in1s. Those were the real deals. 52 and 110, actual Famicom games on a NES cart. Many of the early ones, but still many excellent games, nonetheless -- DK, DKJR, Super Mario Bros, Mario Bros, Tengen Tetris, Balloon Fight, MACH Rider, Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Defender, Joust.... you get the idea. They were also much cheaper, at around $50... Four times cheaper than the Action 52 was being sold for ... a whopping $200!
@@rustymixer2886 $399 for the Silver AES system. $550 for the Gold AES System. $120 - $170 for the games, at launch. They were originally priced based on the MEG sized. I.E.: League Bowling 20MEG = $120, Top Player's Golf 60MEG = $170.
@@videogameobsession indeed i love league bowling aes , I remember in 1992 or so I saw neo geo in store for $600 was crazy thought price would go down since it released 1990 but stayed like that 😆
I definitely have to say it seem SLIGHTLY better than the NES version, but oh boy. New games were anywhere from $35 to $80 new back then so I see where a well meaning relative would think this is wonderful deal. That disclaimer at the beginning was a hilarious attempt to avoid litigation as well
The developers could have called it Action 12 and had games with multiple stages. This is torture for any gamer. If you want to punish your children tell them to play Action 52 for an hour. It would be the equivalent of showing Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, Disney movies.
Imagine buying this new at the time and paying $50 more for it than the cost of a Genesis system with Sonic the Hedgehog, I would have felt so ripped off as a kid.
If someone told me parents got together and paid some amateur devs to make less than mediocre games so they could buy as a gift for their kids failing at school because they were getting worse grades due to playing too much, this one would be enough reason for kids to start asking themselves if the hobby was worthwhile. Miserable experiences, stuff like that are like disasters that make us wonder the whole thing.
Nice look at this title but I am so sorry you had to review this. Was always curious about this back in the day. Interesting to know that I would have doubled my money back today if bought then.
I actually found the music from this the best part by far and apparently EGM agreed. Of course it doesn't save the game whatsoever but on it's own it's cool.
My stepdad owned a retail store and would bring home tubs of merchandise that we have to go through. There was more than two of the action 52 games for the Sega Genesis that he let me keep both now I would be kicking myself because I sold them along time ago.
The ATGAMES 40 games built into their Mega Drive/Genesis beats this. Why? Well because at least with the 40 crappy ATGAMES built in games there are only 40 of those and with this this you're stuck with 52 of them oh lord!
From what I remember reading a few years ago, the devs themselves were not the problem it was the person who hired them wanting quantity not quality, and Im sure I read they didn't even get paid for their work and they themselves knew the product was doomed from the start.
I’d say you did give it a fair evaluation. Calling out a bad game is fair, and you certainly didn’t just do it without looking into what the games were.
I had no idea there was a genesis version of this. I only knew about the nes version. Thought this was a really elaborate late April fools joke for most of the video.
You know, compared to the infamous NES version, the Genesis version is actually semi-decent. At least the games are not so flagrantly broken and glitchy and incomplete or even refuse to start at all like way too many of the NES ones.
5:25 Oh Daytona, you ALMOST got it right.. But why those awful looking digitized cars?! Had they kept it bitmap graphics, and spend a bit more time on this it might have been the killer app of the 52.. or not. :P
Hello, first, I love your videos, thanks for them becuase I love Sega also and growing up it was my favorite system too. Nonetheles, even tough you are the Sega Lord I would really love to see you doing the Action 52 from NES review. Action 52 NES from your perspective, I think it will be a nice ecxeption.
Has anyone looked into the logic behind Action 52? I know they wanted to create a franchise with Cheetah Men. But did the people behind this game look at what was made and say, "yeah that looks like a video game"?
This thing was always a scam, I refuse to believe they had any intentions of making anything besides the bare minimum. My guess is they acquired some cheap games compiled them onto a single cart and sold them hoping they'd get as much as they could before people caught on.
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You are finally getting around to the greatest game compilation ever released! Let the praise begin.
Aaaaaayoooo.
Know about the Great Reset?
You will own nothing and be happy.
@@sophiafortyfour yes. It's the real life Spectre.
@@sophiafortyfour
And you'll eat bugs. It's all a humiliation ritual. Masks, scamdemic, vaccs... all of it.
