How The Sega Genesis Made Weird Work

The Genesis of the Mega Drive

Today, the Sega Genesis is mentioned in the same breath as the Super Nintendo. But at the end of 1989, competing with the House of Mario seemed like a pipe dream.

After the disastrous North American distribution of the Master System through Tonka, Sega needed new leadership for their follow-up console. The company courted Atari CEO Jack Tramiel and Entertainment Electronics Division president Michael Katz for their Mega Drive. Tramiel wanted no part of it—the advanced 16-bit home console was too pricey, and the CEO needed all resources on deck to support the Atari ST. Katz, however, would follow Sega as they formed Sega of America and introduce the console to the market as the Genesis on August 14, 1989, two weeks before NEC brought the PC Engine to America as the TurboGrafx-16.

From the beginning, Sega faced an uphill battle against Nintendo. The Big N had a big market share, and with its launch of the innovative Game Boy that year, the company had revolutionized electronic entertainment hardware twice in half a decade. Further, the corporation’s in-house IP had been given the decade to seed and germinate in the minds of American and Japanese children alike. To compound this, Nintendo had strong-armed themselves into firm relationships with software manufacturers like Capcom and Konami through aggressive, monopolistic contracts. How could Sega stand up against such a consolidation of power?

Katz took a tangible, but ultimately short-sighted approach. He gambled on a number of expensive brand deals and celebrity endorsements that he wagered would translate to brand identity. This included pop icon Michael Jackson (Moonwalker), golf superstar Arnold Palmer (Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf), Joe Montana (Joe Montana Football), and several other athletes who weren’t Mario or a Saturday morning cartoon character. While this early gambit towards the sports gaming demographic did have some long-term gains, as the console would later gain a strong reputation for the genre, it wasn’t enough when faced with Nintendo at the toy stores during the 1989 holiday season.

Rise From Your Grave

More than it is defined by one mascot, the Genesis is truly defined by the broad spectrum of gaming that thrived on the platform. Where Nintendo had tight control over it and its platform’s brand image, Sega tried its hand at a broader approach. This meant bringing in third-party studios to work on first-party projects at a higher volume than Nintendo. It also meant taking a lot of risks on bets that didn’t pay off in the short term, but have gone on to be appreciated in their own right.

Its initial pack-in title, Altered Beast, is itself a testament to the uniqueness of the platform. Where Nintendo gave children a colorful 40-level adventure at home or an endlessly re-playable puzzle game on the go, Sega opted for an arcade port of a bloody, inaccessible brawler with five levels. The game trades in a high level of difficulty, with specific hit-boxes and demanding dodge mechanics paired with combat that expects precise inputs in any given scenario. Further, players are expected to master four transformations with unique controls and varying degrees of strength. Designed as a quarter-muncher, not a home console adventure, the game has still only maintained a small but loyal following over time—far from the ubiquity of World 1-1, Tetris A-Type music, or even Green Hill Zone.

Sega Genesis launch ad

Patrick Gardner is a longtime fixture in the Sega community. He’s responsible for coordinating the Sonic and Sega Fan Jam in Georgia, which began in 2014 and was re-imagined under Texas-based Chaos Creators as Sonic Expo Atlanta in 2023. I met Patrick in 2012, when both us and a handful of others spearheaded a fan awareness campaign for Sega’s Sakura Wars franchise. The first time we met in person was at E3 2017, where he was dressed in full Akira Yuki cosplay and introduced me to Sonic Runners developers over SmashBurger. A true blue Sega fan, if there ever was one.

Gardner spoke with me about the Genesis, and touched on some of the successes that helped build the console.

“Sega wanted to market their 16-bit console in a unique way that could compete and possibly overthrow Nintendo,” Gardner tells me via Messenger. “Despite some differences between the Sega America and Japan staff, [those differences] benefited them in the creation of Sonic and headstrong marketing detailing the Sega Genesis hardware specs.”

