Action 52

aka: A52
Moby ID: 30966

Genesis version

52 in 1, eh?

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.

by Giu's Brain (503) on May 27, 2012

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