What gave Mega Drive / Genesis bad rep?

[Beware]

The MD got cannibalized by Sega's own fracturing of their brand. With a half dozen models of Genesis/Mega Drives in addition to 2 different expansions that played different games and third party spin offs of the main models, not to mention various models of the Nomad, consumers eventually became overwhelmed by choice/monetary investment necessary just to play the latest Sonic game. I don't know anything about a "bad rep," but it died because Sega had no idea how to run a sustainable hardware business.

 

[HaloEffect17]

the first couple of years had many games with slowdowns, sure, but developers overcame that pretty quickly.

Yep. The Super FX Chip brought the SNES to a completely different level.

it was too late when they realized Nintendo didn't care because they had the thing that could *insert* addons .

That's one way of putting it.

 

[sarkwalvein]

Yep. The Super FX Chip brought the SNES to a completely different level.

It was in a completely different level way before that even using Mode 7, in e.g. F-Zero. (and every SNES RPG with its mode 7 world map)
Anyway, what really put the SNES in its own league was music that sounded like actual music.

 

[HaloEffect17]

It was in a completely different level way before that even using Mode 7, in e.g. F-Zero.

Yeah, I forgot about that. Super Mario Kart was pretty impressive as well incorporating that Mode 7 jazz.

 

[cdoty]

Admittedly the Super Nintendo was in fact superior but that shouldn't have made the SMD irrelevant because it was still a great 16bit console, plus the more mature games were uncut whereas SNES had them censored. Although, later on they made it available via a feature or a cheat code to activate it.

I don't know that the Genesis had a bad reputation. The Genesis was the system for quality arcade ports and sports games, and the SNES was the system for RPG style games and 3Dish racing titles. Someone buying a 16 bit system would have to consider the game library, and depending on their preferences would choose one or the other.

Nintendo first party titles really drove the sales of the SNES (and have up to and including the Wii U).
Sega has a lot of first party titles, but most were arcade titles. These titles didn't really allow for sequels, like Super Mario Bros.

The biggest limitation the Genesis was the color limitations. There were only 64 colors that could be used for tiles and sprites, but developers worked around this to some extent.
In comparison, the SNES has 128 for sprites and 128 for tiles. The SNES also had features that helped developers create more advanced titles.

For example:
To increase the number of colors on screen, a Genesis developer would have to create a HBlank interrupt, and change the color values directly. (A HBlank interrupt happens at the end of each line on the display).
A SNES programmer had it easier, and only had to supply a list of colors for each line, and the SNES would change those automatically.

The sound was also arguably better on the SNES. The SNES sound chip was geared more to playing samples and the Genesis used frequency modulation (FM).

There's one system that wasn't mentioned, the TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine. It was somewhere between the Genesis and SNES. It had all of the colors of the SNES and had a slower processor, but was still able to run arcade ports. With the faster processor and some good marketing it could have been a contender.

 

[G0R3Z]

Dis has made good games like epic mickey,Kingdom Hearts(even tho SE did most of the work), and what not.

Plus capcom would of stopped caring as they are known to do although I do miss kids IP games that are good (I'd kill for a good Steven universe game)

Neither of those were developed by disney's studios though. Epic Mickey was developed by Junction Point Studios and Kingdom hearts was Developed by Square-Enix. Both have disney characters, but disney only published them.

 

[RevPokemon]

Neither of those were developed by disney's studios though. Epic Mickey was developed by Junction Point Studios and Kingdom hearts was Developed by Square-Enix. Both have disney characters, but disney only published them.

True but they did have some part. then again they never make games but just publish like THQ used to do.

Also duck tales wasn't dis but wayfoward and capcom. I wish more games would get that treatment

 

[G0R3Z]

At least in Argentina, the Megadrive was the console of choice back in the day, almost everyone and their dog had a Megadrive, but only a few had a SNES.
The reason was probably because of marketing and sports games.
In general Megadrive had way better sport games, and people probably liked that.
I think it actually fared quite better than the SNES, even when the latter had better hardware, graphics and specially sound.
The Megadrive had great platform and arcade games, but it was notably behind in the adventure and RPG department, I think it suited different tastes.