The collaborative design of Sonic between the US and Japan, along with an aggressive ‘Blast Processing’ misinformation campaign, put Sega on North American children’s maps—and birthday lists. Both the cocky mascot and ‘tude-laden marketing were not only a stark contrast to Nintendo; they flew in the face of what was considered acceptable advertising to children. Gardner fondly recalls playing combat-heavy games like Mortal Kombat and Golden Axe at his uncle’s house in the early 1990s. He recalls these games—among other Genesis staples—as ways he bonded with his cousins.

“[I’d come over] to play on the SNES, which also had a good line-up of games,” Gardner admits, “but the Sega Genesis stood out for me the most due to its ‘coolness’ as a gaming console.”

These early experiences shaped Gardner’s perspective of Sega. Today, he runs the Kori-Maru Gaming YouTube channel, where he discusses Sega news and history. He’s also known for his Sega-centered cosplay, which includes Kazuma Kiryu from Like A Dragon.

“What can I say—Sega is my childhood!” laughed Gardner. “While growing up as a Sega kid, I got to play so many cool videogames and franchises that the company produced. Golden Axe, Virtua Fighter, House of the Dead. My dream goal was to work with Sega, to help support their brands and share my passion within the community.”

This key factor is a major differentiating aspect between Nintendo and Sega during this era. While the former has enjoyed mainstream ubiquity going on four decades now—with a top-grossing animated picture released last year—the latter has rescinded into cult status outside of its signature hedgehog. It has taken the passion and drive of the people inspired by that era to keep it alive into the 2020s.

Fatal Labyrinths and Psychic Dolphins

But even between Beast and the Blue Blur, Sega’s initial two-year burst of first-party titles was an ambitious hodgepodge of strange and occasionally profitable decisions. Columns was a conscious, color-based pop against Tetris that—while far from ubiquitous—garnered a following of its own. Yu Suzuki’s sprawling Sword of Vermillion and far-flung sci-fi follow-up Phantasy Star II, meanwhile, offered compelling and beautiful alternatives to now-creaky NES RPGs. (With respect to Final Fantasy III, of course.) Action fans were more spoiled for choice, however, with blistering titles like Mystic Defender and ESWAT offering players stylish adrenaline shots. Ubiquitous titles like Golden Axe and Streets of Rage also offered plenty of mainstream appeal in the brawler market—and brought a new level of artistic possibility to the medium as a whole.

“Golden Axe creator Makoto Uchida is a fan of movies and would watch Conan the Barbarian to further expand ideas for the arcade beat ‘em up,” Gardner tells me, “and I find that really fascinating.”

Meanwhile, the Streets of Rage scores by Yuzo Koshiro have had an enduring musical legacy. The suite of scores have enjoyed release on vinyl, and musicians like Childish Gambino, Die Antwoord, MANAPOOL, and 18 Carat Affair have sampled them.

Of all Sega’s first-party, pre-Sonic titles, Fatal Labyrinth stands out the most. Originally released via Sega Meganet—an ambitious dial-up pay-to-play service in Japan and Brazil—the title is an esoteric and frequently frustrating real-time RPG. Drawing heavily from A.I. Design’s seminal 1982 PC game, Rogue, players are tasked with scaling a 30-floor dungeon with nothing but their wits and whatever they find lying on the ground. Like its inspiration, player movement is bound to a grid, and each input advances every enemy movement on the stage. Death is all but a certainty, as even the first level can toss players into a monster closet with only a dagger to defend themselves. To drive that point home, gold’s only purpose in Fatal Labyrinth is to provide a better funeral at the Game Over screen. It predates Torneko’s Great Adventure by three years, and can therefore be thought of as the first “true” Mystery Dungeon game in a sense. The year following Labyrinth’s release, designer Hirokazu Yasuhara and artist Naoto Oshima would showcase their talents in Sonic as level designer and art director, respectively.

But even after the surefire success of Sonic, Sega didn’t relent on first-party risks. One of its biggest in those following years would come from Novotrade, who put out a series of animal-based adventures through its Ecco series and spiritual companion, Kalibri. The Ecco games, in particular, are notable accomplishments in terms of form and structure in gaming. Director Ed Annunziata—who had been hard at work on licensed comic games Spider-Man and Chakan—was frustrated with the game rental market, and wanted to push players beyond what was usually expected of them.

