Talk:Sega Genesis

I don't know who created this article, but its origin is clearly a move of the original Genesis article, so I've attempted to merge in a bunch of information from the old Mega Drive text.

For archived discussions of those pages, see Talk:Sega Mega Drive and Talk:Sega Genesis. ThomasHarte 18:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Colors

The Genesis can only display 61 colors without tricks. There are 4 16 color palletes; however, color 0 is used as the transparent color for background planes and sprites so the color 0 entry can only be used for the background color. Since you can only have one background color without using raster effects, we get 4*15+1=61 colors. With tricks the color limit is only 1536 colors not 3072 (unless there's some trick I'm not aware of). Raster effects allow all 512 colors in the pallete onscreen (though only 61 per line) at a time. Shadow/Highlight adds a shadow and highlight version of each color effectively tripling the available pallete (though it imposes some other limitations). When both these effects are combined we get 512*3=1536. No games actually use this many colors, though there have been one or two tech demos that use the technique. I am changing the colors spec back to the older numbers.

Mask of Destiny 01:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Shortening the page

I think it might be a good idea to split off something from here, into it's own article. Perhaps the "Genesis-derived" hardware section (a.k.a. "Other variations of the Mega Drive and Genesis"), in which those specific devices can be detailed a little more by themselves. That way we can lighten the article a bit. Arekku 21:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Na --Herzog 06:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

This suggestion concerning a separate article for Genesis derived hardware has been up for nine months with no significant disapproval. That's a long enough gestation time. We should go forward on this. I'll do it, if somebody doesn't beat me to it (or dissuade me). Ben 11:07, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I've cut a big chunk of the variations page out. Feel free to revert it back if you preferred how it was, but at the moment the page is a touch unweildy and goes on a tangent. All the information /is/ relevant, but I'm not necessarily sure it has to be all on the one page, particularly obscure variation differences or the fact one region has a slightly different controller. Halo 22:23, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Very nice, Halo! I've moved all the idiosyncratic Genesis derived hardware to the Variations page you created. The main article looks much cleaner now. Ben 08:43, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Title again...

I can see this has been brought up before, but I dont think that is reason enough to hault all discussion on the topic.

I propose this article be renamed Sega Mega Drive.

• Only one country calls it the Genesis because of silly copyright reason whereas 99% of the planet refer to as the Mega Drive (perhaps an exaggeration, but the majority nethertheless).
• It was reffered to as the Mega Drive in its country of origin (Japan)
• Most games came from regions where it was called the Mega Drive
• The console was *far* more popular in countries where it was reffered to as the Mega Drive
• Their would be an outrage if the Star Fox article was renamed Star Wing because it was called that in PAL regions because of silly copyright reasons, this situation is comparative.
• There is no merit to Genesis shareing this pages title with Mega Drive except that it is the American name for it... and let's not go down that road.

- UnlimitedAccess 06:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I disagree. The current name is already a compromise between the two names (and a merge between two seperate articles). Also, if my memory is correct, the U.S. was not at all a trivial part of the Mega Drive/Genesis market. As for the "country of origin" argument... "Super Famicon" directs to the Super Nintendo article. It's already a contentious issue, IMO, the current name is pretty close to a NPOV. Arekku 06:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

A compromise is neccessary if both names have equal claim, this is not the case as per my above points. Sega was always much more dominant in Europe than in North America - in *every* generation. Again it's silly to share the Internationally standardised brand with the title from one coutries which came about from a copyright conflict, as per Star Wing or Hungry Jacks. - UnlimitedAccess 13:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Changing the name to "Mega Drive" is going to confuse a hell of a lot of people. There's certainly more of the Genesis than 1% of the planet. I'd say perhaps more than there were Mega Drives in Europe. Certainly more than there were MDs in Japan. Although if I'm wrong, let me know.

Basically, it may not be 50%, but it's close enough.

"There is no merit to Genesis shareing this pages title with Mega Drive except that it is the American name for it... and let's not go down that road."

Oh? You seem to be leading that direction anyway.

