Ah, mini golf, the sport of royalty. This is a neat little replication of mini golf with over-the-top obstacles including iced-over terrain, pinball bumpers, shifting sand, Breakout-style paddles you can control and bubbling lava pits. There's even a bonus course at the end (that actually plays like Breakout!) if you clear the first 18 holes under par... Although to get there you'll need to be good, as you only have four balls and lose one for each stroke over par, but can earn more by going under par. The controls strip down the two-press power meter system from Nintendo's pioneering Golf for the NES (or Ayako Okamoto's Match Play Golf for the Othello Multivision if you're a real one) to just the putting and a single button press, but at the start of a hole you get to pick your tee-off position (sometimes from just a square, other times from a whole horizontal strip) and you can scroll the map with your cursor to get a lay of the land. The main issue I found is that the isometric perspective takes some getting used to, and banking shots in particular feels very strange at first as they tend to not go where you're expecting. Still, as the first proper Sega Game Library release, this is a solid start- it sets expectations on what you'll see in this line of releases and while it is simple, it does exactly what it sets out to do.

This was the first of several Pyramid Magic games but was intended to be a sample of the first proper release- Yokokuhen can mean trailer or preview. What footage there is shows that this version looks a lot different from the full game we'll be seeing a little later, mostly with a different title screen and UI. Additionally some of the game mechanics aren't properly implemented yet- the mummy isn't present so the exit is unguarded, meaning you don't need to open any treasure chests at all to proceed, you just need to get to the exit. However, it's not been preserved so all we have is this brief video showing it off.

Oh no, there's eight of these things! I will level with you, Phantasy Star II isn't something I've ever played. Maybe someday, maybe someday, but for now it's not on my radar. I did consider just putting all these in one entry, but they were released across the service's lifespan so I decided to cover them one by one. These eight text adventures showcase a single character in the cast in a varying span of years before the events of PSII itself- this one focuses on Amia (called Anne in the English PSII) in 1282 AW hunting down some criminals in the remote Bee Rock- and even include combat sequences as you roll a dice to see how much damage you dish out and take from enemies. They're all very simple, with five commands- Move, Look, Take, Use and Drop- and very few location images, but the text adventure genre is a perfect fit for this kind of service. Each one is about half-an-hour too so it's like reading a short but good book. Anyway, I won't dwell on them too much but as well as four of each appearing in the Game no Kanzume series, all eight were included in the Playstation 2 collection Sega Ages 2500 Vol. 32: Phantasy Star Complete Collection. If you want to play them yourself, fan translations exist too. Here's a playthrough of Amia's Adventure in English for you.

Oh hell yes, this is it, this is the most video game you will ever see, and it started as a downloadable game! This is very similar to the Master System / Game Gear game Dragon Crystal released the same year in that it's a Roguelike RPG (yes, an actual Roguelike!) where you must brave the 30 floors of the castle Dragonia to recover the Holy Goblet and save the land. However, much like Castlevania, Dragonia is a creature of chaos and the 30 floors are all randomly-generated, plus the effects of items like potions and rings are randomised each playthrough (use them at your own risk, unless you're lucky enough to find an identifying scroll). The mechanics are otherwise as dirt-simple as you can get- enemies move when you do, walk into them to attack, grab anything that isn't nailed down to equip yourself and increase your attack and defense, eat food to stay healthy...

And yet this game is incredibly entertaining. It has this really mean streak to it that's just really funny to watch unfold. Wizards can send you to sleep over and over again while enemies wail on you. Eating too much food slows you down and extreme overeating can kill you. There are invisible pitfalls that send you back to the previous floor. You can pick up gold but all it does is make your grave bigger when you die. There are LAND SHARKS. It's cruel and mean and it rules, you should play it, and fortunately that's easy as it was given a cart release in English as Fatal Labyrinth so it shows up on most Mega Drive collections these days. However, this cart release- later used as the basis for the Game no Kanzume versions- was not the first version. This video shows that the downloadable version on Sega Game Library was even more stripped down with no opening village scene or title screen beyond the name and a grave marker and no border around the game stats. As pointed out by reader BinBowie on cohost, this version has been preserved- it's in the No-Intro MD set as either Shi no Meikyuu - Labyrinth of Death (Japan) (SegaNet) or Labyrinth of Death (SN) (J). Try it for yourself and see the differences! Although here's one for free, BinBowie uploaded its unique ending theme!

