What kind of crazy planet is this, anyway? We came here to conduct a simple study of primitive planets, and look what happened! These...things...came and scared away my friends. Before I knew it, all my friends boarded our lightship and flew home.

What do I do now? The only one I can trust is that nice little alien-- Ellleeott. He gives me those tasty energy pills (What did he call them?
Reeessseess Peeesssesss?) But these other aliens! Every time I get ready to assemble my transgalactic communicator, they come and take me away. The one with the white coat sticks that temperature measuring device in my mouth (I wonder why he was so upset when it melted?), and the other one in the trench coat keeps muttering those strange sounds (Naaashaaannaall Seeeccuuuureeetteee?)
I just want to go home! I hope Elllleeott and I can assemble all the pieces of my communicator before my energy runs out.

Oh, oh. Here come those crazy aliens again. Help me, Elllleeott! Help me get home!

EA's first attempt at a pro baseball sim on the Genesis.

A real winner, as far as baseball sims go. Has all the adjustable options one would expect, as well as top-notch gameplay. The only thing missing is an all-out brawl.

An Indiana Jones inspired side scroller about a daring adventurer looking for fame and treasure amid the ruins of a lost city deep in the South American jungles.

Aaakk! I've often wondered why they didn't use rotoscoping to animate a character's limbs more smoothly. Now I know why! This game looks awful and plays worse.

Life is peaceful in the small town of Onett. Everything is right with the world.

Suddenly, you're startled awake by a loud crash. You grab your cap and head outside to see what caused the noise. After climbing a hill and sneaking by the police, you learn the truth: It's a meteor!

So begins the expedition of a young boy to save the world in Earthbound, a humorous RPG set not in the world of dragons, knights and wizards, but right here on Earth.

Discovering the meteor is just the beginning. On your adventure you'll face enemies like the Pogo Punk and Rowdy Mouse, and brandish killer baseball bats and deadly yo-yos. You'll also meet new friends that will aid in your quest to defeat the evil Giygas.

Expect wacky, off-the-wall fun, plenty of challenging battles and a long, epic quest on your way to stopping the alien invasion in Earthbound. The game contains battery-backed memory to record your progress and includes an 128-page Player's Guide.

In the early 1990s, a mysterious dark shadow covered a small country town in rural America. A young married couple vanished from their house without a trace. The man's name was George, the woman's name was Maria. Two years passed, and George suddenly returned. He never spoke to anyone about what he had experienced. Instead, he lead a solitary life and began an odd study, all by himself. His wife never returned.

Eighty years have passed since then. You play the role of a young boy who lives together in a small town together with his parents and his two sisters. One day, something strange happens: the house seems to be possessed by a poltergeist. Things start attacking house inhabitants. The boy's father advises him to talk to his grandfather and to learn how to use psychic powers in order to discover the reason behind the strange poltergeist. On his journey, the boy meets three other children: a quiet girl who lives together with her mother, a young genius who isn't accepted by his classmates, and a boy who joined a gang, hoping for revenge. The four heroes will explore the world and find out the connection between the strange events of today and the mystery of the past.

Closely related to the SNES game EarthBound, "Mother" is an unusual console-style RPG set in modern times. Combat system is similar to Dragon Warrior: you meet random enemies and bosses, and fight them in turn-based combat viewed from first-person perspective. Instead of magic, your characters can use special psychic powers called PSI.

The Super NES version of Shiny's groovy platform shooter starring a worm empowered by a mysterious space suit features one less level, the gurgling Intestinal Distress, as well as fewer voice samples than in its Genesis counterpart. Added color, lens flare effects, and multiple layers of parallax scrolling help offset the omissions, but the music isn't much of an improvement considering the differences in systems. Control is also a bit tighter in the Genesis version, but Earthworm Jim is still one of the most challenging, diverse, and humorous platform games on a system filled with quality platform games. Wonderfully weird.

Eat Dirt! Now you can eat dirt on the road. This is the tightest conversion from a 16-bit to a hand-held ever! Now the head swinging, blaze blastin' action is totally mobile. So you can eat dirt everywhere you go! The story is simple: an earthworm crawls into a super powered space suit and transforms into a super hero.

Meet our hero - a sweet and lovable fella who just happens to be a steroid enhanced earthworm. This is the wild and wacky platform shooter that everybody talks about, and was a big hit when it was first released.

Stellar gameplay and animation featuring a hilarious main character. This version of the first game has an extra level not found in the SNES version, though some of the SNES graphic effects are missed.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's an earthworm! An earthworm? Yes, my surprised friend. But this isn't just any earthworm, this is Earthworm Jim, the first super-earthworm in the entire world. One day, while crawling about the ground in tranquility, Jim, as mortal a creature as any, comes across a space suit and goes inside. When he does, he suddenly notices that everything seems different, and sees that he has muscles where before there was nothing. He reasons that he has become a super hero! A chance like this comes once in a lifetime for such a lowly creature! However, nothing like this comes falling out of the sky so easily. For now, our hero has angered Psy-Crow, a perverse alien and the true owner of the suit who will stop at nothing to get it back. Thus the adventure begins, but take care ... Earthworm Jim could soon be hooked!

