I know of the Genesis game but never played it (though I do own the newer titles in the series), but did some digging to see what I could find to answer your questions:

Am I imagining this games difficulty? I feel like I am making little progress and I’m always getting ganged up on. / Does this game require a lot of grinding or repeating tasks before moving on?

Everything I’m finding is saying yes to both, with the grinding resulting in the increased money, stats, contacts, equipment and practicing/refining your own strategy for completing runs. Luckily, there are multiple strategies for “quick” grinding, and certain equipment and stats that really help whether it be just straight up powerful stuff or specifically helps to deal with pesky foes like ghouls. Because there are different sections to the grinding with different strategies to doing it efficiently, I’ll leave the specifics out since they get a little spoiler-y in case you want to figure it out on your own. But, do let me know if you’d like me to reply with specific strategies that may be seen as too much of a walkthrough or too spoilery for some (they don’t seem like gigantic story spoilers or anything so if the grinding gets too tedious and you stop having fun, they might be worth knowing about).

Should I be killing these innocents I see on the street? I try to get shadow runs but they seemingly always involve killing ghouls, which bend me over and spank my samurai butt. I’ve put my morals on hold and have been tediously murdering the population for the little nuyen and items they have.

Luckily the Karma explanation section on the Shadowrun strategywiki actually explains this pretty well. I went through it and it looks like a straight up explanation without story spoilers so I feel comfortable just linking it here for you: https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Shadowrun_(Sega_Genesis)/Karma#Karma

-is the samurai class the all-rounder character or should I just restart as a shaman or netrunner?

I found a really good explanation on the Shadowrun wiki: https://shadowrun.fandom.com/wiki/Shadowrun_(Sega)/Archetype. Thankfully this also gives a much needed explanation of the differences between classes without spoilers. It seems like this info is very important to know upfront depending on what your playstyle is like.

As far as the game itself, I did not play the genesis version but definitely looked into it after I got the Shadowrun trilogy that GOG games gave out for free a few years back. From what I found, the Sega Genesis version is superior to the SNES version in a few ways but a lot of people enjoyed both. I really like the style and concepts presented in the series and the newer Shadowrun trilogy seems to have taken all of that and improved on it, with each game getting better and better at giving the experience intended. I’d say it’s worth taking a look at if you enjoy the Genesis game, or if you really like the elements of the Genesis game but aren’t enjoying it so much, the newer series might be what you’re looking for.

Edit: Spelling, grammar and formatting.

Edit 2: Also, here is a link to a PDF of the original game manual for the Sega Genesis version, which helps navigate the UI and buttons, etc., just in case you need it since manuals were kind of a big deal back in the day!

Yes, it’s great, one of my favourites on the Sega. Far more fun than the SNES adventure game.

I start as a decker. I think he might move a little faster to begin with which helps keep ahead of the gangs in the starting area. When they come, you can zig zag away from them to stay ahead, just keep doing that having them chase you around town in circles, taking pot shots when it’s safe. Some of the gangers drop medkits when they die, I sell these to more quickly get a better gun/armour.

There’s no value to killing civilians, you might even lose karma, just don’t do it.

With the shadowruns, just keep walking into Mr Johnson’s booth, if it’s a ghoul run, cancel the conversation and walk back in again. Most of the runs offered should be simple escort missions or courier jobs.

Once you get some karma and boost some stats a bit, and buy a better gun, you’ll have more survivability. Then you can take on some ghoul runs, which are the easiest way to make quick cash early on - get your negotiation up a few points and only take the run if it pays okay. Don’t bother taking a run that pays 15nuyen per ghoul for example, that’s a waste of your time.

Don’t upgrade your pistol/shotgun/SMG skills. Only upgrade firearms. The sub categories of firearms will go up to whatever your firearm skill is when you do upgrade it. (ie If you put a point in pistol, then you will continue to raise that skill as usual. But if you get firearm up to level 10 and then upgrade pistol, or smg, or shotgun, it will go straight to level 10 as well)

You can pretty easily get the Ares Predator after not too many simple runs. You’ll get familiar with so the places doing these runs, but:

Shiawase nuke plant = South

Halloweeners = South East

Chop shop = East

Abandoned building = north East

Prison = west

Coffin motel = centre

Weapons shop = centre/east

The two pubs are north west

Boris greenhouse = north/north east

One more place south west, can’t remember what they call it

I found the netrunner jobs more entertaining and rewarding. Gangs are tough initially, once you get better weapons you go through them like a hot knife through butter.

SNES version is very linear by comparison. Do a task, find the key, get to the next area, rinse repeat.

One of my favourite games for the Genesis. It was my introduction to Shadowrun and to this day, I can’t begin to describe how it moulded my conception of cyberpunk and my own writing as a result. It’s one of three games that, in history, has legitimately changed my view of video games (Shadowrun for Genesis, Fallout 3, and XCom Enemy Unknown/Within)

Now, for your questions:

• You’re not imagining the difficulty. I too recently tried playing it on an emulator and found it more difficult than I remember. I think it’s because the slight lag on emulators between firing your pistol and it actually firing it is enough on the emulator that you simply can’t win a fight. This (I’m guessing) is because of modern displays rather than old CRTs that it was designed for, kind of like jumping with Mario feels just a little bit different.
• It’s pretty grindy in some respect. But that’s kind of the reason that it felt so different to me back then. You’re a Shadowrunner. You’re doing jobs. Yes there’s a quest, but it’s one of the first games I remember where you could just ignore it for a while and punch a clock to go hack some corporation if you wanted to.
• Killing innocents is entirely up to you, Chummer.
• Samurai class is the all around’er. But I think Decker is the “canonical” way to play because decking is a fundamental part of the gameplay aesthetic.

Man, I remember it being pretty tough at first until you get better gear. I made most of my money hacking into the matrix and doing runs there. I think I enjoyed the net running part the most.

I kinda want one that’s a mix of the SNES version and the Genesis version. The genesis version is great as an arcade game. It’s kinda like Gauntlet in the overall loop. While the snes version is an RPG with a questionable combat system. Combining the RPG elements and a story with the infinite random missions of the Genesis version would be tits.

Really appreciate all the comments and personal experiences with the game! Happy to feel I wasn’t the only one who had an initial hard time.

i learned my lesson on killing innocents when accidentally walked into the star station and they fine me all of my nuyen… still loving the game but i think I’m going to restart again with all the fresh new knowledge.

genesis seemed the way to go for this game (for my first experience). always interesting in the genesis snes console era where, despite the names of the games and their IP being the same, the experiences were very different. would love to see that confusion happen in the modern console generation haha.

thanks again!