The Mega Drive and its ecosystem

[Foxxhoria]

The Mega Drive. Or Genesis if you're freaky. The Master System had set the stage for Sega, but not really lived up to its potential. But a new era was approaching - Nintendo had relinquished its exclusivity clause in the West, computing power was becoming more and more affordable, and Sega was making waves in the arcades. And what better way to bring that directly into people's homes than with an ambitious and capable games console!

If you couldn't guess by my icon here, the Mega Drive is my absolute favourite games console. It's got a confidence about it, but still has enough rough edges and quirks to feel sincere. It was nothing like as powerful Sega's arcade systems, but still definitely competent enough to do them justice in people's living rooms, as well as bring new ideas to life as well, such as a trail-blazing blue hedgehog. And also on that success, Sega perhaps got a bit too big for their boots, and started coming up with some funny ideas...

...giving the Mega Drive all sorts of weird addons and variants! The Mega CD makes enough sense, as CDs were becoming more and more affordable, and offered so much more space, and high-fidelity audio, no more music being limited by a sound chip! And to make the most of the opportunity, Sega added extra features that they presumably would have loved the Mega Drive to have had from the beginning, in sprite scaling and rotation, and even more sound channels and better sampled audio capabilities! However, their hubris misguided them, and they leant into FMV more than taking advantage of those capabilities to port more of their excellent arcade games to it. Games like Batman Returns (the driving sections at least) and Soul Star show what a port of Space Harrier, Outrun or even After Burner (II, not III!) could have been like on it! But alas.

And then there's the mushroom which, if you're not careful, can grow out of the top. I was not careful... And Sega weren't either. In many ways it's not meant to exist. It was designed purely as an attempt to bring the kind of 32-bit power the Saturn was being built around to the install base of the still hugely-popular Genesis in North America, instead of telling them all to move onto a completely new and incompatible system. Sega of Japan did not like it, as the Mega Drive was never a huge success there, and running to the end of its course. So not long after the 32X was released, the Sega Saturn was too, even sooner than planned, and instead of excited by the next generation's arrival, many fans felt betrayed and tricked! They'd spent their money on this addon for the tired old system, not the fancy new system! And so it ended up with low sales, and only around 40 games. However, of those 40 games, I'd say ten of them are definitely worth the experience. Kolibri, Tempo, Knuckles Chaotix, Star Wars Arcade and in particular Virtua Racing Deluxe, along with excellent (if not perfect) ports of Space Harrier, After Burner II and Virtua Fighter, are all worth checking out and seeing what more they can do than the basic Mega Drive. It isn't always much...but sometimes it still makes a lot of difference!

Of course, the base system has so many incredible games of its own, we can't let the strange sidesteps steal the entire show! What's your favourites?

Here's my collection! :3 My entire beloved tower of power, which I've modified each part of so I'm able to change it to any of the regions with just the flick of a single switch! The refresh rate and language of the main unit with the BIOS of the Mega CD matching, and each of which even having its own bank of FRAM save memory! Very pleased and excited with what I've pulled together!

[Beancatte]

One of my absolute favorite systems of all time. Only recently picked up an Everdrive so I could start playing stuff on a modded 60hz pal console.

I love every single mainline model of it. Even the fucked up cheap as hell model 3. I really wanna get one someday

[NovaSquirrel]

I didn't have a Genesis until I was a teen, but I sure did have the Sonic 3 & Knuckles PC port as a little kid, and I remember noticing how different the music was in Sonic Mega Collection. I mostly lean on the Nintendo side of things, so it's been fun make a deliberate attempt to go ahead and try more of the games and experience a very different library. I really enjoyed Crusader of Centy and McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. Overall I really love this era, where it feels like 2D gaming really got properly figured out instead of just continuing what arcade games were doing, and where game sizes could be big enough that they didn't need to artificially inflate the difficulty as much to give you enough stuff to play through.

[Mixi Blacksand]

My poor developing fishe brain spent way more time playing and beating the Ecco games than they probably deserved. If you've been through the marathon multidirectional autoscroller hell of Welcome to the Machine that is a core gaming memory for you. The vibes though...