Sega Lord slowly losing his grip on reality with each and every game is very amusing 😅
This cart actually has a bit of a wild story. The developer of this, Farsight Studios, was founded by Jay Olbernolte, who is now a congressman for California. Looking at his career he went to a technical high school and learned computers, founded Farsight at age 18, and must have done this immediately after he graduated college at 22 or so. The NES version had been done in 3 months (that's all they were given) by 4 young guys who were hobbyist programmers apparently still in college themselves. They were only given a single week of training on an NES devkit, arranged by the guy behind the project, who knew little about the gaming industry but was hoping for the Cheetahmen to become the next Ninja Turtles. Which all accounts for why that release was barely functional. To his credit, when Olbernolte's Farsight was brought in for the Genesis version, he insisted on a year's development cycle to work out the bugs. So this one for all its faults is vastly superior to the material he was handed.
As I was watching this video, my thought was, "they took all the demos of recent programming hires in the company doing dev training and released it, didn't they?" A few of the games here have the exact same background, character sprites, etc ..
@nemo pouncey what is it called?
Yeah...Farsight made the concept as functional as was possible with the material they were handed. These games would've been pretty interesting on the Atari 2600. But not on the Genesis.
Well i guess this explains it all.
I had this as a kid, mom got it off the shopping channel, and was thrilled to give it to us. 52 games! Go have fun! Didnt take my brother and I long to realize it was trash, we pretended to love it and stayed in the basement pretending to play it long enough that she didnt clue in we hated it, but we were done with it 2 minutes after starting it up.
Yep, as a kid I would know within seconds this was total crap.
As a kid if you got certain games you would keep playing them because that's all you had but was something like this, no. You couldn't pay me to play this game.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu We'd pick it up and play it again, many times, for the reasons you said. We had like 8 games to pick from, eventually you get bored enough to put action 52 back in, and relive how terrible it was all over again.
@@FNHot
I played some truly truly awful games back when I was a kid. All I had was game boy games too so when it was bad it was really really bad. But I have to say it really gave me a deep appreciation for anything even remotely good. Once you've played true trash you then know what a good game truly is.
I had the exact same experience, haha. Except I also remember seeing it on the shopping channel and laughing at it before my mom bought it! Surprise, she got it for us for Christmas anyway. We tried to like it, but didn’t pretend it was good for my mom’s sake. Thankfully we had enough good genesis games as well. But when I got bored of them, I remember playing quite a bit of Bonkers - the tile breaking game, Pong, and sometimes the vertical version of Pong: Dino Tennis. But it was a truly horrible cartridge. The graphics looked so fake, everything was boring and repetitive, and it just felt like it wasn’t a real game. I still have all my old games though, so this one is still hanging around!
@@soundandvision77 i remember laughing at it on the shopping channel too! lol mom was just trying to be nice, when really it was punishment.
Imagine how sad all of the kids that received this for Christmas were
😂🤣
As sad as the Christmas when I got an Atari 7800 instead of an NES.
Like me when I got the first turtles game for nes expecting it to the arcade game 😂
those are the few adults who don't like games today 🤣
I like to think these were only bought by rich families, so the kids had dozens of other things to play with in addition to this.
This really reminds me of Public Domain games on the home micros. Usually quite basic and made by one person, but they were free or just the cost of a disk, and often made for experience rather than for commercial reasons.
They just never took off here in the states sadly. After seeing stuff like this I really wish they had.
Regarding compilations, I've often wondered if the Sega CD could have done better in the market if they would have done more with their compilations. The lower manufacturing cost and increased storage capacity could have been utilized alot better. Just imagine if Sega had included a pack-in title with 10 current gen, AA/AAA titles along with the Sega CD. Something like that could have easily offset the high price point. I feel like the 90s console war could have played out very differently if they had done something along those lines.
Good idea, but have you heard of the Great Reset?
@@julianborges1569 Is it a modern day Noah's Ark involving all the rich people of the world?
Compilations are certainly something that would have worked well at the time and there were a few good CD games such as sonic CD, but IMO the technology of home video game consoles during the 16 bit generation just wasn't advanced enough to make good use of cd-com technology. CD Drives were very expensive, the drives themselves were slow and at times unreliable, the video from a CD-ROM at the time wasn't great, and while there was a huge amount of storage capacity consoles such as the Genesis, TG-16, or SNES weren't powerful enough to benefit much from that storage capacity. It was kind of like draining a 10,0000 gallon swimming pool with a drinking straw.
@@julianborges1569 The average consumer isn't looking to pay a premium for old tech. A compilation of Genesis games wouldn't have changed a thing.
