EDITOR'S NOTE:
Oh Christ, does anyone give a shit that we didn't play this game on 'original' hardware? Really? Anyone? OK, so if you didn't know, PAL copies of The Ooze are very expensive, Japanese ones aren't even worth contemplating (print run of only 800, that's not in our ballpark) and US ones are cheap but because we only have a PAL Mega Drive, it plays too slow so we decided to grab a cheap copy purely for a visual gag at the end of this article (that's dedication, to what I don't know). As a result, the least inconvenient method for playing The Ooze on something vaguely respectable is the Mega Drive Mini 2 as it was one of the replacement games for the games cut from the Japanese version. We lost Starblade for this?! In any case, it's an M2-emulated rerelease and thus the best we can get. Our backup plan was to buy a cheap copy of Sonic Mega Collection Plus on the Xbox and unlock it on there, but as it turns out, that version is 50hz regardless of your console's settings and also has a ton of glaring graphics issues! Cool!! Our backup backup plan was to play it on one of those plug-and-play consoles imported from the US by the writer's brother, but the sound emulation on those things is iffy. Options for playing The Ooze are limited, what can I say. In any case, we emulated it for screenshots (with the borders snipped off then slightly stretched as this appears to be the correct aspect ratio as compared to the US manual's title screen) but the Mega Drive Mini 2 is as close as we're willing to get for the authentic experience, sorry.
Just what is The Ooze?
We can't even hope to answer this question, but Gaming Hell will try its best.
... So before we begin, I'd like to talk a little about my own exposure to The Ooze. I feel this is important 'cause you'll know where I'm coming from with what I've written. See, as we'll find out in the rereleases section, this was included in a Sonic collection- Sonic Mega Collection- but only in the Japanese version. I'd never heard of this game before, imagine that- a first-party Mega Drive game that was completely new to me! I tried to put the code in to unlock it on my PAL copy, because I was a stupid idiot baby with too much free time [Nothing's changed since then, clearly. - Ed] but no dice, the strange ooze-themed game would elude me. I'd then mentally file it away as a weird game that has strange boxart for the Japanese release and think about it occasionally, try the first level and get defeated mercilessly, then forget it existed for a while. The Mega Drive Mini 2 would finally put it back on my radar where I'd... Stream it for like an hour and make absolutely no progress. Every time I'd try to get somewhere with the game, I would get nowhere. Finally sitting down with it, approaching it with an open mind and trying to see the good in it, and, well, we have what you read below. I also didn't realise it was the subject of memetic internet humour until I was way too deep in, so I hope this does not colour your thoughts on what I have to say, if you think I'm that plugged in to retro gaming culture on the internet you clearly haven't read this site for very long. Ahem. So let's keep all this in mind as we descend into the oozy madness.
Anyway, I think a little context for The Ooze is in order first so we're all on the same page, or perhaps in the same slime. This was the final Mega Drive project of Sega Technical Institute, the US-based Sega division that worked on, among other things, Sonic 2, Sonic Spinball and, of course, Comix Zone, and so it slithered its way onto store shelves at a strange point in the Mega Drive's life- that is to say, right near the end. So here's some behind-the-scenes intel which all comes from the Ken Horowitz book Playing at the Next Level: A History of American Sega Games (ISBN: 978-0786499946) which has interviews with Sega alumni for its insight on the work of developers like STI. The Ooze began life in 1994 as an algorithm for fluid liquid-like movement on the Mega Drive by programmer David Sanner, and with help from other STI members, a short level was made to demonstrate the concept and presented it at a product review meeting, with Dean Lester convincing the higher-ups to give the idea a try. It faced an uphill battle due to its unconventional nature, with main artist and designer Stig Hedlund recalling that marketing wanted a more cartoony look for the game, which was resisted (the right call, I would argue). The book retells a few other interesting stories about the game's development, but the one I want to highlight here is that Hedlund designed the first Toxic Dump area with the intent that it slowly introduced new concepts and mechanics to the player, gently ratcheting up the difficulty. He was, quote, "dismayed" to see that the other map designers did not take up the baton for this design philosophy and instead proceeded to make the remaining stages much, much, much more difficult, almost immediately. That feels like it should be important, I can't imagine why, so just make a note of it for now.
