#Sega CD
Yes this is 16-bit (the Sega CD used a 16-bit processor alongside the Genesis' 16-bit processor).
Just like with the 8-bit day, I felt like having a bit of fun stretching the definition of 16-bit music. This meant no FM synths, no SNES music, and going for things that are more out of the box or less thought of as "16-bit" music. I did indeed have fun doing this.
I guess I'll say something about Sonic CD; it's a fun game. A bit more messy than 2 and 3, but still a fun time. If you get the rereleases, you can get two soundtracks for the price of one game! Whoa! This song is from the original Japanese/European soundtrack.
why'd they give this thing a professional photo shoot for the box but Shining Force CD gets flipped Game Gear art
"Game no Kanzume Vol. 1" and "Game no Kanzume Vol. 2" are compilations of Sega's Game Toshokan games. Game Toshokan was a sort of predecessor to Sega Channel, where you use the Mega Modem to download smaller titles. Among those games, a Mega Drive port of arcade classic "Flicky" and a simple roguelike called "Shi no Meikyu: Labyrinth of Death" ended up getting standalone physical cartridge releases outside of Japan, with the latter given the name "Fatal Labyrinth." Both volumes came in a strange packaging: a transparent plastic "shell" roughly the dimensions of a thick CD jewel case, with a thin tin canister that contains the CD (there is foam inside the can to protect the disc).
Something to note about "Flicky" and "Fatal Labyrinth" are that the cartridges that were released in the west include the Japanese regional variants as well. That is, if you had a Japanese Mega Drive and plugged the cartridges in, you'd get the Japanese versions of those games popping up. A lot of early Mega Drive games just had one ROM that would feature a bit of regional variation depending on what console you plugged them into. Coincidentally, the classic "region switch" mod you might have heard of for Genesis/Mega Drive consoles shows that the region lock method is rather simplistic. The Mega Drive motherboard essentially the same in all regions, barring slight differences depending on manufacturing date. There are a set of jumpers on the board that tell the console what region it is supposed to be and whether it should run at 50Hz or 60Hz.
A good example of how this works for a lot of early games is "Gain Ground." There's only really one ROM for that game across all regions, but the game was published by Sega in Japan and Europe, while it was published by Renovation in the US. This means that, if you imported a Japanese or European copy and played it on your US Genesis, you would see the Renovation copyright data on the title screen that is otherwise not there if you played it on a Japanese or European Mega Drive. Conversely, if you played a Renovation-published US copy on a Japanese or European Mega Drive, that Renovation copyright data on the title screen doesn't show up.
The reason I bring this up is because, according to most information regarding "Shi no Meikyu: Labyrinth of Death" on the Game Toshokan platform, it was a bit smaller than what ended up on the later released "Fatal Labyrinth." Namely, in the beginning of "Fatal Labyrinth," your character starts in a rather simple small town with a couple of NPCs you can talk to and nothing else. The NPCs give very basic gameplay hints before you delve into the main part of the game, which is the dungeon crawling. While this is present in "Fatal Labyrinth," it apparently does not appear in "Shi no Meikyu," instead the game starting you right in the dungeon. But in "Game no Kanzume Vol. 2," the game starts in the town, complete with Japanese text in place of the English text that was originally there.
Well, like I mentioned earlier, "Fatal Labyrinth" does include Japanese text on the ROM if you happen to play it on a Japanese Mega Drive, despite the game never getting an actual standalone cartridge release in Japan. So presumably, what is included in this CD compilation is that ROM. Which led me to thinking: if you play "Game no Kanzume Vol. 2" on a US Sega CD attached to a US Sega Genesis, would the game play in English, due to the Genesis having its region set to US?
Unfortunately, because of how region locking works on the Sega CD, it normally isn't possible. For some reason, unlike many other CD-based platforms during these early years, Sega opted to tie region locking to the Sega CD's BIOS. You can't normally run a Japanese CD game on a US Sega CD, or a European CD game on a Japanese Mega CD, etc, regardless of whatever region the Mega Drive itself is configured to.
However, nowadays you can just get a custom region free BIOS installed on a Sega CD or Mega CD without an issue. Using that, you can just run a Japanese CD game on a US Sega CD without much of an issue. So that brings me back to "Game no Kanzume Vol. 2" and the question of whether "Shi no Meikyu" will run as "Fatal Labyrinth" on a US console.
It turns out, "Game no Kanzume Vol. 2" is just using that previous standalone cartridge ROM, for the most part. When you load up the game from the CD's menu, that game seems to check the regional configuration of your Mega Drive/Genesis, and then loads up that region's respective version of the game. In this case, "Fatal Labyrinth" pops up, English and all. "Flicky" also happens to be in a similar situation, as the Japanese text and Japanese names of certain characters get changed to English text and uses the English names of the characters during the attact screen.
All the other games on those compilations are just in Japanese, as English localizations weren't planned or made for them.
Anyway, this was just a weird thing I was poking around with because I was thinking about getting rid of my physical Genesis cartridge copies of "Flicky" and "Fatal Labyrinth" and picking up both of the "Game no Kanzume" games.