Here's our next Phantasy Star II Text Adventure and the obvious favourite because it's about a cool girl thief, Shilka (called Shir in the English PSII) pulling off a daring art robbery in 1282 AW. What's not to like? As you can see, the other reason I felt it necessary to show off all eight adventures is they have different UI border designs, neat! Here's a playthrough of Shilka's Adventure in English for you.

A pretty accurate port of the 1984 arcade game where Flicky has to save the Chirps from housecats and iguanas and get them safely home, Flicky had only appeared on Japanese home computers and the SG-1000 by this point in time so it was due a more accurate home conversion. Admittedly, it's hardly straining the Mega Drive to get this job done, so while some elements are cut (the high-score table, the intro with Flicky on the bicycle and the 'how to play' demonstration in particular) and the visuals and sounds are different (the colours are a little different, some animation frames got cut and the music is either arranged differently or changed entirely), this is a solid port. It even keeps the 'perfect round' bonus, albeit using one image instead of different ones- play the first ten rounds and every eight rounds after then perfectly (beat the stage in less than 40 seconds and save the Chirps in a single chain) for a bikini girl to appear in a window (more info here). The game itself is pretty charming and I like it- the entire game is based around risk vs. reward as you can get more points by bringing a line of Chirps to the exit, with the risk being if the chain gets touched by anything they'll scatter and you'll waste time gathering them again. The controls are very floaty and that times a few tries to get used to, and it's a little limiting that you can't hold on to a weapon for when you'll really need it as the throw and jump buttons are one and the same, but it's a decent lil' hop-around arcade game. I think knowing this was originally a download-only release makes a lot more sense than what happened in the West- it got a full cartridge release in 1991, after games like Castle of Illusion, Target Earth / Assault Suits Leynos and Granada, i.e. games that way, way outclassed it in technical terms. I'm glad it did get that release as it lead to it being reissued a lot, but the next time you see a copy, just remember it was never really meant to be on a cartridge.

Another Phantasy Star II Text Adventure. These early ones get released pretty rapid-fire, huh? This time, we travel to 1281 AW to see Kinds (called Josh Kain in the English PSII) hang around the seedy town of Lume. Here's a playthrough of Kinds's Adventure in English for you.

These five unpreserved games were released on after the other, so I've just decided to put them all in one section to keep things clear. These are single-puzzle adaptations of Sadato Taneda's Kinetic Connection which was first released on the MSX and later reprogrammed by Sega for the Game Gear. They're basically picture puzzles where you have to place the panels in the correct arrangement, the catch being that because this is a video game, the image is actually an animation that's constantly moving. Certainly a visually-interesting way of presenting this kind of thing! I imagine these never saw any kind of rerelease because Sadato Taneda created the concept and Sega just licensed it out, plus they're pretty small and so maybe Sega figured it wasn't worth the hassle (although if you haven't had enough Phantasy Star II, two of these have Nei in them!). kukun kun has video of these at least, so here's 1 - Nei Second, 2 - O hanaba take and 5 - Lightning Nei, here's 3 - Shirogane wa warau yo and here's 4 - Mogura no o asobi.

Phantasy Star II Text Adventure time! To 1284 AW we go, this time with Anne (called Amy in the English PSII), a doctor on a mission to bring aid to an elementary school attacked by biomonsters, although she ends up finding a wanted criminal in the process. Here's a playthrough of Anne's Adventure in English for you.

With the rather amusing subtitle "Dai Uchū Ichi no Eahokkē Yarō" or "The Greatest Air Hockey Player in the Universe", this is an air hockey game with a pretty silly vibe to it, with a host of bizarre characters to battle against including a salaryman horse-person, a space idol and a giant insect. Playing the one-player mode, both you and the opponent have three Force blocks available that you can use to either temporarily block your goal or use a unique ability like turning the puck invisible or splitting it into multiple clones to confuse you. After beating each opponent you can choose to steal their ability or keep your current one (you start with one that magnetises the puck to your paddle, which might be a better choice honestly). Good luck with that though, this game is difficult! The AI's defense is pretty on-point for the first minute of a match, at which point the goal widens on both sides (and it does so again at two minutes) so you'll spend that first minute just desperately trying not to let the puck in. The controls are what let this down as they're very twitchy, not helped by the fact you have two speeds, just-a-smidge too fast and way too fast. Definitely something better played in versus mode, but if you want to see all the strange table and character designs, plug a Mega Mouse into Controller Port 2- you'll automatically win every stage!

