SegaBase Volume 3 - Mega Drive / Genesis

Page 3

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Other SegaBase articles: Older Systems | Master System and Game Gear | Mega Drive/Genesis | Mega CD/Sega CD | 32X | Saturn | Dreamcast

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Table of contents of this page

Table of contents

• SegaBase Volume 3 - Mega Drive / Genesis
  • Page 3
  • Winds of fortune
  • Twilight time
  • In retrospect
  • The future?
  • Genesis/MegaDrive factoids
  • Sources

go to: Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3

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Winds of fortune

As the fateful year of 1994 began to unfold, Sega was still the dominant force in the North American videogame market and was poised to remold the industry in its own image. By the end of the year, Sega was a troubled company. It was beset within by disputes between its Japanese and American branches. It was operating under a mountain of debt and practically nonexistent profits. It was having great difficulty supporting all of the various products it had on the market. It was having an image problem with both developers and gamers, who felt Sega had become fat, sassy, and directionless. Those were not its only problems. Sega was under assault from without by its rivals. It was already seeing the rise of the new nextgen wave, the 32-bit consoles, and could ill afford to be left behind. It would watch as a resurgent Nintendo would reassert itself and win the first great console war. It would also see the arrival of a new player on the console scene, a former third-party vendor for both Sega and Nintendo that would unveil its own nextgen videogame system before the year was out and thus initiate the second great console war. The time had come for the Genesis to step aside.

It is a rule of thumb within the videogame industry that the average market cycle of any given console is five years. As the year 1994 opened, the Genesis was already six years old and showing its age rather badly. This was the time that another vendor would have had its nextgen system ready to unleash upon the public, taking over the market in place of its aging predecessor. Unfortunately, Sega was having problems doing just that. Sega CD had gone nowhere, and both Sega of Japan and Sega of America were fighting over the correct vision regarding the path to a 32-bit videogame system - the hallmark of the new nextgen wave that was already beginning to wash over the marketplace. This particular issue is best addressed elsewhere; suffice it to say that a definite successor to the Genesis was not certain in 1994. Sega's Japanese executives blamed Sega of America president Tom Kalinske for mishandling the American business and reasserted themselves. By 1995, Sega of Japan was in effect running Sega of America as it tried to deal with what it perceived to be Kalinske's bad judgement.

Actually, it was back in 1992 that the winds of fortune started to blow against Sega. Sega was the new master of the U.S. videogame market at that time; however, its continued rule in that coveted position was not completely assured. Having seized the throne from longtime rival Nintendo the year before, Sega had wasted no time in committing many of Nintendo's same mistakes. In fact, Sega had already begun the process years before their swift ascendancy to power. You can go right down the list: the restrictive licensing agreements (not as harsh as Nintendo's, perhaps, but still quite strict), the all-too-familiar and carefully manipulated "inventory management" techniques, the expensive (and not always successful) side ventures, the emphasis of product over substance, and so on. Almost every single mistake that both Atari and Nintendo had made in their respective turns in the catbird seat were now being committed by Sega; and just as its predecessors had behaved before, Sega seemed blind to its own growing corporate arrogance. Sega made grandiose plans for a videogame future molded in its own image, confident that the new systems and software it already had on the drawing board or beginning production would redefine the industry as everybody knew it. Nobody at Sega was listening when former ally Trip Hawkins tried to warn them in 1993 that they simply did not have the resources to support all of those systems. Not that he had any credibility anymore with Sega - he had jumped the Sega fold by backing the launch of Panasonic's ill-fated 32-bit 3DO console that same year. Of course, Sega's behavior did not go unnoticed. It was more sensed than known at this point by its loyal customer base, who were becoming confused and more than a little annoyed at Sega's seemingly never-ending array of expensive software, peripherals, upgrades, and systems. It was indeed noted by the industry watchdogs, who tried to warn Sega of what was happening just as Hawkins had tried - even though Sega still wasn't listening. It certainly did not escape the ire of the third party developers, the one group that represented the key to success for any videogame system. One licensee put it rather bluntly when he said, "As often happens, a revolutionary accomplishes a coup and becomes the next despot. Sega was as bad as Nintendo becasue Sega wanted to be Nintendo." They neither forgave nor forgot the cold shoulder treatment that they were now beginning to receive - something to which they were already accustomed from Sega's rival. Interestingly enough, though, many of their eyes were looking back at a resurgent Nintendo - who was suddenly all smiles and warm hugs again. "Come back to my fold," the plumber promised. "I'm sorry. I'll do better this time." The third parties had no problem with this proposition - after all, healthy competition among multiple platforms, with them providing the requisite software (and pocketing the profits along the way) was what they had wanted all along.

More than anybody else, Nintendo had watched, endured, and studied Sega's sudden takeover of a market that they could rightly claim to have single-handedly revived from certain death almost a decade before. Nintendo had expended over US$25 million on the SNES launch back in 1991 and everything had seemed to be on the right track, only to see Sega not only survive the launch but almost blow the SNES out of the water in 1992. Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi commissioned a study by the independent Market Data Corporation (MDC) as to Nintendo's future in the videogame industry, and MDC's results were delivered at a special meeting of the board of directors. That report, combined with the insights of Nintendo's own analysts, spelled out in cold and inescapable logic why the Genesis had succeeded against them. It was a sobering assessment.

