On this day in 1989, Sega released the Sega Genesis in North America. It was the company’s third console, following on from the Master System, with its design supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa.
Sega adapted its System 16 arcade board for the console, pushing that power into a Motorola 68000 processor (also used by Apple in its Macintosh 128K, the Commodore Amiga, and the Atari ST amongst others) along with a Zilog Z80 for sound, and 64 KB of RAM, 64 KB of video RAM and 8 KB of audio RAM.
In terms of form factor, the Genesis actually had multiple variations but the one best known by North Americans can be seen in the video above with its Knight Rider-esque design, rolled edge at the front, dome-like shape on the top and that glorious 16-BIT motif below the cartridge slot. Sega really wanted you to know that the Genesis was the dawn of a new era of gaming.
By the time the Genesis hit stores in North America, it had already been out for 10 months in Japan and it wasn’t actually doing that well compared to the SNES and PC Engine but there were no such failures in West as it sold 18.5 million units in the US1 before it reached Europe (where it became known as the Mega Drive), and Brazil where it lived a much longer life.2
My first and only in real life exposure to the Genesis was in 1993 when my cousins got one for Christmas in the US and I got to play Sonic 2. It was an experience like no other with its amazing 9-bit color palette, the sound of the coins and Sonic’s speed! While this isn’t a blog post about Sonic, I definitely feel like the Genesis was made for a character and game series like Sonic the Hedgehog. It wasn’t until the 2010s when I managed to get a Mega Drive of my own but I rarely played it and my son has it somewhere. Now if I want to play a Genesis game, I use an emulator.
Sega arguably peaked in its 16-bit era and rode that wave with a devil-may-care approach in the US that saw it continue into the 90s and crash (seriously, screw Sega of America). But we can still cling to the memories of the console’s war with the SNES and how it won its battles in the West, even if it didn’t win the war against Nintendo.
- Give Me Genesis! 35 Years Ago, Sonic the Hedgehog Fought Nintendo and Almost Won
- This day in tech: The Sega Genesis launched in North America
- 35 years ago, one of the best consoles of all time changed gaming forever
- 10 Reasons Why Sega Genesis Was Better Than Super Nintendo
- The Best Sega Genesis Games Ever Made
- Happy (belated) birthday, Sega Genesis (from CNET in 2009)
- Happy 25th birthday, Sega Genesis (from Engadget in 2014)
- Happy Birthday, Genesis! (video)
- Sega Genesis Brought Dad And Me Closer – My Retro Life (video)
Footnotes
- https://equities.wedbush.com/clientsite/Research/ActionAlertFilePreview.asp?UUID=E4AFF57F-DDBC-437F-8520-AF38BEDD3E43 ↩︎
- TecToy were in charge of distribution in Brazil and didn’t stop selling it until 2023 ↩︎