More Phantasy Star II Text Adventures? Sure, why not. We're still in 1284 AW this time, with Huey (called Hugh in the English PSII) investigating some strange goings-on at his university, including some kind of horrid creature and too much batter on the fried Motavian chicken. Here's a playthrough of Huey's Adventure in English for you.

Heavily influenced by Namco's Motos, this is a single-screen action game where as some kind of souped-up, futuristic marble- a Hyper Marble, if you will- you have to ram all the other marbles into the electric fences on the edge of the screen before they can do the same to you! The controls are a little slippery and you can choose to make them even more so by holding the turbo button (while helpful for ramming other marbles into the fence, you have a meter that limits its use until you ease off on it) but generally it controls fine, but the opponents are what make this difficult. There's a nice variety of them at least- small, medium and large marbles that get sent flying different distances when you hit them, some that aggressively pursue you and others that try to avoid you entirely- but they're also very erratic and on more than one occasion refused to move out of a position where I could do nothing but wait for the clock to run out because I couldn't get them into the fence at all. I think Motos does the idea better but this at least keeps introducing new hazards and marble types, so it's worth a little try.

This is the last Phantasy Star II Text Adventure for a little while. We start this one back in 1274 AW when Eusis (called Rolf in the English PSII) was just a kid at the orphanage in Paseo, before a time skip to 1282 AW where he returns after training to solve a kidnapping case. Here's a playthrough of Eusis's Adventure in English for you.

One of the few Sega Game Library games to fortunately be preserved but not actually rereleased anywhere, this one credits Laszlo Olah on the title screen and has Sega on programming duties, but I couldn't find a single thing about Laszlo Olah and the Dreamworks movie makes it near-impossible to Google this game. Perhaps Laszlo Olah was the pseudonym of a developer who made a home computer version that Sega adapted, or a licensor of some kind, these are just guesses on my part. What I can tell you is that MegaMind is actually a video game adaptation of the board game commonly known as Mastermind (not to be confused with the quiz show) that you kids these days might know as Hit and Blow from Nintendo's Clubhouse Games, where you have to guess the correct four-item combination (usually coloured pegs but here they can be food, mahjong tiles, flags or road signs) within a set number of guesses (16 here) with your opponent telling you either you have items in the right place, or the right items in the wrong position. It's pretty simple and perfect for a service like this, and there's a decent number of variations here too- you get four modes in total, with either seven and eight symbols to use and the ability for the computer to lie to you (!) with some guesses. Although rereleased on Sega's B-CLUB! and Hompo services, it was never included in any of the Game no Kanzume collections.

The first of many Pyramid Magic games for the service, this is a simple puzzle-platformer game where as an intrepid explorer, you must brave the first 38 rooms of the vast and confusing pyramid. The mechanics are easy to grasp although consulting the instruction screen before you start is important as there's some less-obvious actions you can perform- your explorer can jump, carry blocks (don't fall from a height with them or you'll be crushed), kick open boxes, kick blocks across the screen, crush blocks beneath his feet as he jumps and fit through narrow passageways while hunched over carrying a block. You need to open the path to the exit by collecting keys, opening treasure chests and ultimately finding an item that scares the daylights out of the mummy guarding the exit door. I'm not going to lie, I'm not very good at this kind of thing- see also, my attempts to clear Namco's Babel no Tou constantly being rebuffed- so this isn't really my cup of tea, especially since it's very easy to screw yourself out of victory. At the very least, you get constant extra lives and you can skip a limited number of round if you really want, but if you run out of lives you only get a password every 5 rounds so you still have to be careful. If the concept sounds interesting to you though, there's plenty of it for you to get stuck into, with 40 stages in this first volume. Weirdly, this game probably had the longest life of any of them- it's in the Wondermega Collection, the Game no Kanzume series, and even got a feature-phone port in the 2000s, which can be seen in action here.

