Despite the genesis being the 16-bit console in my house growing up, it really wasn’t a PART of my childhood; we had a lot more NES games including several of The Classics so that was kind of always in competition with the Nintendo 64, which we got a couple years into its life cycle, and was the first console I was old enough to really engage with on my own as a kid. After that it was like, damn, 3D graphics amirite? Ocarina of Time changes a kid. So we had like, the first two Sonics and that point n click Pac-Man 2 nightmare and that Aladdin game and like a few shitty sports games and Phantasy Star TWO which I guess if you want to know why I turned out this way, Phantasy Star 2 might be the first JRPG I played to completion. Imagine that ending informing a kid on a genre.

Anyway I didn’t have a good spread of genesis games, I didn’t particularly like PLAYING most of these games and I didn’t enjoy like, the aesthetics. I don’t know enough about tech stuff to understand the differences between consoles and I don’t really care but there’s a clear difference between the aesthetics of a lot of SNES and Genesis games and I assume that’s gotta come down to what’s under the hood? Regardless, I feel there’s definitely a Genesis Look. Sonic has this, y’know, Toejam and Earl has it, Wonder Boy has it. You know what I’m talking about.

Ristar is probably the platonic ideal of a Sega Genesis game. Genesis-ass game right here. Massive fuckin’ sprites, weird little fucko, obvious sonic clone, Japanese vibes but not so Japanese that people will make racist jokes about how wacky it is, interesting control gimmicks, funky-ass soundtrack, and my god the colors. Look at all the JEWEL TONES in this fucker. The deep purples, the turqoises, the burnt oranges that fill in the crystalline outlines of these bizarre and creative level themes. Sure yeah we start in like a forest and and water level but it’s really not long before we’re hitting the crystal planet and the synthwave cityscapes and shit, GENESIS shit y’know??

Ristar is a fantastic One Of These Guys (big sprite Sonic cash-ins I mean, he even steals the sonic title screen), and true to his name, he’s got stretchy wrists, and he is shaped like a star. What you see is what you get. It makes for an interesting dynamic where your jump isn’t anything to write home about and your stretchy arms don’t actually give you quite the freedom of movement you WANT but they do enable you to do a lot if you put in the time to find mastery. The game actually does feel something like a slowed down, zoomed in Sonic in the sense that there are winding paths and secrets hidden in every level if you’re skilled enough to navigate them well.

This isn’t the kind of game that I probably would have sought out on my own but I’m glad I was prompted to on my rec list by BansheeNeet. I love a good platformer, I love good tunes, I love good art, I love challenging my biases. A great recommendation!