Retro Scan of the Week: “52 Super Video Games in One Cartridge!”
December 4th, 2006 by Benj Edwards
Ah, the venerable Action 52 cartridge, long the butt of video game jokes everywhere. This cartridge was probably some greedy bastard’s idea of a get-rich-quick scheme in the video game world: throw together 52 crappy, buggy, quickly developed “games” into one cartridge and sell it for $79-99 (originally $200!) a pop. Needless to say, Active Enterprises didn’t last long. These days, the NES version of the Action 52, while containing some of the worst video games of all time, is also one of the most sought-after carts by collectors due to its rarity. And the Genesis version isn’t any better, by the way.
My question to you is: did anybody actually have an Action 52 cart (NES or Genesis) back in the day? If so, what are your memories of it? Did you like The Cheetahmen?
If you use this image on your site, please support “Retro Scan of the Week” by giving us obvious credit for the original scan and entry. Thanks.
December 4th, 2006 at 3:00 pm
It’s a pile of crap, that’s for sure, but a pile of crap that I long to have in my collection.
December 4th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Well, I remember when the NES appeared on Polish market. It was early 90’s and in the rest of the world it was rather a history, but in the “eastern Europe” it hadn’t been known. It came into Poland as a clone under name “Pegasus”. And I remember cartridges “198 games in one!”, “250 games in one!”, etc. But I wonder if they were legal, or illegal… :>
December 4th, 2006 at 5:40 pm
CHEETAHMEN!
And actually, I DO prefer the Genesis version to the NES…
December 6th, 2006 at 6:35 am
The Genesis version is much better, actually. Which isn’t saying much. But there’re less programming flaws.
December 11th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Is that Genesis cart available somewhere? I’d love to have it to use with my Nomad!
February 4th, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Late to the game here, but I must have been one “lucky” fella cuz I got this game for the NES the Christmas it came out. I know my Dad got it from like a QVC like channel (where he’d also get me cool baseball cards and stuff).
The games pretty much ALL sucked, and had weird bugs and glitches. The prize winner was the cheetah game though. It actually looked like it had some production values. It was the ONLY game that had any kind of modern gameplay (i.e., scrolling screens, multiple levels, storyline).
I still own it and would never get rid of it. I even still hear the music from that cheetah game, which was kind of reminiscent of the background noise from that nineties song (“it takes two to make a thing go right… or whatever).