The name should stay as is. Arekku 04:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

How about one of you provides us with some actual information instead of vague and quite possibly imagined statistics? If it can be shown that Mega Drive is the more common name, move it, if it can be shown that they are equally known, leave it. - 211.28.79.52 02:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think its hard for anyone to argue that the combined sales of the Sega console in question in the entire globe is even close to the sales of only America and Canada, especially considering typically Japan alone matches US sales in video games, and back in the 90's even exceeded it (despite having like half the population). Sadly I wish we had the figures but console tracking espeically through non Western and much of European countries is impossible, but just taking into consideration Japan and America, historically (until the PS2/GameCube), Japanese Consoles have always sold more in Japan then in America. - UnlimitedAccess 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

No, actually... of all three major markets, the Mega Drive was the least popular in Japan. Japan was mainly dominated by Nintendo, and later on by Sony. In America, the Genesis might've actually (at least slightly) outsold the SNES (resulting in Nintendo even marketing Mortal Kombat for the Genesis, IIRC), until the SNES finally matured, the Sega CD/32X fiasco, and finally the launch of the PlayStation.

The whole premise behind this is stupid. If the article was simply named Sega Genesis, then I would've recommended adding the second name, as like you said, it was the Genesis only in America. But the North American market was very large compared to the European and Japanese markets, perhaps even combined. Both names should be used equally for the article.

Arekku 18:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No. This entire WIkipedia is U.S centered. The Japanese SMB2 is Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, its USA name. The USA release of Super Mario Bros. 2 takes the real title. This example shows just how US-centered Wikipedia is. I believe this article is a good compromise between the two names. Let's keep it that way. - Hbdragon88 21:55, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually NO, thats borderline offensive, English Wikipedia is ENGLISH centric... not USA or European or Australasian centric... Its reffered to as Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels because thats what it was called in all English speaking nations. - UnlimitedAccess 13:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Hbdragon that this article should keep its current name (or be moved to Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, but whatever), but I have to protest against the claim that "this entire Wikipedia is US centered" as all of the examples apply not to just the USA but the entire English speaking world. I also have to point out, as I often find myself doing in these discussions, that the official policy of wikipedia, as stated in Wikipedia:Manual of Style is that "For the English Wikipedia, while a nationally predominant form should be used, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English." so the mere fact that many other articles are written in the American predominant form has no bearing on what should be done with this article.

What would be good would be to state in the introduction something like "references to the Mega Drive also refer to the Genesis except where in a region specific context" and then stop labouriously writing "The Mega Drive/Genesis" throughout. Even that would probably be too controversial for some users though, so I guess the best solution is just to reduce such references to a bare minimum for readability reasons. — ThomasHarte 22:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

"The Lost Levels" was the name of the game bundled in Super Mario Allstars in both USA and Europe. But yes, enwiki is USAPOV. As with the Starwing example, this article should be under Sega Mega Drive. The same goes for Fatal Frame which should be moved to Project Zero, which is the name for that game series in the entire world except USA. And so on. /81.170.235.234 10:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC) (User:Grillo)

You know, I MIGHT be able to support the whole name thing if it wasn't for the fact that "Mega Drive" is such a boring name. And yeah, it will confuse a bunch of people and we'll just end up having the name changed again.--SeizureDog 15:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

All the mentions of genesis just show up wikipedia's American bias which there is a big need to stamp out. The general rule of law is to use the correct terminology for the country in question i.e. in American Football articles go ahead and use color and talk about american football as the football and all that to your hearts content however in football articles its colour and assosiation football. Since the mega drive is a Japanese invention mega drive should definatly take priority. Also as mentioned it was the mega drive in a lot more markets.

For the US market being bigger: definatly not. At the time of the mega drive Japan was clearly the biggest market, the USA has never been the outright biggest market to the extent it can dictate what the others do (well except maybe in the 70s but thats a different story altogether)- Japan has popularity over it, Europe population. And then that's not to mention Australasia and South America who whilst not equal with the big 3 are certainly not ignorable.--Josquius 15:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Nintendo/Sega info

I'm not sure where this should be placed in the article, so I'll toss it here and let you guys decide. Iwata just announced in his GDC keynote speech that the Nintendo Revolution would offer some Sega Genesis games, similar to how they'll be offering NES, SNES and N64 games. They won't have the complete library, but they'll carry the best/most popular. Ladlergo 20:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

As this article is almost entirely dedicated to the console hardware, I don't believe the Nintendo/Sega bit should be headlined at the top of the page and probably should be removed. It's mention later in the 'History' section is fine, though. --Millbrooky 02:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it should be inside the article, not in the headline. Move it in a section named "Nintendo Virtual Console agreement" or something like that. -- ReyBrujo 03:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Brazilian release

Erased: "The console was very successful, but only overcame the Master System in 1996" I really can't buy this story. In Brazil, as early as 1992/93, everybody was playing Genesis and SNES. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.31.229.219 (talk • contribs) .

