there's something kind of hokey about the character design - like it was designed to sell kids' shampoo or breakfast cereal. fun platformer though, and great sprite art.

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>>12419498
Considering what the original concept art for the character was, i'd say the final product isn't to bad.

I think it makes sense that it became more appreciated later on.

Back then games like Sonic were kind of UFOs on Megadrive, casual platformers did exist on Megadrive but for the most part it's not what the audiance wanted on the platform. On one side they wanted "hardcore gamers" games, on the other side, sports games; not kiddy looking platformers. Ristar is also lacking in terms of challenge (except from the final boss), challenge being one of the selling points of the Megadrive.

Nowadays it's the contrary. Players are alien to the concept of challenge, or pretend 'challenge was never good or wanted', and as a result kiddy platformers become le HIDDEN GEM for youtubers and their braindead viewers. Ristar and also Pulseman are good examples of that since they have a completely inverse popularity now.

>>12419505
>not kiddy looking platformers
the 2 biggest platformers of the console wars had children in mind as the target audience though, mario & sonic never originally appealed to older people.

>>12419506
As I said yes it was a thing, but generally speaking children weren't Sega's target audiance. This becomes very obvious the second you open a period Sega centric magazine vs Nintendo Power. In fact it's one of the reasons the Saturn did so poorly: because Sony established itself on the exact same market share (teens, young adults and hardcore gamers) in 94-95.

>>12419492
I didn’t know about this game until I grew up years after I played my beloved Megadrive

It's too slow and gay

>>12419492
If I remember correctly, the main issue was timing. The 1995 was very late into the life span of Genesis and people already were anticipating Saturn.

>>12419681
This makes the most sense, a case of being way to late to the party when everybody had already moved on.

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>>12419687
The contemporary magazines seems to reflect that, too. The game was very liked but a lot of people just had little to no interest in Genesis games.

>>12419492
The Genesis was more or less on it's way out at the time. It was marketed as a bit of a Sonic successor but the character is pretty lame and the game, while not bad at all is not nearly as good as Sonic.

This game is better than Sonic 2.

>>12419681
Vectorman came out later that same year and did way better; game just sucked and isn’t what Mega Drive gamers were looking for.

>>12419492
In my opinion it was just a little too safe. I think it's one of the better Mega Drive games for sure but despite it's clearly very high production values it really doesn't do anything substantially different from what every gamer back then had seen a million times over the past several years at that point. I think 1995 was just way too late for such an orthodox platformer to make a big impression, something like Vectorman, as was already mentioned ITT, would turn a lot more heads due to how unique it looked. Had Ristar been released 3 years earlier I believe it would have been a big hit.

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I tricked myself into believing it was made by, or in part by, Treasure.
Like the grappling mechanic (which Treasure is borderline obsessed with) and the graphical style...
But it was all a damn lie by my own fruition...

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The GG version is fine too

>>12420523
Graphics and sprite work are surprisingly on part for being a game gear port of a mega drive game.

>>12419492
aside from bad timing and the kiddie look I think the game had little to no marketing, I don't remember seeing any ads for it but my brother rented it from blockbuster one day

>>12419506
There was only room for 2 kiddie platformers in the 90s, most other shit flopped.