“I was paranoid about game rentals and kids beating the game over the weekend,” said Annunziata on Twitter in 2013. “So… I… Uh… made it hard.”

“Hard” barely dips beneath the surface of how impenetrable the Ecco duology can be for impatient and incurious players. Both titles are dense, foreboding experiences with little direction beyond oblique riddles and hints from other creatures. Ecco can only bump into four hazards before dying, and is also only gifted with a limited supply of oxygen before he drowns. There is no gameplay loop, no core mechanic to master other than getting more used to the demanding underwater control scheme over an indulgent 24 levels. Players aren’t offered any comfort by the narrative, either, which weaves a bleak intergalactic story of dolphinkind being harvested as organic matter for the matriarchal Vortex civilization. The game’s often unsettling imagery is fueled by inspiration from prog rock like Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, with the 23rd level dubbed “Welcome To The Machine” in a cheeky nod.

Ecco The Dolphin is a hard sell in any medium, let alone early 1990s videogames. But Sega not only published the ambitious first game—as well as Master System and Game Gear conversions—and greenlit the even darker sequel, Tides of Time. The company also issued two separate Sega CD upgrades of each game, as well as a Game Gear version of the sequel. (More on the Sega CD in a bit.) This ambitious, unique, and—above all—strange concept was not only allowed to get out the door, but given full corporate support and pushed to the same kids who now wanted Sonic 2.

The Sega CD ports of both Ecco titles are notable, too, for their commitment to Sega’s vision for CD-based gaming. Rather than being strictly committed to innovations in 3D entertainment, several titles released for the add-on smartly embraced more complex 2D assets and took advantage of improved sound quality.
Former Sega audio department head and composer Spencer Nilsen recalls the period as one of rapid innovation.

“The funny thing is Sega of America (SOA) didn’t have a “studio” per se when I started,” Nilsen said via email, “so I moved all of my personal equipment down to the Redwood City headquarters from my home in Marin County and set it up in a converted broom closet. Shortly thereafter, we designed and built the first small recording space and I began writing music […] It wasn’t until we moved the main music operation to San Francisco and launched the Sega Music Group (SMG) that we built an 11,000 square foot, state of the art, multi-studio recording facility.”

Along with Brian Coburn, Nilsen composed the scores for the Genesis and Sega CD versions of both Ecco The Dolphin and its follow-up. (Attila Dobos, András Magyari, and Andy Armer also contributed to the Genesis version of Tides.) A self-taught musician, his eclectic influences include Ennio Morricone, Wendy Carlos, Tomita, and, fittingly enough, the band Genesis. His process for perfecting the sound on the titles he worked on was extremely involved, and it took the work of several collaborators—both contracted and in-house—to pull off.

“I had been working in professional studios since I was a teenager and it finally felt like we could produce the level of work that the new game platforms demanded,” said Nilsen. “I’m still amazed at what we were able to accomplish in those early makeshift spaces. I’m primarily a keyboardist and would compose everything on the keyboards, then hire studio musicians to flesh out the arrangements, such as drummers, guitarists, synthesists, vocalists, etc. I was definitely given creative freedom to take the music in the direction that I was inspired to go, but it was always a collaborative process with the producer(s) of the game, and especially other musicians and/or composers that may have been involved.”

Although Nilsen worked on several notable titles during his tenure at Sega, the musician and teacher holds his work on Ecco, Batman Returns, and Sonic CD’s American score in particular esteem.

“The teams of musicians, engineers, and producers were like family and collectively we accomplished some amazing things, given the era, technical limitations, budget sizes, tight schedules, etc.,” he said. “I think the palette of sonic textures featured in Ecco… and the early ‘surround’ immersion we accomplished by using the Q-Sound system, really drove a stake in the ground as far as what was possible and how much the music could enhance the player’s experience. It also opened the door to game soundtracks standing on their own, like movie soundtracks. Because I didn’t grow up playing games, I approached every project like a film or an album as opposed to just creating ‘wallpaper’ music to hang in the background.”

This new approach to game audio was being done partly in service of Ecco—a deeply weird project that speaks to the creative boundlessness embodied by the Genesis itself. Because while Sega may not have ever truly found its “Mario,” in the long run, it can also be said that Nintendo never found their own Ecco The Dolphin.

