Comix Zone - Sega Genesis Review
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- It was Sega Technical Institute's crowning achievement, but was it misunderstood from the get go?
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Opening "Sega" jingle is from Astal for the Sega Saturn.
Ending Music during the credits is from Batman for the Sega Genesis.
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By: Jan Neves
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Intro by Evan S.
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Episode Notes:
1. Captured on the Mega SG.
2. I wanted the gameplay capture to cover a first play(my daughter) and a counter play(myself) to show you the difference of how a newbie and a veteran approach the game. You'll see similar scenes play out very differently because I knew where items were and how not to get my life bar drained easily.
3. The gameplay capture was very difficult in this one. With so few stages, it would be easy to show you the bulk of the game in 15 minutes. I tried to avoid major spoilers, particularly the ending.
4. Comix Zone's continue system is still a mystery to me. You can get continues but I honestly have no clue how.
5. Try and keep your pet rat with you at all times. That little dude is worth his weight in gold. He finds items, paths and really comes through like nothing else in the game.
6. If you are finding it difficult, there is a cheat for unlimited life. Use it to try and get a feel for the gameplay and using the items. It may help you enough to where you don't need it later on.
HARD as hell but great!
That's What She Said!
Wow didn't expect to see you there.
@@infinitemillennium3821 That's what she said!
@@michaelscott3750 hey that's my thing!
Yeah this games harder on gamers then vagitas pride is on his fans. Am i right.
My favorite Sega Institute game. I love the graphics and sound, and playing on a 6 button controller really helps the gameplay. Also, did you know Sketch will randomly fart when you duck? As a kid I thought that was hilarious.
That was hilarious! much effort they put into this game... so many details,
Game looks brilliant. This is one of the games I point to when talking about the Genesis’ graphical abilities.
I say the visuals still hold up even today.
@@captainkirk265 You are right. Around the late 90’s the hand draw sprite era was reaching its pinnacle. A 2D game like Comix Zone looks great even today. In contrast, an awesome 3D game like Tekken looks dated to a modern gamer because 3D was just starting to get popular at the time.
One of the hardest games I've ever played. Wish we got sequels though. Have you reviewed the ooze yet? I remember egm and other mags hyping it up
I just know about DJ Slopes doing a video about the Japanese release of The Ooze
Play it slow and steady, with trial and error you can do it.
I never got into Comix Zone, however, those last few years REALLY showed how much power was in that little black box. I miss old-school SEGA, please come back, gaming needs you.
If you can get past the over world, Jurassic Park: Lost World has some of the best effects and visuals of any genesis title.
I got it for the wii VC and just played the hell out of it. Game is real good and like you said shows off what the genesis could really do.
Sega was the industries wild card.
You can still get a genesis and the old games you missed.
What a cool looking game.
What a crazy coincidence. I decided to play through Comix Zone recently. I’ve been playing this game off and on since it came out and could never beat it. But I JUST beat the game for the first time about an hour before this review went up. Lol
Damn! Thats badass!
I tip my hat to you =)
Damn son. Congrats
Good ending or bad ending?
@@nomanland645 Good. But just BARELY, lol.
The brilliant idea of how Sketch passes from panel to panel always blew me away. And I live how enemies would try a few different attacks.
I completed this back in the 90's on my Megadrive. It is tough but really good fun.
It is a bit of a guilty pleasure when games have a detailed bad ending for dying instead of a simple game over screen.
I loved the addition of that bad ending!
Challenging and unique. I like this game. It even managed a decent soundtrack out of the GEMS driver.
Instant deaths, trial and error, and a single life don't gel together well. I can appreciate the art style and even sort of what it was going for, but like you said, there's no room to learn. If a game is hostile to letting you figure out how to progress, why should the player invest the patience? I do appreciate your efforts to try and see both sides of the idea at least.
I could see this getting a remaster with easier difficulty settings. Like no damage when hitting obstacles that need to be removed
Actually you have extra lives, but if you make it to the 2nd and 3rd level. The game rewards you that way and it's well-made.