• First, Nintendo had failed to grasp the significance of sewing up the nextgen market even at the expense of current market sales. The success of the Genesis in a market that by all reason should have been Nintendo's was evidence enough for this observation.
• Second, the SNES needed a strong library of games if it was ever to have a chance of catching the Genesis. Sega's Sonic franchise and the ever-popular EA Sports library, both popularized by Genesis, were cold proof of that inescapable fact.
• Third, Nintendo needed to diversify its software libraries if it wanted to retain its customer base. The young kids, Nintendo's traditional targets, would always be there, but the original generation of Nintendo gamers were getting older and developing more diverse tastes. Sega's new system and games better appealed to them; therefore, they were buying Sega and not Nintendo. To borrow a quote from the Star Trek episode "Shore Leave," "The more sophisticated the mind, the greater the need for the simplicity of play." Nintendo still enjoyed its near-synonymous identity with videogames as a whole, but it would have to release new and better games and expand its presence in other genres in order to recapture the older gamers that it was losing to Sega.

The aging 8-bit NES was by now too old to maintain Nintendo's monopoly. The 16-bit SNES was superior to the Genesis in almost every aspect save raw processing power, but it lacked market presence and good, diverse software. The SNES was all Nintendo had, for despite its announcements of its own nextgen console (Project Atlantis, aka Ultra 64, aka N64), Nintendo's executives knew full well that the new system would not be ready until 1996 at best. They would have to remold the image of the SNES in the eyes of Western gamers in such a way that it could successfully take on Sega's current and nextgen systems simultaneously. With this in mind, Nintendo reasserted itself and began a comeback the likes of which has yet to be duplicated in the history of the videogame industry.

One of the very first things that Nintendo did was to start revamping its software library with higher quality and more diverse titles. It secured an exclusive deal with Capcom in 1992 to make the console ports of the populr Street Fighter 2 arcade games exclusive to the SNES. That didn't stop Capcom from squeezing out a Genesis port of Street Fighter 2 Special Champion Edition, but it did mean that the console port of Super Street Fighter 2 would be a SNES exclusive for four long years. It was a blow to the Genesis software library that would see no solution until the following year, and then by from a different vendor entirely.

Another approach that Nintendo tried was augmenting the processing power of the console through the use of external processors fitted inside specially designed SNES carts. The Super FX is the best known of these, and StarFox is the best known Super FX title. It was a well-designed space shooter featuring 3D polygonal ships whose game engine was almost exclusively handled by the Super FX. This freed up the system resources inside the SNES and made for one very fast, great-looking, and great-playing game. It was impressive, and it made Nintendo a lot of money, but there would be few other Super FX games. These and other such customized co-processor carts were very expensive to produce, and it was not long before Nintendo began other, cheaper avenues of assault on Sega. On 1 May 1992, Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa lowered the price of the SNES to just $150. This was partly to celebrate the legal victory that Nintendo had just won over Atari and its unlicensed Tengen games, but it also gave Nintendo the chance to better position the SNES to potential customers. The price reduction was a move that Nintendo's Peter Main, vice president of marketing, heartily approved. He had wanted the US$150 price tag right off the start at the U.S. system launch. "I could have sold an extra million," Main said. Sega's Tom Kalinske promptly dropped the price of the Genesis to US$130 in reply, but at least sales of SNES consoles began to pick up. The Genesis was still the cheaper console, but not by much anymore.

There is one key event in 1993 that bears on the first great console war. It is the "violence in videogames" debate and how became the political quagmire that it did. This is not the place to deal with that particular subject in great detail, though. That is better left to the history of the Sega CD, which played a more prominent role in the ensuing debate than any other single videogame system. Instead, let us examine the true cause of the affair. Not surprisingly, Nintendo was behind it.

The videogame sensation known as Mortal Kombat was first released to U.S. arcades in 1992. A Midway/Williams product, it was an instant hit. A fighting game in the best Street Fighter 2 tradition, it distinguished itself with its own character mythos and array of secret and finishing moves. It was the latter that caused the biggest stir. Once an opponent had taken enough of a pounding to be near collapse, he or she would stand in place and begin to sway dizzily. An unearthly voice would then solemnly intone "FINISH HIM!" - at which point you were supposed to execute your character's trademark finishing move. If performed correctly, the results were spectacularly bloody - disembowling, decapitation, flaying, spines ripped out, hearts ripped out, and so on. That had been a deliberate choice of the game's production team. "It became a huge part of the game," noted designer Ed Boon. "We didn't know that was going to be such a big attraction. It just happened." Acclaim Entertainment owned the exclusive rights to any console ports of Mortal Kombat and its successors. Both Sega and Nintendo wanted the game badly, and both paid Acclaim well to get it. There was just one minor difference between the two, but it would prove to be the distinguishing selling point between them. The Genesis port was faithful to the arcade original, right down to the bloody finishing moves. Nintendo's was not. Acclaim was forced to remove the finishing moves from the SNES port due to Nintendo's strict quality control standards. "Having a toned-down version for Nintendo - do you guys really want us to do that?" Acclaim reps warned. "Does that really make sense?" It did not to many of Nintendo's American members, but they were not the ones running the company. Both were released in September of 1993. Guess which one sold better? That's right - you win the booby prize. The Genesis port of Mortal Kombat outsold the SNES version by a ratio of 4-to-1. "Street Fighter 2?" Genesis fans would sneer. "Who needs it?! We've got Mortal Kombat - and uncensored to boot." SNES owners were furious at the decision to deliberately gymp up their port, and they let it be known to Nintendo.

