Sega Games play online

No matter how many millions of years there would be a 16-bit console Sega, there are people who wants to play it ...

So, a little history about Sega. At first there was a little-popular SG-1000, then a more common Sega Master System, and only then a Mega Drive. But now we have no place in the budget for this purchase, as there is no one for Sega Saturn and DreamCast, GameGear, Nomad. So let's take a closer look at the Sega Mega Drive.

During the development the console was called Mark Fire, but before the release, it was decided to name it Mega Drive. A blue Reset button, a headphone jack on the front panel, a volume control, and Power combined with a cardridge block that physically prevented the launch of games in other regions. Back to the power supply jack, avi output and extension port, very similar to the plug of the joystick. And this avi output gives out sound in mono, and the headphone jack - in stereo .. If you wish, you can suffer and still bring the stereo to TV. And by the way, the extension port was used only in Japan. Mega Net modem was connected to it to use the Sega Network System service.

The PAL version for Europe, Australia, New Zealand came out in a slightly different shell in 1990 with a white Reset, inscription redesign and a completely different cartridge slot. Games from Japan won't fit into it, but if you remove the console cover, many games will work, especially early ones.

For the rest was selling an informal adapter. There are 2 versions of PAL console - with and without an extension port. In Brazil was released Mega Drive for the local PAL-M format. Neither the Japanese nor the European cartridges on it work, but adapters were selling there that allowed to do this. Asian Mega Drive can be easily confused with Japanese. They are visually very similar, but the inscriptions again have some differences: Reset button was cyan and cartridges for it were produced separately and looked different than in other countries. Shape was like in Japanese, design was like in Europe.

In the USA Mega Drive did not come out, in the United States was not Mega Drive. The name of the console had to be changed, because the Sega company could not get the rights to the territory of America. Therefore, there it is known as Sega Genesis. Its features besides new logo are: volume control now affects only the sound from headphones. The extennsion port was only on early models, and the reset button is gray. At first it was produced in Japan, and then, in order to reduce the cost, it was started to be manufactured in Taiwan. And from the same place from Taiwan we were brought Mega-Ken. This is understandably a pirate console, but in South Korea Mega Drive officially came out under such names, that I would rather play Mega-Ken .. Samsung Super Aladdin Boy .. this should be thought of before such names. Let me remind you that SNES is listed as SuperComBoy. I would not buy anything for my children that shocks with current in a advertisement, let them play hide-and-seek better.

The controllers which came from the first model were always three-button, and the start button was painted with the same color as the Reset button on the console. Actually this is the easiest way to distinguish between their regions. Since from first model, Mega Drive has supported games for the Master System. True for this you had to buy Power Base Convertor. We, of course, the first model was not selling in virtually any form. The second model is more familiar to us. After all, she was already on the shelves of the whole world, while we were receiving consoles. Like me, probably in childhood many people were tormented by the question, why do we play Mega Drive 2, and where then is Mega Drive 1? Now you know.

We had clones similar to the Japanese model. It is much more compact and cartridge folds are purple. It no longer has the Power and AVI bulbs replaced with a small Mini-DIN connector that can output audio in mono and stereo formats. (But we had always only monocables :))

I don't remember exactly when Mega Drive started to appear in our country, but in 1994 it was definitely here... at least on the table of the children's television program "New Reality".

On the covers of games of my childhood there were also images from Mega Drive games and from games for Genesis, although the design of them is different. Both of them, as a rule, were produced in plastic boxes, which allow them to look good even now. Not like snes from cardboard boxes, which eventually gets worse and worse :). Internal content, in fact, as elsewhere: cartridge, instruction, and sometimes different booklets. Cartridges had various forms:

  • Japanese
  • European
  • American
  • Also some publishers invented their own, such as Electronics Arts, Code Masters and others.

Also Sega games were in cardboard boxes ..
In spite of the fact that my console was associated with such good good memories and its superiority was obvious to me, in the West, meanwhile, there was a fierce struggle. And it was very aggressive on the Sega side. On television, multiple commercials have openly stated that SNES is bullshit compared to Sega Mega Drive and that Genesis is the coolest and most furious games. And the pirates decided everything for us again, and Sergey Suponev could not force our parents to buy an expensive Super Nintendo. Another know-how at Sega was that the licensed cartridges were with a battery and this made it possible to remain in the game, and then after a few days to continue the game.

Light guns in the 16-bit era were no longer so popular. They were no longer included in the set of consoles, but they still existed.

A few words about gamepads.. initially they were three-button. I will say that this is a pretty cool, massive and very comfortable joystick. Its three buttons are enough for most games. But as time went on, and the games in the arcade halls became steeper and steeper. Three buttons became small and at the same time with the release of the second Fighter's port for the megadrive, a six-button controller was released, resembling the location of the buttons in machines with fighting games. With the X, Y and Z buttons, the More button has been added. And many players did not find any game where it would be used.

In addition to Sega Genesis and Sega Genesis 2 were released Sega Genesis 3 (of course only in Brazil and the USA) and Sega Genesis 4 (So small, announced in 2008 and released as Sega Fire Core in 2009. It has built-in games, just like in our pirated only licensed. There is no Region Lock, it is sold only again in Brazil and the USA). Well, after all began tin with the production of consoles. Were for every taste, and portable, and with guitars in the kit, and built-in CD players, in general, any variety, for which Sega gave a license. Only in refrigerators and vacuum cleaners did not build 16 bit Sega, although it would be nice).

Of all this diversity, we only knew Sega Mega Drive 2, because it was he who was chosen by the pirates for mass production. And it was he who was with every second Russian schoolchild of the 90s.

Sega Mega Drive 2 for me opened many genres that I hadn't even known before, such as strategies, quests, first-person shooters. It seemed that the games now reached a whole new level and in quality they were often compared with players from cartoons. It had a great cultural influence on children of the nineties and became Sega’s most successful console. Next Sega console Saturn was almost absent in Russia. Dream Cast was outnumbered. Therefore, for most of us MegaDrive remained the one and only Sega. Although it is certainly silly to call the console by the company name that made it ...