Sega Genesis Realtec Earth Defense & Funny World / Balloon Boy

Realtec is a relatively unknown company which produced several unlicensed games for the Genesis, including the two mentioned here.

In Earth Defense, you take on the role of a jet pilot assigned to liberate five world continents from a technologically advanced army. It is also notable for being one of the few simultaneous two player vertical scrolling shoot ’em ups available on the Genesis. According to Sega 16, the game is horrid.

Balloon Boy and Funny World have a form of copy protection, which prevents it from being executed on some emulators. I love how a pirate company basically managed to pull this off better than Sega.

In Balloon Boy, your job is to pop as many balloons in a level as possible. When popping a balloon an item falls down. This item can either have a positive effect on the player’s score, or negatively affect his health.

Funny World consists of shooting various bears running over the screen. It’s like Stephen Colbert’s dream game. Besides shooting it is also possible to drop a stone-like ball out of the sky, to clear all the creatures on the screen. To clear a stage, the player has to reach a certain number of hits in a level. It is also important not to hit the princess. That last statement makes me want to make some sort of joke about Mario, but I’m drawing a blank.

Oddly enough, while the Realtec games have copyright dates from the 90s, it seems they weren’t actually released until the complete end of the Genesis, sometime between 1998 – 2000.

Realtec also released Whac-A-Critter, and possible some other games (some random Chinese Checkers thing). The former also has a rather rare controller, which was sold on eBay back in November of 09.

Anyways, the main reason that I’m mentioning these is that a seller has Balloon Boy & Funny World available for $1.00 ($7.00 shipped). Auction shows as more than 10 available, so they’re probably sitting on a crate of these. They also have Earth defense available for $19.95.

In all honesty, these are not very rare, or even remotely desirable, but who can argue for $1.00?