Forget Pes or Fifa, the nineties witnessed a far more polarising fanboy war over a hedgehog and Italian plumber. As an interesting note, I’ve been later told by a former developer of this system that the command structure of Mode V (used to control the VDP within the game) inherits the design from the TMS9918 (the famous video chip used in the SG-1000) [9]. The Mega Drive port was fantastic in every way that mattered, sprites were large and detailed, arenas had all their wonderful little details intact, and it even included elements that were missing from other ports such as the small spray of blood visible in some attacks. Although, most PAL games don’t bother with the extra tiles allowed in PAL systems (as they probably need to keep consistency between the two regions, and NTSC is the common denominator) so they instruct the VDP to render with 28 rows (as they would do in NTSC systems).

We're going to stick out our necks and say Hard Corps is the pinnacle of the Contra series, such was the frequency of its lavish boss battles, animated in stunning style. Designed to go head-to-head against the NES, the Master System released seven years after the NES, and while it was a bit more advanced than the competition, it never really caught on in North America. When Sensi lined up on Mega Drive consoles in March 1993, it was a footballing triumph: none could match its 60 frames per second animations, the pitch-wide view and customisable teams.As the months wore on, I managed to beat Street Fighter II on its highest difficulty setting with Ryu, having breezed through everything below at this point without losing a round. It was abundantly clear why Sega had delayed it; it didn’t want Nintendo to have the superior version, so it pulled it back to add the required bells and whistles to give it the best chance of being voted Queen at the Street Fighter prom. The only excuse you have for not having played Battletoads is being born after 1991 (it was originally a NES game, before receiving a superb Mega Drive port in 1993).

Gamers started scrambling to run out and get the now two-year-old Genesis console just to play the hot new game.

A turn-based battler, the story took place on the once-lush world of Motavia, now crumbling and filled with biomonsters. Using L and R for heavy attacks felt completely off and I was subsequently soundly defeated once more. Now this may not be apparent to most, but to me, being a Greek, it constantly put surprised me throughout the book. Best fact: Shifting over 6 million copies, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is fittingly the second best-selling title for the Mega Drive.

Programmers could also implement extra checksum checks at random points of the game in case hackers were to remove the initial SRAM checks. GamePro criticized the "meandering game play, which plods along at a pace much slower than the rollicking movie", but assessed the animations and variety of moves to be impressive by NES standards. I still remember thinking how amazing the game had held up, and how it really was one of the best of all time.

It was a title I’d play against anyone who was willing, and even in 1994 it was this port that convinced a friend of mine who owned the Amiga version to get a Mega Drive for his birthday.