
	Platform Genesis Genre Action Publisher Electronic Arts Developer Innerprise ETA 1990
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Sword of Sodan

These days when we see a game sitting on the shelf with a drastically reduced price, there’s a decent chance it could be a real gem. Pay ten or twenty bucks for the thing, take it home, fire it up, and you could be in for a good time. If it turns out the game sucks, it’s probably not that big a deal, since it didn’t cost you much in the first place. Looking back at 16-bit games back in the day, there were still marked down games, but not nearly to the levels we see today. Nonetheless, when I was in high school I decided to take a chance on an old, second hand Genesis game that was at one of the local game shops, called Sword of Sodan.

All of the warning signs were there, the game was cheap, the box had been on display for weeks, and it didn’t show much signs of going away any time soon. Unfortunately, I was a teenager, strapped for cash, and desperate for a new game, any game, and this horrific side-scrolling action game was all I could afford.

Even while popping it in the console when I got home, I was still trying to convince myself that maybe things would turn out all right. However, these hopes were quickly dashed when the game fired up, and I was greeted by some of the most god-awful graphics of that generation. Even first generation titles on the Genesis looked better than this pile of crap.

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The sound wasn’t much better, assuming it felt like working. Half the time the sound effects would crap out on the game, though sometimes I wonder if this was a fault of the programmers, or if it was my console was trying to save my ears from the horrible audio in the game.

In fact, I’m of the suspicion that for large chunks of the game my Genesis was trying to say, “Look, man. This game is trash. Just turn it off, pop in Phantasy Star II, and

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actually enjoy yourself.” It’s the only possible answer. The controls were unresponsive, the previously mentioned sound problems carried throughout the game, and for those sadistic enough to actually make it near the end of the game, enemies suddenly became impossibly hard. It was like my Genesis was trying to get me to play something else every step of the way, shutting down different aspects of the game as a deterrent to continue. It was the closest thing the console could do to performing an intervention on the fact I was playing such an awful, awful game.

Because of Sword of Sodan, I became incredibly wary of cheap games for years. Thankfully by the time the PlayStation had been around for a while, the market was becoming far more friendly towards frugal gamers. Nonetheless, that craptastic action game will always hold a particularly rage-filled place in my heart.

Mr. Nash

(May 7, 2005)