 SEGA DRUNK! Comic Zone for Sega Genesis is first and foremost a great idea for a game. You play as a comic book artist named Sketch, who's working on a comic featuring aliens and mutants invading Earth when a bolt of lightning hits his work and brings to life the evil villain he created named Mortis. He's still just a drawing in the real world, so he somehow sends Sketch and his pet rat into the comic book he created. I have no idea how or why, but the idea is that Mortis will be able to take Sketch's life force and become a real person if he's killed in the comic or something. So Sketch's only option is to play his way through the comic book he's created, and man, the visual style of this game is unlike any other 16-bit game. It's a brilliantly realized idea, and it makes me wish it could have been used for Superman or The X-Men or some real comic book heroes. Either way, the visuals here are incredible. You navigate your way through each panel, sometimes having a choice of different directions you could go, and you're met with some stunning pixel art, great-looking backgrounds, a bright and lurid color palette, and some fantastic sprite work. It really feels like you're playing a comic book. Unfortunately, that's where the game hits a big speed bump. As you can see, Comic Zone is a beat-em-up, and Streets of Rage, this is not. Sure, the visuals, story, sound, and music make for great window dressing, but as a beat-em-up, this game falls a little flat. The mechanics here are limited and repetitive, which makes Comic Zone kind of a slog to play through. It's just knock a guy down, wait for him to get back up, using the same moves over and over. It's not a total bust, though. I mean, this game is at least programmed for the six-button Genesis controller, so when you play using that, you can set up the C button to do a few different things via the options menu, like block enemy attacks, do a special move that consequently uses up some of your health, or a macho yell, which does nothing. You can hold up to three items at once, like bombs and potions, and those are really important for progressing through the game. That's because whenever you hit an object in your path, like a barrel or a box, you take damage. Aw, come on, really? In Final Fight, Cody beats up a car with his bare freaking hands, and that's a bonus level. In Comic Zone, you have to be a lot more careful, so save your bombs and use those to get stuff out of your way, otherwise you're gonna die really quickly. I'm willing to forgive most of Comic Zone's faults, though, not just because of the original visual style, but the soundtrack. I'm telling you, when this game came out back in 1995, no other game had music that sounded anything remotely like this. It was unheard of back then to try and have rock music like this for a soundtrack on a home console. But if any console was up to the task, it was the Genesis, and to this day, it still sounds awesome. I love the music here. It was released on CD as part of the Sega Tune series, and the game was even sold with a bonus CD featuring original songs from bands like Danzig and Lovin' Rock It. Comic Zone was also ported to the Game Boy Advance in Europe in 2002, and it plays pretty much the same way, although the music is totally different, which kind of sucks. It's also part of the Sega Genesis collection for PS2 and PSP as well as on the original Wii Virtual Console, and it's still available on Xbox Live Arcade for $5. So yeah, Comic Zone looks awesome, sounds even better than that, but sadly the gameplay doesn't really hold up its end of the bargain. The beat-em-up action here is just tiresome and repetitive, especially with no passwords or continues. You gotta go through six levels on one go. Still, I do think it's worth playing today. It's an awesome idea for a game. The soundtrack is frickin' awesome. It's just that you'll probably get tired of playing it after about 10 minutes or so, and that's too bad.