![]() Many early titles had complex gameplay and/or nightmarish imagery one wouldn't expect of any other console game. It was obvious to Sega that they weren't going to get anywhere trying to appeal to Nintendo's audience, and that the answer lay in the burgeoning demographic of teens and young adults with disposable income, who largely preferred home computers before the console's launch. A few months later, the system had its first standalone hit, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, adapted from the 1988 film of the same name and driven by the sheer star power of its lead figure at the time. What really captured the public's imagination instead was Altered Beast, a hastily-made but fairly-accurate port of Sega's arcade hit which came bundled with most of the consoles. However, Enchanted Castle was a severe critical and commercial failure, especially in western countries. The Genesis/Mega Drive initially did the same, as evidenced by their original mascot platformer Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, a sequel to the Master System's Alex Kidd in Miracle World. During the Master System era, Sega made a grab for the same kiddie demographic as Nintendo. What made this console such a hit in the West was a shift in Sega's target audience early in its lifecycle. At any rate, Nintendo voluntarily dropped a lot of these policies later. Those same developers flocked to Sega due to the latter's apparent laxity Sega were angling toward the same kind of lockout policy until Electronic Arts broke the mechanism and then, characteristically, threatened to leak the details out to other third parties unless Sega agreed to more favorable terms. It was nursed along by Nintendo's region lock policy, which was viewed by some developers as a violation of anti-trust regulations. released in 1988 in Japan, 1989 in North America, and 1990 elsewhere.įor the most part, it worked. In actuality, according to the 2014 book Sega Mega Drive Collected Works by Keith Stuart, it was Sega co-founder David Rosen who wanted the name change because he disliked the name "Mega Drive" and wanted the console to represent "a new beginning" for Sega. by Mega Drive Systems, Inc., a manufacturer of hard disk drives. Thus, Sega decided that they would beat Nintendo to the punch with a console based on their System 16 arcade board (codenamed "Mark V").Įnter the Sega Mega Drive or, as North Americans refer to it, the Sega Genesis, note It was commonly believed that the name change was because "Mega Drive" was already trademarked in the U.S. ![]() ![]() They were already being impacted in Japan by the sudden success of NEC's PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16 in the West) which, while not actually 16-bit, was a noticeable technical improvement from the Famicom, which was underpowered even for its time. Nintendo were complacent with their success and dragging their feet on developing a 16-bit system, which was the arcade standard at the time. After the Sega Master System failed to make a dent on the hold of the NES/Famicom, at least in North America and Japan ( it did okay in Europe and South America), Sega decided to just top it. ![]()
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