[Panda o' Plenty]

Taz-Mania on Sega Genesis is forever ingrained into my memory as the first bideogame I ever remember. Angry critter go zooooooom

And Sonic 1.
Funny critter go spiiiiiiiin

[EdenCoven]

Megadrive is eternal. Gotta try to understand how the hell you play Alien Soldier some day.

[Mixi Blacksand]

There's something raw and experimental about a lot of Genesis games to me. Devs just seeing what they can squeeze out of the 68000 without built-in tricks the SNES had.





Though sometimes they pushed harder than it could go...

[Enbyeon]

Thank you for calling it the correct name - "Mega Drive."

My go to recommendation is always Shinobi III.

[JenniferSkunk]

Hi Foxxhoria!

I yearned for a Mega Drive as a kid. While my first console was a Master System (and I remember being disappointed that it wasn't its 16-bit older sibling), the Mega Drive may have been the first system I fell in love with. I always wanted to play on friends' systems when I visited. Getting one finally in 1998 was really special.

I think the Mega Drive's sound chip often gets unfair flak. There are definitely games which don't sound as good as their SNES equivalents due to poor use of various sound drivers, but there are games which sound absolutely phenomenal and are the absolute peak of FM soundtracks. Thunder Force IV, any of the Sonic games, Madden '90, and Cool Spot are some of my standouts for representing the Mega Drive at its absolute best.

One day I will own a 32X. One day...

[Foxxhoria]

Hiii Sophie!!!

Yeah, the SNES soundchip requires instruments, but the OPN3 is an instrument, so needs to be used like one. And not to forget the PSG which came along with the Master System backwards-compatibility too; that can add some great versatility to its sound!

There's something raw and experimental about a lot of Genesis games to me. Devs just seeing what they can squeeze out of the 68000 without built-in tricks the SNES had.

Yeah, the SNES is very flashy, but has a lot of hardware support to facilitate those fancy effects. The Mega Drive comes across having less hardware support but more versatility in how the hardware can be used, with its faster processor and DMA capabilities and such.

I didn't have a Genesis until I was a teen, but I sure did have the Sonic 3 & Knuckles PC port as a little kid, and I remember noticing how different the music was in Sonic Mega Collection. I mostly lean on the Nintendo side of things, so it's been fun make a deliberate attempt to go ahead and try more of the games and experience a very different library. I really enjoyed Crusader of Centy and McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure. Overall I really love this era, where it feels like 2D gaming really got properly figured out instead of just continuing what arcade games were doing, and where game sizes could be big enough that they didn't need to artificially inflate the difficulty as much to give you enough stuff to play through.

Yeah! Feels like the technology finally enabled full experiences rather than quirky challenges with a premise, hehe. And games definitely often have a different feeling between the two consoles, not just because of the technical aspects, but also just a slightly different demographic the two systems were often targeted at, leading to interesting differences in flavours! Crusader of Centy is neat; I don't normally like Zelda-like games, but there's something charming and approachable about it. And Treasure Land Adventure is a great introduction to the madness of Treasure, heheh!

Megadrive is eternal. Gotta try to understand how the hell you play Alien Soldier some day.

...Which Alien Soldier exemplifies, yeah! So tough! But so cool. I absolutely loooove the spritework of the bird, and I would die to see my sona animated in that style!!!

My poor developing fishe brain spent way more time playing and beating the Ecco games than they probably deserved. If you've been through the marathon multidirectional autoscroller hell of Welcome to the Machine that is a core gaming memory for you. The vibes though...

Yeah Ecco is absolutely a vibe. It's got such a thick atmosphere to it, it really sucks you in and makes you intrigued about the world, and the gloom which permeates it gives you this anxious, tentative curiosity about whatever could be happening there.

One of my absolute favorite systems of all time. Only recently picked up an Everdrive so I could start playing stuff on a modded 60hz pal console.

I love every single mainline model of it. Even the fucked up cheap as hell model 3. I really wanna get one someday

The Model 3 is so silly. But it's about as small as a PC Engine or something, so it is pretty nifty hehe. I saw a Multi-Mega in CEX once, and started yearning for it...but I was safe, as those are too pricy haha! But they're so compact and neat too!

But I'm happy with my tower :3