Third-Party Candidates

Third-party support was slowgoing in the early days of the Genesis. In fact, it took a whole year for a single third-party title to hit America—Seismic Software’s Air Diver. To capitalize on this, Sega was quick to offer a slew of licensed IP-based games. Early on, this yielded Rambo III (1989), Ghostbusters (1990), and Dick Tracy (1991).

But of these early efforts, the most notable is Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. This charming, colorful platformer features Disney’s rodent sweetheart as he bounces off and chucks projectiles at toy soldiers, sentient mushrooms, and giant bugs across five levels. It was directed by Emiko Yamamoto, who would also go on to work on Quackshot and World of Illusion. Women in directorial roles was a rarity for gaming at the time, so Yamamoto’s work on these titles is both vital and unprecedented.

“It was my first time making a game, so I came up with ideas I thought might be interesting,” said Yamamoto in a 2013 interview, “Things I thought would help flesh out the fantasy world, without being hesitant about how difficult or unconventional they might be. In that sense, I think that helped us make a unique game.”

Castle of Illusion was a boon for the Genesis in 1990, coming in a year where the platform struggled to stand out amid myriad competition. This would also cement a further collaborative relationship between Disney and Sega, which would yield several games of note for the platform. These include BlueSky’s exploratory Ariel the Little Mermaid (1992), Virgin’s swashbuckling Aladdin (1993), and SIDD’s simplistic minigame barrage Bonkers (1994). In general, Sega would continue to embrace these first-party licensed games well into its life cycle, such as Batman Returns (1993), Garfield: Caught in the Act (1995), and several Looney Tunes tie-ins released between 1992 and 1996.

Sega, however, was far from the only publisher with a Warner license. As Sega’s fortunes improved, several third-party publishers would finally bring the platform much-needed support. Konami released a pair of Tiny Toons Adventures games to the platform, along with a bevy of other notable alternatives to their SNES blockbusters like Contra III, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time, and Castlevania IV. The Genesis, in fact, received three distinct alternative installments in those particular series—Hard Corps (1994), The Hyperstone Heist (1992), and Bloodlines (1994), respectively. Konami also debuted the colorful and creative Rocket Knight Adventures (1993) on the platform, although sequel Sparkster (1994) went multi-platform.

Capcom was barely present on the Genesis outside of licensed arcade ports, but other Japanese publishers and developers stepped up to bat and made a splash on it. One such example was Data East, who brought a number of exclusives to the console outside of multi-plats like Joe & Mac (1991), Captain America & The Avengers (1992), and Side Pocket (1993). Games like Two Crude Dudes (1992) and Midnight Resistance (1991) were a bit too carnal and violent for the Super Nintendo, but they fit right in with the edgy image the Genesis had cultivated. There were also the strange experiments, such as pirate-themed Sonic riff High Seas Havoc (1994) and chaotic head-to-head racing platformer Dashin’ Desparados (1993). That latter title yielded the characters and world for 1994’s Spinmaster, which peaked at number 11 on the US most-played arcade charts according to RePlay Magazine.

Renovation, meanwhile, was a smaller contender but no less important. While the Copya Japan-exclusive Cutie Suzuki no Ringside Angel (1990) set the stage for better female representation in games on the platform, it was Renovation’s Valis games that most notably thrust women into the spotlight. Originally a PC series, three entries were released on the Mega Drive between 1991 and 1993. Aided by another in-house Telenet developer, Wolf Team, Renovation also released El Viento and Anett Futatabi, both combat-driven games that starred capable sorceress Anett. While far from first-party support, these combat-heavy action-platformers were among the first console videogames to center an original human female protagonist besting larger foes in combat. The developer/publisher would also put out a string of cult staple RPGs such as Arcus Odyssey and Ys III, along with a string of stylish shoot ‘em ups like Arrow Flash (1990), Gaiares (1990), Data East arcade port Vapor Trail (1991), and Sol-Feace (1991).

While major American publishers like Activision and Electronic Arts would help the Genesis take purchase among casual players, core genre enthusiasts were often better served by this wealth of support straight from Japan.

