Action 52

The Good
What's good about this? Well... you do get 52 games. Sort of, because the last game is just a run through the toughest levels of the other games. Obviously many of them use the same sounds, sprites or backgrounds. A few of these games could be described as OK... ish. Stuff you might want to play for more than 2 minutes. Also the order of day seems to be 4 lives and 9 levels per game.

The sounds - there's nothing to actually like, but for the most part they won't bother you. Except for the annoying woman announcing the levels.

Another good thing, I guess, is that the games are colour coded and grouped by type or difficulty. And now I know I'm really grasping at straws when it comes to good things about this. Let's move on to the bad...

The Bad
Considering you had to pay 200 bucks for this thing back in the day, you'd expect a little more quality.

A few games are, as I said, somewhat fun, but most of them are either poorly programmed, poorly designed or full of glitches. Plus any combination of that. Not to mention many look and feel like cheap knock-offs of other games, ranging from Minesweeper to After Burner. There's even some sort of Simon in there and a Pong clone (or the first video game as they call it).

I'm not gonna go on and on about the problems of each individual game. Even the ones that might be worth playing still have problems and aren't genuinely good. So if you were to spend 200$ all at once, on games, back in 1993, you'd be better of buying a few individual titles from the different genres presented in this multicart. You know, proper games like Golden Axe or Desert Strike.

The Bottom Line
Bottom line: if you actually paid 200 bucks for this, you were ripped off. Still, if you do happen to stumble across a copy (or you actually bought it), you might as well give it a try. It's not complete and utter garbage. It's just pretty boring, mostly bad and with a dash of average here and there.

The Good
Little. SOME games were sort of fun...in a bad kind of way. The main 'good' point about the game is it isn't as bad as the NES version. The graphics (although they look like they've been drawn on Microsoft paint) are more professional and at least and there aren't about 10000000000000000000000000000 glitches. The music and sound is nothing terrible. Although it is weird when a little red pool ball hits a brick it says "OUCHHH!!!".

The Bad
Some of the games seem unfinished, and some, seem to have had more effort put into them than others (E.G. Cheetahmen, Skirmish) . Many games are cheap knock offs of classic games (like 'Sidewinder' is an 'after burner' rip-off) and others just Like 'Bonkers' just don't work at all. Shoddy concepts!! When playing with a Mega drive joypad, half the games seem unplayable as well. There are many complaints i have about this pile of poo...so many i can't fit half of them on the page. Some include: Shoddy animation Poor sprites and also, half the games are the same with the sprites replaced.

The Bottom Line
Well...this game is so terrible, so awful, so stinky...it's good. If you want a laugh, buy this and have a cackle at how rubbish it is. Really. It's so bad, it's entertaining. This is AWFUL.

The Good
First of all, as the game title states as obvious, there are 52 different games crammed into one single cartridge. Now you're probably asking yourselves,"How can anyone go wrong with 52 games in one" well, guess what. They got it completely wrong! Now, I'll admit that Action 52 does have a few decent games compared to the last failure. Now to be honest, I never got the Action 52 for the NES, because I believed that genesis was the top at it's time. Anyway this game does have "Bonkers" and it is actually the best game I played on Action 52 . The only problem here, it gets really boring after a while and so do the other games that actually work on this thing. Oh and the graphics have been slightly improved due to the fact this is a game on the Genesis and you'd expect a genesis game to have more complex graphics compared to the NES.

The Bad
Well, practically everything in this game is bad, they didn't fix any bugs or glitches in this game. The games are hardly playable and also, the music. It sounds like it was created by a moronic dj. I mean, it's nowhere near playable and yet, there are 52 broken and terrible games that don't work. And also, when you land onto something, you make this very strange noise (can't describe it, sorry). You can't jump while shooting and you fall like a rock. Also, whenever you're about to start any game, you hear an annoying voice saying "level one". And you know what? That voice is going to repeat every single time you lose and when you choose to submit yourself to any other game.

The Bottom Line
It's not playable or enjoyable, but it is better than the one on the NES, I think. The only thing that is the best about this game is either the menu screen or the game "bonkers". And I'm not playing Action 52 for the Genesis ever again. This is a perfect example why you have to check out the reviews of a game you want before you want it in stores!