Mazin Saga for Genesis/Mega Drive can be hazardous to your ego

destructoid.com:

I’ve been doing some exploration into the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive catalog after having played through the Valis games and Gley Lancer. The Genesis isn’t what I’d call one of my blind spots, but I’m not as familiar with it as Nintendo’s early consoles. 

As it turns out, the depths of its library are pretty murky. I had not heard of 1993’s Mazin Saga: Mutant Fighter. In fact, if I had heard of it, I probably wouldn’t have been interested in playing it. And that would have been a shame. I would never know what an interesting game it is. On the other hand, my pride would still be intact.

Mazin Saga is the story of… Hold on, I think I missed something here. Okay, so there’s a text crawl that says that in the unimaginably distant future of 1999, humanity lost a war. We got attacked by “Godkaiser Hell,” and in the process of trying to fight their forces off, we kind of destroyed the environment. The survivors hid underground, and it’s looking pretty bad for them, but a person named Dr. Kabuto (Dr. Helmet?) has created Mazinger Z to save them all.

Because, you know, creating weapons really worked out favorably for us before.

Wait a minute. This sounds extremely familiar. Apparently, Mazin Saga is based on a manga that is a mash-up of the Devilman and Mazinger Z series. Er, maybe? Researching this is just confusing me more.

In any case, the Mazin Saga game is sort of a tokusatsu-style setup. You initially fight as a normal-sized dude through belt-scrolling beat-’em-up sections, but at the end of each level, you fight a boss as a giant-sized dude.

The brawler levels are a bit routine. There’s a good variety of enemies, but Mazinger doesn’t have much in the way of special moves. There are various ways you can swing your sword, but