Citing references

We need proof of this statement: "Since the System 16 made by Sega were very popular, Hayao Nakayama, Sega's CEO at the time, decided to make their new home system utilize a 16-bit architechture." Was this really Hayao's decision, when it would almost certainly be the decision of the engineers? Was System 16 truly *that* popular at the time? (Sega had multiple 16-bit arcade platforms in existance, why System 16 in particular?)

And again: "Signetics 68K only found in early revisions as this CPU is known to be inefficient." I have seen *many* Genesis consoles and tons of arcade games using the Signetics-manufactured 68K with zero problems (same with any other 68000 manufacturer: Hitachi, Motorola, Toshiba, etc.). Additional information to back this statement up is needed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.110.36.224 (talk • contribs) .

Article neglects major handicap vs. Nintendo

The current version of the article fails to note why the Master System and then the Sega Genesis struggled to build marketshare until a certain point and why the NEC TurboGrafx never overcame this problem.

This is quoted from the Wiki entry on Nintendo:

By the end of the 1980s the courts found Nintendo guilty of anti-trust activities because it had abused its relationship with third-party developers and created a monopoly in the gaming industry by not allowing developers to make games for any other platforms. They changed this rule during the Super NES era, allowing Sega to start a massive console war against Nintendo with the Sega Genesis and Game Gear. This would occur once more in 1996, when Sony released the PlayStation.

In more detail, a third party publisher getting ready to release a US NES game for manufacturing had to sign a contract with Nintendo of America covering a variety of things. One of these was a clause that obligated the publisher not to allow this game to be published on any competing platform for a minimum of two years. I encountered this contract myself when my then employer, Cinemaware, was readying some NES ports from our C64 titles.

This was a devastating weapon against Sega, NEC, and anyone else who wanted to be in the game system business. During the Master System era, Sega failed to understand the critical need for third party support anddidn't really accept this until the Mega Drive/Genesis was being readied for a US launch. NEC understood this, especially since the PC Engine was rapidly grabbing marketshare. Much of that came from having highly superior version of popular third party hits seen solely on the NES in the US market.

NEC's semiconductor operation sold a lot of memory and other chips to Nintendo. The complaints from the video games division were overruled by the much larger semiconductor business' need not to upset a major customer.

Sega didn't have any such restraints and brought suit against Nintendo. The details of the settlement have never been made public (to my knowledge) but the effects were immediate and dramatic. Capcom shipped a version of Street Fighter II for the Genesis within weeks of the settlement's annoucement. For the first time, Sega had a level playing field in the US market. Nintendo's marketshare has never approached the NES peak or the high level it had before the settlement.

Sonic and Madden helped but Sega never had a chance until they broke Nintendo's stranglehold on third party publishers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Epobirs (talk • contribs) .

Screenshots section replacement

Okay, I can understand why the entire section of screenshots was removed. They had no written commentary and thus were not allowable under fair use laws.

However, those pictures spoke more than a thousand words about the capabilities and limitations of this machine. The article is seriously lacking without them.

I propose we create a new section which will highlight a few MegaDrive games (maybe half a dozen?) and include screenshots with critical commentary. To keep the list short, we should strive for a good cross-section, not just a most popular list.

Everyone: provide nominations here for games that ought to be included as demonstrating something unique about the MegaDrive. Please be sure to describe why the game is important or unique.