The Ooze is the story of one Dr. Daniel Caine working for The Corporation, with the plot rather slickly told without any words in-game but elaborated upon in the manual, so I'll sum things up for you. Caine's been suspicious about his employer's research lately, and so well after working hours in the plant one night, he starts hacking into the company's databases and finds out what they've been cooking up... OPERATION OMEGA, a plan to contaminate water supplies around the world with a fast-spreading disease and then force the governments of the world to pay for the only cure. Just as he finds out the horrible truth, the Director shows up with some goons and, well, the good doctor's got to go if he knows too much, so he gets injected with a mysterious green liquid before getting flushed down the toilet! Caine awakens in the toxic dump, but while the injection was meant to kill him, it went wrong- it instead turned him into THE OOZE, a puddle of green slime with a skull and a fist floating around in there somewhere, with the power to absorb certain types of sludge and even other creatures to get bigger. He may just be a pile of goo, but he's the only one that knows The Corporation's evil scheme, so he has to make it to the plague factory and shut down the whole operation, but more importantly get revenge on the Director and just maybe restore his humanity if he can find all the hidden DNA helixes. That's assuming he doesn't get shot in his vulnerable head, burned away to nothing, flushed down the drain, or... Well, you get the idea.
How does The Ooze play, then? Strangely, but there's not a whole lot to learn. With a top-down view of the action, you've got to guide what's left of D. Caine (Get it? D. Caine? Decayin'?) to the exit in fifteen stages across five areas- the Toxic Dump, the Waste Plant, the Genetics Lab, the Power Core and the Plague Factory, all divided into two main areas and one shorter boss area (although the Plague Factory's two areas are two halves divided by teleporters)- while keeping his head protected and his ooze levels topped-up. Before we get to the combat or other elements, we need to spend a bit of time talking about how you actually move around because, well, you're a giant puddle. Guiding the ooze takes some getting used to but it's not too difficult, as you're essentially moving the head near the centre of the ooze, with the ooze reacting to obstacles and changes to the ground- it'll become thin and spread-out if you head down a narrow passageway, take the shape of corners if you squeeze into them, that sort of thing. The ooze is also affected by terrain, with it travelling faster on some surfaces (it's a bit slower on dirt but faster on some indoor floors) and liable to slip down inclines (usually into a drain) so paying attention to your environment is important (in theory).
The algorithm for determining the behaviour of the ooze is certainly impressive for a 16-bit system, looks pretty slick for the most part, and it's used in clever ways in parts. A favourite example is a section in the Waste Plant with a switch you need to pull around a corner that leads to a deadly incline that'll send you down the drain. However, if you've got enough ooze, pressing against the wall squeezes it around the corner, and you can hit the switch unharmed! I really wish there was more stuff like that in the game but, well, we'll get to that. You can defintiely see the limitations of the liquid movement if you look closely enough, though- the ooze itself moves in small 'tiles' that it can sometimes get stuck between so it'll flicker between them until you adjust your position (a problem if the switch you're trying to flip is one you can turn both on and off, as it'll keep activating it!) and when using warps like the toilets in the Genetics Lab stages, you'll lose a bit of ooze each time because of this oddity (not much, but every scrap of ooze is precious). Perhaps it could've been smoother on more powerful hardware, but for what it is, it's pretty good and certainly the most interesting part of the basic mechanics.
