Comix Zone is one of those late era Genesis games that came packed inside a cardboard box (the bane of any CIB Genesis collector) and relied more upon its uniqueness than it did the quality of its gameplay. It occupies that same space in my mind that Vectorman does - all style but very little substance, though Comix Zone takes things a bit further with some odd gameplay choices and jankiness.
You play as Sketch Turner, a comic book artist with the most on-the-nose name a character like him could possibly have. One night he gets sucked into the comic he's drawing and has to find a way out, because this is a mid-90s underground comic and that means it's a total nightmare world. Each level sees Sketch bouncing between panels (this game's way of segmenting areas of gameplay as screens) and pages, solving very rudimentary puzzles and getting into fist fights with enemies. Visually it's great. Animations looks terrific for the Genesis, and the game perfectly captures the "tude" of 1995 comic books. Dialog appears, appropriately, in speech bubbles, and striking enemies and obstacles makes sound effects pop up on screen. STI really leaned into the comic book aesthetic here and it's easily the game's strongest suit.
That's because the gameplay is at its best moments unremarkable and at its worst downright messy. I play video games to relax, to escape from the real world and get out of my own head for a little while. After a long day of punching walls and grating and utterly destroying my hands, the last thing I want to do is play a game where I take damage by wailing on doors. I don't like to bring my work home with me, Sega!
I always struggled to get very far in Comix Zone as a kid due to how bad Sketch's jump feels and the level of precision that's sometimes involved with needing to platform your way through a screen. He just has a certain weightiness to him that makes everything feel kinda bad. Combat, jumping, picking up items... Nothing feels as good as it ought to. The game is also incredibly short, and while it's somewhat non-linear, it won't take you very long at all to see everything Comix Zone has to offer. At least if you want to revisit it today you don't have to commit to its poor overall feel for very long.
It's that short play time and its overall uniqueness that I think make it worth playing today. Late era Genesis games tried to be attention grabbers, for better or worse. It meant you had a lot of games that tried to push the boundaries of what the system could do visually, but too often that ambition came at the cost of making these games fun. While Comix Zone is pretty illustrative of this, there isn't anything else out there attempting to be what it is, and I think that alone gives it some worth.
You play as Sketch Turner, a comic book artist with the most on-the-nose name a character like him could possibly have. One night he gets sucked into the comic he's drawing and has to find a way out, because this is a mid-90s underground comic and that means it's a total nightmare world. Each level sees Sketch bouncing between panels (this game's way of segmenting areas of gameplay as screens) and pages, solving very rudimentary puzzles and getting into fist fights with enemies. Visually it's great. Animations looks terrific for the Genesis, and the game perfectly captures the "tude" of 1995 comic books. Dialog appears, appropriately, in speech bubbles, and striking enemies and obstacles makes sound effects pop up on screen. STI really leaned into the comic book aesthetic here and it's easily the game's strongest suit.
That's because the gameplay is at its best moments unremarkable and at its worst downright messy. I play video games to relax, to escape from the real world and get out of my own head for a little while. After a long day of punching walls and grating and utterly destroying my hands, the last thing I want to do is play a game where I take damage by wailing on doors. I don't like to bring my work home with me, Sega!
I always struggled to get very far in Comix Zone as a kid due to how bad Sketch's jump feels and the level of precision that's sometimes involved with needing to platform your way through a screen. He just has a certain weightiness to him that makes everything feel kinda bad. Combat, jumping, picking up items... Nothing feels as good as it ought to. The game is also incredibly short, and while it's somewhat non-linear, it won't take you very long at all to see everything Comix Zone has to offer. At least if you want to revisit it today you don't have to commit to its poor overall feel for very long.
It's that short play time and its overall uniqueness that I think make it worth playing today. Late era Genesis games tried to be attention grabbers, for better or worse. It meant you had a lot of games that tried to push the boundaries of what the system could do visually, but too often that ambition came at the cost of making these games fun. While Comix Zone is pretty illustrative of this, there isn't anything else out there attempting to be what it is, and I think that alone gives it some worth.