Sega’s Mega Drive is 25 years young
Britain’s favourite console is a quarter of a century old, but from Streets Of Rage 2 to Micro Machines, which are its greatest games?
The Mega Drive was originally released in Japan on October 29, 1988. It then launched in North America, as the Sega Genesis, on April 14, 1989. As was common back in those days we in the UK had to wait two years for the console to be released here. But when November 30, 1990 finally rolled around Europe turned out to be the Mega Drive’s biggest fan. Certainly in the UK, where the NES had never had much of a foothold and the Sega Master System was already more popular, the Mega Drive’s 16-bit blast processing was welcomed with open arms.
Although less powerful than Nintendo’s SNES, in terms of both graphics and sound, the Mega Drive was released first and made good use of Sega’s predominance in the arcades. But what really sold the console in the UK was the alternative Sega offered to Nintendo’s family friendly image.
It wasn’t just that the games tended to feature more overt violence (many multiformat games on the SNES included green blood and other forms of censorship – most infamously in the original Mortal Kombat) but that Sega’s marketing tended to be more edgy and aggressive.
In fact although the 16-bit era was still dominated by Japanese companies, the foundations of the modern games market were clearly laid down during Sega’s watch. Western publishers found it much easier to get on with Sega rather than Nintendo, which saw the introduction of more realistic sports games and titles that pushed the envelope in terms of what kind of adult material was acceptable in a console game.
It’s not an irony that the Mega Drive’s biggest hit was still the family-friendly Sonic The Hedgehog, but more an example of how the Mega Drive was able to appeal to a wider demographic of gamer. But unfortunately Sega squandered its early lead and, hampered by a lack of success in Japan, the Mega Drive was handily outsold by the SNES worldwide.
It definitely won the console war in the UK, but that never really helped Sega who, despite rallying again with the Dreamcast, eventually gave up making consoles – and have now almost given up making console games entirely. As a result many of the games in the list below are part of what are essentially dead franchises, which seems horribly unfair.