Slithering around is only one part of the game though, as every facet of the Corporation is determined to snuff you out, be it their hazmat-suited goons armed with flamethrowers or other failed experiments ready to take a bite out of you. You'll have to fight, but how do you do that as a pile of goo? Punch or spit, it's your choice. Your punch is probably the trickiest part of the controls to get used to as holding the button down launches it ahead of you, only as far as your current ooze level will allow but it weirdly changes depending on whether you're punching horizontally (it'll be a thin stream of ooze sending your punch along) or vertically (it'll use more ooze and have less reach). I imagine this was done to account for the screen being wider than it is tall, but it does feel odd at first. With enough ooze you can get your fist around corners which is extremely important later on for hitting enemies while staying out of danger, and once you get the hang of it, it's an essential tool. Spitting, on the other hand, is a projectile that generally does more damage but takes a little ooze out of you, and once you're in danger mode (your ooze will flash red and make a buzzing noise, fortunately not constantly but every five seconds or so) you can't spit anymore. Of course, defeating enemies can also get you more ooze (only biological enemies though, although some mechanical enemies have enemies that break out of them once you defeat them) and you've got some power-ups to temporarily let your ooze defeat enemies (you're not invincible though!) or speed past enemies, so take advantage of whatever you can find to get past the threats in your way. The main thing I dislike about the combat is that getting hit will interrupt pretty much anything you try to do, so you absolutely will get murdered with no way to fight back if you're a little unlucky with an enemy getting at you at a bad angle. It feels horrible when it happens to you, and it will happen a lot, especially since some enemies don't even have distinct attack animations like the snails in the Toxic Dump and they just keep interrupting you. This also happens in the boss fights, as there's usually small-fry enemies (since you need to stock up on ooze for some of them, like the Waste Plant boss that requires spitting) who will just eat your attacks, and then they eat you, and then you just want to give up and play a normal video game, just anything else. Then you reach the Power Core boss who has instant-kill attacks launched at lightning-speed from off-screen, and then you want to give up video games forever.
This is probably the best segue I'll get to talk about the three-way symbiotic connection between your current health level, the efficacy of your attacks against enemies and the space you take up on screen- all three of these vital factors are dictated by how much ooze you have. Lots of ooze means a bigger literal health pool, more goo to spit and a protective barrier for non-piercing shots but, of course, you're a gigantic target so avoiding attacks and traps becomes impossible, let alone impractical. You literally cannot squeeze past some obstacles once your health is past a certain point, so you just have to lose all that accumulated ooze and make yourself more vulnerable, The problem is that you might think that being low on ooze comes with a benefit- you're a smaller target, so you can skip past traps and avoid attacks easier- but the detriments to your only forms of offense, since you can't spit and your reach is significantly shorter, negate any real advantages as you will constantly need to fight and be able to reach enemies. Many a time I've lost a life because my health had been chipped away at so much that I didn't have enough reach to attack enemies safely around corners, and with no other items or resources available, this would leave me with no recourse but to try a frontal assault and get murdered. By the time you reach the Power Core though, having a lot of health isn't even an advantage either, as almost every projectile and trap has piercing and will just melt through your ooze and if it's heading for your head, you're dead. I think having some kind of mechanic where you can alter your ooze size / density at will (there is something like this in the game- grabbing the speed-up makes your ooze long and thin as you move- but it's only temporary) could've alleviated this a little- bunch the ooze up to sneak past traps slowly, let it spread out when you need to hit stuff at the trade-off of being weaker, something like that. As it is, you often feel like there's nothing you can really do in some situations where you have to lose a bunch of ooze or even just die. I guess it's a bit like Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels where you're often forced to be small Mario but it somehow feels even worse here.
