2025/10/13: Sega Genesis: Earnest Evans, Dinosaurs for Hire, Virtua Fighter 2

[VideoGameCritic]

I hope you like Sega Genesis reviews! Got a lot to discuss here.

The Earnest Evans re-review was necessitated by the fact that I am currently reviewing the Sega CD version, along with Annet Returns, so stay tuned for that. My original Earnest Evans review was published in 2001! Time flies...

Dinosaurs For Hire is a brand new review that I wrote a while back (probably last year) but it got lost in the shuffle. I probably have 100 nearly-complete reviews sitting in my files at any time. Anyway the game isn't bad.

The Virtua Fighter 2 review is part of my effort to spruce up my Virtua Fighter reviews. The original review was posted in November 1999, and was a little lacking in detail.

Okay, now it's your turn to talk about these...

[Stalvern]

The tangled puppet strings analogy is a perfect description of what it's like to play Earnest Evans. Ridiculous game, one that I always pull out for a quick laugh and then immediately get sick of.

Typo in the Virtua Fighter 2 review: "The game lifts its characters, stages, and moves from the Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn, 1996)," which is missing a word or two. But to fix it, instead of saying "the Saturn Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn, 1996)" and making your standard parenthetical redundant, how about this? "The game lifts its characters, stages, moves, and name from Virtua Fighter 2 (Saturn, 1996)" – it avoids the issue and gets a bit of extra snark in.

[Retro STrife]

Good stuff and pretty funny too. I played Dinosaurs for Hire a few years back, and I agree with your review. It's about as mediocre as it gets - maybe D-level gameplay, but the dinosaur premise and co-op give it a slight boost to average.

But since you mentioned the Earnest Evans box art, I gotta say the same for Dinosaurs for Hire. I actually bought this game solely based on its box art. I had never heard of the game until a few years ago, when I saw it for sale at a retro game store. This thing demands that you look at it- I mean, we got a crazy dinosaur with a machine gun, in a pig pile with other dinosaurs. I figured.. best case, this is an amazing hidden gem, like Contra with dinosaurs .. worst case, it completely sucks but it's worth playing for the novelty alone. Turns out neither applies and it just hovers somewhere in the middle. But what publisher would waste money on "quality", or blow it on "developers", when you can just sell a game with this:

[VideoGameCritic]

Thanks for the feedback!
I'm fixing the typo and adding the Dinosaurs for Hire cover art for good measure!

"teamwork makes the dream work"

[matmico399]

No comment on the particular games but I really like how you're putting the original box art on more and more reviews. It brings back some nostalgia and is a nice touch.

[mbd36]

I'd forgotten there's Virtua Fighter on the Sega Genesis. Relic from when games were still transitioning from 2D to 3D.

[Anchoa79]

Virtua Fighter Animation on Game Gear was much better than this atrocity.