Back in 1989, I worked at the primary location of Lone Star Comics, a retail chain and mecca of popular culture in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was a great time to work at such a place and an amazing time to be a fan of cartoons, comic books, and the like. The Simpsons debuted on television that year, and Tim Burton’s first Batman movie inspired a new wave of Batmania, including a major ongoing comic book title, Legends of the Dark Knight. After years of stagnation, Disney reclaimed their crown with The Little Mermaid, their best animated film in forever.
The year also marked the North American debut of the Sega Genesis (after releasing the previous year in Japan as the Mega Drive), which created about as much buzz around Lone Star as the aforementioned entertainments, even though the store didn’t carry video games. I distinctly remember my boss’s son coming into Lone Star one day and announcing that the Sega Genesis was far superior to the NES. He said how awesome the pack-in title, Altered Beast was, and how it was much cooler than anything on the NES. When it came to graphics, he certainly had a point. While Altered Beast was a solid title game in terms of gameplay, it really lit up the screen with amazing visuals compared to what had come before on home consoles… and it was so edgy and “adult”!
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A full-time freelance writer, Brett Weiss is the author of the Classic Home Video Games series, The 100 Greatest Console Video Games: 1977-1987, Encyclopedia of KISS, and various other books, including the forthcoming The SNES Omnibus: The Super Nintendo and Its Games, Vol. 1 (A–M). He’s had articles published in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Game Informer, Classic Gamer Magazine, Video Game Trader, Video Game Collector, Filmfax, Fangoria, and AntiqueWeek, among others. Check him out at www.brettweisswords.com