There was only one thing Nintendo could do to stop this unexpected surge in sales for the Genesis. Fight dirty. If Sega was going to take a stand on violent videogames as a positive selling point, then Nintendo would have to come up with a way to pull the rug out from under them. Nintendo began lobbying the U.S. Congress about the rise of violence in videogames, and willingly provided carefully edited videotapes containing footage from the Genesis port of Mortal Kombat and the Sega CD game Night Trap to anybody who would listen. One of these was U.S. Senator Joseph P. Lieberman (D) of Connecticut. He had heard some of the hubbub and was curious as to what it was all about. Lieberman obtained a copy of Mortal Kombat as a favor to his chief of staff, Bill Andreson, who son was interested in the game but who also had misgivings about buying it. "I was startled," Lieberman would later recall. "It was very violent, and as you know, rewarded violence." The rest, as they say, is history. The one thing that Nintendo got out of the U.S. congressional hearings of 1993-1994 into videogame violence was the smearing of Sega's reputation in the minds of America's parents. They would now begin second-guessing their children's judgement and seek to protect them from the perceived threat. By openly promoting such violent fare, Sega was guilty of poisoning the minds of America's youth. Whether or not that was true was beside the point. Nintendo had caused a shift in public opinion against Sega, and it was all that they needed.

By the beginning of 1994, both Sega and Nintendo had their respective consoles marked down to US$100 each. The two were now on an even playing field as far as the more informed gaming public was concerned, who had cared little for the congressional hoopla, so all eyes now turned to the software. Sega's was the same as always - the expected Sonic titles, the usual array of platformers and action games, and some kick-ass sporting games. No change. Not so over at Nintendo. They were the ones who were innovating now. 1994 would see Nintendo release the two SNES games that finally brought it back to a position of strength in the videogame market. The summer of 1994 would herald the coming of Super Metroid, considered by Nintendo fans as the greatest platform shooter ever made. Metroid had been one of the hit shooters for the venerable NES and its fans had been clamouring for Samus to return in an improved SNES sequel. They got their wish, and the game sold by the truckload. Super Metroid sales would pale in comparison, though, to the monster hit that Nintendo was about to unleash just in time for the fall shopping season.

One of the most noted programming houses from the glory days of the NES was a company called Rare. They were best known for their Double Dragon and Battle Toads fighting games, both of which were hits at the time. It was not long after that Rare dropped off the radar screen and did not re-emerge until 1994. When they did, it was with the killer app of the year. Donkey Kong Country, based on the original Nintendo arcade game, was without doubt one of the best-looking platformers to ever grace a 16-bit console. Rare's development teams had found a way to convert 24-bit animation sequences into a format that a 16-bit console rich in system resources could handle - a console, say, like Nintendo's SNES. The game's pre-rendered graphics were all created on a high-end SGI workstation and then ported to the SNES. The game's humor was lifted straight from the dry wit typical of England. Oh, yeah - it was a great-playing game, too. It was also the videogame hit of the 1994 holiday shopping season. Over 2.2 million copies of Donkey Kong Country were pre-ordered - far more than Nintendo claimed it could deliver in time for Christmas. The initial shipment of 500,000 cartridges were already sold even before they had a chance to be put on store shelves, and a second shipment sold out within the week. It would go on to sell over 9 million copies during the official lifetime of the SNES, making it Nintendo's second-best selling game (behind Super Mario Brothers 3 for NES). The roles were now reversed. In comparison, Sega's Sonic and Knuckles seemed rather lame. There was a cooler Sega game out there, but Star Wars Arcade required the 32X to play and most folks simply did not want to buy the expensive peripheral required to play it. Sega still outperformed Nintendo in overall holiday sales, but Nintendo had the #1 game of the season.