It’s like Bloodborn. Fun as hell but hard as shit.
Ever play X-Men 2 Clone Wars?
Game was random every time we turned it on
@@aceassn716 in xmen 2 clone wars, only in stage 1 were you unable to choose your character. That is because it dropped you right into the first stage. After that you could choose who to play as.
I think I'm slowly starting to become one of your favorite fans. This right here was one of my favorite games growing up. I say that proudly as a Sega lover at 39 years of age!
i never got past 2nd stage lol
Read that first sentence again.....
Always enjoyed this for how different it was.
This game was so cool when it came out, it still is, but man its always been damn hard!
This game NEEDS an HD Remake. Sega should have brought this game back AGES ago~
Yeah but the list of games they need to bring back is a mile long. So many good ones are still lost either never brought from the arcade or some other obscure/rare/expensive Sega platform.
It looks so good, and it is available on almost any platform possible. Why change anything?
they made a copyright of the comic panel gameplay and than never made new games...
Because of that Sega should be ashamed of themselves
@@EoR_2B4GOT10 that's nuts. I was wondering why this hadn't been done more.
This game is like on every platform under the sun.
This is one of the most stylish games on the Genesis - it's one that I was jealous of as a SNES owner.
Probably would’ve been waaaaay better on snes
Did you ever buy a Genesis? I’ve always played on Sega and Nintendo systems. Such a big variety of different games over the years!
@@aggrock7808 Nah, especially the soundtrack. It would have no punch on SNES, which is way better for orchestral scores. This game has Sega and Genesis vibes all over it.
The game was always much too difficult for me to enjoy
i love this game but I have no idea how many times I have seen the game over sequence. But I can definitely tell you how many times I've seen the 3rd stage
I remember seeing this in video game magazines and thinking how cool it looks. I was finally able to play it on the Wii virtual console and I loved it. It's hard but it's not impossible. You just have to figure out what's the best move execution for each enemy and gets easier. But make no mistake, it's hard but fun
I was going to say the same thing. That's how I felt about. Reading it (I think) Video Game Monthly or whatever magazine I was reading made me wish I had a Sega Genesis. It's such a great game. I didn't think it was hard though so I'm kind of surprised by what others have said.
I originally played this at my friends house, and instantly fell in love with the presentation. I loved the art style, Music, Voice samples, and even the little touches like enemies being drawn in and the impact noises words. I never did get past the second or third level though, as this was definitely one of the hardest games I played. I did get to see one of my other friends beat it several years later though. I would absolutely love to see a modern sequel that added voice acting for the text bubbles, upped the presentation, lowered the difficulty a bit, and just had a huge comic book adventure. No other game really had this type of style.
I remember there was one game on I think the PSP and I think it was a PSP exclusive that also took place in a comic book universe and had the look and stuff but it wasn't quite up to the same stuff as this even though it was a little better visually/graphically a and I don't remember anything about the music. I can't really remember much about it and I feel like it just got forgotten but I do think a game like this given even the streets of rage 4 treatment would be amazing.
This was groundbreaking for it’s time. A Saturn sequel would have been interesting.
@@roldanrosario8292
Problem was they kept releasing 3D games on it even though it was more built for high-end 2D. They should have done it they could have done it but of course like everything else it was a missed opportunity.
@@JohnDoe-wq5eu Saturn still had impressive titles though. What ever wasn’t done with the Saturn was because Sega of America was distracted by the 32x. But even then there were people buying the Saturn just for X-men vs Street fighter. And it was worth it!!
Sega Genesis is like the 1996 impala or the Mercury marauder just the best that gets better with age
WhenI played this again recently, I was amazed at a) how well it held up, and b) that I ever finished it as a kid. A very good game that should have had a follow-up or two. Plus, the grunge EP that came with the game weren’t too bad
I didn't think the game was too difficult to play when I was a teenager, since I was able to beat the game after playing it quite a bit, though I ended up getting the bad ending without figuring out how to easily defeat Mortus and save Alisia from drowning.
