Behold! The work of a day!This here is a picture I made of one of my favorite childhood games, Phantom 2040 for the SNES and Sega Genesis/Mega Drive.Those that grew up in the 90s might remember this as a cartoon. Forget what channel, but it was probably Kids WB or Fox Kids. Pretty interesting and dark compared to the other cartoons of the time, so when I saw that there was a game of this at Blockbuster, I simply had to rent it back then. And eventually we bought it. Dad could never beat it (got to the final level a few times, but always lost). And I could not even get to the final level until about half a decade ago. Of course I had seen it through cheats, but never had legitimately gotten there before then.Now I had a Sega Genesis so I didn't play the SNES version until a couple of years ago...and I gotta say...the SNES version is easy as hell compared to the Genesis version. I don't know if it's the controls or what, but it's easy. As for which is better they both have their ups and downs. I like different sound tracks more on both systems, I like the sounds of the Genesis version more probably, but the SNES has some nice cutscenes here and there. Really doesn't matter which version you get at the end of the day as long as it ain't the PAL version (damn thing doesn't have any cutscenes. Just has text that tells you what happened in the cutscene you weren't allowed to see).And while I liked the cartoon I'm pretty sure I loved the game more. The cartoon was neat and all, but at the end of the day it felt really...weird, whereas the game just kicked ass and felt cool as hell. As a kid I always thought the game was the ending of the series, but when I got older and found the old episodes on youtube I found out the game was just a summary/alternate version of the story...which was a lot better in my opinion. I like characters and plot more in the game usually. I don't know if it's because she didn't talk as much in the game, but Rebecca Madison (the woman in red, main villain) felt like a threat. In the cartoon she was just a whiny bitch. In the game...she had a rather ominous feel to her drawings and was rarely seen until the end which helped portray her as someone to hate more than be irritated with. In the game it felt like she was actually an evil overlord of some empire whereas in the cartoon she felt more like a boring business woman.And speaking of Madisons, Maxwell Madison...dear god. He gave me nightmares. When I finally got the chance to see the ending of the cartoon I couldn't believe what they did. It was so damn disappointing compared to how the game handled it. All throughout the series you're lead to believe he was the evil monster of a man that killed the previous Phantom. Then at the end of the cartoon it's revealed to just be a misunderstanding. The game was satisfying as hell to me with how they handled him. That demonic skull thing that was always in Rebecca's scenes was creepy, but I just thought it was decoration. When the final boss fight came and it dropped down to fight I was like "Holy shit!". Damn bastard also kept me from seeing the ending for months with how tough it originally was.That being said it is probably best to at least see a few episodes of the cartoon beforehand because otherwise you aren't going to really understand who some characters are and why they're important. But if you want a sort of kickass Metroid-Vania experience then I would highly suggest you pick Phantom 2040 up.Here's the intro of the game: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhm93O… And here's the first level: www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF3iME…