I think some of the foibles of the mechanics and combat could've been forgiven if the level design was interesting, but this is where the game turns into a complete hellscape. Remember what I said about the first level being designed to ease players in, then all the other stages were made significantly more difficult? Well, here we go. Once you're past that first stage, every dirty trick in the book starts showing up to make sure you do not make progress, and this works in tandem with the sprawling, easy-to-get-lost-in design you'd usually see in Western platformers of the time, just now in a slow-moving, top-down form which just turns the game into a total drag. Some of this is in unclear presentation- inclines that will send you into toxic pools are somewhat hard to see, drains that will kill you if your head gets too close are too small and sometimes almost blend into the background so you might not see them until you're too late, bomb-launching machines where the bombs are genuinely difficult to separate from the background even on a gigantic modern TV... The game tries to make up for this by having lots of skull signs around, and yet it still doesn't help- the Toxic Dump has these barely-visible dips that send you into toxic waste, and even though there's a warning sign, you might not even register it because the difference between the dips and the non-dips is so subtle. It's fascinating really, there's a lot of details in the graphics and presentation and yet it still feels like you can't see a lot of threats before it's too late. Later stages, in particular the Power Core, also have a reliance on hitting switches to progress where it's not even clear what the switch has done- they usually open doors somewhere but because you don't really get a huge view of the area around you, you won't see it happen so you'll just have to meander around and hope you don't get killed by stumbling into something you didn't see coming.
On that note, the most egregious trick is the game's habit of hiding items, power-ups, switches and enemies behind walls- from the Genetics Lab onwards it does this pretty much constantly, and while hiding things like DNA Helixes (we'll get to those) behind walls is rude but at least understandable (you hear a YES! when you pick one up), using foreground objects to hide enemies in a game like this is just frustrating, because you're never prepared for it and they're usually instant death. The best example is the use of electric robots in the Power Core, who rush you as you move up or down the screen, hidden by overhead arches. They have an electric battering ram, so if you don't see them coming, they'll smash into your head and kill you instantly because it melts through your ooze. Not fun. Learn where they are among the many near-identical hallways, punk. The scorpions in the Genetics Lab are even worse- they hatch from eggs that are often hidden and make a beeline for your head if you're too close. They're easy to deal with when you know how- spawn them and run away and they'll destroy themselves when they hit a wall- but sometimes the eggs are literally not visible to the player. What really caught my attention here is that the game almost knows that these enemies are horrible- the first time you encounter them, you'll have picked up an ooze-kills-enemies item, so you might not even see them in action, and this actually happens multiple times when you see them, but the few times it doesn't, the eggs are hidden from view so there may have been an opportunity to introduce this enemy type to you, it wasn't taken, and instead you're blindsided by it. The Genetics Lab and Power Core are also lousy for hiding progress-requiring switches like this, and in stages you're likely to get lost in, that's just horrible, especially since as mentioned before, it's often unclear what those switches even do.
So, OK, what if you learn the game? Is it fun then? Obviously being blindsided by stuff isn't fun at all but if you take the time to learn the game, figure out where all the nasty tricks are and memorise everything you need to know, it gets better, right? I think The Ooze is in a similar position to Comix Zone, which means I'm going to say no. I did, in fact, master The Ooze, from a certain point of view- I didn't get all the DNA Helixes for the true ending because a) it's not worth the effort, b) you have to find the hidden bunny-slaughter bonus stages and beat them before time runs out, and you only get one shot and the later ones have ridiculous time limits and also if you don't exit in time you lose the DNA Helix and c) the bad ending is funnier. I did, however, beat the game without the level select cheat. I learned where all the sneaky tricks were, where to find easy-to-get extra lives to stay afloat (no continues, they cut them from the game), how to deal with every kind of enemy, strategies for every boss... I labbed this game out. And I didn't enjoy it. These are my go-to examples, but arcade games like Alien Syndrome, Fantasy Zone and The NewZealand Story have the 'ideal' difficulty for me. They take time and practice to master, and even once you do, they remain a tough challenge but the basic mechanics are engaging and fun so you want to keep playing. The Ooze is not fun for me. It's slow and plodding, it often feels like you're fighting with the controls and mechanics rather than engaging with them, combat is frustrating and often sees you being interrupted without any available recourse, you'll frequently die with no idea what killed you, a lot of things can go wrong that just don't feel your fault like being blindsided by piercing shots fired by something just barely on-screen, the game's way too long for what it is with sprawling maps that are way too easy to get lost in... I did just barely beat the game, but by the end I was so frustrated with it I almost gave up, and it's been a long time since I've done that with a video game, but The Ooze got very, very close.