Unfortunately most companies including Nintendo and Sega, generate most of their figures from the largest audiences of their products eg. USA, UK and Japan. It's silly, but they don't really have their sales figures sorted in a more general way.

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True but they did have some part. then again they never make games but just publish like THQ used to do.

Also duck tales wasn't dis but wayfoward and capcom. I wish more games would get that treatment

I know. Disney does have their own studios now after the acquisition of LucasArts. Disney/Lucas Arts are developing for the more casual audiences (Disney Infinity for example) and EA/Lucas Arts is developing for the Core Gaming market (New battlefront).

 

[reiyu]

I actually did watch that particular video, and yes, the Genesis did very well in the West. No doubt. My point is that when we look back today on what gave the Genesis a bad reputation, it was blast processing. It was misleading as the video mentioned, which constituted for more sales in the US back in the '90s.

Actually, nobody gave Sega bad rep. They kinda just shot themselves in the foot towards the head with bad marketing. Saturn was not received well in the west due to Sega japan not liking the west and not translating anything, so you can do the math, no games = no cash. Dreamcast was a suicide mission, PS2 was right in the corner, and they just had to release a non-DVD device, also the PS2 was the cheapest DVD player out in the market, it was a win-win for every household. Also to add that piracy was rampant on the early models of Dreamcast where you can just burn games onto a disk without any problems.

Consoles aside, look at where Sonic went after Dreamcast. The atrocious Sonic 06' was full of bugs. This shows that Sega didn't care about their franchises. After acquiring ATLUS recently, the Sega CEO published an apology statement towards the mass about not caring about the west and not taking care of their franchises.

It was simply bad management that lead to Sega's demise, and I doubt nobody really badmouthed Sega aside from Nintendo fanboys.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Earlier today I tried out Sunset Riders on SNES and SMD, and turns out the SMD version is a bit better since it's not as censored as the Super Nintendo version. On the SNES version when you enter a bar you come out as if you woke up, while on the SMD it's more or less like the original edition, i.e, it's your character and a lady.

 

[goober]

The first half of the Genesis/MD was very successful for Sega. They actually started to put huge dents into Nintendo's armor. Nintendo had to restrategize how they dealt with third parties because of it, become aggressive with software design and sales. It also forced them to push forward a few key titles, forced them to innovate more with things like the FX chip, and to fight harder all around. Quite a few technologies and games were "upgraded" from their previous design spec to make the disparity between the Genesis/SNES seem much larger.

It really is a funny time period. Sega's temporary strength lead to Sega's ultimate downfall and arrogance, and at the same rate made Nintendo stronger than ever after humbling them. It may seem crazy to think that Nintendo would have folded because of that time period but they were actually under real pressure for about a year and everyone was calling for their downfall at the time due to how they did business.

It just illustrates why Nintendo is Nintendo, they can usually learn from their mistakes (except in regards to third parties) and come back stronger and more profitable. They also leave themselves room to fail and as such take risks. Just not the risks people appreciate.


Only Sega gave Sega a bad rep. After the competition really heated up Nintendo kept innovating and trying to keep things affordable whereas Sega couldn't keep up after their initial push and as such kept introducing more and more hardware fragmentation, shovelware and rushed developments of not only hardware but software. They released a ton of peripherals, many sucking (though to be fair some were also great and ahead of their time), at time when there were already a ton of peripherals. Ports on their systems were often awful and the "worse" version just from a technical playability perspective and not even graphics/sound.

I don't mean to shortchange Sega since they did many great things at that time too, but they just did a crap load of tiny things that added up to diminish their branding. From a pure gameplay perspective Sega was more of an arcade-like system and if you liked those type of titles you generally loved Sega. If you wanted more, at the time of a "home console" type games, Nintendo had it down pat and all the third parties that went with it.

 

[VinsCool]

This thread just remind me that I have Genesis games (including aladin) and I have to buy a console.

 

[RevPokemon]

This thread just remind me that I have Genesis games (including aladin) and I have to buy a console.

Where did you get the games?

 

[VinsCool]

Where did you get the games?

