Can anyone identify this old Sega Genesis game?

Cafe Society
1

From my incredibly vague description, of course.
You commanded an army of (mostly) mythological critters, like Cyclopes, Hydras, and so forth. It was available, at least for the 16-bit Genesis, as a cartridge. Don’t recall if it was strictly single player, or if you could play it two player, as well.

You and the “computer player” took turns moving your units, one a time, on a map laid out with a hexagonal grid. There were various terrain types, which effected both the unit’s movement speed, and combat abilities. (Hypothetically, defending a mountainous hex from attack by a unit in grasslands/plains gave your unit a defensive bonus. But don’t quote me on that.)

Units accumulated exerience with each combat survived, and eventually “leveled up” into some more formidable version of themselves, or they simply gained in health/combat abilities with each level. Or possibly both.

(Like I said, I remember it only vaguely.)

Thinking about it further, it’s quite possible that you gained “summoning points,” or some other convention, for each castle (a single hex each) or town, or something similar, each round of combat, allowing you to bring in more reinforcements.

All that I can say definitively is that it was not Dark Wizard, released for the Sega CD. It was, however, pretty similar.

Which, of course, only helps if you remember Dark Wizard.

So, anyone got a guess? Or, a barely remembered old-school cartridge game of your own to track down?

2

Wild Guess:
Achron?

3

Nope. At least, it wasn’t any version of Archon I’m famililar with. The map for this one was an actual island/continent/whatever, divided into hexagons, that represented some real (in the game, at least) chunk of real estate.

Archon was played on a chessboard, IIRC, yeah? White and Black squares, with a couple that changed color, favoring either the white or black pieces in combat, as the game went on.

(Or mebbe that was in Archon 2, but it weren’t in the game I’m tryin’ ta find.)

Nice try, though. :slight_smile: It did have a similar feel.
Another detail that may or may not be accurate:
The actual combat between the units was resolved with no player input. (IOW, no arcade action, like Archon had)

It was closer to…
The Shining Force games, in terms of actual combat.

4

A bit more clarification, as details slowly* creep back:

The map that you played out each battle on was larger than a single “screen.” You could scroll around a decent amount of territory, with a single tv screen’s worth of map visible.

(IOW a single screen was maybe 1/4 to 1/10 the total map.)

*[sub]At this rate, I’ll have the title, publisher, and lead designer’s name retrieved from deep storage memory in about thirty years…[/sub]

5

I’m pretty sure the game you’re thinking about is called Master of Monsters. It matches pretty much all of your criteria.

6

Well, hell.

Chrutian, please take one “nicely done” out of petty cash. That be the one.

Thankee kindly. Been trying to figure out what that game was for something like two years, now. I’d rented it from a mom ‘n’ pop video/games joint, thought it was pretty nifty, then missed out on my chance to buy it when they closed shop and sold off the stock dirt cheap.

(And, obviously, I couldn’t recall the name of the thing, which makes tracking it down a little tough.)

Thanks again.

7

For a similar Genesis game with tanks, bases and aircraft, you might want to check out Herzog Zwei, which is very hard to find - and was used as a partial base for the design and feel of the more “modern” series of games called Command and Conquer.

8

This sounds kind of like Fantasy General, but I don’t know if that was out for the Genesis.