Nintendon’t Try This At Home

What often gets lost in the discussion around graphic violence on the Genesis is that the platform had traded in gruesome imagery from its very inception four years prior to its much-documented Supreme Court trial.

Altered Beast remained fairly faithful to the arcade version, in that players punched shambling, rotted corpses into pieces in the very first area. That’s to say nothing of Rambo III and Revenge of Shinobi, which both offered violent, fast-paced thrills that only the latter truly delivered on. These were all first party titles that were released within the initial year of the Genesis being put on the market.

And that’s just in America! Right out of the gate, Japan was treated to a particularly brutal Fist of the North Star brawler, which featured chunky dismemberment and hearty helpings of CRT marinara; it was later watered down and localized as Last Battle. Meanwhile, Curse featured open-skull lobotomy in its provocative cover art, and boasted a storyline built around alien civilizations and post-colonial anxieties. On both sides of the Pacific, Sega didn’t shy away from gristly imagery and grim themes that wouldn’t fly under Nintendo’s stringent internal content regulation. This was built into the console from the get-go.

“During that time, I felt that Sega was not only aiming to market their games to children, but more towards mature audiences as well,” says Gardner. “[The] Sega Genesis versions of Mortal Kombat allowed you to perform gruesome fatalities, unlike the Super Nintendo due to [corporate] censorship and it being a family-oriented console.”

This trend is an important factor in how the Sega Genesis captured the North American mindshare, specifically. The Genesis was marketed as a loud, aggressive artistic revolution for young Gen X’ers. Sega offered material and content that quite simply wasn’t available on other platforms. Most young gaming enthusiasts in this era of the United States didn’t have access to a personal computer, and renting violent movies was generally a no-go. As such, the first initial four years of the Genesis hosted a brutal and gruesome repertoire for the time.

First-party arcade port Alien Storm is a great example of the creative, nightmarish gore that could sometimes pop up on the system. Much of its visual design is owed to Cronenberg and Giger, whose work had a long tail of influence from the ‘80s onward. Parasites tear through human flesh like tissue paper, and aliens morph through oozing, visceral transformation sequences. Players can even shoot up convenience stores and shopping centers to hunt for the beastly creatures. And while a good deal more innocent, 1991’s Decap Attack might be the only children’s game to ever star a headless corpse with a face sewn into its stomach. The Japanese original was a kiddy manga tie-in with no American fanbase, and thus, the resulting Burtonesque nightmare was Sega’s attempt to make the game resonate with kids in the US. These two titles—combined with those early action-heavy launch games—help characterize Sega as a first-party publisher willing to get its hands dirty in a way Nintendo simply wasn’t.

Of course, Sega wasn’t the only restaurant with red sauce. Third-party developers would push the boundaries of acceptable carnage through the early ‘90s. Namco, for example, was able to resuscitate its grim 1988 brawler, Splatterhouse, into a pair of ambitious and frequently disgusting titles. While the initial follow-up, Splatterhouse 2, was a polished re-do of the first game, the third entry pushed the boundaries of both its genre and its platform. This was not only due to the content, which is arguably the most extreme in the series, but also in its non-linear progression and four branching endings. These endings were exceedingly dark and featured the player’s death, spousal loss, and infanticide—far from a triumphant victory. While not the cited reason for controversy that would go to define the Genesis, gruesome titles like the Splatterhouse games nevertheless had a home on the platform and moved the needle in terms of what was possible to depict in electronic entertainment.

Even licensed games, which were generally kid-safe cash grabs, took shocking risks with hyperviolence. Perhaps the most notable example of this is Virgin Games USA’s RoboCop Versus The Terminator, based on the 1992 Frank Miller mini-series of the same name. The game is uncommonly gory for the time, even when held up against PC contemporaries like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Enemy NPCs explode into thick, ketchupy splashes of red goo; dismemberment, decapitation, and disembowelment—the ‘three Ds’ of visual design—are a constant. As if to drive the point home, the Genesis version of the title had a version-exclusive ‘Violent Mode,’ which could only be executed by entering a comically long thirty-input cheat. This is a remnant of an internal switch made to throw off management.