Ben 13:27, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

I have been talkign about this on some pages. Basically see Nintendo 64 and Nintendo Entertainment System. They explain specific hardware components and how this was reflected in teh games. We should also mention popular franchises, and top-selling games. Perhaps list major first/second party titles and major third party titles. Mortal Kombat, on its genesis port, was particularly popular. --larsinio (poke)^(prod)

Mortal Kombat might be good to highlight, not because it was popular, but because of the reason behind the popularity. I've heard that the Genesis version sold better because the SuperNintendo version censored the blood. Does anybody have a good (citable) source for that rumor? Ben 11:39, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

i think that it would be a good idea to have a mix of the games that had the most impact on the console (such as Sonic 2), games that provide a good feeling of what type of games were primaraly played on the console (such as a mix of platformers, arcade like games, sports games) and a selection of games that stretched what the console could do (Virtua Racing, Vectorman(maybe), Sonic 3 + Sonic and Knuckles) gord 15:01, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Idiomatic games for the Sega Mega Drive

Note: this section is temporarily here until it is complete enough to put into the main article.

Although the Mega Drive had hundreds of games developed for it, the gamut can be expressed with a few examples. Note that these games were not necessarily the most popular or well known, but each represents a unique facet of the Mega Drive.

Sonic the Hedgehog

While essentially a 2D "jump-and-run platform game", similar to the earlier Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog used the Mega Drive's advanced hardware to provide better graphics and speed. Often used for sales demonstrations, this title came to signify the great leap that the 16-bit Mega Drive had made over contemporary 8-bit consoles, such as the NES.

Virtua Racing

The Mega Drive was designed as a 2D machine with fast sprite blitting, but no 3D hardware. To simulate 3D on the Mega Drive, game programmers would usually pre-scale the sprites based on their distance (viz., Space Harrier). Porting the arcade hit Virtua Racing to the Mega Drive was possible only through a special graphics co-processor built into the cartridge which performed the 3D polygon operations. Virtua Racing is notable because it shows the design limitations of the Mega Drive. Even with the co-processor, Virtua Racing on the Mega Drive had a disappointingly low polygon count compared to the original arcade version (put actual numbers here) and sales were low because the coprocessor made Virtua Racing one of the most expensive cartridges on the market at the time ($99). The graphics coprocessor technique was never used again for any other Mega Drive game.

Phantasy Star IV

Phantasy Star is the most famous RPG for Sega consoles and Phantasy Star IV has been cited as one of the most influential computer Role Playing Games on any platform.

John Madden Football

As Nintendo's SNES became more popular, and Sega faced more competition in the genre of RPGs, Sega attempted to differentiate the Mega Drive by heavily developing sports titles. John Madden Football was one of those high-quality sports series. When it was first released in 1991, it created a whole new type of football game. The series was so popular that Sega was able to release nine versions of the game from 1991 to 1998.

Beggar Prince

[I'm not sure if this game is noteworthy enough to highlight; the only characteristic that redeems it is that it was the last professionally released video game for the Sega Genesis (2006).]

I think its noteworthy in that it was released several years after the console 'died', meening that assumingly there is enough interest in the mega-drive and enough mega-drives still floating about to make the project finanicially viable, apart from that though there isn't anything about the game that makes it unique or special. gord 14:46, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Discussion about the games

A good start, although some changes should be made. The Sonic one has some pov, using "stunningly" dosn't add anything to the article other then to glorify the MD. Also added a note about Super FX aswell as adding {{fact}} to the end of Pahantasy Star, it might be the case, but would need a citation to even be considered being left inn. Havok (T/C/c) 13:09, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the word "stunningly" does sound POV, but it is also something we should express in the article. Part of the reason Sonic was so important was because, at the time, people were shocked to see a video game where the sprites and background tiles moved so quickly. I'm sure we can dig up a reputable reference for this. Ben 13:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Requested move for Sega CD

I just want to inform you that I've requested a move for Sega CD (back again) to Sega Mega-CD/Sega CD. Since the CD Drive (may it be a Mega-CD, may it be a Sega CD) is just an extension for the Mega Drive/Genesis I'd like to follow it the naming convention used for its "mother console". After last years discussion (I wasn't a registered user in en.WP back than but I've followed it) I'd like to prevent a move-war for the Sega (Mega-)CD and would be happy about a consensus. If you want to support or oppose my request, then please leave your oppinon at Talk:Sega_CD#Requested_Move. --32X 13:53, 19 July 2006 (UTC)