Me too. And that superhero meter, never reached the max :(
I love this game, such a cool concept! Too bad there wasn’t a 2 player sequel
2 player roguelike comic zone would be so rad.
You've really come around on this game since your Difficult Genesis Games series. The great tragedy to Comix Zone is that once you realize *how* to play it, you also realize it's only 3 levels long and not all that difficult, and you end up wishing it were 5 times longer.
You nailed this one. This game was so hard, I was one of those kids that rented most of his games and this one was a frustrating weekend. Played it later on a PS3 compilation and could make it to the end but needed to use the invincibility cheat to see the ending. It is too short of a game but the mechanics are well executed
There is a instant kill move available that can kill off most enemies making the game easier to complete. Hold the action button and the character will tear off the backdrop to use it to made a paper aeroplane as a weapon against enemies. Enemies die much faster than being plummet by regular attacks.
wow. 25 years and i never knew this until your comment. though it does drain your health to do it, but still, can't believe I never knew this.
It drain your life. and if it hits you by mistake when it returns it damages you very bad...
and it takes too much time to be done in front of enemies.
jesus, once you get to the 2nd stage, let the rat out right away and he rips open the background and dynamite pops out so you can blow up the door unharmed. I've never seen the rat get an item out of the wall like that. I can't believe I didn't realize the rat does those things. I usually only used it to get under those rotating blades
wow and in the room with the liquid aliens hatching from the glass wall, the rat rips open the wall and finds a health bottle....i always wondered how the hell you are possibly supposed to have enough health for the boss by that point. So much makes sense now
@@manirahnema9585 no, he's right, you use it immediately, and then duck so it wont hit you on return. And then use the health bottles you find throughout. Let the rat out in places and he will tear out the wall and find new health bottles. I'm blown away
I woupd be curious about yer feelings about early SEGA arcade games, like the Zaxxon games, for instance...I never got to play Super Zaxxon...
I didn't own a Sega Genesis back then, but I do remember seeing this game at a friend's house and thinking it looked awesome.
Now, I get to play it thanks to great rereleases like the Sega Genesis Collection on current consoles and pc.
Wish I could do the same for Sega Saturn and especially Dreamcast games too.
Despite the difficulty, I always really loved this game. Played it through both endings a couple months ago after I fixed my Nomad, and I recently got it for the PS3. This game could definitely use the Streets of Rage 4 treatment. There's so much more they could do with modern mechanics, gameplay, and graphics.
As a kid that only had access to a Genesis back in the mid 90s, Comix Zone was so much fun and I loved all the different routes!
Me too
Very difficult game but also very solid. The GBA port from developer Virtucraft (Mortal Kombat Advance, Samurai Jack The Amulet Of Time) was a HORRENDOUS port. Dear lord they did an incredibly horrific job.
3 chapters, split into 2 stages each with multiple branching paths and multiple endings. This game is still a great play.
I recommend the Japanese version of this game, it's slightly easier and it has an English option.
That's where the fun is, the more challenging the better. I beat this game in 24 minutes without losing. If the japanese version is easier, then it's trash.. 👍
oh ok
I didn't think "Comix Zone" was too difficult to play when I was a teenager, since I was able to beat the game after playing it quite a bit, though I ended up getting the bad ending without figuring out how to easily defeat Mortus and save Alissia from drowning.
The only thing that makes any games really hard and frustrating, is when they dont have save points... so everytime you d!e, you have to start from the beginning
Comix Zone is one of the games I’ve had several opportunities to pick up. I’ve been hesitant until watching your review of it. If it’s at my local retro shop I’m going to pick it up. Thanks for the honest review
You won't be disappointed
Check out the rom and see for yourself if you would like it, then buy it. It's not like anyone involved with the game production is making any money off of it anymore from second hand sales.
Would love a Directors Cut of this game with the two additional planned levels finished and included
I really appreciate just how subtly brilliantly this video is structured. I love how at the beginning, the footage shows it being played like a beat 'em up, falling into the game's frustrations, and in the last third, you showed some of those same sections done right, using the rat and items to progress well. Just a dynamite, cohesive way to combine the footage with the message.
