Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude!
Sega Genesis
Back in the early 90's Sega was looking for a mascot to compete with the likes of the Super Mario Brothers series. They smartly decided on Sonic the Hedgehog, whose games became a roaring success. But one thing that a lot of people don't know is that Greendog: The Beached Surfer Dude was also in the running for the next big Sega mascot.
I remember hearing about this game when I was a kid. I would have been around 9 or 10 when it first came out. I didn't think much of it. The title of the game didn't appeal to me as I am not big on surfing or beaches at all. The game wasn't based on a cartoon or a major motion picture (yes, I was a sucker for those kinds of games back then). If somebody had given me the game, sure I would have given it a shot. But it wasn't anything I was going to go out of my way to procure.
So I completely missed out on this game as a kid. Which is sort of a new experience for this blog. So many of my classic game reviews I like to reminisce and talk about the good old times I spent playing these games. But I had never played Greendog until this year: 2017. Which is 25 years after the game first came out.
Not many people I know have ever played or even heard of Greendog. I probably would never have played it if it was not for my cousin Ryan, who loaned me a big box of his old Genesis games. Greendog was in this box. If you are following this blog and have been reading my Genesis reviews, you will notice that I give my cousin a shout out every time I review one of the games he has loaned me. The contribution to the blog is much appreciated.
I began playing the game with relatively low expectations. I figured that if the game was that good, I would have heard more about it as a kid. But at the same time, my cousin spoke highly of it. So I was willing to have an open mind and give it a shot.
The game begins with a narrated cut scene. Greendog wipes out while surfing and when he wakes up on the beach he discovers he has some kind of strange pendant around his neck. His blonde and buxom girlfriend Bambi is standing nearby, and she explains to him that the pendant is cursed and will cause all living creatures in his vicinity to go crazy and attack him. The only way to break the curse is to collect six artifacts that have been scattered around the Caribbean.
So off you go on a quest to recover these artifacts.
The game takes place from a 2D, side scrolling perspective. You control Greendog, who looks like a skinny beach kid with a really weird Donald Trump style haircut. Or is that supposed to be a hat? I can never tell. It appears to be both from different pictures I have seen. Needless to say, he is not as visually appealing or as marketable as Sonic the Hedgehog. So he was never going to be as popular.
Your main method of attack is by launching this little disc thing at your enemies. Is it a yo-yo? Is it a boomerang? The game never really says. But you throw it at your enemies and it kills them. That's all you really need to know.
The game progresses through many Caribbean themed stages. One level has you walking through the jungle, swinging from vine to vine over the waters. The next level may have you on the beach fighting off clam creatures and out of control birds that are attracted to your pendant. One of the levels which stood out to me as being pretty difficult (at least the first time through) is an underwater stage where there are a lot of tricky jumps and ill placed fish hooks that can instantly kill you.
Other stages include underground temples where you have to fight off possessed statues, a subway station where your pendant makes the tourists attack you, and a small village where you must fight off a native tribe. As you progress through these levels, you collect the pieces of the artifact needed for you to remove your pendant and lift the curse from your body.
There are a few minor boss fights in the game, but they are all pretty easy. They mainly consist of doing battle with a totem statue where its many lairs represent different attack modes. You have to wipe out each lair one by one while avoiding all the different attacks. That's really it as far as boss battles go. The game could have used a little more imagination in that category. There are definitely no villains here as iconic as Doctor Robotnik.
There are occasional bonus stages that the game throws in to keep things fresh. In these stages you must pedal Greendog's signature flying bicycle thingamajig and collect bonus hot dogs that are parachuted in from the sky. Who thinks this stuff up.
I found the game to be pretty fun to play. It took me two separate attempts to beat the game from start to finish. My first attempt, I made it to the tribal village stage before I lost all of my continues and had to give up. On my second attempt the next night, I beat the whole game. This game was definitely much more of a challenge the first time around. Once you get the hang of it, though, it is pretty easy.
The only thing I didn't like about the game were the rollerskating stages. You start on the left side of the screen and have to skate forward on a track, hitting a bunch of jumps with near perfect timing. All while avoiding an annoying respawning bird creature that keeps swooping in and trying to mess you up. These stages frustrated me like no other. Especially the last one. I nearly blew all my continues on the very last stage of the game. I would have been so mad if I would have had lost them all and had to start over from the beginning of the game again. It almost happened.
I am sure that the premise of the game would sound dumb if you were to explain it to someone. But surprisingly I found myself really enjoying the game. I think that if I had grown up playing this game I would have considered it a classic and I probably would be ready to give it a good old nostalgia A+. But I didn't grow up playing it, so it doesn't hold any sentimental value for me. I have to judge it by the time I had with it now.
And I had a good time with it! I couldn't help but feel like this game would have been right at home on my shelf back in the mid 90's. It is fun, it is a challenge. It has nice graphics, some innovative level design. There is a reason to go back and play it again from the beginning. The game is charming. There is a lot to see and you have a good time seeing it.
I don't think this game will ever go down as being a timeless classic or anything, but it certainly is a very fun title. And an underrated one at that. It should have gotten a lot more hype and build up back when it was released. I think a lot of people would have really loved this game if they'd gotten a chance to play it.
Overall:
B+
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