It seems that nostalgia is in the air as Nintendo recently announced the SNES Classic, the successor to their first classic mini console. The NES Classic famously sold out worldwide seemingly minutes after its launch last Holiday season, and the SNES Classic is looking like it’ll repeat that performance once it goes on sale September 29th.

But there was more than just Nintendo hooking kids on video games in the 90s. Sega was there too, and they had a respectable enough market share - enough to try and cash in on the wave of nostalgia that Nintendo is already making bank on.

In come the Sega Genesis Flashback, the mini monument to classic gaming that answers the NES Classic. It boasts a library of 85 games, and the ability to play any of your old Sega cartridges you have laying around. The only question is: does it faithfully reproduce the gaming experience of the early 90s?

Well, in a word, no.

First off, it’s important to note this mini console isn’t made by Sega - it’s made by At Games, the same company that brought you the Atari Flashback. And those 85 games aren’t all Sega games - 28 of them are generic knockoff games like Pong and Space Invaders, games that were old long before the Sega Genesis came along.

Of the 57 games that are left, only 45 are legitimately from the Sega Genesis. The remaining 12 are either from the Master System or the Game Gear.

sega-genesis-flashback
via cnet

Still, 45 Genesis games is a pretty good number and more than twice the roster of games provided in the SNES Classic. There are some genuine classics here, like Sonic The Hedgehog, Golden Axe, Phantasy Star 1 through 4, Mortal Kombat, and Vectorman. These are games that most Sega kids grew up on, and are welcome additions to the console.

There are also some not-so classic games, like Adventures in the Park and Super Thunder Blade, and some even more conspicuous absences such as Ecco the Dolphin, Streets of Rage, and even Sonic The Hedgehog 3, arguably the best Sonic game of the series. It just doesn’t make any sense to make a Sega console and not include these renowned gems of the era.

Things get worse when you sit down to actually play. The emulation seems to be rather poor, with many games dropping frames and oddly garbled sound. Even the cartridges you slap in yourself suffer from the same issues. The controllers are wireless, but feel odd and cheap, with an unresponsive set of buttons. You can plug your own Sega controllers into the Flashback, which alleviates the problem somewhat, but how many of us actually kept our old Sega controllers?

With glaring omissions in its lineup and poor execution of emulation, the Sega Flashback is nowhere near the quality of the NES Classic. You’re better off waiting for Sega to do an official mini console, or just downloading some Sega games to your phone.