LOCR Producer: The whole reason we have a room full of videogames is because we love playing them and we're always on the hunt for those awesome titles we can share.
General Chaos has showed up on a few recommendation lists, and it looked good enough but this one of those games that doesn't really liven up until you swap out those COM players for actual players. General Chaos is the whole reason I even knew the multitap for the Sega Megadrive existed.
This game plays like an isometric strategy game, which is already pretty rare among the 16-bit consoles (usually these titles were reserved for the PC gamers), but General Chaos has nice bright, easily discernible graphics and frantic, arcade action making it very suitable for the Megadrive. The game only requires you to use 3 buttons, but the on-field powerups, optional side-missions and different squad formations mean the strategy comes more from positioning your squad than learning complex button configurations.
General Chaos comes from a development group called Game Refuge Inc. which consisted of developers from Bally/Midway (who also worked on Xenophobe and Rampage). General Chaos is the first game from Game Refuge Inc., quirky, original and unrestrained.
I'm not sure what constitutes as a hidden gem, but for me, general Chaos was the definition of a hidden gem. I grew up with a Sega Megadrive, I thought I had a pretty good understanding of its in's and out's... Then someone suggested General Chaos. It's an original game that's heaps of fun to play and if you value an awesome multiplayer experience this game could be totally worth adding to your collection.
At the time of writing, I don't know of any Megadrive compilation that includes General Chaos and I don't know of any Virtual Console release. This contributes to the reason I feel General Chaos is a hidden gem, because if you missed it the first time there's a slim chance you've had the ability to play it since.