It's a shame because the presentation is actually pretty interesting, as the game goes all-in on its somewhat dreary, gritty and grimy aesthetic. Lots of use of dithering and highly-detailed tilework does make each section of the game feel distinct (even if there's not many landmarks which makes getting lost easy) with details I especially like including the biohazard signs in the Genetics Lab and the pipes constantly churning out waste in the Toxic Dump. Admittedly, this falls apart in the Plague Factory stages which don't look like a factory at all, more like a very generic area with barely any detail to the backgrounds making for a really rough, half-hearted teleporter maze. Still, the rest of the game looks pretty solid for a Mega Drive game of this era, and the ooze itself has a lot of personality and character, chuckling to itself when it sends its fist out, dipping its head under the ooze when it's idle and shouting YES! when it grabs a DNA Helix. The absolutely highlight is, of course, the incredible soundtrack by Howard Drossin, making the GEMS sound driver sing. It's somewhat similar to the Comix Zone soundtrack with a lot of use of synth guitars, but there's a little bit of everything here- Toxic Dump Parts I & II establishes a reoccuring motif for the game with a thumping opening theme, Genetics Lab Parts I & II is a more sombre, almost dirge-like tune that suits the oppressive atmosphere of the labs perfectly, and Toxic Dump & Genetics Lab Part III has the perfect intensity for a boss fight. It's by far the best part of the overall package, which might be damning with faint praise but it really is great! Praise needs to go to the sound effects too which are suitably disgusting- alongside probably a few too many digitised burping noises, the screams of pain when you turn one of the hazmat goons into ooze is genuinely unsettling.
If you're looking for a happy ending, then you won't find it here. The Ooze, for good or ill, didn't stand a chance on release. As well as coming out very late in the Mega Drive's life, Sega themselves didn't seem to bother marketing it- there was no real advertising push, and according to the Horowitz book, a plan to make it a pack in with the Nomad fell through which might've got it in front of a few more eyeballs (albeit eyeballs done in by the blur of a mid-90s colour portable screen). Hell, you might even say the Japanese staff made a bolder effort at making the game stand out than the Western branches of the company, but more on that in a minute. It didn't even get a shot at a sequel, as while Sanner developed a 3D version of the liquid algorithm for potential use on the Saturn, the original game's poor sales meant there'd be no return for D. Caine and his ooziferous self. It's a shame because I think the liquid mechanics could make for a really good game from this era, you'd just need to find a concept that used it well, but honestly? The Ooze could've been that game had it not been an action game. I think this is the critical issue at the core of The Ooze, they tried to turn this liquid algorithm into a full-on action game complete with the brutal difficulty that STI was apparently dedicated to adding to almost all their games, but there are brief flashes where you could've seen this working as more of a puzzle game, using the unique properties of the ooze to solve interesting problems in neat ways. Things like using your mass to flick switches around corners and using a thin streak of ooze to grab items on the other side of a dangerous path show the potential of the mechanics here, but it all feels a bit wasted in service of a mediocre top-down action game that had the difficulty knobs twisted to max because that's what STI does. You can say I'd be better trying to see the game for what it is rather than what it isn't (and I'd probably be better served by something like Archer Maclean's Mercury released a decade later that is more puzzle-like with liquid movement) but when the game we have is, well, The Ooze, you can't blame me for trying to find something better with a different approach.
