Man, The Pirates of Dark Water on Genesis takes me back. You start off as Ren, swinging a cutlass through jungle ruins while this weird, gloopy Dark Water stuff creeps in from the edges of the screen. The animation's actually pretty slick for '94—your crewmates Ioz and Tula have these exaggerated pirate swaggers that still hold up.

Ship battles are where it gets interesting. You’re not just trading cannon fire—you’ve got to time boarding actions right or you’ll get wrecked by enemy crews. First time I played, I totally underestimated how fast the Dark Water spreads in later levels. That black goo doesn’t mess around.

It’s got that classic "tough but fair" Sega vibe—you’ll die a lot figuring out enemy patterns, but pulling off a perfect sword combo against a monkey-bird thing feels great. Just don’t expect the treasure hunt to hold your hand. Half the fun was scribbling notes about weird symbols in the overworld.

Still one of the better pirate games from the 16-bit era, even if the difficulty spikes like a mutinous first mate.