Nintendo Switch’s higher-tier paid online service will offer subscribers some titles from the SEGA Mega Drive (SEGA Genesis overseas) line-up in addition to the Nintendo 64 offerings.

The basic Nintendo Switch Online subscription makes some games from the Japanese company’s NES and SNES 8- and 16-bit consoles available. Still, the Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack also offers a selection of games from two newer platforms. Animal Crossing: New Horizons, one of the Switch’s killer apps for 2020, adds a little something extra (the Happy Home Paradise DLC). But the game line-up could do with expanding, and with so many games coming out for the NES, SNES, Mega Drive, N64 quartet, the only obstacle for the big N is legal licensing in the “flea market”…

Nintendo has announced on Twitter that the SEGA Mega Drive game catalogue has been updated with five games. These are Altered Beast (SEGA, 1988; was one of the Mega Drive/Genesis launch titles, a pack-in title, beat ’em up), Dynamite Headdy (Treasure as the developer, SEGA as publisher, 1994, platformer), Sword of Vermillion (SEGA AM2, 1989/91 depending on region, action RPG). Thunder Force II (Technosoft, SEGA, 1989/90, shoot ’em up), and ToeJam & Earl (Johnson Voorsanger Productions, SEGA, 1991/92, action/roguelike). So, seeing these, it wasn’t hard for Nintendo to get the licences.

The five games are already available on the service, so you don’t have to wait for them to show up. Nintendo hasn’t differentiated between regions: the second video below is for the home turf, Japan, and even there, the list of games show no difference for the subscribers. They’re not bad games, but there are better ones on offer from the SNES’s big rival (and it was during this period, SEGA was smack talking; for this reason, many in the West consider this generation of consoles as the golden age of video games).

Source: Gematsu