Action 52 (1993). Play online

Summary

Action 52 for the Sega Genesis is the legendary unlicensed multicart that packs fifty‑two tiny games into a single cartridge. Built by FarSight Technologies from the ground up, it fixes most of the NES version’s infamous glitches and leans on the Genesis’s stronger hardware for smoother scrolling shooters and platformers. The box screamed $199—a price tag that made it an instant collector’s oddity, and today it’s prized more for its notoriety than any gameplay mastery.

The menu is a rainbow of choices: green for beginners, purple for intermediate, yellow for experts, white for challenge, and blue for multiplayer. A built‑in Randomizer will fling you into an unplanned level of one of the other games, and a quirky music demo showcases the synth‑heavy score from Mark Steven Miller and Jason Scher. I still find the featured Cheetahmen titles fascinating, even if the graphics are firmly “so‑bad‑they’re‑good.”

Storyline

The Cheetahmen is a side‑scrolling action game in the Action 52 cartridge for the Sega Genesis. In this version, the three Cheetahmen heroes set out to rescue cheetah cubs that have been captured by the evil Dr. Morbis and his minions.