It's Pyramid Magic for Super Players! Unlike the other Pyramid Magic sequels which continue the story of the game and alter the mechanics, Special is just another 40 rounds of Pyramid Magic for you. There's not much else to say really, sorry! I've played way too much Pyramid Magic, please be nice to me.

Here's a strange one, less a game and more like an application to facilitate rocking out to hot FM synth jams. Three of these were released one after the other, each dedicated to a different game- Phantasy Star III: Generations of Doom, Bonanza Bros. (yes) and Sonic the Hedgehog (as pointed out by this Sonic and Sega Retro post, this Beep! MD mag shows that this predated the release of Sonic by about six weeks). A cute idea, but perhaps not quite worth the phone line charges to download them. None of these have been properly preserved, and while there are videos of the Phantasy Star III and Sonic instalments, the Bonanza Bros. edition is completely missing in action.

I'm pretty certain I don't have to explain Columns to you. I mean, probably not. I'm just going to send you over to Kimimi for some words on the virtues of Columns. As for this lost Sega Game Library version, judging from this Sonic and Sega Retro post which is where the screenshot comes from, it seems to have been a timed version of the endless mode (with the timer set at an hour) with high scores being able to be sent to Sega for their Sega Net News service as part of Sega Game Grand Prix 2. It's pretty stripped-down from the cart release then, with some parts of the UI moved about here and there too- there's a clip of it in this video which is where our screengrab comes from. Later on in the post, it's explained that something close to this version was included in the Dream Library, a Yakuza 0 companion app on the Vita as DLC and as a bonus mode in Sega Ages: Columns II for the Switch. That's all that's really left of it though.

Now this is a little more interesting! While the other Columns game on the service was purely a solo experience, this is purely a versus one, with two players duking it out in the versus ruleset established by Columns II, using the magical jewel set-up to screw with your opponent's pit. What's interesting here is that the game goes for a more Japanese artstyle than the Greek trappings of the original, and also has music from the then-unreleased Columns III, First Year of Genroku, for its in-game music. Wild! This one isn't preserved either, but kukun kun has a video of it, which is where our screengrab comes from.

It's more Pyramid Magic! Starting off exactly where the last one left off, this time you have to make your way to the top of the pyramid and, from Round 10 onwards, you have to bring a golden block to the exit before you're allowed to proceed. It's a pretty sturdy thing, letting you drop and kick it about as much as you like, but get it stuck in a place you can't get it back and you'll have to restart the stage. It's a neat little wrinkle on the game, but otherwise this is 40 more Pyramid Magic rounds for you. Like the first game, it also got a feature-phone port via Sega's Sonic Cafe service in the 2000s, and you can see it here.

So this one is technically preserved... In a roundabout way. While the original download version of this game- assuming it exists, as appears on Sega's official list- isn't preserved by itself, Pyramid Magic Sōshūhen, which we'll be seeing later, contains an extra mode called Pyramid Magic Map Editor. Needless to say, this lets you make your own Pyramid Magic stages, up to 10, to annoy your friends with or for your own pleasure. The Sōshūhen version on Mega-CD lets you save your creations to the backup RAM, but I'm a little curious- how did the download version work, did it create passwords for your maps to make them shareable with friends? That's the real riddle of the Sphynx, huh.

Oh my giddy aunt, filthy gambling! It's OK, you're not gambling money, you're just gambling medals, all nice and legal. Starting with just 30 medals to your name, your objective, according to the 'show time' scenes that appear after big wins (which appears to be teasing some kind of saucy stage show performed by a giant egg) is to win... 100000 medals in total. You've got three ways to go for it- poker, blackjack and a slot machine- and they're all functional if a little basic. This ain't no Casino Kid is what I'm saying. Fortunately, you don't have to win 100000 medals in one sitting, you actually get a password that keeps track of how many you've won. Lose all your medals and the striptease egg explodes and it's Game Over. I genuinely have no idea if anyone has ever reached 100000 medals in this game. Is it possible? Well, I'm certainly not the one to do it. There must be a gambler out there brave enough to do it, maybe that Kaiji guy...

