Racketboy

Enjoy!
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/together ... -earl.html

One of my favorite games to play when a friend came over... not as fun as a solo game.
I will have to try to talk the wife into playing or bribe a friend with beer...

Got it on the Genesis and it is one of my favorites to play. So glad that I finally found a cheap copy off of eBay. I have yet to actually find all the pieces yet though. Now that I have some kind of motivation maybe I will sit down long enough to finish it.

The hot tub full of hula girls on level 'zero' has to be one of the best game secrets ever right?

I used to play this game a lot with my younger brother. We had a pretty good strategy. On the first 2-3 levels, open all the presents you get. That way, if you hit a Randomizer you haven't lost too much. Total Bummers seem a lot scarcer on the lower levels too, but it does happen. After about level 3, stop opening presents. Pay the carrot guy to identify them until you've identified both the Randomizer and the Total Bummer. If you run out of money, and fill up on presents, open things you have triplicates of, they're less likely to be bad.

Oh, I almost forgot, when opening unknown presents, make sure you're near an elevator (fall down a level if need be). If you get a rain cloud, tomato rain, etc, just get in the elevator and it'll be over when you get to the next level.

When you start the game, go up. Keep going up until you have enough presents to get all the secrets on level 1 and 0. You'll need to cross some large expanses of water, use the seahorse, icarus wings, or rocket skates. You'll need 3 at least. Go to the upper left and collect the presents, return to the main island (you can use a Door for this), then go to the bottom left, get the presents there and fall down the hole. Lemonade guy has a 1up, and hop in the hot tub for full health. Jump off the edge of the world and you'll be returned to the highest level you've been to.

If you see Santa, STOP! Hope there aren't any earthlings around. You have to sneak around Santa or he'll fly away. What's worse is when he looks up from his bag, you have to stop entirely or he'll see you. (Keep abolutely still, his vision's based on movement!) While he's digging throug his bag, you can sneak towards him. When you get to him, you'll spook him and you'll get 4-5 presents most of the time.

Hmm, what else. Earthlings, avoid them whenever possible.

Oh, exhaustively explore as many of the lower levels as you can. The presents are good, and clearing map tiles gets you points which gets you levels which gets you lives. Once it gets dangerous (bogey men, mole men, sand, etc) move up as quickly as possible.

It can be kind of a long game, and there's no password or save function. Stick with it and you will beat it though. It's not actually too difficult. IIRC it took something like 4-6 hours to play through back in the day.

I'm gonna see if I can talk my wife into playing marathon style with me this weekend.

I managed to get this one running on emulation first time and have got all the controls and options nailed down.

Only played it for a short while so far, seems to be charming in an intentionally silly way. I'm only playing by myself, how does the multiplayer differ from the single player?

One of the cool innovations was the ability to play either split screen or single screen - ie, it's single screen when you're close to each other, and splits when you get far enough away. Very very cool for the time, and actually still holds up as more than a gimmick.

But yeah, I absolutely adored this game as a kid. There was just so much imagination that went into it - the world, the art style, the "earthlings", the sprites - it all just really struck a chord with me. It's still really fun to play, and is easily in my top 5 games of all time.

I have the music as .mp3s on my player. Just pure and raw Sega funk

I've been planning on playing this game for a while now, since it's one of those mega drive games that kind of generated a cult, like Comix Zone for example, but I have to admit, now that I've played it, I'm not too impressed. Don't take me wrong, I can easily imagine this being a pretty refreshing and original experience in a time where regular platformers were everywhere (pretty much like FPS today), but nowadays I can't seem to take much fun from it. It's original, no doubt, and the whole setting and soundtrack have their charm, but overall I think I would enjoy a regular platformer more, like the sequel, actually, or at least judging from what I hear about it since I haven't played that one yet.