The Favorite Games List was a recurring feature originally published on Trevor Trove. This installment originally debuted on December 19, 2015
Been a while since I revisited my Favorite Games List segment so let’s touch on that. For this installment, I’m talking about a system I had completely forgotten we owned until I reclaimed some of my old boxes of video game stuff from my sister’s house a few months back.
JVC X’Eye (Sega CD)
When I first saw this thing at the bottom of one of these boxes, I thought, “that’s weird? Did my parents accidentally put one of their old CD players in here?” Then I saw the Sega CD cases and it all started flooding back to me. Well, not really. It sparked a few memories that at least were enough to connect the dots between the two. Then I wondered why this thing didn’t have the Sega brand on it. That’s obviously not something I cared about as a kid: it played the Sega CD games, that’s all that mattered. But as an adult looking back, I was confused. Then I remembered that this was during a time when a lot of electronics companies were partnering up to try and break into the industry. Here, we had Sega partnering with JVC but more famously, Nintendo partnered with Sony on the CD-i, but then instead switched to working with Phillips on the project. The Phillip CD-i wound up a bust, but Sony transitioned their investment into the original PlayStation, shaking up the console market for good.
In our collection, I found the following Sega CD games.
- Ecco the Dolphin
- ESPN Sunday Night NFL
- Links: The Challenge of Golf
- Microcosm
- Mortal Kombat
- NBA Jam
- WWF Rage Cage
Now Ecco the Dolphin was covered with the Genesis and Mortal Kombat in with the Game Gear. The only other ones I remember anything about at all were Links and NBA Jam
Links: The Challenge of Golf – Games like Links and Jack Nicklaus Golf on the Super Nintendo existed in out house for one reason: my father. I vividly remember playing with my dad’s golf clubs growing up, swinging them around as if they were swords (probably much to his dismay). We had a driving range about a mile up the road that also had a mini-golf course. Occasionally, he’d take my sister and I up to the mini-golf course and we’d play putt-putt while he practiced his swing on a bucket of balls. When I was older, I joined him on the driving range once or twice but quickly decided the sport wasn’t for me. That said, I would occasionally play games like Links with him, though my young mind couldn’t really figure out how wind affected my game or what the difference between a slice or a hook meant (I actually still don’t know the difference on those two come to think of it).
NBA Jam – NBA Jam was out during the phase of my life when I followed basketball fervidly. We had a Shaq adjustable basketball hoop in my driveway growing up (with a plastic backboard and was made to look like Shaquille O’Neal had shattered the glass). It was the kind you could pour cement in to weigh down the base but my parents only ever filled it up with water. So if my friends and I lowered the basket and used the trampoline to dunk on it, it often fell over and spilled water all over the driver before we’d fill it up and do it all over again. Anyway, that’s just an anecdote that I think of when I remember the 2-v-2 games of NBA Jam. The tongue-in-cheek nature of the game was always a lot of fun, as were the various cheat codes to enable hidden players or always be “On fire!”
Any consoles you’ve ever completely forgot you owned? Let me know in the comments!
Thanks for reading!