Back to the arcades for this one, although this is much less of a straight port than Flicky was. This is a port of the 1985 arcade game of the same name with new level designs and a complete graphical overhaul, looking pretty much nothing like the arcade game or the Master System port. In fact, most of the enemy designs have been changed too to things like slimes and toy soldiers which... I dunno, it hits a little different, I miss the Darumas. Anyway, it also doesn't sound like it either- the game uses a completely new song (not even a remix of the Master System version) which is fine but, you know, it's not the game's namesake. Otherwise, from what I can see this plays basically fine, it's just Teddy Boy Blues with a completely new presentation. There's more info about the history of the game on our Yohko Ishino page

Ah, there's not a lot for me to say here unfortunately, it's the bane of all MAME players- a Japanese quiz game!! With a plot about Earth being overtaken by hostile aliens, you have to win the planet back by answering quiz questions, mostly about Japanese TV shows you've never seen from the looks of things. While arcade quiz games are often totally worth savestating through if you can't read the language just for the presentation, this one's a little plain and so I decided to forgo the pleasure. However, all that is currently preserved is one episode of possibly many- the current ROM dump is listed as Volume 1, and as discussed in this Sonic & Sega Retro forum post, there were supposed to be new volumes every two weeks, presumably providing new questions. The same post also explains that Quiz Scramble, included on Wondermega Collection which we'll get to later, is pretty much a reskinned Riddle Wired with game adjustments and a more visually-appealing presentation, so it did sort-of get a rerelease. Weirdly, while Riddle Wired isn't in the Game no Kanzume collections, it is listed on Sega's B-CLUB! and Hompo services, so I wonder which volume they used, or was it just the first one? A mystery.

Kiss Shot is an odd one, as it's on Sega's official list as coming out in 1991, but there's no footage of it being downloaded on kukun kun's channel, it has a 1992 copyright date and it's a secret game in Game no Kanzume Otokuyō, leading some on the Sonic and Sega Retro forums to believe it wasn't actually released on the Sega Game Library, or that it was a significantly-later release. Whatever the case may be, this is a fairly standard pool game, with you going against either computer opponents or friends in either nine-ball (max two players) or 'boulard' (max four players, I assume they meant 'billiards') styles. This is very much reminiscent of Data East's excellent Side Pocket games (with the name probably trying to evoke the atmosphere of Pocket Gal but there's no nudity here) with its top-down view, but it has its own touches too such as a more visually-striking way of deciding the power of your shot (a view of the pool cue itself- the further it is from the ball, the more powerful the shot). The physics are generally fine and you have a few different shot options such as launch / masse shots, but the opponent AI is a little lacking- they will often take a long time thinking about their shot, and until you get to the third opponent the AI will do whatever they want, including one time where my adversary launched the cue ball off the table apparently just to show off. Maybe this really is set in a bar and everyone's just three sheets to the wind, but this is definitely something you'd be better playing with a friend. Or, maybe you could just wait a little bit- if this really did come out in 1991, then the next year you'd be able to get a very good version of Side Pocket for the Mega Drive on cartridge.

Technically the final Pyramid Magic game, this one has another change to the rules but unlike Pyramid Magic II, it shows up right at the start of the game. You still have to get enough keys to open the path to the exit (this time just sealed by a door rather than a mummy) but the golden block is replaced with a jar of water. You can carry it just like a block but can't be kicked or dropped from a height otherwise it'll break and you lose a life, and just like the golden block you can't leave unless you have the jar of water with you, which presents its own set of challenges due to its fragile nature. Honestly, this is the most interesting of the Pyramid Magic games as while block management continues to be the order of the day, handling the water jug and figuring out how to get it to the end safely is just a more engaging challenge to me. If the other Pyramid Magic games didn't do anything for you, this one might be worth a look! This was the final proper entry in the series and gives it an ending, but don't worry, we'll be seeing it again... Unlike I and II though, this didn't get a feature-phone port.

Aha, we're back to Phantasy Star II Text Adventures! You thought you'd escaped, but nope, here we are again. This time, in 1281 AW, Rudger (called Rudo in the English PSII) must avenge his village after a horrifying biomonster attack. Here's a playthrough of Rudger's Adventure in English for you.