I still have this complete with the CD. The CD sucks. The game is great.
Got this guy complete with CD and registration card!
This game looks stunning on a CRT. I have a vid here of playing it on a PVM. I only ever beat it on the PSP Genesis collection with the save states and all it was still hard!
It's great to look back at the Megadrive and see how software matured on it, as said in the video, I think also that it could have gone on for a couple more years, even if it was kid friendly games and movie tie ins.
this game looks so cool i dont want to watch the rest of the review so i can have as fresh an experience with it as possible
Owned this one as a kid and remember it was rare I ever made it to the 3rd level, and never got past that part of Comix Zone. Brutally difficult game. I wound up trading it for Splatterhouse 3 with a friend which is a waaaaay better game imo, but also plenty difficult.
I think comix is better game than splater3...
Splatterhouse 3 I thought was less good than the other splatterhouse games I think I liked the first one the best.
I agree with you on the subpar output of Sega of America. Their crappy games and shitty management is what killed Sega.
Sega of America only was good at marketing, Sega of Japan made most of the good games.
Probably my top Genesis game. Hard as hell but so enjoyable in every aspect. How about some tips?
It doesn't tell you but you get an extra life for every page you complete.
Roadkill gets rid of Mongoreias super fast.
To minimize damage when hitting objects use your shoulder bash.(Push against it and attack at the same time)
Every boss has an easy way to defeat them with minimal effort. (1. Trash can on other side of her. 2. Jump kick into his nails ((obviously)) 3. Spamming the thruster lever when he's by the thruster.)
Don't grab the green slime monsters after the city.
Try to keep Roadkill with you at all times. If there's a part where you think he can help, he probably can. (Take your time if there is no enemies or pits. He can find items in a lot of panels. More than you think.)
Boxes stacked on top of each other might be a small puzzle in itself. Try jumping at them.
Each enemy has a weakness to a certain attack pattern. Gravis are weak to grab. Strigil if above uppercut. If not low kicks (NOT CROUCHING KICKS.) Flying mutants: uppercuts and neutral jump kicks. Styx are weak to high and low kick mix ups. Mongorias are probably the easiest. Just mash attack while pushing against them while roadkill is out. Pelagus are best delt with an item but jump kicks a good to.
Press and hold attack to rip a piece of the page off, make a paper airplane and clear the panel. It does enough damage to you that you might have to think before using it but it's a useful tool and there's enough health drinks around to make it ok. (Just remember to duck!)
A six button controller is ideal because the block button can be programmed to the OD shoulder bash or any other combo ender. You still would get auto block but now you can do strong attacks on command.
There's more I could say but try these out for yourself and you will probably find out more small things as you play.
I actually have an idea for a sequel to Comic Zone. I call it Manga zone. it would be a mixture of a first person shooter and first person Hack n Slash RPG. The combat part of this possible sequel would focus mostly on melee and firearms combat. There is more but let me know if this is a good first start.
Never really understood what everyone's problem with this game's difficulty problem was. Then again, it was probably my first Genesis game back then so I didn't know any better and kept playing until I finally beat it.
God I LOVE Comix Zone, first played on Sonic Mega Collection Plus back in the day!
Had the PC port of this with the first Windows (95) PC I had at home. Truly a brilliant game and you've hit the nail on the head with this review. Difficult but well, well worth playing over and over to get good at! Brilliantly designed game.
Loved this game from moment one, the 8 yr old me thought the style was so incredibly cool. Later on when I was a teen and had this for pc I came to appreciate the survival/adventure/puzzle mechanics you highlighted. Never did beat it though, the third world always got me in short order. I think there’s loads of potential here to make a bigger and better (not to mention more new player friendly) version of this in the future. Maybe when dotemu is done with Windjammers 2 they can start on a Comix Zone 2, their penchant for hand drawn 2D graphics would be a natural fit.
Thumbs-up if your button config was:
X, Y, Z = Items
C = Jump
B = Attack
A = Shoulder Smash
My problem was definitely that I never figured out the Adventure game elements...well, I did, but even then I didn't have the skill to pull it off.