“We were all like 22 years old,” director John Botti told Retro Gaming in 2020. “And we wanted as much gore and blood as possible! Tim and I even installed switches in the game, so when the management came by, the game wouldn’t look so violent.”

In-house, third-party, or even IP-based tie-in games were lured by the promise of creative freedom under Sega. Before and far beyond Mortal Kombat, the Genesis elevated graphic content in electronic entertainment to new and exciting highs—or lows, from the perspective of Joe Lieberman.

But this wasn’t the only front the Genesis would innovate on.

An Altered Beast

What killed the Sega Genesis? Most favor Occam’s Razor, and heap the blame solely at the feet of Sega of Japan’s lack of cooperation with their American counterpart. This is a fair assessment—the division was notoriously combative against Kalinske’s handling of the company from the very beginning. In fact, shareholders challenged his plan to slash the price of the console and bundle it with the new hardware. Japan’s historical technological economy can be summarized as hardware perceived as “strong” and software as “weak.” This dates back to the early days of Japanese computing in the 1960s and 1970s, when software was established as subservient and ancillary to computers.

Writes Disrupting Japan host and Japan-based entrepreneur Tim Romero:

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, software was written for specific and very expensive hardware, and the software requirements were negotiated as part of the overall purchase contract. Software was not viewed so much as a product, but more like a service, similar to integration, training, and ongoing support and maintenance. It was usually sold on a time-and-materials basis, and sometimes it was just thrown in for free to sweeten the deal. The real money was in the hardware.

This attitude remained ever-dominant during Japan’s bubble years, as corporations were unwilling to gamble the country’s new economy on the burgeoning software market. Fast forward a decade, then, and it makes more sense why Kalinske’s approach ruffled the feathers of Japanese executives and shareholders. After coming out from under the thumb of Gulf + Western in the early ‘80s, the company had spent the better part of the decade developing the Mega Drive in-house—even as the Master System hit the market. This was meant to be an advanced piece of technology that saved Sega and established them as a strong independent hardware manufacturer.

Instead, a toy salesman wanted to cut the price in half and bundle it with a cutting edge piece of in-house code. To a Japanese businessman, it sounded like total disaster. It was only by Nakayama’s blessing that Kalinske was able to make any of the choices that would make the Genesis competitive in North America.

Those choices, however, had come home to roost by 1994. After struggling out of the gate, the Super Nintendo had recovered with a string of lavish first-party and third-party titles that would go on to define that system’s legacy. Meanwhile, a failed business venture with Silicon Graphics for the upcoming Sega Saturn—orchestrated by Kalinske, shut down by Japan—pushed the hardware manufacturer towards the Big N and led to the inception of the Nintendo 64. Kalinske tried to work with Sony’s Olaf Olafsson and Micky Schulhof on a potential collaboration, only for disagreements to push the company towards creating the PlayStation.

Two large elephants in the room, however, are the Sega 32X and Sega CD—two crushing commercial blows that put the confident company on shaky ground just as they’d caught their footing.

Of the two, the Sega CD is the most defensible and home to the most innovation. Meant to both compete with the TurboGrafx-16 and its CD-ROM drive and preempt products such as the Jaguar, the CD-ROM add-on allowed for a broader range of more diverse titles. It also boasted better graphical and audio fidelity than the base console, although the former is somewhat difficult to appreciate today due to the compression required to even play videos on the console. In some sense, it’s a marvel that the Genesis could process video at all. Yet even with this technical limitation, the system boasts a variety of notable titles that are classics in their own right.

Originally released as a laserdisc arcade title in 1985, Time Gal was one in a small series of anime-based FMV titles. Similar to Dragon’s Lair—which also received a Sega CD port—these titles tasked players with precise inputs set to synchronized video.

I described Time Gal for Anime Herald last year as follows:

While it was another riff on the already-aging mechanics of Dragon’s Lair, Time Gal was notable for its beautiful original animation, as well as for boasting one of the industry’s earliest human female protagonists. It’s best described as a Project A-Ko alike, in the sense that it’s a broad pastiche of—and love letter to—sci-fi of the era.

