Having been unable to break
Nintendo’s dominance during the 8-bit
era, Sega decided the best way to turn
heads their way was with sheer power.
Although having said that, if you
cracked open a Sega Mega Drive
(released in the US as the Sega
Genesis), inside you’d find some pretty
familiar circuitry. The main processor,
a Motorola 68000, was the same
found in many popular computers of
the time, while its Z80 sub-processor,
which handled the sound, could be
found inside a Game Boy. Yet despite
its humble innards, the Mega Drive
was able to punch above its weight
technically because its processors
were freed to concentrate exclusively
on gaming. That the tech was similarto many arcade games of the time
was also a big win for Sega’s fledgling
console. Developers found it easy to
program for, and the familiarity of the
architecture led to many fantastic
coin-op conversions. To be this good,
contrary to the popular marketing line,
didn’t takes ages.
The Mega Drive proved how
important it was to be first to the
market, competing favourably against
Nintendo on two fronts – first the NES,
and later the SNES. Later attempts to
give the system extra grunt would flop,
however, with neither the Mega-CD
(Sega CD in North America) or the 32X
add-ons gaining much traction. With
the Mega Drive, it seemed, simplicity
really was the key to its success.Sega’s most successful console, the Mega Drive was a
thorn in Nintendo’s side across two generations
MEGA DRIVE
Sega’s boast of ‘16-bit
Blast Processing’ hinted
at the Mega Drive’s rapid
processing speeds,
which enabled higher
resolutions and complex
parallax scrolling.