Electronic Gaming Monthly's Top 38 Full-Motion Video Games

For a brief moment in the 1990s, full-motion video was seen as the wave of the future. With CDs bringing what many magazines referred to as “near-limitless storage,” many developers chose to fill that up with grainy, poorly-acted footage shot by wannabe movie directors. The results were, to put it politely, disastrous, with many gamers left cold by the poor quality and lack of interactivity. These days, developers have found a lot of innovative ways to build a game around full-motion video, but that was not the case in the 1990s. And that made me wonder what Electronic Gaming Monthly thought of FMV. Did they have a favorite full-motion video game? Depending on how you count, Electronic Gaming Monthly reviewed a total of 38 full-motion video games between 1989 and 2009. That includes everything from on-rails shooters to point and click adventures to games built around you making music videos. In order to qualify for this list, the full-motion video needs to be front and center and more than just a few cinemas. There are a lot of games in the 1990s that hired a famous actor to be in a few cinemas that are mostly disconnected from the rest of the game. Instead, I want to focus on the games where the FMV is crucial. This allows us to talk about a lot of games and systems that we normally don’t get to cover, like the Sega CD, 3DO and CD-i. What we’re going to do today is countdown the top 38 full-motion video games using Electronic Gaming Monthly’s own words and scores. There’s no editorializing here, we’re just going to focus on what the critics said back when these games first came out. I hope your eyes are ready for a lot of grainy footage with D-list actors, because this is what happens when EGM ranks full-motion video. 0:00 – Introduction 2:17 – Commercial: Introducing Sega CD 2:49 – The Guy Game (PS2/Xbox) 3:47 – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Sega CD) 4:19 – Corpse Killer: Graveyard Edition (Saturn) 4:54 – Power Factory Featuring C+C Music Factory (Sega CD) 5:27 – Who Shot Johnny Rock? (CD-i) 6:03 – Supreme Warrior (3DO) 6:37 – Corpse Killer (32X) 7:10 – Supreme Warrior (32X) 7:46 – Star Wars Rebel Assault II: The Hidden Empire (PS1) 8:24 – It Came from the Desert (TurboGrafx-CD) 8:50 – Mad Dog McCree (3DO) 9:19 – Slam City with Scottie Pipen 9:47 – Star Wars: Rebel Assult (Sega CD) 10:26 – Commercial: Sega CD Games 10:59 – Tomcat Alley (Sega CD) 11:34 – Double Switch (Sega CD) 11:54 – Night Trap (Sega CD) 12:19 – Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective Vol II (TurboGrafx-CD) 12:49 – Surgical Strike (Sega CD) 13:30 – Dragon’s Lair (Sega CD) 13:50 – Mad Dog II: The Lost Gold (3DO) 14:10 – Prize Fighter (Sega CD) 14:30 – Revenge of the Ninja (Sega CD) 14:49 – Loadstar: The Legend of Rully Bodine (Sega CD) 15:10 – The Daedalus Encounter (3DO) 15:46 – Dragon’s Lair (3DO) 16:06 – Sewer Shark (Sega CD) 16:40 – Commercial: Prize Fighter 17:13 – Slam City with Scottie Pippen (Sega CD) 17:38 – Dragon’s Lair II: Time Warp (CD-i) 18:10 – Cobra Command (Sega CD) 18:35 – Night Trap (3DO) 19:05 – Quarterback Attack with Mike Didka (Saturn) 19:30 – Road Avenger (Sega CD) 19:57 – Dragon’s Lair (CD-i) 20:27 – Ground Zero Texas (Sega CD) 20:59 – Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective (TurboGrafx-CD) 21:24 – Time Gal (Sega CD) 21:54 – Space Ace (CD-i) 22:27 – Burn:Cycle (CD-i) 23:06 – Commercial: Ground Zero Texas 23:38 – Question of the Day Join our brand-new Discord Server:   / discord   Defunct Games is on Twitter:   / defunctgames   Defunct Games is on Facebook:   / defunctgames   Defunct Games is home to thousands of reviews, articles, comedy pieces, podcasts, features and more: www.defunctgames.com #FMV #Sega #FullMotionVideo