The Sega CD release of the Toei-Taito collaboration was a faithful port, if compressed. Renovation would release it in North America, along with three other Toei-animated FMV titles—Road Avenger (1992), Cobra Command (1992), and Revenge of the Ninja (1994). As these were considered the domain of either PC gaming or arcades, this was a notable accomplishment for the era.

Other games used the expansion to either bring new styles of gameplay to the platform or enhance existing ones. An example of the former is 1993’s Yumemi Mystery Mansion (released as Mansion of Hidden Souls in 1994), an evocative point-and-click adventure which boasted stylish and uncanny visuals that elevated its murky plot. In that latter classification, both Lunar games—1992’s Silver Star and 1994’s Eternal Blue—pushed JRPGs into the 1990s with an aggressive, forward-thinking approach. The title took full advantage of the platform’s features, boasting a robust score and animated cutscenes designed by Gunbuster and Project A-Ko animator Toshiyuki Kubooka. Lunar was a precursor to the PlayStation era of JRPGs, which were similarly often defined by their lengthy, involved soundtracks and stylish cutscenes. Titles like this and Mansion were proof that the Sega CD had more vision than a handful of key titles—even if those titles are all people tend to remember. After all, it’s hard to ignore the “CD” in the Sonic, Final Fight, and Shining Force installment titles!

But the 32X’s contributions are more tenuous. The bulky attachment was meant to bridge the gap between the 16-bit and 64-bit eras by attaching directly to the top of the Genesis unit.

“Initially, the argument was that we could get another year of life out of the Genesis before we had to introduce the Saturn,” Tom Kalinske told Retro Gamer in 2016. “Japan disagreed with me on that, so as kind of a stopgap measure, the 32X came up.”

Inside the 32X were two 23 MHz RISC CPUs with 256 KB of RAM and VRAM; the base Genesis offered 7.6 MHz from its onboard Motorola 68000 and boasted 64 KB of VRAM. These improvements, then, were substantial from both a performance and quality standpoint. One drawback was the bulky size—4.3 x 8.3 x 3.9 inches to the base console’s 2.25 x 10.95 x 8.45 inch body. To put that in perspective, this meant that the 32X was about as wide as the Genesis was deep. This made for an unattractive and cumbersome sight, no matter which of the Genesis’ two models it weighed down

Of the 32X’s 40 (!) exclusive titles, few could be described as essential. That said, its version of Virtua Fighter—released after the arcade’s landmark Saturn port—is an impressive and colorful fighter that proved the system had some life in it yet. Armored Core fans may also be intrigued by Metal Head, a 3D mech simulation title that predates the From Software title by two years and boasts advanced (if clunky) sim-style cockpit controls that are impressive for the platform. Also still pertinent and fun is Star Wars Arcade, which offers platform-exclusive bells and whistles along with a generous continue option; of the handful of 3D flight-based shooters on the platform, it’s perhaps the most stable and legible.

Yet even with silver linings tucked away beneath them, the 32X and Sega CD cast a dark cloud on the Sega Genesis. Their subsequent failure with the Sega Saturn—including its well-documented non-consensual launch at E3 1995, which was forced on Kalinske six months early by Sega of Japan—is almost a nothing issue when compared to the self-sabotage done on the Genesis by Sega itself. Miscommunication between both divisions of the companies yielded chaos that unfolded in molasses—disorganization that cost the company valuable time and market share.

The Genesis wasn’t killed by its competition. Instead, the architects behind the system took it apart from the inside. They did this by sullying, cheapening, and confusing ideas of what the platform even was. This was a mistake Nintendo would go on to repeat with the Wii U, but just once; meanwhile, Sega made it several times within less than five years. In hindsight, however, the 32X and Sega CD have both been rightly appreciated by platform enthusiasts for their advances in what consumers thought was possible in home console gaming.

“Personally, I have no ill will towards the 32X and CD other than the amount of plugs you had to attach together,” said Gardner. “Besides that, there are some cool games I really liked from the add-ons such as Sonic CD, Final Fight CD, Knuckles Chaotix, and—of course—Virtua Fighter. Sega was definitely ahead of its time.”

