Back in 1991, Sega was getting ready to release the Mega CD in Japan, the often misunderstood add-on to what many consider to be one of the greatest consoles ever made – and it seems that nobody misunderstood that system more in its early days than Sega itself. Wonder what I'm on about? Well, have you ever looked into Sega's first-ever game for the system? NO? Then lucky you!
You see, back in December 1991 in Japan, the add-on launched alongside Sol-Feace and Heavy Nova – two third-party releases of middling quality – and Sega's debut on the format wouldn't come for another week. That game was Wakusei Woodstock: Funky Horror Band.
Developed by Advance Communication Company and published by Sega, this Japanese-exclusive RPG starred a stop-motion band made up of aliens who released several albums and singles before being completely forgotten about.
Sega's only Mega CD game of 1991 has hardly gone down in history as a classic, either, but playing it today is at least interesting from a historical perspective. As soon as the game boots up, you see an adequately animated intro sequence that recreates the band's most iconic song, POSEIDON.
The animation shows the lead singer of the band, Avivi (a purple/blue bulbous-eyed chicken thing), crash landing on planet Woodstock, and it’s your job to help them search the world and repair the ship. It's like an RPG version of Pikmin, but it's less appealing.
Not only is the gameplay extremely bland, but the audio and visual effects are, too – an odd situation when you consider that the first Sega-published Mega CD game should surely be trying to "sell" the hardware's capabilities. Beyond the introduction and voice acting, all of the visuals and audio are handled by the Mega Drive itself, making this a very poor advert for the expensive CD add-on.
Even by 1991’s standards, the game looks quite dated with its basic-looking Dragon Quest-style, top-down playstyle. The RPG fighting mechanics have musical elements attached in place of items and spells to help connect this forgettable game to the forgettable pop act, but very little else is going on here – and before long, you will want to turn the volume all the way down.
In short, Wakusei Woodstock: Funky Horror Band is only really notable for being the first Japanese-exclusive Mega CD title (there was little danger of it being localised, given that the band's fame was limited outside of Japan) and for marking Sega's publishing debut on the platform.