The Sega CD was always going to be a near impossible sale (the design of the console sucked). If they launched it at $199 without all the extra b.s. that only 10% of the library used anyways. You could have had atleast tried to sell it to Genesis owners as one of the cheapest CD players available at the time. Then subsequent price drops would have made it a legitimate option for the average consumer.
When I picked up the original Sega CD back in the day, it did come with several games;
-a compilation disc with Revenge of Shinobi, Columns, Golden Axe, and Streets of Rage
-Sherlock Holmes, a detective mystery game which used FMV sequences
-Sol-Feace, a horizontal space shooter that was also released as Sol-Deace on the Genesis
-and some multimedia CD+G music discs.
Later Sega CD hardware releases (Sega CD2, CDX) sometimes came bundled with other titles, this also varied by market.
It wasn't as extensive as you suggested but there was an attempt.
One of the main issues was that the Sega CD split up the userbase, devs prioritize the larger userbase; a game will usually appear on the Genesis first before showing up on the CD.
Also such a compilation Sega might have been limited to the properties they wholly own, that's why the 4 game pack in included the games it did.
It would be difficult/costly to amass 10 AA/AAA games that Genesis owners have not played already.
I think the biggest problem with Action 52 is that all of the games included have infinitely better alternatives elsewhere. For example, "Sunday Driver" is a way way worse version of "Outrun" when you really think about it.
No, not really
That was probably part of the scam. To a well-meaning parent buying games for their kid, or a kid seeing still screenshots in a gaming magazine, they probably looked like acceptable alternatives to the real thing.
@@efuuu Yes really.
"You need to end their miserable existence... you know, for fun!?" I found this far funnier than I should have 🤣
You know it's bad when he quotes Bubsy of all characters in the description.
Gamesack and Sega Lord X releases greet me in the morning. This is a good start for the day.
I'm inclined to think this game was a future predictor of what microtransactions in games would feel like 😂
I am so glad you finally reviewed this! The first time I heard of Action 52 was when the Angry Video Game Nerd reviewed it. Have you seen it? It is old, but definitely a classic episode! One of my favourites!
12:44 I instantly remembered the AVGN with Apple seed and his farmer's voice.
Haha me too
Atari games are simplistic but often include deeper strategies that allow you to score more points. Here, on the other hand, you have nothing at all.
Very true; not a single game on this compilation would be something that could be considered timeless, or even engaging for its' time.
Indeed, and that's why you can still pick up an atari game and enjoy it today
People love to hate on Nintendo (and to a much lesser degree Sega as well) for their restrictive licensing practices in the late 80's and early 90's. But junk like this would have been much more common in the US during the 8-bit & 16-bit era if those licensing practices weren't in place. Absolute crap games like this were a large reason why the North American video game crash of 83 happened in the first place as there was boatloads of absolute junk being released on the Atari 2600 and other systems in the early 80's!
Yep and this is why restrictions are in a way, needed. Today, both sony and microsoft have litteraly refused to release games on their platforms because they are absolute trash
Nintendo was happy to publish junk all day long as long as the check for the licensing fee cleared and there weren't any boobies, crucifixes, or microwaved hamsters in the games. Lest we forget: Back to the Future, X-Men, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Heroes of the Lance, Taboo the 6th Sense, Mecarobot Golf on the SNES, etc. etc. etc.
@@chiroquacker2580 Agreed, as a teenager I soon realized that seal was complete and utter BS. While I do agree it kept crap like this A52 from being sold by regular retail, as a company like this wouldn't pay the fees. But many did, who released just as much crap, and Nintendo got paid either way, which was disgusting.
This game was released on a Nintendo console first tho 😂🤣 And both titles were unlicenced and needed to be bought through magazines. It was literally mentioned within the first 3 minutes of this video.
Your post makes no sense other than to hate on people who think Nintendo's monopoly over the industry and strict licencing policies (among limitations, also included essentially pledging full allegiance to Nintendo or they'd bully retailers into discarding your games) is worth criticism.
Or TL/DR, you believe if Nintendo wasn't as aggressive as it was, video games would've been exactly like Atari (because a lockout chip and having licences at all just isn't enough) and died.
Rather than Nintendo making it as aggressive as it was so that they controlled the video game market and refused any competition.
Agreed. Some of these replies are lamenting about poor quality NES games, and yes, there were bad NES games released that were licensed. However, although games like Back to the Future and Taboo were bad, they were competently programmed and were fully functional.