Here we are, the last Phantasy Star II Text Adventure, and probably the most interesting for fans of the game as it stars Nei (called... Oh, they didn't rename her for the English version) in her child form in 1284 AW, chronicling the events that lead her to meet Eusis / Rolf three months before PSII begins. Her kid form looks just like Lin from Fist of the North Star too, bless! Here's a playthrough of Nei's Adventure in English for you.

This isn't quite Robot Wars but it's actally slightly better than I expected- this is a robot fighting arena game where you start with a fresh slate of a robot and can increase their stats in five areas (attack, defence, speed, laser energy and missile capacity), then buy weapons and boosters and head into the top-down battle arena. Of all games, this reminds me of Gain Ground a little, in that you have two weapons but each one is assigned to a different hand, meaning you have to adjust your positioning depending on whether you're using your robot's left or right hand. Alternatively, you can close in and go all Marquis of Queensbury Rules on the opponent, first robot to die loses. There's even obstacles and boxes to take cover behind until they get destroyed! Unfortunately, similar to Hyper Marbles, the enemy AI is kind of a dealbreaker here as they will frequently sit behind cover in just the right spot so you can't hit them and just generally be annoying to deal with. The optimal strategy, as seen in a few fights in this longplay, is to let the enemy drain all their resources so they have no projectiles to work with which seems a bit... Unsporting. Still, I think this would be a good candidate for two-player action, seeing which customised robot does the best!

Here it is, perhaps the most infamous game from the service, a Sonic game that Sega is apparently so embarrassed by that they have never rereleased it, not even in the Game no Kanzume series... Although unused data in Sonic Gems Collection suggests it was planned for inclusion there but ultimately scrapped. Anyway, what is it? This is a fairly basic block-dropping puzzle game where you drop clusters of four differently-coloured shapes at a time into the pit, although unlike something like Sennou Game Teki-Paki (released in the same year) these clusters can be in different arrangements such as in a square or t-shaped, and you rotate the placement of the shapes but not the overall shape of the cluster. Match two shapes and they're removed from the playfield. There's a surprising amount of modes here as there's Round where you have to clear special blocks from the field, Normal which is just an endless mode, Doubt where shapes placed into the pit can change into different ones, and Block where the clusters only adhere to gravity when you destroy shapes connected to them. That's just single-player though, you can also fight against a friend or the computer, and this is the only part of the game where Sonic actually appears! Two Sonics (strange, isn't it) have a stand-off in this versus mode, with the game pausing to show one knocking seven bells out of the other when someone lands a huge combo (complete with, as far as I know, brand-new sprites for the 'hog). That is the entirety of his contribution to the game.

It certainly functions as a puzzle game but it's not particularly engaging, at least partly due to the presentation which isn't particularly colourful and includes music that can be described as 'offensive to multiple senses'. I think the Round mode is pretty neat as not every puzzle game had this kind of problem-solving mode just yet (Puyo Puyo was just starting out with its Nazo Puyo mode) but the rest is not Sonic's finest moment. Although it showed up on Sega's B-CLUB! and Hompo service (which, as is my understanding, is how the game was preserved at all), it has never been rereleased since. Be right back, I can probably make a YouTube video out of this, how does 'THE SONIC GAME THEY DON'T WANT YOU TO SEE!?' do for a title? We'll workshop it. [I refuse. Also, you're fired. - Ed]

Romanised as AQOGUE in-game but mostly referred to as Aworg on the internet, this is a very strange maze-action game where, as the Japanaese-fan-propelled Aworg of the title, you have to find the three capsules hidden in each round to open up the exit, avoiding hostile robots and traps along the way. The way this controls looks very similar to an MSX / Famicom game called Astro Robo SASA where your robot's weapon propels it across the stage, but the key difference here is that in that game, the direction you hold determines which direction you aim your gun in, and you're propelled the opposite way you're facing. Here, the direction you hold determines what direction you move in, with the fan generating sparkles behind you. These sparkles can bump enemies away from you either out of your way or into spikes to eliminate them, but you also have an eight-way dash that has a lot of wind-up (so don't use it point-blank) but can directly hurt some enemies. It's not a long game- there's only 10 rounds in total- but it's a pretty steep challenge as the controls are so awkward and strange at first. After a little adjustment you'll be able to make it further in, and the maps get increasingly long and complex, so even with its short length there's something to get stuck into here if you click with it. The presentation is fairly nice too- the time of day changes as you progress through the game, altering the colour palette of not only the characters but the UI too. It's a cute idea, but probably one that could be expanded upon with a bit more time and proper cartridge space to devote to it.

