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WELCOME TO THE NEXT LEVEL

In a time when the Super Nintendo was was $179 with Super Mario World, and the Genesis was $149 with Sonic The Hedgehog, the Sega CD introduced a new storage medium and was boxed with six packed in games and two music discs. The Sega CD was released in November of 1992 for $299 and was eventually the first add-on to sell over 1 million units. The add-on's relative success, hardware prowess and affordability are why it should be touted as the first legitimate entry into the next generation of console hardware. Later generations' criticisms of Sega CD further legitimize its presence in the history of Video Games. Critics and journalists alike claim the Sega CD is the example of why add-on upgrades will fail in the console market. Not only does this consistently occur in the media and on Usenet, but the logic behind this analysis demonstrates the Sega CD's effective design. The initial media reception for the Sega CD was positive, but its presence in the media was quickly overshadowed by Nintendo's promises for a Super Nintendo CD-ROM add-on. Nintendo was therefore responsible for sealing the legitimacy of Sega's Genesis CD-ROM. Although, Nintendo released games with special chips in their cartridges instead of the promised CD-ROM upgrade. These chips were placed in games such as Pilot Wings, Super Mario Kart and Star Fox, and allowed for better special effects than the Super Nintendo was capable of alone. CD-ROM had yet to prove its staying power as a game console medium but, despite Nintendo's commitment to cartridges for the Nintendo 64, compact discs would become and remain the dominant medium for the rest of the 1990s.

The core of the Sega CD architecture is a central Motorola 68000 processor running at 12.5 Mhz that operates in tandem with the 7.6Mhz 68000 CPU in the Genesis. The Sega CD's CPU is only, however, considered to be marginally more capable in game related software than the Genesis CPU. Furthermore, both processors were not employed in processing the same programming code simultaneously. The Genesis has exclusive control of displaying the graphics, and the Genesis CPU can only access the Sega CD's memory in 256KB chunks. This meant that most games used the Sega CD's central processor for game code which would then be streamed in smaller chunks to the Genesis for display.

As a result, the Sega CD can not be considered a dual processor system. Because such a claim implies that both processors effectively double the system's overall processing power, this terminology is inaccurate to the Sega CD. Even without the distinction of having double the processing capabilities of the Genesis, the Sega CD added significant capabilities that were not possible on any of the 16-bit systems of its day. Superior CD audio, scaling and rotation capabilities, more complex level designs and cinematic sequences were possible on the Sega CD. This complex but relatively inexpensive approach to game architecture stemed from Sega's own arcade business, which was well known for its dual MC68000 boards.

The Sega CD could not stream game data from the CD-ROM on to the screen in real time, so the architecture included 768KB of RAM. Internal limitations caused developers to be limited to 256KB (2 Megabits) per level. In comparison, a standard Genesis cartridge of the time could hold 1024KB (8 Megabits) for the entire game, and would be forced to efficiently use much of the same data to create a wide variety of level designs. While the Sega CD was demonstrably more than a CD-ROM attached to the Genesis, most developers from 1992 through 1993 treated the add-on as such. The result was that third party developers, and sometimes Sega themselves, only prepared standard 8 Megabit Genesis games with the addition of CD quality music and updated cutscenes. Third party developers were therefore primarily at fault for the lack of impressiveness in early Sega CD software. The scaling and rotation effects chips eventually produced far more technically impressive effects than anything on the Super Nintendo. Developers hardly used the system's advanced capabilities in its first sixth months of game software.

Early buyers were nonetheless won by games that contained Full Motion Video of live actors, or cartoon cinematics, live voice acting in cut scenes, and CD quality music and sound. Sega' marketing campaign for the Sega CD also centered around the system's audio capabilities and Full Motion Video (FMV) games. In sum, first year Sega CD software failed to show an advantage in popular genres over older systems like the Genesis and SNES. Game magazines such as EGM and Gamepro conglomerated from 1993 on to give the Sega CD a perception of mediocrity despite the add-on's later technical achievements.