The world's most famous worm superhero is back to save Princess What's-Her-Name from arch-nemesis Psy-Crow. Journey across the galaxy through 12 levels of wackiness such as "Udderly Abducted" and "Level Ate." One level ("The Villi People") will even have you playing as a blind cave salamander! Along with the standard machine gun, Jim can find six new guns that'll fire plasma, bubbles, three simultaneous shots, homing missiles and more. New moves include the snott swing and parachute, allowing you to glide through the air with the greatest of ease.

Making their return appearances are Peter Puppy and Bob the Goldfish (not to mention the cows), but there are several new villains who will greet you at the end of each level. Special care was taken to improve the graphics and sound over its predecessor. Tommy Tallarico Studios was responsible for the music and sound effects, Animotion II was used to create fluid character animation and Silicon Graphics helped give the characters a 3D appearance. Wish you could jump right to a certain stage instead of playing through the entire game? If you find three different items hidden somewhere within the level, you'll receive a password to return to your crazy adventure at a later time.

Meet our hero - a sweet and lovable fella who just happens to be a steroid enhanced earthworm. This is the wild and wacky platform shooter that everybody talks about, and was a big hit when it was first released.

Stellar gameplay and animation featuring a hilarious main character. This second outing for Jim has lots of subgames, including an isometric shooter. Groovy!

In Earthworm Jim 2, our hero must rescue his new girlfriend from the evil dude that kidnapped her - cue more madcap platform hilarity.

Play 3 rounds of 501

After defeating the Vortex ECCO returns to earth a hero. Unknown to ECCO the Vortex Queen has escaped destruction and followed the pod back to earth and is building a new hive and so starts your adventure.

ECCO 2 has better sound and graphics than it's predecessor, not that there's anything wrong with the graphics in the first game. There's a cool 3D subgame when moving between levels, ECCO also gets a few new talents as the game progresses and there is a little more variety to the gameplay this time round. As with the original game it gets a little tough later on but it's well worth playing.

ECCO Jr. is essentially ECCO 'Lite', a watered down version made for the kiddies.

You now have a choice of three characters to play, ECCO the dolphin , a killer whale and a porpoise. The graphics aren't as crisp as the other two ECCO games and the game seems to have lost some of it's character. The kiddies should enjoy it if ECCO 1 or 2 are a bit too tough for them but adults will find it way too easy, I finished the game in under an hour when I played it.

Ecco is a dolphin. A dolphin's life consists of swimming around all day, eating and playing. And that's what Ecco does. But one day something happens, and Ecco finds all his friends missing. The once friendly seas have become lonely and oppressive. It's up to Ecco to find out what happened.

Ecco the Dolphin is a 2D underwater adventure game. Players control Ecco and can guide him as he swims horizontally or vertically through the water. He can also jump above the ocean surface and use his sonar to talk to other dolphins or to map his environment. But because Ecco is a dolphin and not a fish, he needs to go back to the ocean surface periodically for air.

Ecco's supply of air is indicated by the blue dots on the upper left of the screen. If the blue dots all fade away, Ecco is out of air and dies. He can also take damage from the unfriendly creatures in the sea. The health level is indicated by the red dots on the screen. Should all these dots fade away, Ecco will be critically wounded and die. Before that happens, Ecco can have a clam heal him by singing to it.

Ecco must journey through the ocean completing the requirements in each level before moving on. He can talk to the other dolphins for clues as to what he must do. By holding down the sonar button, players can see a map of their immediate vicinity with creatures and items marked in different colors.

ECCO's pod is mysteriously swept into the sky leaving him all alone. The evil Vortex is harvesting the oceans of all life for food. Help ECCO on his quest to find his pod and save the earth.

The ECCO games are a little hard to pigeon hole, the G3 calls them Platformers but I think Action Adventure would probably be more accurate. The graphics and sound are excellent in this game. You must use ECCO's abilities to navigate around the maze like levels and their is a heavy slant towards puzzles so you'll need your thinking caps on for this game. ECCO inherits new abilities as the game progresses to aid in your quest, the most useful one is when gain the ability to breathe underwater which means that you don't have to find air pockets every couple of minutes. It can get quite tough later on in the game but it's well worth pressing on as this is one of SEGA's crowning achievements.