These unlicensed games are often completely broken. Sometimes the game itself won’t boot. Sometimes levels are impassible, collision detection is not present, or the games may even just randomly crash. As bad as the gameplay in Back to the Future might be, the game behaves the way it should. That is what the Seal of Quality guarantees. Without that, companies could have pumped out crappy software that was barely functional.
Sharks surprised me because I didn't know an even worse version of NES Jaws existed.
I think that the Cheetahmen was supposed to be the feature game of the bunch and the official mascot. When a tile sliding game is among the best on offer that's a big problem but it's to be expected that quantity over quality is going to be an issue on a compilation of all previously unreleased games like this. Those are trees on Slalom? They look more like patches of triangular artificial turf? Perhaps they should have given the skier a football helmet to wear. I'll say that the music you had going in Apache wasn't half bad for an 8-bit chiptune.
Music was cool 😎 you right
That Sunday Drive game reminds me of the driving section of the NES/SMS/C64/Atari 2600 Ghostbusters game, just, without the gas cans, drunk drivers, or vacuuming ghosts.
13:22 Looks like the driver has a seizure. Nice touch.
The most interesting thing to consider is that at one time in history, the department of Sega that granted Licences for their platform had to play this game...if they already had knewn the NES version I onöy can imagine the terror that the employees must have striked when they saw that now a Sega Genesis version was requested for licencing.
Imagine if this was the only game you had back then.
I only knew about Action 52 because of AVGN.
52 games reviewed in under 24 minutes must say something about the quality of the games… 😂
It reminded me of early (to me) computer games… at school we used to “collect” them and it was common to have hundreds of games in a single floppy disk. Of course those games were awesome for the first 10 seconds and we didn’t bother if the disk failed and we had to start “collecting” all over again.
It's so weird so many of the games on the school computer I remember where garbage. Then we got some new computers and they had some kind of Beetlejuice game I've never of heard or seen since. (Based on the cartoon I do believe not the movie) it looked cool the sound was good and it had some kind of very addicting puzzle type gameplay.
Or the quality of the reviews 😅
@@TheCommentNinja81 nah! SLX always delivers!
@@rafaeltogami of course! I was just playing and fooling around with words. 🙂 He's my main Genesis reference for games. I only got respect for the guy and his work.
I'm surprised you managed to make this into an episode without a language warning, but maybe it's just not as broken as the NES version. Octavious has a funny video about that Action 52.
I genuinely felt this game could possibly be hated unfairly. That it was just years of YTer's making fun of it that gave it a bad reputation. I wanted to review it straight. Boy was I wrong. It deserves all its hate and then some.
The biggest problem with action 52 was its $99 price tag. Because those games were barely acceptable at $1 each, charging $99 added insult to injury. Charging $49 for the game would have been bad enough.
Yet another instance of how quantity is NOT better than quality.
The Angry Video Game Nerd video of this cart on NES is one of the funniest things I've ever watched.
Oh it started with the intent of being humorous, but after 52 games, I was crushed under a mountain of despair and depression. Perhaps if I had a partner to offload some of the burden I could have stayed positive, but I was all alone to weather this turd.
Wow!!! My friend had this when we were kids. I remember we stayed up playing all the games. What a let down lol.
I don't know if it's worth mentioning, but Freeway is only fun for younger gamers until the see the brutal way the dog dies when the cars run it over.
I'm fine with violent video games (in 1994 Doom was basically a second parent) but it's a lot more palatable when humans (or demons) die, and not cute animals.
“You know, for fun!”
All those where various reimplentations of early arcade games, and exactly the stuff people make when learning game coding.
This compilation looks like the result of a Game Jam where you only had 3 hours to make a working game.
That is an insult to game jams.
@@siveon298 3 hours is not a lot of time. I think it would still be somewhat impressive.
The Angry Video Game Nerd’s review of the NES one is epic too bro! Nice vid 👊🏻
The funny thing is, the Genesis version is MILES better than the NES version. I would honestly even say that some of the games on the Genesis version are fun in a phone app sort of way. I remember I played an emulator of this version and I got addicted to a few of the games on it.
Wow those textures on the slalom actually looked like the trees were made of felt ... incredible ...
... and I thought TecToy's 20 in 1 had been your worst experience XD
Thanks for all the laughs!
5:51 ....dayyytooonnnaaa - let's lambo-away!!!