Maybe it'll go better as an adult...
Great vídeo, played vía emulator!please, make a Review of Sega Rally 2 (Arcade, DC and PC) keep going!
Have you done a video on Chakan the Forever man? A game few people talk about. It was dark souls hard before Dark souls was even a thing.
On a side note, i would also be interested in hearing your thoughts on Cyborg Justice.
Have beaten this game countless times. If you use Roadkill and know where the items are at, and know how to manage your items all while maintaining heavy blows to your enemies and low damage to yourself, it’s not all that very hard. If you want a hard game, Sega Technical Institute made The Ooze alongside this game, and it’s far more broken in comparison.
There were too many games on the Genesis with artificial difficulty through limited continues that took much of the fun out of them.
I never knew about this game back in the day. Found it last year and i love it. Took my friend and i 5 weeks of Friday nights to beat it.
This was one of the ones i brought home when renting back in the day. I beat it in adult hood with the help of save states- although wasn’t able to get a perfect ending where you save the drowning girl. I’ve since bought it on my genesis and chip away at it every now and again. It’s a pretty unforgiving game.
comix zone is my favorite genesis game.. i got it back in like 95.. i still play it on sonic's ultimate genesis collection on ps3.. but i play on an arcade stick for the 6 button layout of the original game
I can’t believe so many people don’t like the sound in this game. I loved the 90s grunge sound! What a time…
Comixzone was definitely a cool game. But by then I had a PC. Nuff said.
Ah yes, my favorite comic book is the one where the guy punches barrels for 50 panels
It’s a surprise to me why no other gaming developer thought this would make a good remaster/remake or a reboot.
Comix Zone is one of those games that everyone who has ever played it likes, but has never finished.
The soundtrack is like instrumental Nirvana replicated on a Sega Genesis sound chip. I dig it!
This is one of those Genesis games that needed an enhanced Saturn port, but it never came. The Sega Tunes soundtrack would have been perfect in a Saturn version of the game.
One of the few sega games i keep going back to enjoy the soundtrack so much and fun to just beat up some bad guys
Comix Zone was a game that I really wanted to like, and do appreciate to a fairly good extent. The difficulty was enough where I have limited mileage when trying to play the game. Perhaps if I had purchased the physical game upon release I would have been more persistent (Too many other games of interest for Genesis and SNES, as well as the incoming 32 bit games) but as part of collection disc it is too easy just to play in a short burst and move onto something else.
I had the same experience playing it in the PS3 Genesis collection. I get to a part that gives me trouble and I end up turning it off.
Yes when I first saw it not too long ago I thought it was an very interesting design for the time. Yep it is somewhat hard
Same. I got it on PS2 megadrive collection. I gave it a go. I skimmed passed.
I've played it last year without using save states. In the end it wasn't as hard as so many on the internet say, especially because it's a very short game.
Hey man, great review. I too never gave Comix Zone much time as well due to the difficulty but will definitely have another go of it soon with a different mentality now.
I agree with your points, Sega should've made it easier and have difficulty levels, with say a better ending on higher ones for added replay value.
The soundtrack vaguely reminds of Nirvana, or grunge in general.
The difficulty curve is eff'ing nuts TBH 😕
As far as I heard, the gems driver was a neat idea, easier to use, the thing is that it wasn't well utilized most of the time. Custom sound drivers like Yuzo Koshiro's still sounded better, but it wasn't as easy to use.
Yeah I remember reading an interview with the guy that developed the GEMS driver (I think, don't quote me on that) but he was saying the whole idea was that GEMS gave an easy starting point for music creation but few devs took it past the 'defaults'
Comix Zone sucks. There's no save and load feature in it.
Great review, fantastic game that took me a while to appreciate, too. Comix Zone is such a wonderfully unique game, though. Totally agree with your notion about mindset. This game is way more Flashback or Blackthorne than Streets of Rage. A tutorial level at the beginning would have totally made this game more accessible. I also think the rat should've been ever-present like Navi in Ocarina of Time instead a collectible item/piece of equipment.