It's a little sad though, because the idea, the concept of The Ooze is fascinating, tantalising even. In the act of describing The Ooze- on paper if you will, or just text on a screen, like I'm doing right now- it sounds amazing. It's the sort of thing I imagine being explained to me in the form of a secondary school student's notepad, like they're breathlessly scribbling down how THE OOZE has to fight THE CORPORATION by going through the WASTE DUMP and the GENETICS LAB to get to the PLAGUE FACTORY and make the goons SCREAM IN AGONY as they turn into ooze then you PUNCH ROBOTS TO DEATH and make them EXPLODE as your own ooze SHRIEKS IN PAIN when caught in electricity and... [Please don't just read from my primary school creative writing books like that, it's rude.- Ed] Even beyond that, thinking about what the game's mechanics are like, its very concept, conjures up images of this weird, messed-up Mega Drive game very few people played when it was new, and maybe it's just out there, slithering about, waiting for someone to discover a true hidden gem. I can absolutely understand that, and I can see why others would see the appeal, it's just actually playing the game, figuring out how it works and trying to finish it is just not fun for me. Maybe it's a little surprising than despite that, I gave it two hearts on my thorough and robust rating system, but I feel the general presentation is very strong and the idea of it is something I really want to like, and just one heart felt a little too mean, but I tried to meet The Ooze on its own level and found myself flushed down the toilet, metaphorically speaking. Bear in mind, this is me kinda reining myself in, I had to focus on the stuff that really stuck out in my mind otherwise this might've gone on forever and less than no-one would read it. If none of what I've said today has put you off, then maybe The Ooze is for you, but it just ain't for me.
For being more of a damp spot rather than a wellspring of joy, The Ooze is awarded...
In a sentence, The Ooze is...
An interesting idea flushed by all-over-the-place execution.
And now, it's that time, folks!
EXTENDED PLAY!
If you'd like a second opinion on the game, I am here to oblige.
Barleybap wrote a long article about THE OOZE which you may wish to peruse. Or perooze if you will.
Next, a level select code as taken from GameFAQs. It's a pain in the ass to put in, because of course it is.
On the Options screen, avoid altering the controls (don't dip into the gap in the middle, and use the sound selection to select the following numbers, pressing C after highlighting each one: 009, 019, 010, 024, 011, 013, 006, 027, 006, 088, 003 then 030. A 'YES!' will confirm code entry, then press A + Start at any point. It doesn't matter if you go past the number you want, just as long as you get the right number then press C after you highlight it. Once here, you can start from any stage, essentially serving as a makeshift continue feature. There's a few quirks though- the Part I / II / III screen will always show Part I of the area you're in but you'll be in the right stage (and this corrects itself once you start progressing) and the game will assume you never picked up any of the DNA Helixes on the stages you've skipped so getting the true ending this way is impossible. It's not worth it anyway, I promise.
Now, of course, we have to talk about the Japanese release of The Ooze, it's fascinating.
(Pictures in this section from Sega Retro's page on The Ooze.)
First, a little history. The Mega Drive in Japan was, rather famously, not the smash hit console it was in the West, and so around the time The Ooze was released, the console was very much on its way out. As mentioned by gosokkyu, only 800 copies of the Japanese version were produced, mostly as a nod to the die-hard Mega Drive maniacs writing Beep! Mega Drive and Sega Saturn Magazine (the Japanese one, of course). What follows is information found on Page 233 of Sega Consumer History which is available to read on Sega Retro and has had excerpts and paraphrased parts translated by both Sega Retro and this forum post on Sega-16 (thank you very much Retro Pals Discord member coryoon for finding this again after I'd lost it!), so I won't take credit for it. Roughly summarised, Takayuki Kawagoe, marketing manager at Sega of Japan across the Mega Drive and Saturn eras, would often look at games being released by the US side of the company and would try to bring them over if he felt they were interesting- this included ToeJam & Earl, Comix Zone and, right at the end of the system's life, The Ooze. Other people in the company were opposed to it but he made it happen anyway, but was given a limited print run and absolutely no marketing budget, so they all decided to just do whatever the hell they wanted with this one, go silly (to the point of giving it a reversible cover) and make it stand out.
Taking a look at those scans from Sega Retro... Mission accomplished, I'd say.