......I'll get my coat
It's like a compilation of college or highschool projects
The cats are sleeping you maniac!
They’re enjoying the sun!
I think these games have a special charm for the person who is learning to program video games. So, I found a bootleg copy and bought it.
Wow, they actually waited until the programmers graduated from college before hiring them!
Imagine having this as a "dessert island" game.
Edit. Sigh, I meant “desert”
Mmmm, dessert island 🍨
Playing action 52 with kids? Sounds like something that can ruin a childhood XD
btw, your name reminds me of another childhood ruining game......😂😅
@@Deathtank75 Hey! Do some respect! My original game was dissent!
@@bubsy3861 🤣🤣
@@bubsy3861
Why couldn't they leave you alone and not try to bring you back from the past where you belong.
Oh no, not action 52, lol i had it on the nes and cheetah men was the only kinda good playable game with maybe a handful of others that I played..ahhhh not wanting to getthrough this but let's see what genesis had over the nes on this game I always support the channel no matter what, even if it's about action 52 lol
Who would inflict this on a child?! D:
I hope the developers of these games still can't sleep at night.
And now.......The Cheetahmen
I remember as a kid I got a 20$ handheld device that was only in monochrome and claimed to have 100 games in it. All the characters, vehicles, shapes were made of blocks. After playing a few games named like "destroyer, skylight, bomber, etc" you know, I started realizing it's basically the same games with different goals and scrolls in the opposite direction. I was poor growing up in the early 2000's and I played that POS because I couldn't afford a Gameboy. At least I had a nes :) but when we went places I had to play that ugly yellow handheld that I thought would be fun...
No cap, the in game music at @13:35 is fire tho 🔥 Reminds me of Spider-Man VS the Kingpin on Genesis
This has a few cool tunes, Apache game has cool loop music too
10:32 "But the core is really accessible to younger gamers"? Sega Lord X Sama, did you see the death animation of the player's character in this game? It's gruesome. :U
Even the tanks seem to bleed in this collection! How does that work?
Lately there has been a lot of modern games for the genesis. I wonder if you already did a compilation talking about them.
Some are amazing
It's my belief that Active Enterprises went with 52 games to try and deceive people into thinking these were the same bootleg carts, which were becoming quite popular in 1991. 52in1's were being sold in MANY shops in New York, and other big cities at the time., as well as 110in1s. Those were the real deals. 52 and 110, actual Famicom games on a NES cart. Many of the early ones, but still many excellent games, nonetheless -- DK, DKJR, Super Mario Bros, Mario Bros, Tengen Tetris, Balloon Fight, MACH Rider, Duck Hunt, Wild Gunman, Hogan's Alley, Ice Climber, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Defender, Joust.... you get the idea. They were also much cheaper, at around $50... Four times cheaper than the Action 52 was being sold for ... a whopping $200!
My God, what a terrible deal! You could get a Neo Geo AES game for that price.
@@simon41978 neo geo cost like $600+ even then
@@rustymixer2886 $399 for the Silver AES system. $550 for the Gold AES System. $120 - $170 for the games, at launch. They were originally priced based on the MEG sized. I.E.: League Bowling 20MEG = $120, Top Player's Golf 60MEG = $170.
@@videogameobsession indeed i love league bowling aes , I remember in 1992 or so I saw neo geo in store for $600 was crazy thought price would go down since it released 1990 but stayed like that 😆
@@videogameobsession what was difference between silver and gold did did cone both controllers and game and omg snk v cap 2004 must been 999 meg 😆
I definitely have to say it seem SLIGHTLY better than the NES version, but oh boy. New games were anywhere from $35 to $80 new back then so I see where a well meaning relative would think this is wonderful deal. That disclaimer at the beginning was a hilarious attempt to avoid litigation as well
I really enjoy your videos. Many hours of entertainment!
"Just keep on skiin', man!"
This made my Sunday.
I love SLX's snarky delivery throughout this one.
The developers could have called it Action 12 and had games with multiple stages. This is torture for any gamer. If you want to punish your children tell them to play Action 52 for an hour. It would be the equivalent of showing Wednesday and Pugsley Addams, Disney movies.
Lights
Camera
Action 52!
Imagine buying this new at the time and paying $50 more for it than the cost of a Genesis system with Sonic the Hedgehog, I would have felt so ripped off as a kid.
