Sega Genesis/Mega Drive
The Genesis / Mega Drive was Sega's 16-bit console. Due to the fact that "Mega Drive" was already trademarked in the United states Sega decided to rename the system to Genesis for the US. It was released in the United States on January 9, 1989 with a launch price of $200 and marketed as the first "true 16 bit console". It was then released to the rest of North America on September 15, 1989 with a slightly reduced price of $190.
The main competitor of the Genesis was Nintendo's 16 bit console the Super NIntendo (SNES). With the release of the SNES Sega continued to maintain a strong fan base mostly made up of Arcade, RPG, and Sports gamers. Even with the strong fan base Sega needed a power house game to really take control of the console war, and with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 1, they did just that. The war between Sega and Nintendo during the 16-bit era was one of the greatest console wars ever in gaming. With the anticipated release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992 the Genesis was propelled to the number one console in the USA and was outselling the SNES for the first time ever.
Along with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992 the Genesis recieved a redesign in an effort to cut costs and implement a stronger region encoding. Sega also started developing add on devices, Sega CD and 32X. Both of these were ultimatly failures due to poor advertising, lack of third party support, and disputes between Sega of America and Sega of Japan. While some great games were released for the Sega CD and 32X they helped form a distrust for Sega. In 1994 with the annoucements of new more powerful systems things were looking down for the Genesis and the 16-bit era in general. For a breif time before the demise of the console Sega teamed with Time Warner in the United States to offer a service called the "Sega Channel" which was a subscription that which gamers could download a certain number of new games a month. By 1996 the Genesis was dropped by Sega in favor of support for the Sega Saturn.
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