The genre diversification issue was also addressed by Nintendo in the years following the MDC study, and one genre in particular deserves special mention. The lack of role-playing games (RPGs) had always been a glaring weakness of the Genesis software library. It was not the the console did not have them; rather, it did not have enough to satisfy fans of this rapidly growing genre. This is ironic once you consider the fact that it was none other than Sega who first introduced the U.S. videogame market to console RPGs back in 1987 with Yuji Naka's groundbreaking Phantasy Star for SMS. Naka's game eventually evolved into its own franchise, with three more titles in the series released by Sega for Genesis. There were also the two Shining Force games by Climax Graphics and two other early efforts for the console - Will Harvey's The Immortal and Yu Suzuki's Sword of Vermillion. While we are at it, let us not forget Ancient's Beyond Oasis and Falcom's Ys 3: Wanderers of Ys. This handful of games were the best RPGs that the West would ever see for the console, and there weren't that many more of the average or bad ones, either. Japan was lucky in that they managed to get a few more, but only a few. These included a special edition reissue of the original Phantasy Star in all its 8-bit glory, Falcom's Dragon Slayer: The Legend of Heroes series, Hot-B's Blue Almanac, Compile's charming Madou Monogatari, Namco's Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (based on the anime TV series of the same name), and Japan Media's Surging Aura. All in all, even by liberal estimates there were only some two or three dozen RPGs in a worldwide software library of several hundred official titles. Unfortunately, even the best of these simply could not measure up to the avalanche of RPGs that were being released by Nintendo for the SNES. It was a lost opportunity for Sega upon which its competitor eagerly seized. "While Super NES pushed out Final Fantasy and its sequels," noted Game Players in their holiday 1995 issue, "Sega almost entirely ignored the role-playing audience." Nintendo had openly courted the RPG community ever since the days of the NES, and the resource-laden SNES made the prospect of producing better and more sophisticated efforts all the more tantalizing. It was not a big niche, to be sure, but was growing fast - and its many denizens would willingly pay full retail for quality software. Since Nintendo need all of the market share it could get to regain its former prominence, it quickly moved to claim RPGers for its own before Sega took them away. There were dozens of RPGs being released for the SNES back in Japan on a regular basis, and Nintendo's quality control people made sure that many of the best of these made it to Western shores. The company had already enjoyed success on its own with two Zelda games for the NES, so it made sure that Zelda: A Link to the Past for SNES would be the best yet. In fact, it turned out to be one of the console's best selling games. In addition, Nintendo managed to keep its two best third-party RPG programming houses in the fold, and they are names that are whispered in revered awe by RPGers even today. Both Enix and SquareSoft continued their efforts for Nintendo, although Square did take the time to dabble with the Genesis hardware with Bahamut Bahant Senki - which was later reissued in a superior remake as Bahamut Lagoon for SNES. It would be the only Square title to ever put in an appearance on a Sega console.

Enix is best remembered for its Dragon Quest (aka Dragon Warrior) series, which made the successful transition from NES to SNES and is still in production for today's current crop of videogame systems. Other notable Enix titles for the SNES include the ActRaiser series, Evo: The Search for Eden, Star Ocean, and Terranigma. Square, on the other hand, needs no introduction. Their best-known calling card, the Final Fantasy franchise, first made its debut on the NES and against all odds became one of the console's hit titles in Japan. As with Enix, Square's most notable franchise also made the successful transition to the SNES. The steampunkish Final Fantasy 3, one of several Final Fantasy titles released for the SNES, is considered by all hands to be the finest example of a fantasy RPG ever burned into a cartridge ROM. It does not receive the title of best RPG ever created for a cartridge-based console, though. That belongs to another Square title, 1995's legendary sci-fi RPG Chrono Trigger. Other notable SNES RPG efforts by Square include such well-known titles as the Breath of Fire series, the Romancing SaGa series, Secret of Evermore, Secret of Mana, and the delightful Treasure Hunter G. Square was also responsible for the RPGs based on two popular franchises at the time - Bandai's Sailor Moon: Another Story and Nintendo's Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Silver Stars. All told, there were well over a hundred or more RPGs from a dozen or so different vendors available for the SNES, and at least a good two-fifths of those made it to Western shores. They pushed the console for all it was worth, and since RPGs generally do not require as fast a processor as an arcade or sports title for decent gameplay, they made the SNES shine. It was no wonder that Sega's best RPGs for the Genesis, from the few that were available, seemed rather pale and shabby in comparison. Genesis lacked the audiovisual resources that Yamauchi had insisted on including with the SNES, and the difference was telling once the two began to duel it out in side-by-side comparisons. However you chose to interpret the causes and effects, there is no doubt that Sega missed a golden opportunity by failing to exploit the rise of the RPG genre more thoroughly than it did. They left the door wide open for Nintendo, with the inevitable result that SNES became the console of choice for RPGers. Remember, it was but a small niche of the market, but it grew rapidly as the 1990s rolled on. This sudden surge of interest in RPGs came at a critical time for both companies, and it would eventually prove to be one of the mainstay forces driving the videogame market from that point onward. Sega may have been the one to bring the first RPG to the West, but it was its rival Nintendo who would wind up reaping the bounty of this particular harvest.

By the end of 1994, Nintendo was back on top of the game. Sega's market share had shrunk to only 35% - a drop of some 30% within the space of one year. Sega executives claimed that the slump was due to a traditional summer rollback in its advertising campaigns, but everybody knew better. Nintendo's new marketing campaign had succeeded. The SNES was now the dominant 16-bit console, with the aging Genesis reduced to the role of second fiddle. The SNES would remain the dominant 16-bitter from now on. That was not Sega's only problem. By the end of 1995, Nakayama was forced to confront the reversal of his company's fortunes and the rise of the 32-bit videogame systems. It was an acknowledged fact that the new kid in town, Sony Corporation, had an excellent videogame system in the Sony PlayStation? and was not about to go away anytime soon. Nakayama's reaction was to make a decision that would decide the course of Sega's fortunes for the next three years ... and possibly more.