Included in the criticisms was one that was common to the Genesis itself, a limitation to only 64 colors on screen out of a palette of 512 colors. In 1993, the Genesis was already becoming known in game magazines more by its weaknesses than its strengths in relation to the SNES. The Sega CD was, therefore, presented by game magazines as an attempt by Sega to upgrade the Genesis to remain competitive with the SNES. So, Sega's "failure" to increase the on screen colors and color palette of the Genesis with its CD-ROM add-on became the media's favorite whipping post.

As noted in the Genesis-vs-SNES page, the Genesis did not need an upgrade in order to compete with the SNES. The Genesis had an advantage over the SNES in its relative speed and variety of background effects. Sega's system was also widening the gap with the SNES in sales by the time of the Sega CD's launch. One significant motivation for Sega was the fact that a CD-ROM upgrade had already been released for the TurboGrafx-16 two years earlier. Following that was the fact that the industry expected add-on upgrades in general. As a result, Sega simply designed and released the Sega CD with the Genesis in mind as its complement, not its predecessor. Evidence of this is in every press release by Sega at the time, as well as the hardware itself.

If anything was a motivating factor in creating the Sega CD, it was Sega's desire to maintain its cutting edge image. Blazoned on the top of every Model 1 Genesis were the words "High Definition Graphics" and a chromed logo stating "16-bit." Appropriately, the Sega CD's very name contained its most important cutting edge characteristic, the CD-ROM medium. Secondarily to this motivator, Sega had to keep the system's costs and the installation process as user friendly as possible. In so doing, leaving the Genesis video chip as the primary display output became a forgone conclusion.

Bringing the Experience Home: But At What Cost?

Context proves to be the best example. The 3DO (1993) and the NEO GEO (1990) featured price points of $699 and $649 respectively. Their mutual inclusion of the most cutting edge hardware available at the time is the only reason for their record setting price points. The NEO GEO was primarily an Arcade system, though, that offered a consolized version to high end consumers. Because the average price of NEO GEO games were in the $199 range, the NEO GEO truly had no chance of becoming a mass market product. With that said, the system used the same CPU and co-processor as the Sega Genesis. With those central similarities in mind, the NEO GEO's audio/video processors and amount of RAM allowed for high quality sound, scaling and rotation effects and higher color counts. These additional chips were what set the NEO GEO well above the technical capabilities of the Genesis or Sega CD, and they also were the cause of the prohibitively high cost. Though the NEO GEO was released two years before the Sega CD, it still retailed above $550 in 1992.

In order to be appealing to multiple manufacturers, the 3DO had to have enough hardware prowess to impress developers and manufacturers alike. The system's 32-bit ARM60 Central Processor and total of 3 Megabytes of RAM, the same amount of RAM as the Sony Playstation released in 1995, certainly delivered. The 3DO's ARM60 processor has been compared to a "fast x386" or Motorola 68030 which puts it at the top of the line for 1992 PC hardware, and slightly below the top of the line computers of 1993. In comparison to the Panasonic 3DO's $700 price tag, the cost of contemporary PC or Macintosh systems in 1993 were in the range of $2000 to $4000 respectively. Since the 3DO was only capable of playing games and other forms of multimedia CD-ROMs, the price difference may not have been viewed as acceptable by consumers in general. A consumer who wanted a computer for work related tasks would not have chosen a 3DO instead. Someone who wanted a computer primarily to play games may have seen the 3DO's exclusion of non-gaming functions as a deficiency.

The price contrast of these systems can be over simplified as well. If a consumer bought a Genesis at its launch price in 1989 and then a Sega CD for its launch price in 1992 the total cost would have been roughly $490 spread over three years. With that said, the retail price of the Genesis 2 and Sega CD 2 in 1993 were $129 and $229 respectively. It should be noted that the largest group of consumers who bought the Sega CD had already owned a Sega Genesis. Nevertheless, the price of the two Sega units combined was still roughly half that of the 3DO at its launch in 1993.

