Gaming History 101

Console: Sega-CD/Mega-CD
Released: 1992
Developer: Digital Pictures
Publisher: Sony Imagesoft
Instruction Manual: Not necessary
Difficulty: Non-existent
Played it as a child? Yes
Value: pricecharting.com has hilarously not even covered these games
Price: Don’t even bother
Other Releases: Absolutely Not
Digital Release? No, aside from how horrible they are, the music is timely

There is just no getting around this, these are terrible video games.  Not only are they pop groups that only existed in the early part of the 1990s, but they aren’t games at all.  You goal is just as it sounds: make a music video.  It’s a crash course in linear digital editing where three streams of video appear on the screen at once and you use the A, B, and C button to select the “active” feed that will become your master video.  Unfortunately the three feeds are made up of a random lot of public domain videos from the first half of the century, sometimes altered slightly for the beat, and the original music video for the game.  I’m not saying that these videos are directorial masterpieces, but when combined with the patethic hodgepodge of public domain video, they’re the next Star Wars, I have never once wanted to leave the feed of the main video.  Having said that, they are amazing fun at a party when you want to laugh your head off at how pathetically cheesy this generation of pop music was.

Before he was an Oscar-nominated film star, Mark Wahlberg was a white rapper riding the coattails of his brother Donny Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame.  His glorious name was “Marky Mark” and his band was known as Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, which couldn’t be more perfect if I was trying to make fun of him.  Ironically enough, this is the most prominant and popular of the Make My Own Music Video series, which consists of three other bands: INXS, C&C Music Factory, and Kriss Kross.  If you weren’t a kid back then, these bands and/or their music will (hopefully) hold no familiarity to you although you may be familiar with their hits thanks to modern top 40 stations and Jack FM.  Personally it’s a testament to the culture, mainstream, and music that flooded my boombox and got me through my junior high school years in a way that is just really sad.  I like going back, even for only 5 minutes, and I can’t help it.  Don’t mistake this as an endorsement, even if you had a childhood similar to mine, I still can’t in good faith recommend these games.  Lucky for you, I’ve captured video of one of the three songs for each game so you can laugh to your hearts content at home without spending a single penny.

I picked up all of these games in a collective bundle on eBay, which to this moment I can’t tell you how I found them because they are currently impossible for me to find on the auction site, but I know they’re on there somewhere.  I paid somewhere between $5-$10 for all of them and I assure you that guy ripped me off.  For what it’s worth, the slight functionality of these games does offer you an amusing intro video and tasks of what you are to catch footage of, although I rarely make a video that appeases my anal retentive judges.  It doesn’t matter though, win or lose you just get a different video before being encouraged to try a different video all over again.  I don’t think there is a bonus song or a final stage that’s hidden away on any of these games, despite how hard my friends and I tried to make all the judges happy on our numerous playthroughs as kids.  If there are, I assure you few have gotten to them and even fewer care.  Make My Own Music Video is just an example of the times and harkens back to a time where video game developers and publishers had no idea what to do with this new technology, but they knew that you could encode grainy versions of video, so why not?  For better or worse, gameplay video is below.

This wraps up the “test portion” of the Sega CD titles.  Future articles this month, I assure you, will have more games that are actually games.  I can’t promise that full motion video (FMV) games aren’t on the horizon and that they are seldom any more interactive than the games you see above, but at least they have direction and a real task to complete along with scoring and lives.  In the meantime, enjoy the video above that’s chock full of bad music, horrible editing by yours truly, a glimpse at the fashion disaster that was 1992, and the worst acting since the After School Special.  Oh, but it has Mark Wahlberg, which means it’s on the same level as an episode of Entourage, right?