Twilight time

In his book The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games, author and longtime videogame industry reporter Steven Kent has this to say about Nakayama's decision to kill the Genesis in favor of the Saturn. "Concentrating on Saturn proved to be a tactical mistake that cost Sega millions, if not billions of dollars." It was not that Nakayama made his decision in the dark. He knew full well that Nintendo CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi was spending millions of dollars that Sega could not hope to match in arranging secret alliances with technology companies and software houses, many of whose products would be destined for the SNES. "No one can stop us," Yamauchi is reported to have said in December of 1992. Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa, Yamauchi's son-in-law, was not afraid to let his opinions be known. "I don't think the other companies understand that they do not have what Nintendo has," he said in a 1993 interview. "It is why we will grow. Maybe that growth will not always be as fast as it has been, but it will continue." That was a clear warning that Nintendo was playing for keeps. No matter how long it took them, no matter what they had to do or to what lengths they had to go, they fully intended to put Sega "back in its place" - and they had the ready cash, company resources, and sheer force of will to do it. Even Sega's own Tom Kalinske went on the record in 1994 when he said, "The 16-bit business ... is going to be very, very strong for at least another two to three years." It was as candid an assessment that could be heard from a senior Sega executive; the only problem was that his superior was not listening to him anymore. Nakayama's 1995 decision to discontinue Genesis support made no sound business sense unless you were part of the narrow-minded corporate culture at Sega of Japan that brought it about. Within that context, focused as it was on the rise of the 32-bit nextgen market in Japan alone, it made perfect sense and all other opinions be dammed. Kalinske was ultimately vindicated when his prediction came true. The 16-bit market remained strong all through 1994, 1995, and well into 1996, when it finally gave way to the new 32-bit systems in the fall - and even then, 16-bit software sales remained a significant (if no longer leading) factor in the market for another year or so. Nakayama practically handed the 16-bit market to Yamauchi on a silver platter when he made his ill-fated decision near the end of 1995, and all of Sega's lost potential profits went with it. Nintendo now had the 16-bit console market all to itself, and its performance during the 1996 holiday shopping season would be the most profitable that any vendor would enjoy in the U.S. videogame market. By then, it was too late for Genesis. It was no longer a significant presence in the market.

Once Sega made its abrupt official announcement that it was dropping the Genesis in favor of the more expensive Saturn, with its obvious dearth of games, there was a sudden rush by the retail community to dump their inventories in order to make room for products by Nintendo and Sony. Both Sega and its largest third-party licensee, Acclaim, were now stuck with warehouses literally filled to the brim with unsold Genesis carts and no one willing to buy them. Both took a financial beating in the fiasco, but Sega lost more than just money. It lost its hard-won reputation with the gaming public. Sega was no longer cool to its fans because Sega was now acting like an arrogant ass. Nakayama's decision was a direct slap in the face of Sega's core consumer group, pre-teen and teenage boys, and it was a perceived insult that would take years to heal. Nintendo had won the first great console war. The irony here is that Sega deliberately chose not to win. It was from Nakayama's choice that all of Sega's subsequent misfortunes would come.

Tom Kalinske resigned his job as president of Sega of America effective 15 July 1996. He had arrived five years earlier as an outspoken, self-confident executive with a reputation for success and the resume to prove it. He left five years later an embittered man, knowning full well that his foes at Sega of Japan personally blamed him for all of Sega's misfortunes regardless of cause. Perhaps the worst part of it was that his former friend and confidant Hayao Nakayama seemed to have bought into the anti-Kalinske propaganda of his colleagues and eventually turned his back on him, taking away direct control of Sega of America bit by bit until he was left as little more than a figurehead. Perhaps it was the fact that he knew what was wrong with Sega, had said as much time and again, only to see his actions and suggestions continually thwarted or overruled. Michael Lantham, a former Sega producer who was acquiainted with Kalinske during his days at Sega, remembers all too well the final years of Kalinske's tenure. "He was not allowed to do anything. The U.S. side was basically no longer in control." Kalinske would write surly or sarcastic memos to subordinates whenever they made obvious mistakes. Rarely would he argue for very long about the decisions of Nakayama or his representatives, who were by now paying frequent visits to Sega of America and dictating how it would conduct its affairs. Oftentimes, people would come into his office to see him doing nothing but staring out the window. We may never know the full story, but Kalinske left Sega a very different man than he was when he first arrived.

Even though the Genesis was now officially dead in North America and Japan (it would not be discontiuned in Europe until 1998), Sega's 16-bitter was about to roar back to life in South America. Tec Toy, Sega's Brazillian distributor, had already enjoyed considerable success with the 8-bit SMS and decided to give the newer console its turn at the wheel. The MegaDrive? had been actively produced in Brazil as early as 1991; however, now was the time to pull it out from under the shadow of the SMS. It was a guaranteed success, because Tec Toy and its Sega lineup had held 75% of the Brazillian videogame market since the beginning of the decade. Rival Dynacom, who pushed Nintendo's systems, never came close to beating them. As with the SMS before it, both MegaDrive? consoles and games were produced at Tec Toy's main plant in Manaus - Brazil's rather unique take on Tokyo's world-famous Akihabara district. Anyone who has been there will tell you that conducting business in Manaus gives whole new meanings to the the terms "trade free zone" and "carry-on luggage." It was an apt place for Tec Toy to place a plant, for it reflected perfectly the company's free-wheeling, free-dealing nature - often to the benefit of Brazillian gamers across the nation. The MegaDrive? hit its stride in Brazil from 1996 to 1998, just as the popularity of the SMS was beginning to wane. It officially replaced the SMS on Tec Toy's production schedule as of 1997, and both consoles and games continued to be produced until the end of 1998. Those three short years would also see a handful of software releases that are unique to Brazil, including the only 16-bit console version of Duke Nukem 3D ever produced.