The final game on the service not to be based on something else, 16t is a pretty inventive wrap-around platformer similar to Teddy Boy Blues but with mechanics all of its own. On each round you need to defeat all the monsters who spawn in a strange way- a roulette at the top of the screen determines where each group will enter from, and each round has a certain number of runs on the roulette wheel determining how many monster groups will appear. Your only defence is the game's namesake, gigantic 16-ton weights that crush the monsters in one touch, plus you can throw at a couple different angles depending on your movement state when you throw 'em. While you have an infinite supply, you have to wait for the meter at the bottom to fill to give you more weights to throw around. These weights also double as footholds to reach higher platforms although every time you jump on them or an enemy touches them after they've landed, they'll decay and eventually disappear, plus they'll bounce around if you throw a weight on top of another weight, but be careful- if a weight hits you while it's airborne, you die! As you progress, different round layouts include new types of blocks like bouncy blocks and ice blocks that affect not only your movement, but the behaviour of thrown weights too.

It's a simple set of rules but it's surprisingly effective, keeping things interesting and providing a lot of freedom in what you can do with your weights... And how you can make the Mega Drive scream in agony because weights are only removed from play when you die or they decay, and so throw enough of them around and the system starts to choke on its own guts and slow to a crawl. There's also a strange bit of presentation here, with glitching and static screens at the start and between rounds, and "IC CHECK ERROR" appearing when you start a new game, suggesting the game's world is glitching out. It's a little odd for sure! I've seen people suggest this is the best of the Sega Game Library originals, and I can definitely see it. Once you get used to some of its oddities (in particular, jumping feels very strange and spawning enemies will sometimes fall through floors and on top you) this is a neat little arcade-action title, definitely one of the highlights of the service.

Translator's Note: Sōshūhen in Japanese for summary or omnibus, often used for a compilation of a series. Now, while this is listed on Sega's official Sega Game Library page, I don't think this was actually a downloadable title. Instead, it appears in both Wondermega Collection and Game no Kanzume Vol. 1, to gather all the Pyramid Magic games in one convenient place, and as a result was probably way too large to be reasonably downloaded. Additionally, it doesn't appear in kukun kun's playlist of Sega Game Library games. In any case, you begin at the start of I and then make your way through II, III and unlock Special at the end, but there's also the Map Editor mentioned earlier which is nice. So while this probably doesn't belong on this list, it's on Sega's list so I may as well put it here. And I put the title screen here because I didn't want to see another Pyramid Magic screenshot, sorry.

The final game for the Sega Game Library is also the most polished and well-presented of the bunch if you ask me, a remake of Doki Doki Penguin Land, originally an SG-1000 and MSX game later brought into arcades and given a follow-up on the Master System. As penguins are wont to do, you have to get your egg safely to the bottom of each of the game's 30 stages, making sure it doesn't drop from too great a height (lucky there's an indicator showing the safe drop distance) or get broken by falling blocks, polar bears or spikes (there's a lot that can do a penguin egg in, apparently). Your penguin can jump, push solid blocks and destroy ice blocks ahead of him at his feet Lode Runner-style (you need to be standing on an adjacent block to destory one), and the rest is just managing all the different blocks and obstacles along the way, aided by a map, checkpoint and undo function. While the other games in the series start out pretty difficult, this version eases you in as best it can- the title screen demo shows a few techniques and what different blocks do and the new level designs start off very gentle, slowly introducing ideas before throwing you into the deep end. It's a cute little platform-puzzler and honestly one I'd rather play than Pyramid Magic- there's a lot of planning and thinking ahead, and while it can be a little frustrating to be caught out by a series of bungles, I think it's the more engaging of the two. It helps that the presentation is really colourful and charming. With more levels you could've easily given this a cart release early enough in the system's life, but at the very least it lives on in Game no Kanzume. A great send-off to the service.