I wouldn't have a problem with the difficulty if it wasn't obvious padding meant to lengthen the game and punish the rental market. This is the kind of game that I think would have really benefited from "waiting" on a Saturn release. More storage (and CD sound), and consequently less of a need to pad the few levels in the game, would have made this an undisputed classic. It feels like a "respectable" port of a much better arcade game, or a forgotten 3DO game that is "surprisingly good" for the system it was on.
I say that as someone who rented this game multiple times when it came out and has revisited it multiple times since. I *want* to like this game. I collect genesis games and 80's/90's comics. This should be my jam.
It was less about punishing the rental market and more to do with how limited storage was on cartridge's back then. Imagine spending $90+ in today's money and then beating the game in less than an hour because they couldn't fit much content on the cartridge.
A very common practice from those days was to make short games harder to compensate it.
Having a cd as a pack-in and showing what the songs actually were like added to the versions on the cartridge. Kinda hit harder that way.
Thinking about the gameplay, it´s all about the routes to the bosses. It almost made me cringe a couple of times seeing your gameplay full well knowing your thinking behind those scenes. Man, i played this thing for hours and hours.
Wait wat. Only the pal version had the cd? Didnt know that. You ntsc guys really missed out here!
Wow! I liked this game when I first played it, but yeah I thought it was just a bullshit hard beat'em up. I dropped it because you took damage doing the things you needed to do to get to the next panel. Didn't even care about the items. Thanks for making this video, I need to revisit this game!
Most things you need to do have work-arounds that don't involve hurting yourself by punching stuff. You just have to think.
I would love to see a comix zone 2 done by the streets of rage 4 team
Mortus almost looks like Dr. Zan from Streets of Rage 3.
I really love this game. Yeah it's pretty damn hard at first, but just the overall look and feel of it always made me wanna try again. Like mentioned in the video, I love the different ways you can handle situations in this game, as in there isn't just one way to deal with something.
Man, this was begging for a 32X version but it was probably dead by then. I wonder if the 32X could have done even better with the audio though.
Same music however, arcade/CD sound effects. I wish they added a cd sountrack for the pc version.
I just realized I want to see a walkthrough of this game by the Sega Lord X with these crisp graphics...
I have the game on the Genesis. It's one of my favorites.
Worthy game for review. Difficult af.
I've actually never played Comix Zone but remember watching some behind the scenes clips... The art always blew my mind!!!!
Every picture worth stop the game and look at the details and the beauty of the art works
I'm not a fan of the "twangy" sound of this game. Great looking game but I passed on this as a kid because of that...
Especially the screeching instruments.
One of my favorite games when i was a kid.
wonderful, innovative game and pushing Genesis to the limit, it's a shame Sega didn't continue the game on Saturn and Dreamcast. Because history is personality the game has plenty.
After the genesis, the innovation dwindled during the 5th and 6th console generation.
definitely, it's a great game. According to my point of view, one of the best of GEN
100% agree
Dare to find an equal for this beauty in snes...
hey I can only see this video in 480p, I can see other videos in 1080p but it's not even an option here! And this has been the case with his last couple or few videos! Has anybody else been experiencing this?
Can you do a video on Rambo 3 for the Genesis?
بازی با گرافیک بالا و بسیار هیجان آور ولی سخت! متاسفانه در دوران کودکی هیچ وقت نتوانستم صحنه پایانی داستان را ببینم،
این بازی با گرافیک بالا، قدرت رندر کردن توسط SEGA YAMAHA CHIPSET را بخوبی نشان میدهد
امروز comix zone را در با ویندوز ۱۰ بازی میکنم و هر کجا که خواستم آن را با emulator ذخیره میکنم
Finally last year beat it with saving the girl in time hard game
I first played this on the Sega Channel.
Yesss. more SegaXLord. love your vids
Last genesis game I rented. Man I just remember telling my friends it was better than donkey Kong.
Yeah you’re right buddy it is better.
Graphics and animation are amazing.