No art from the game. No screenshots. No pictures aside from one of a staff member of Sega Saturn Magazine on the reverse cover. An 18 rating even though the game is probably a 12+ at the absolute most. What can one do but look upon these covers with awe and wonder? Outside of the game's general premise, this strange approach to the game's cover in Japan is probably one of the most famous things about The Ooze. Strange, isn't it? As explained in this exchange between Chris Scullion and Harry Bossert on Twitter, the first cover is using circles to censor the words and make the game seem more salacious than it really is, hence the 18+ 'rating' (you'll see circles like that in other Japanese media, such as Hitori Bocchi no Marumaru Seikatsu, with the 'Marumaru' (two circles) being used to blank out part of the name). The second cover, on the other hand, is more in the style of a romance novel, an equally absurd choice of cover for this game. Hopefully this brief overview of these covers will suffice- while there is an English YouTube video that translates both covers (and parts of the manual), it frames the entire video around the extremely silly and clearly wrong premise that Sega of Japan didn't want people to buy the game. Listen, The Ooze is no friend of mine, I think I've made that clear, but I won't say silly shit like that about it, heavens no. So, I'm absolutely not using that as a source. Until I get my editor to learn Japanese [お断りします - Ed] or find someone willing to translate the two covers (this is a paying job, I'm not joking, email me at themetalslug at gmail dot com, let's do business), this'll have to do.
One interesting thing is that the story in the manual (presented by a bunny girl called Yuki and, at points, a buff construction worker) is slightly different- now this I did use a machine translation for, but only because an abridged version of this story was translated for the English version of Sonic Mega Collection Plus, so I figured I was in the clear, In this version, Caine creates an odourless poison gas as an employee of the Corporation, then develops an antidote and leaves the company after the gas is sealed away, only for a worldwide crisis to break out contaminating water supplies with the antidote being very expensive. Noticing the company on the label is the one he used to work for, he breaks in and looks up the classified info on it to find out it's his gas, leading to him being caught and the rest of the story is the same as before. It's not a huge change, but I guess it adds more detail and flavour than the US manual and the textless intro,
The funniest part?
The game itself is identical to the English version.
Not a single thing's changed.
Weirdly, despite being a Sega-developed Mega Drive game, The Ooze has not been ported to everything under the sun. Can you believe that?
As a result, there's only a small handful of places you'll find it outside the original release.
To get the least weird one out the way first, the game was one of six games included in Radica's Sega Mega Drive Plug n Play Volume 2 unit, one of those Plug n Play dealies we've seen before that contained a weird selection of games- Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Columns, Gain Ground, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Ecco the Dolphin and The Ooze. I used to have one of these things but even if I still had it, the batteries I might've left inside would've probably done a number on it by now, so the title screen above is borrowed from The Cutting Room Floor. Unlike that Space Invaders one which saw fit to include the NES Space Invaders, these are the original ROMs, and aside from harsh sound issues (see also: every Mega Drive clone ever) this works pretty well. Unless you live in PAL-Land where it's 50hz for you, sucker!
Now, the more unusual one is... Sonic Mega Collection on the Gamecube from 2002? Yes indeed! A collection of Sonic games! The Ooze, alongside fellow Sega Technical Institute game Comix Zone, was hidden in the 2002 Gamecube collection, but only in the Japanese version. There's two methods, one more well-known than the other! The first is to play the original seven games 40 times each and play on either March 3rd, May 5th or July 7th according to your Gamecube's internal calendar (as mentioned in the Sonic Mega Collection Saikyou Kouryaku Guide and apparently nowhere else on the internet), a method that multiple people joked sounded like a playground rumour someone would swear up and down was true because their uncle works at Atari when I mentioned it online. The second is on the Options menu, press Up, L, Down, R, Up, Z, Down, L, Up, R, Down and Z (it seems using either the D-Pad or the Analogue Stick is fine for this) and a sound will play on correct code entry. However you do it, The Ooze will unlock once you return to the Games menu, and this also adds the manual (including the two different covers) to the Manuals menu. You can try this code all you like in the US and EU version (I actually did because I really, really wanted to play The Ooze and I guess I had a lot of spare time back then) but it won't work. The game is otherwise fine, no real notes here, an acceptable way to experience The Ooze.