A side-scrolling shoot-em-up with an ecological theme, in which the player must battle a ruthless mega corporation that is slowly destroying the Earth's ecosystems with its industrial machines. As well as superbly rendered graphics, Eco Fighters features an interesting play mechanic with the addition of an extended metal arm mounted on the side of the player's ship. On the end of the arm is a weapon that can be rotated through 360 degrees. This weapon comes in 4 different forms; Energy Ball, Long-range Hammer, Laser Sword or Scatter-Bomb foil. The rotatable weapon can be powered up before being fired, in a similar fashion to the 'Force' weapon that featured in Irem's "R-Type". The rotatable weapon is also impervious to all enemy contact and can be used as a shield. In addition to the rotating weapon, the player's ship is also equipped with forward-firing laser guns. Both the guns and rotatable weapon can be powered-up with greater shot power when the relevant icon is picked up. Designed by a Japanese gamer, who won a Capcom-sponsored competition to design a game for the arcade giant.

Edison's Conquest of Mars was published in 1898 intended to be a sequel to H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, but did not achieve the fame of its predecessor.

The book was endorsed by Thomas Edison, the hero of the book -- though not by Wells. The themes and messages of Serviss's book are diametrically opposed to Wells's original. In it, Edison travels to Mars, his inventions (including the disintegrator ray) allow an Earth spacefleet to destroy the Martians' ability to make war after several exciting battles. There are ship-to-ship battles, and battles between Earth ships and Martian ground forts. This was perhaps the first space opera, although the term did not yet exist; it was perhaps the most literal of the Edisonades.

Communication between astronauts requires a wire to be passed between them; spaceships communicate by flags or lights. Although the story was published in 1898 during the early real experiments in radio, it contains no concept of radio.

The book contains some notable "firsts" in science fiction: alien abductions, spacesuits (called "air-tight suits"), aliens building the Pyramids, space battles, oxygen pills and disintegrator rays.

Based on the cartoon of the same name, Eek! The Cat is a side-scrolling adventure game starring the do-gooding purple cat. Players control Eek! as he performs good deeds for people, all while keeping a watchful eye for Sharky the dog. Graphics are just average, yet the gameplay is quirky and colorful enough to capture the essence of the show. Levels feature a myriad of characters from the show, and gameplay mostly consists of completing tasks and solving simple puzzles to advance. A two-player mode might have saved this title from the litter box.

A puzzle game.

Save the Eggs using your mouse

As you were exploring a deep dark dungeon underneath one of the many pyramids in Egypt, you find yourself lost. A magical orb in the distance calls to you. You follow the sound and then get absorbed by the orb.

The only way to escape is to complete all the puzzles of the dungeon. Will you get out or be stuck in the pyramids forever?

Avoid the police for as long as you possibly can!

From the makers of the Valis series comes the tale of a young female warrior, an expert with her custom boomerang, who in 1928 travels to New York on a personal vendetta against a mob boss and his henchmen.

This is yet another one of those impossibly plotted Japanese platformers in which the anime-style cinemas are better than the game itself. Boomerangs against Tommy guns and Harleys? Come on, get real! Gameplay and music are decent, but not awe-inspiring.

A young warrior with magical powers as well as fighting skills embarks upon a quest for justice against an evil warlord.

This is just your basic fantasy-themed top-down shooter with all the usual trappings thereof. Nothing special here, just run and shoot. Watch out for those bosses, though. Looks and plays pretty decent.

You are Agent 17 (codename: "Otto"). Your mission is to secure all top secret documents from a security building and escape in the getaway car, located in the basement of the building.

Enemies spies are scattered throughout the 30-floor building and they have only one mission: execute Agent 17 at all costs.

International intrigue Behind The Lines. The Man: Super Agent # 17 (code name 'Otto'). The Mission; Retrieve disks containing valuable information from a criminal organization. The means: infiltrate their top-security defense building. Use the elevators and escalators to sneak around quickly. Avoid the alarm sensors. Muzzle the guard dogs. Disassemble the robots. Explore hundreds of secret rooms. Find and steal the disks. Destroy enemy agents. Use the most powerful weapons and jumping techniquesa and one more thing...stay alive.

Terrorists are on the loose and it is up to a special counter-terrorism squad to infiltrate their strongholds to snag information and terminate them before it's too late. Features excellent graphics and sound, three selectable characters, an expanded arsenal of weapons and an excellent challenge. Definitely improved over the last game and highly recommended for "Rolling Thunder" fans!

You are a lone fighter pilot in the middle of one of the biggest space battles of all time. Remember the rules of the space shooter - maneuver often, fly furiously, get power-ups at every possible opportunity, and shoot anything that isn't you!

This is one truly impressive R-Type clone, and reminds me a helluva lot of the Macross shooter for the SNES. Fantastically detailed multi-plane scrolling backgrounds, a driving musical score, a well-designed weapons and shielding system, and just plain solid gameplay put this squarely in the top five all-time great Genesis shooters. Its only real drawback is the total lack of a plot, but shooter fans really don't care about such stuff, do they?