Specs Not Make One Great

The Atari Jaguar ran afoul of a host of precedents. It was the first of this generation's systems to be promoted by lofty spec-related promises, and also the first to arguably deliver on most of them. The Jaguar was the first system to fail almost from the outset because of its unorthodox architecture and deficient development kit support. The console's hardware is reputed to have been too difficult for most programmers to adequately exploit. Even Doom creator John Carmac needed to hand write a special game engine that catered to the Jaguar's unique design. While developers had chosen not to work with the Sega CD's hardware more closely, most of them apparently could not take advantage of the Jaguar hardware in its entirety.

With its low launch price of $250 and technical prowess in light of its peers, it is inaccurate to say that the Jaguar had no chance at success. The reality of the situation was that the Genesis and Super Nintendo commanded too much mass market frenzy for any product to truly compete. Hardware specifications were still discussed among gamers and the media, but the focus had shifted to software by '94. The expectation among gamers and the media was that all games would be released for one of these two popular systems. This also spilled over into the expectation that any necessary hardware improvements should be made for one of the two dominant systems.

They Say Yes, But They Mean No!

While common thought at the outset of the 21st century would be that add-ons to existing consoles will fail, game magazines and gamers themselves were clambering for upgrades in the 80s and early 90s. EGM #8's overview of the Sega Genesis and NEC TG16's merits had an entire section dedicated to "Expandability," which listed off the Turbo CD-ROM, the Powerbase Converter and the unreleased TeleGenesis modem as the only announced peripherals at the time. Numerous issues of EGM, Next Generation, Gamepro and Gamefan published reader questions in regard to when, not if, their console of choice would have the next system upgrading expansion released. Turbo fans were always looking forward to the next System card RAM expansion to the Turbo CD, Sega fans wanted to know when the Sega CD would be released, and Nintendo themselves stop-gapped the Sega CD's publicity with hype and cheap mock ups for their "32-bit" SNES CD-ROM add-on.

Sega's announcement the 32-bit upgrade to the Genesis, hot on the heels of their VDP chipped Virtua Racing cartridge, was not a surprise to anybody. In the Summer of 1994, issues of Gamepro and EGM heavily publicized the Genesis 32X. Both major publications even went as far as to predict that the add-on would sell well. EGM and Gamepro estimated that the Genesis 32X was a very marketable product in its own right. With Nintendo only having the Super Gameboy adapter for the SNES coming out that fall, EGM, Gamepro and Gamefan magazines all gave the 32X add-on their blessings. These magazine's story changed drastically however as soon as the 32X's fate became clear. Not only was the 32X suddenly a bad idea according to game magazines, but Sega was to blame for creating a device that literally "ripped off" anybody who bought it, .

This negative presentation of the 32X was so firmly set in the minds of gamers of the day that it was still repeated by people in the new millennium that unlikely to have ever owned the system. Even while the 32X was enjoying a relatively successful launch and first Christmas season, industry rumors were compiling to destroy its marketability. The $169 add-on failed to light the world on fire and quench the success of Rare's Donkey Kong Country and so its launch was quickly overshadowed. The titanic battle between the 16-bit Genesis and Super Nintendo effectively overshadowed all hardware innovations launched in their lifetimes. Consumers had grown to expect more from a console than a few pieces of software demonstrating how it was "the next best thing." As a result of Sega's mass market success with the Genesis, thanks in large part to licensees like Electronic Arts, mass market consumers expected software release numbers across a broad variety of genres and pinched their pennies for Fall blockbusters . Rather than risking their money on risky investments, people used word of mouth, hype, and video game magazines to make their purchasing decisions for them. This meant that console hardware that did not find its way into hundreds of congrous households at the same time had almost no potential for mass market penetration.

Below is a sequential list of every commercial release for the Sega CD, Jaguar, 3DO and 32X. This is not a notable game list like the other comparison lists on this site. Because of the sheer lack of exposure to gamers that most of these games had, there are not enough resources online to be able to compile a list based on the Notable Games rubric. Fortunately, unpopular as each of these systems were, the full release lists are relatively short in comparison to that of a mainstream console. Without the mainstream yearly updates, sequels and sports games, these system's libraries are easily viewed in their entirety. These lists should be viewed as a list of what was available at any given time to owners of each system.

Click here for information on the notable game lists.

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