Sonic and Sega Genesis

Sonic 

The first Sonic title would be released in 1991 and was an instant success, selling over one million copies and exceeding all of Sega's expectations. Clearly, Naka and Oshima had achieved all of their goals - Sonic was fast, colorful, had broad appeal, and sported an imaginative level design that remains emulated in platform games to this day. Within a year Sonic would become the most recognizable video game character in the world among children - more recognizable than Mario, and according to one study even more recognizable than Mickey Mouse. It was the start of Sega's flagship franchise, a franchise which continues to this day and that virtually assured the downfall of both the NES and NEC's US release of the PC Engine (renamed Turbo Grafx 16) in the face of the Genesis. Sega created a major marketing campaign around the second title in the series, releasing the game worldwide on what would be known as "Sonic 2's day" - Tuesday, November 24, 1992. A whole new bit of technical jargon would be invented to explain the game's technical prowess: "Blast Processing". This "Blast Processing" is what allegedly set the Genesis apart from its inferior competitors (including the brand new SNES) - at least if you believed Sega's TV ads. In reality, this was simply Sega's way of saying the Genesis featured a faster CPU than any other system on the market at the time - and that was, in fact, true.

Genesis

The early 1990's also saw the handheld gaming market begin to heat up, with Nintendo's GameBoy system doing for the industry what the Atari 2600 had done for the console market years before. Almost instantly handhelds began to move away from the non-programmable single game models that had been popular to that point and instead embraced the same programmable cartridge-based system used in home consoles. Sega would not be left out of this emerging market, thinking along with everyone else that there was room enough for more than one system. The Master System-based Game Gear was released in 1993, sporting a backlit color screen and a more powerful processor than the GameBoy at a reasonable price. The Game Gear performed reasonably well but ultimately just could not outlast Nintendo's marketing machine; poor battery life didn't help. A new handheld based on the Genesis would replace it, but its massive bulk and horrendous power consumption doomed it to failure from the start. Today, the Sega Nomad is one of the more collectible of Sega's systems - it's relatively rare and allows you to play real Genesis cartridges on the go. What more could you want?

Unfortunately, Sega would never again replicate the success of the Genesis system. Despite the sensation Sonic had caused, Sega's home console stumbles began anew in 1992 with the rising popularity of Nintendo's new Super Nintendo Entertainment System. While it would be years before the SNES would finally win a war of attrition with the Genesis, the continuing erosion of market share was probably the impetus behind the almost-desperate release of several ill-conceived and poorly supported Genesis add-on peripherals. First came the Sega CD, a major $300 upgrade that added support for the CD format as well as a little-known sound chip upgrade - removing the one weak link in the Genesis hardware and putting the system basically on par with the otherwise sonically superior SNES. (It was the Sega CD that was largely responsible for the early designs of the Sony/Nintendo PlayStation in response.) The Sega CD was poorly supported from the start, when Sega told developers to first simply add FMV and higher quality music to already-released Genesis titles before starting on future new content. In the end, only a little over 100 titles would be released for the Sega CD, many of them simple re-releases of Genesis titles (a few of these, however, being worthy upgrades due at least to the better sound chip and CD-based music - Sonic CD being one of them).

The later 32X would fare even worse. With Sony and Nintendo's future plans being rumored and occasionally even announced (the PlayStation first being unveiled in 1993), Sega decided they needed a stop-gap in between the Genesis and a much more powerful, top secret console code-named Saturn that would go head to head against the next-generation consoles from Nintendo and Sony. The 32X was a 32 bit upgrade to the Genesis, allowing for rudimentary polygon games that kept the Genesis one step ahead of the SNES in an attempt to prolong its lifespan. Only a relative handful of games would be released for the system before the much more advanced Saturn was dumped on an unsuspecting American public in 1995.

The early 1990's also saw the handheld gaming market begin to heat up, with Nintendo's GameBoy system doing for the industry what the Atari 2600 had done for the console market years before. Almost instantly handhelds began to move away from the non-programmable single game models that had been popular to that point and instead embraced the same programmable cartridge-based system used in home consoles. Sega would not be left out of this emerging market, thinking along with everyone else that there was room enough for more than one system. The Master System-based Game Gear was released in 1993, sporting a backlit color screen and a more powerful processor than the GameBoy at a reasonable price. The Game Gear performed reasonably well but ultimately just could not outlast Nintendo's marketing machine; poor battery life didn't help. A new handheld based on the Genesis would replace it, but its massive bulk and horrendous power consumption doomed it to failure from the start. Today, the Sega Nomad is one of the more collectible of Sega's systems - it's relatively rare and allows you to play real Genesis cartridges on the go. What more could you want?

Unfortunately, Sega would never again replicate the success of the Genesis system. Despite the sensation Sonic had caused, Sega's home console stumbles began anew in 1992 with the rising popularity of Nintendo's new Super Nintendo Entertainment System. While it would be years before the SNES would finally win a war of attrition with the Genesis, the continuing erosion of market share was probably the impetus behind the almost-desperate release of several ill-conceived and poorly supported Genesis add-on peripherals. First came the Sega CD, a major $300 upgrade that added support for the CD format as well as a little-known sound chip upgrade - removing the one weak link in the Genesis hardware and putting the system basically on par with the otherwise sonically superior SNES. (It was the Sega CD that was largely responsible for the early designs of the Sony/Nintendo PlayStation in response.) The Sega CD was poorly supported from the start, when Sega told developers to first simply add FMV and higher quality music to already-released Genesis titles before starting on future new content. In the end, only a little over 100 titles would be released for the Sega CD, many of them simple re-releases of Genesis titles (a few of these, however, being worthy upgrades due at least to the better sound chip and CD-based music - Sonic CD being one of them).

The later 32X would fare even worse. With Sony and Nintendo's future plans being rumored and occasionally even announced (the PlayStation first being unveiled in 1993), Sega decided they needed a stop-gap in between the Genesis and a much more powerful, top secret console code-named Saturn that would go head to head against the next-generation consoles from Nintendo and Sony. The 32X was a 32 bit upgrade to the Genesis, allowing for rudimentary polygon games that kept the Genesis one step ahead of the SNES in an attempt to prolong its lifespan. Only a relative handful of games would be released for the system before the much more advanced Saturn was dumped on an unsuspecting American public in 1995.