My gf found them at her parent's house
I am going to get a Genesis and play them

 

[RevPokemon]

My gf found them at her parent's house
I am going to get a Genesis and play them

Marry her while you can!!!!

 

[WiiCube_2013]

This thread just remind me that I have Genesis games (including aladin) and I have to buy a console.

I have two Model 2 Sega Mega Drivers complete in box as well as around 10-15 games. I had a Mega CD but the turd didn't work properly.

Anyhow, looking forward to play Batman Returns via a different method.

 

[mightymuffy]

Hah, was arguing today about which version of SFII was best between SNES, MD/Gen & PC-Engine, and the subject of the speech in the MD version inevitably came up.... what the hell was that about?!
I think the Megadrive's sound processor just needed a bit of twisting and turning by good devs to get something decent out of it, but others (Capcom included) just didn't bother trying..

Anyway OP, just where is this bad rep you're on about?! Comparing the machine to the SNES is unfair as the SNES was clearly a far superior machine, but that doesn't mean the Megadrive was bad in any way, in fact it's my 2nd favourite machine of all time! Rather hilarious that my #1 fave machine is the SNES, but that's beside the point...

Even the Mega CD, yeah perhaps that got a bad rep, but really the only competitor to that machine was the fukkin Phillips CDi, and taken in that context, the Mega CD was awesome!
32X? Well yeah, let's just forget about that though..!

 

[DjoeN]

I love my SEGA collection, i love my SNES, i just love them both
I grew up with both and it's a shame SEGA got out of the hardware stuff :/


MegaCD1 with MultiBIOS MD1 (Regionswitched)
MegaCD2 with MultiBIOS MD1 (Regionswitched)
32x addon (Regionswitched)
MegaCD2 (No MultiBios) MD II (Regionswitched)

My MD collection (only part of it, got more)

 

[WiiCube_2013]

Hah, was arguing today about which version of SFII was best between SNES, MD/Gen & PC-Engine, and the subject of the speech in the MD version inevitably came up.... what the hell was that about?!
I think the Megadrive's sound processor just needed a bit of twisting and turning by good devs to get something decent out of it, but others (Capcom included) just didn't bother trying..

Anyway OP, just where is this bad rep you're on about?! Comparing the machine to the SNES is unfair as the SNES was clearly a far superior machine, but that doesn't mean the Megadrive was bad in any way, in fact it's my 2nd favourite machine of all time! Rather hilarious that my #1 fave machine is the SNES, but that's beside the point...

Even the Mega CD, yeah perhaps that got a bad rep, but really the only competitor to that machine was the fukkin Phillips CDi, and taken in that context, the Mega CD was awesome!
32X? Well yeah, let's just forget about that though..!

Mostly from people online preferring Super Nintendo by far in every aspect and disregarding the SMD as if it was all that bad, it wasn't, in certain third party games with a mature theme they kept the blood and violence while SNES had that removed. AVGN's (he's tends to take SNES side over SMD) one of the culprits of making the SMD look bad but Sega's got a lot of blame to take too.

YouTube doesn't really have a lot of Sega fans or reviewers that are open-minded to both 16bit consoles.

My MD collection (only part of it, got more)

That lump on SMD Model 1 doesn't really look good on either one. Sega really ruined SMD's stylishness.

Ah, finally found the photo! These are my boxed SMDs.

 

[RevPokemon]

Mostly from people online preferring Super Nintendo by far in every aspect and disregarding the SMD as if it was all that bad, it wasn't, in certain third party games with a mature theme they kept the blood and violence while SNES had that removed. AVGN's (he's tends to take SNES side over SMD) one of the culprits of making the SMD look bad but Sega's got a lot of blame to take too.

YouTube doesn't really have a lot of Sega fans or reviewers that are open-minded to both 16bit consoles.




That lump on SMD Model 1 doesn't really look good on either one. Sega really ruined SMD's stylishness.

Ah, finally found the photo! These are my boxed SMDs.

For what it's worth very few youtubers (or gamers in general) are open to all consoles as most have a bias towards certain companies and consoles due to experience,beliefs and what not.