In Aesop’s fable, the tortoise beats the hare with slow and steady perseverance. However, the hare will always have the satisfaction of seeing what lied ahead before the competition got there. This, too, is true of Sega in regards to the Sega CD, 32X, and the numerous moonshots that lay at its plastic feet. For a few brief years, the developers and executives at the helm could see into the future. The cost, however, was everything they’d built to get that brief taste of what might be.

“Naivete and Innocence”

The Genesis was not an accidental success, nor an overnight one. It was a concentrated, focused effort to do things differently than the much larger competition. A “David and Goliath” story, as Nilsen puts it, the real buried lede in Sega’s temporal triumph is that it offered area to experiment with style, content, and depth in a way developers hadn’t been able to up until that point.

“I think what defines the ‘Sega era’ for me is the naivete and genuine innocence we all shared,” says Nilsen. “There were very few rules and even fewer examples to draw from, so we followed our instincts and created the music that was in our hearts.”

Genres once bound to home computers banged their code up against the console’s processors, some to more success than others. In less than a year, it seemed like home console videogames could be as risky, scary, and ambitious as their PC counterparts.

Until they couldn’t. Until the Supreme Court got involved and the ESRB was formed. Until the Sega 32X flopped, and the Sega CD’s wager to pre-empt the PlayStation failed. Until Sega of Japan’s pride forced Kalinske’s hand and—vis a vis—brought about his hasty exit. By the time of the Saturn’s ignoble death under much-maligned CEO Bernie Stolar, Sega was already a third wheel to the rising battles between Nintendo and Sony. Even its ambitious Dreamcast—a modest success in Japan—couldn’t live up to their less powerful, but more content-rich competition in North America.

This is a well-documented story, and a decline that has been enshrined several times over in the annals of gaming history. A story that—as I wrote this—I was careful to not retread.

Often lost in that narrative is the ambition and drive that defined the people who made the Genesis and their art from the period. As a collective of privately held companies and independent developers, Sega had a lot to lose going into the 1990s. Had the Genesis launched with more accessible and digestible titles, it might have failed to stand out. Had it succeeded right out of the gate, some of its largest innovations might not have happened. Had it played it safe with content, home gaming may have remained stagnant and inoffensive for several more years. And had all of the options open to Nintendo been available, Sega might not have taken a risk on lesser-known developers whose work would reshape the artform.

“There was little to NO corporate over-lording going on at SOA or any pressure from the executive branch to do things a certain way,” says Nilsen. “We were trusted to do what we did best and I think that is reflected in not only the music itself but in the decades-long love affair so many people around the world have for those early, quirky soundtracks we created. That innocence is probably all but lost today, in any area of the entertainment industry, especially games because we know too much for our own good and everything has to compete on the world stage.”

The Sega Genesis did not start with Sonic, nor did it end with him. In fact, the console was technically in production until 2023, when TecToy finally discontinued its unprecedented regional distribution of the console in Brazil. 35 years later, the system that didn’t even make half its estimated first-year sales outlived several platforms that have come and gone since. Numerous high-profile indie titles have hit the console over the last decade, too, such as colorful anthropomorphic animal platformer Tanglewood and fast-paced multi-directional shooter Xeno Crisis. Even Sega’s two attempts to cash in on the mini-console craze brought both unreleased titles and updated arcade ports.

“The Genesis is still active through fan hacks, translations, and newly branded consoles in other regions,” says Gardner. “Personally, I would love to see more miniature consoles like the Genesis Mini I and II be produced to keep history alive for a newer generation.”

Because there’s not quite another system like the Genesis in videogaming. And as long as there are people left to surprise, its odd, shocking, and mesmerizing corners will always do what Nintendidn’t.

All games tested on Kega Fusion. Special thanks to Patrick Gardner and Spencer Nilsen for their correspondence on this piece.

Madeline Blondeau is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest. She’s written for Paste, Anime New Network, Anime Feminist, Anime Herald, and Coming Soon. Her writing has appeared in A Handheld History, Lock-On, and Sakura Serenade. You can support her work and read further writing on media and culture at her Substack.