In late 1997, a New Jersey based company named Majesco Sales approaced Sega with the idea of refloating the Genesis as a low-budget alternative system to the higher-priced Sony PlayStation and Nintendo N64 in the U.S. market. Majesco felt that there was still enough value left in Sega's name to make a go at it, and it offered to handle everything it could - marketing, distribution, sales, and so on. In exchange, Sega would receive royalties on every piece of hardware or software that Majesco sold. It did not take long for Sega to assent; after all, it was still sitting on warehouses full of unsold Genesis inventory and needed to move them any way it could. Due to a shortage of consoles, Sega went ahead and produced for Majesco what would be the very last iteration of the Genesis.

The Genesis 3 was released to little fanfare in early 1998. It was a decidedly no-frills version of the console that had originally brought about the 16-bit revolution a full decade earlier. Gone were the sidecar expansion bus (for Sega CD) and Z80 processor (creating some minor incompatability problems). The new system was a tightly integrated box about the size of a man's outstretched hand and resembled a cross between an oversize hockey puck and a space-age portable CD player. The original asking price was US$50 - a far cry from the original 1989 U.S. launch price of $190 and only half that of the system's last offical price tag of US$100 back in 1996. Along with it came the first new Genesis game in three years - Frogger, a perfect port of Konami's original 1981 arcade hit which Sega had vended in the U.S. and was now owned by Hasbro Interactive. It would be the last officially licensed title ever released for the console. The re-emergence of the Genesis after an enforced absence of two years also brought about a brief revival of the first console war. Nintendo had also been trying to clear its back inventory of SNES stocks, having produced its own budget version of the SNES in 1997 and filling the shelves of any willing retailer with excess SNES inventory. Once Majesco horned in on the action with its US$50 Genesis 3 console, Nintendo matched its price. Majesco then dropped the price of the Genesis 3 to US$40 and again to US$30, with Nintendo matching them dollar-for-dollar every step of the way. Software prices for both systems remained stagnant, ranging anywhere from US$10 to US$25 per title. By this time 16-bit sales only accounted for 10% of the total U.S. console market, but it was a brisk and fiercely fought share. "I think you may see some sharpening of the SNES price in the holidays," said Nintendo vice president George Harrison. "It's the best kept secret in the industry," noted Majesco's Morris Sutton. "Retailers have been making a lot of money on 16-bit." Majesco would wind up selling between 1 and 2 million Genesis 2 and Genesis 3 consoles, along with 10 million or so Genesis cartridges for fiscal year 1998. In comparison, Nintendo would only sell 1 million SNES consoles and 6 million SNES carts. As with the American Civil War, the rebels would win the last battle - if not the war itself.

In retrospect

I know that there are going to be a lot of SNES fans and folks associated with Nintendo who will read this article and get terribly upset. They will dispute my observations and throw all kinds of statistics in the air to prove their point that the SNES was and always will be the superior 16-bit console. I have three words for those of you who belong to this crowd. Competition promotes excellence. The SNES would not be what it is today had it not been for the Genesis. The actual nonbiased historical record shows that Nintendo was in no hurry to release the console, let alone decent games, until the Genesis came onto the scene. Sega's 16-bitter was the benchmark system around which the fortunes of the SNES revolved, and even several top Nintendo executives have grudgingly admitted that fact. Just look at what software was available for the SNES before 1992-1993 and the stuff that followed. Can you honestly say that there would have been a Super Mario RPG, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, a Chrono Trigger, or hundreds of other such excellent SNES titles from 1993 onward had it not been for the competition fueled by Sega's console? I think not. Okay, so your system won the first great console war. Big deal. The Genesis is still there, along with almost 30 million former users in silent tribute to the fact that Nintendo's monopoly on the U.S. videogame market was forever broken, never to be regained again. Even after Nintendo clambered its way back to the top, it was knocked off again two short years later by Sony and its PlayStation. Crow all you want. I for one don't care for pyrrhic victories. Whether you like it or not, whether you ever admit it or not, the Sega Genesis was the system to beat. That is something no Nintendo loyalist from the time will ever admit, and the mere thought will forever stick in their craw.

SEGA!

The future?

Recently, interest in the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was rekindled by two startling events:

• The release of the first-ever commercial Genesis game since 1996, a translation of the Chinese role-playing game Beggar Prince in 2006, made by Super Fighter Team
• The re-release of classic Genesis/Mega Drive titles for Nintendo's new console Wii

Genesis/MegaDrive factoids

NOTE: For the sake of convienence I shall abbreviate the phrase "Genesis/MegaDrive" as GMD throughout.

