Sega Mega Drive
From GamerWiki
| Sega Mega Drive | |
| File:SystemPicture.jpg | |
| Manufacturer: | Sega |
| Alternate Names: | Sega Genesis |
| Announced: | ? |
| Release date: | JP: 29/October/1988 NA: 15/September/1989 EU: 30/November/1990 AU: date/month in text/year |
| Initial Price: | JP: date/month in text/year NA: $189.99 EU: £189.99 AU: ? |
| Discontinued: | 1995 |
Sega Mega Drive
After Sega's limited success with its Sega Master System, and noticing how other machines were beginning to outperform the increasingly dated Nintendo Entertainment System, Sega set to work on a successor to its platform. It aimed to be powerful enough to reproduce the company's System 16-based arcade games, including Altered Beast while still having a competitive price-tag.
The term "Mega Drive" is supposed to represent its increased processing power compared with the NES.
Although early in its life it was the most powerful machine on the market, outpowering both the 8-bit NEC PC Engine and the NES, delivering games such as Sonic the Heddgehog which were not possible on the previous generation of systems. Sega's early marketing deliberately drew on this fact, comparing the increasingly dated-looking NES games with that of the Mega Drive.
Sega went over a year before Nintendo released their rival system in Japan, the Super Famicom (otherwise known as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System or SNES). Although the SNES vastly outsold the Mega Drive in Japan, in America and Europe the battle was a lot closer with the SNES outselling the Mega Drive in America and the Mega Drive outselling the SNES in Europe.
Early Japanese Game List
The first games released in Japan after the launch of the Mega Drive were:
| Game Name | Release Date |
|---|---|
| Space Harrier II | 29 October 1988 (Launch Title) |
| Super Thunder Blade | 29 October 1988 (Launch Title) |
| Altered Beast | 27 November 1988 |
| Osomatsu-kun | 24 December 1988 |
| Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle | 10 February 1989 |
| Phantasy Star II | 21 March 1989 |
| Super League | 22 April 1989 |
| Super Daisenryaku | 29 April 1989 |
| Thunder Force II | 15 June 1989 |
| Hokuto no ken | 15 June 1989 |
As you can tell, during the few months of the Mega Drive's life there was a distinct lack of games.
Games
A full list of Sega Mega Drive games documented on GamerWiki can be found at the Sega Mega Drive category.
Alternatively, a manually created list is also available - this is to be deprecated, so please add any further games to the games to be added page.
