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Comix Zone, released in 1995 is a rather unusual beat’em up for only one player developed and released by Sega for the Genesis / Mega Drive in August 1995.

Unlike most other beat’em up games released at the 16bit era, Comix Zone is a complete 2D experience without different planes for the player to use, its also for only one player and has till today a most unusual graphical style based on a comic book experience.

The protagonist and comic writer Sketch Turner is working on his latest projects he called “Comix Zone” in which the Earth is attacked and invaded by an alien race based upon Sketch Turner’s own nightmares and imagination. Somehow, a mutant with the name Mortus escapes the comic during a thunderstorm and sends Turner into the Comix Zone since he has no powers in the real world. Now Sketch Turner has to fight his own aliens in the comic.

The cool thing about the game is that it is organized like a comic, with Turner having to beat any enemies in a comic images and has to survive from page to page including some funny graphical effects.

Beside that all, the game plays relative like a traditional beat’em up game with a Punch, Kick and Jump control layout, different weapons to find and a few items which can be stored by the player to overcome the different obstacles in the Comix Zone.

 – You can enlarge most of the images here by clicking on them –

While Comix Zone received good ratings and is kinda a cult classic today for not a few beat’em up fans, it was really plagued by the fact that it was released  a bit too late in the 16 bit era circle.

Funny enough it was advertised as the first truly

The Sega Saturn and the Sony Playstation were both released already and the impact of the new 3D games was so big that Comix Zone was simply overseen by a lot gamers at the time.

Comix Zone did never get a sequel but was ported to the Gameboy Advance in Europe (2002) ..this port got a new soundtrack which was criticised by fans while it was composed by the same musican, Howard Drossin.

It also focused itself more on the platforming parts. Comix Zone was also ported / emulated for the Sega Sonic compilation games for the Playstation 2 and the Ultimate Genesis Collection for PS3 and XB360. You can also get it alone via PSN since 2011.