You'd have to wait for Sonic Mega Collection Plus on PS2, Xbox and PC from 2004 if you wanted The Ooze on those systems over here, though. For this enhanced rerelease, as well as save state support and six Game Gear games including Sonic Blast (oh no), The Ooze and Comix Zone were present and correct in the Western releases too, with two ways to unlock our slimy boy: either have a save file of Sonic Heroes on your memory card / Xbox hard drive (this unlocks both games) or unlock every other game except Ristar and Comix Zone on the collection (this just gets you The Ooze, and is a lot of work- you need to play Sonic 1, 2, 3, & Knuckles, Spinball and 3D Blast twenty times each to unlock Blue Sphere, Knuckles in Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and also play Mean Bean Machine thirty times to unlock Flicky). However, even with all this effort, it is absolutely not worth it, as this is the worst option- something has gone horribly wrong with the emulation here, with backgrounds being completely wrong (the title screen uses the pulsating white and green palette of the Ooze's head, the intro has background elements as blue instead of black, the Toxic Dump's ground is pitch-black, etc.) and the PAL PS2 and Xbox versions forces 50hz for slower gameplay, even if you set your Xbox to 60hz! Completely miserable way to play the game, don't even bother. The description does mention the game's 'unusual packaging' though, which leads me to believe they just translated the Japanese description and left it as-is, as that makes no sense when talking about the US and European box art!
As for why The Ooze and Comix Zone are even here... As explained by gosokkyu, Mizuki Hosoyamada, the current producer of the Puyo Puyo series, lobbied for their inclusion in the set because he wanted to play them but the second-hand prices of the games in Japan were completely out of control. You know what? Good reason to include a game in a collection. This odd tradition continued with the inclusion of the Bare Knuckle / Streets of Rage trilogy, Bonanza Bros. and the Vectorman games in Sonic Gems Collection, but only Vectorman 1 and 2 made it to non-Japanese versions, apparently to keep the age rating down. The Bonanza Bros. are innocent! Both collections also tried to include games fron the Wonderboy series which were scrapped, but now we're going wildly off-topic.
After that, there were some more plug-and-play appearances for The Ooze (mostly those bad ATGames models), but the big reappearance of the game was the Western Mega Drive Mini 2 in 2022. The Japanese Mega Drive 2 Mini was stuffed to the rafters with licensed games and others that had no chance of being kept on the Western unit, so there were a lot of replacement games, and The Ooze is one of those games that Sega owns outright so no problem using it to fill a few empty slots, right? I'm OK with The Ooze being used like this but not Vectorman 2 showing up here, but that's my own deeply-unreasonable beef. Not a lot to say here but it generally seems to be fine, and you can also view the Japanese box art if you change the language to Japanese. That's about it, really, this is the most recent rerelease of The Ooze at the time of writing. Although I bet you anything, by the time I write this and finally get it finished and published, it'll get a wild HD remake or Nintendo Switch Online reissue or something and I'll have to rewrite this entire bloody thing.
And yes, that does mean The Ooze is not in any of those Sega Mega Drive collections!
Some people swear it was, but nope, it's not, I checked, I have all those collections and it ain't there.
One last thing.
As mentioned in that Ken Horowitz book, The Ooze was suggested as a pack-in title for the Sega Nomad.
I'll be real with you, it's not a great fit for the system.
I want to make it known, I was very glad to be finished with this article. More so than with most things I write.
This is at least partly because The Ooze killed two of my USB Mega Drive controllers during the 'production' of this 'article'.
Dr. D. Caine owes me money now. Until I get it back, it's back to the index for us.