• The Genesis is Sega's all-time best selling console as of this date. It enjoyed total worldwide sales of some 28.5 million units.
• There are three primary variations of the GMD as depicted below. All appear identical in Sega's various worldwide markets save for small differences in case color schemes and product labels.
  • Genesis/MegaDrive Model 1 (MK-1601) - Produced by Sega of Japan or under license to other vendors from 1988 to 1992, this is by far the most ubiqutous version to be found in Japan and North America. It is the only model with a volume control for the headphone jack. The North American Genesis version includes a set of tabs on the cartridge port to prevent the use of overseas MegaDrive? carts with the console. Certain early accessories - such as Power Base Converter, the Sega CD/Mega CD Model 1, and Sega's karaoke unit - are designed specifically around the case styling of this particular model and must be modified to work with later models. There are two different unique production batches as well. GMD MK-1601s made from 1989 to 1990 have only limited firmware protection and will work with any vendor's cartridges, both licensed and unlicensed. This includes the early non-standard Electronic Arts and Accolade carts. Units produced starting in 1991 include the TMSS code in firmware and will only work with cartridges that can properly interface with the TMSS.
  • Genesis/MegaDrive Model 2 (MK-1631) - The sudden success of the Genesis caused Sega to redesign its entire product line in 1992 for a sleeker, more "cool" look, and these redesigned products began hitting store shelves in 1993. The GMD MK-1631s has a more streamlined case and smaller planar than its ancestors, and are missing the headphone volume control as well. Other than the reduction in size, it has identical internal hardware to that of the older GMD MK-1601. This is the version of the console that is better known to European, Brazillian, and Australian gamers. As with the GMD MK-1601, North American Genesis versions include a set of tabs on the cartridge port to prevent the use of overseas MegaDrive? carts with the console. Certain accessories designed for the case styling of the older GMD MK-1601 cannot be used with the GMD MK-1631 without significant adaptation. All GMD MK-1631s incorporate the TMSS into the system firmware.
  • Genesis/MegaDrive Model 3 (MK-1641) - This, the very last version of the Genesis console itself, is believed to be unique to the North American market. It has the smallest footprint of any version of the console, and is about the size of a older model portable CD player. Another significant external difference is the lack of the tabs on the cartridge port, thus permitting the use of overseas MegaDrive? carts. The major internal difference is the complete absence of the Z80 processor from the sound processing suite, and change this has been documented to cause compatability problems with certain Genesis carts. It also lacks the sidecar expansion port; hence no possibility of adding a Sega CD unit to the system. Hardcore Genesis fans avoid the GMD MK-1641 like the plague and have derisively nicknamed it "the hockey puck."
• That's not all, folks. There are many more Genesis-based systems out there. You want to seem some other variations of the Genesis by both Sega and other vendors? Well then ... hang onto your hat, because here we go!
  • Sega's 16-bit Genesis portable was conceived by Sega of Japan in 1992 as a means of developing a portable Genesis along the lines of Game Gear. It was based on the MegaJet, an earlier screenless Sega portable originally developed by Sega of Japan as a promotional item for Japan Air Lines. The end result was the Sega Nomad handheld portable, which came to market in October of 1995. It featured a backlit color LCD screen and works with almost every single cart in the entire GMD library. It was expensive (US$180) and went through batteries in record time (about 3 hours of gameplay); nevertheless, it was quite popular among hardcore Sega fans. It was discontinued by mid-1996 along with the Genesis itself so Sega could focus its resources on Saturn support. Because of its heritage, the Nomade works with both Japanese MegaDrive? and North American Genesis carts. There never was a PAL Nomad released for Europe, although I've heard from one of my sources that a lone prototype exists. Im told that the Nomad was the first iteration of the console to drop the Z80 and therefore suffers from the same compatability problems as the later Genesis 3 console. Because of its self-contained, portable nature, the Nomad is the most sought-after version of the console to be had. They were last priced for retail sale at US$40 (brand new in the box) at Toys 'R' Us in the spring of 1999 and promptly sold out shortly after the announcement was made. If you can find a used one for that price, then consider yourself lucky.
  • The Sega TeraDrive? combined a Genesis and an IBM compatible personal comptuter into a single unit. It was designed in conjunction with Amstrad and first marketed in 1991. Originally intended for the Japanese home market, they quickly became the darling of the Sega development community overseas - which was a good thing, because the system failed to impress Japanese consumers. There are two, possibly three different versions of the system. The first one sported a 10 MHz i80206 CPU and came with 2.5 MB of RAM, a 20 MB HDD, and 800x600 SVGA graphics. The second is the MegaPlus, about which I have no hard evidence. The third, also known as the Amstrad Mega PC, had the beefier 25 MHz i80386SX CPU and came with 4 MB of RAM and a 40 MB HDD. Both are about the size of an IBM PS/2 Model 30 and have the Genesis hardware incorporated directly onto the system planar. Japanese versions were almost always black, while overseas versions tended to be white. According to one of my U.S. sources, the original asking price for Sega TeraDrive? was US$750. Another source in Europe says that the Amstrad Mega PC originally retailed in the neighborhood of US$3000, but that price included the full-blown official Sega MegaDrive? Software Developer's Kit (SDK).