Never knew there was a Genesis one, neat
If someone told me parents got together and paid some amateur devs to make less than mediocre games so they could buy as a gift for their kids failing at school because they were getting worse grades due to playing too much, this one would be enough reason for kids to start asking themselves if the hobby was worthwhile. Miserable experiences, stuff like that are like disasters that make us wonder the whole thing.
I never saw this review coming. This should be fun!
Well, if nothing else at least Dino Tennis was playable. It is kind of hard to screw up a concept like Dinosaurs playing tennis.
Nice look at this title but I am so sorry you had to review this. Was always curious about this back in the day. Interesting to know that I would have doubled my money back today if bought then.
In '96 we were selling these for like AU$20 bundled with other shovelware. I borrowed it with pretty low expectations and it failed to meet them =\
Finally got to see Alfred N the Fettuc
This is like the PG version of AVGN’s take on Action 52. Good job not getting frustrated with the half-assed programming.
The NES version soundtrack actually isn't that bad for a unlicensed game
I actually found the music from this the best part by far and apparently EGM agreed. Of course it doesn't save the game whatsoever but on it's own it's cool.
I was really waiting for a "what were they thinking!"
No time for a what were they thinking.
My stepdad owned a retail store and would bring home tubs of merchandise that we have to go through. There was more than two of the action 52 games for the Sega Genesis that he let me keep both now I would be kicking myself because I sold them along time ago.
To be fair, this looks a lot better than the Action-52 on the NES! haha
CheetahMen OST is a banger tho
I feel it's immoral to release games of this quality. It would have been better if they'd made a Galaga clone, or copied some good games.
"More like ASS ton Fifty POO!" -AVGN probably.
...I think I'll stick with my Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet cart.
En mi opinión, este port es mucho mejor que el la versión de la NES.
Yes yes!! I have been waiting for this !!
The ATGAMES 40 games built into their Mega Drive/Genesis beats this. Why? Well because at least with the 40 crappy ATGAMES built in games there are only 40 of those and with this this you're stuck with 52 of them oh lord!
The big crime about the Genesis version of Action 52 is that it doesn't have the awesome Cheetamen theme!
From what I remember reading a few years ago, the devs themselves were not the problem it was the person who hired them wanting quantity not quality, and Im sure I read they didn't even get paid for their work and they themselves knew the product was doomed from the start.
10:35 "it's accessible to younger players"
*well... except for the brutal death of the poor dog*
One of my friends had amiga computer . an this games reminded me of some of the games he had for it
Review the NES version next please!! 1:24
Love seeing those old school 49ers names in NFL '95 ;)
Thank you segalordx
I’d say you did give it a fair evaluation. Calling out a bad game is fair, and you certainly didn’t just do it without looking into what the games were.
I had no idea there was a genesis version of this. I only knew about the nes version. Thought this was a really elaborate late April fools joke for most of the video.
That pinball game being so bad is ironic, considering FarSight went on to create the Pinball Hall of Fame and Pinball Arcade series.
You know, compared to the infamous NES version, the Genesis version is actually semi-decent. At least the games are not so flagrantly broken and glitchy and incomplete or even refuse to start at all like way too many of the NES ones.
This feels like some kind of cracked out version of warioware
5:25 Oh Daytona, you ALMOST got it right.. But why those awful looking digitized cars?! Had they kept it bitmap graphics, and spend a bit more time on this it might have been the killer app of the 52.. or not. :P
Hello, first, I love your videos, thanks for them becuase I love Sega also and growing up it was my favorite system too. Nonetheles, even tough you are the Sega Lord I would really love to see you doing the Action 52 from NES review. Action 52 NES from your perspective, I think it will be a nice ecxeption.
This game fried my genesis.. someone make a video on the sadistic thieves who made this gem.
We appreciate you Mel. Taking the hits so that we don't have to.
I do my best.
Deepest respect to you for having endured this drivel in all good faith.
Oh boy I'm so ready for this one XD
surprised to see this was developed by Farsight.. they went on to make some of the best video pinball games in later years
And Game Party.
Has anyone looked into the logic behind Action 52? I know they wanted to create a franchise with Cheetah Men. But did the people behind this game look at what was made and say, "yeah that looks like a video game"?
This thing was always a scam, I refuse to believe they had any intentions of making anything besides the bare minimum. My guess is they acquired some cheap games compiled them onto a single cart and sold them hoping they'd get as much as they could before people caught on.
Can't believe they didn't go with "Mine's Eye"