  • It is ironic that the Genesis, itself based on Sega's System 16 arcade hardware, was itself the basis of three more Sega arcade boards. All of them used plug-in carts for their games, like the Genesis, but these were in a custom format and are not compatible with Genesis consoles. They are the single-game System C (1990) and the multigame MegaTech (1991) and MegaPlay (1992) arcade boards The MegaTech? is also designed to work with Master System games, again in its own unique format that is not compatabile with either the SMS or Genesis consoles. While I'm at it, I would like to thank the folks at the ShinobiZ's Home website for providing all of the Sega arcade planar pics used in this document.
  • MSX was the Japanese attempt at defining a worldwide standard for 8-bit personal computer systems. It may surprise you to know that there are two MSX computers, both produced by Sakhr under licence from Universal, were produced for distribution in Kuiwait and Yemen. Based on the Yamaha AX-330 and AX-990 MSX2 computers, the Sakhr versions included built-in MegaDrive? hardware and a cartridge port. In fact, Sakhr's AX-990 variant included additional firmware with 50 games in Arabic burned into its ROMs.
  • The latest standalone Genesis clone hails from South Korea. Produced in 2000, the Noritul FX was vended by Unitech and retailed for 95,000 won (US$85). It is nothing more than a Genesis disguised inside an Dreamcast-like system. It has 14 games built into the console, most of which are believed to be unlicensed. Sega has refused to offer public comment on Noritul's unit, but most authorities are of the opinion that it was produced without Sega's permission. This also goes for Shinco's DVD-868 unit, a DVD player with a built-in MegaDrive? emulator, PlayStation-like? controllers, and no cartridge port. Shinco also distributes nine CD-ROMs for the player that contain ROM dumps of almost every GMD game ever released.
• All Sega-produced GMD consoles and official derivatives include firmware market locks to prevent cartridges produced for one market to be used in consoles from another. There are a series of well-known hardware hacks to get around this that can be found with the use of your favorite Internet search engine. North American owners of Model 1 and Model 2 Genesis consoles will also have to break off the tabs located on either side of the cartridge port in order to accomodate the slightly wider MegaDrive? carts.
• The Super NES, Nintendo's answer to the Genesis, was launched in the U.S. on 09/09/91. The Sony PlayStation, which would take over as the dominant system on the console scene in the back half of the 1990s, made its U.S. debut on 09/09/95. The Sega Dreamcast, the first of the 128/256-bit nextgen wave of consoles, made its U.S. debut on 09/09/99. 9 September seemes to be something of a sacred date in the U.S. videogame industry because of the widespread belief among videogame vendors that companies who launch their systems on that day will see their products enjoy successful market runs. Coincidence? Superstition? Perhaps ....
• The Mega Modem was developed partly in response to the Nintendo Network, which was first unveiled in Japan in 1989. Nintendo's NES-based telecommunications system was geared largely towards businesses, so Sega decided to take up the slack on the modem gameplay front. The Mega Modem failed miserably; there just wasn't enough of a market at the time to support modems for videogame consoles. Only two games were ever released for the device, Sunsoft's Tel-Tel Baseball and Tel-Tel Mahjong. Its Western counterpart, the Telegames Modem, was announced but never released. There were a small number of Western videogames designed for use with the Telegames Modem, with the unreleased Combat Aces coming immediately to mind. Sega did not abandon the concept of networked videogames, however, and would pick it up again approximately five years later.
• The Sega Channel was a joint venture by Sega, TCI, and Time Warner that used existing Genesis technology to deliver a game-on-demand systems to users of TCI's and Time Warner's various U.S. cable TV franchises. Test-marketed all through the summer and fall of 1994, the service saw its debut in Pittsburgh, PA in December of 1994 and launched nationwide in both the U.S. and Canada in March of 1995. It was eventually introduced in Europe in June of 1996 through a variety of distributors - Flextech for the UK, Detusche Telekom for Germany, Eneco in the Netherlands, and Telenor in Norway. For US$15 a month, Sega Channel subscribers could download their choice of up to 50 different Genesis games inside specially build combo modem/RAMsave adapters based on Catapult's X-Band? modem hardware. Many of these were previews of up-and-coming games, such as Time Killers; others were custom versions of existing games, such as the 24-bit version of Super Street Fighter 2: The New Challengers and a custom port of the Sega CD's Earthworm Jim Special Edition (sans FMVs, of course); and still others were titles were never released in their subscriber markets, such as MegaMan: The Wily Wars (a European market exclusve that only U.S. Sega Channel subscribers got to see in those days). Downlink transmission of the Sega Channel was carried nationwide across the U.S. on transponder 1 of the Galaxy 7 communications satellite. At its peak of popularity in 1997, the Sega Channel was carried by over 100 cable TV systems in 140 U.S. cities and enjoyed a steady subscriber base of some 250,000 users. The Sega Channel was officially discontinued in the U.S. on 30 June 1997 due to declining popularity in the wake of the Sony PlayStation.
• If you ever hear the term J-cart, then this is referring to the special cartridges released by Codemasters that had two extra joystick ports built into the cartridge. This permitted four-way gameplay without a multitap adapter. Only six J-carts were ever released: Pete Sampras Tennis, Pete Sampras Tennis 96, Micro Machines 2, Micro Machines 96, Micro Machines Military Edition, and Super Skidmarks. All were later released as standard carts but retained their distinctive J-cart curved housing (sans extra ports, of course).

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