Sega Genesis

Overview

The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in October 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in August 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Sega Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tectoy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung Electronics as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.

Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU, a Zilog Z80 as a sound controller, and a video system supporting hardware sprites, tiles, and scrolling. It plays a library of more than 800 games on ROM-based cartridges. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel.

In Japan, the Mega Drive fared poorly against its two main competitors, Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine, but it achieved considerable success in North America, Brazil, Australia and Europe. Contributing to its success were its library of arcade game ports, the popularity of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, several popular sports franchises, and aggressive youth marketing that positioned it as the cool console for adolescents. The 1991 North American release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System triggered a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe known as the "console war". This drew attention to the video game industry, and the Genesis and several of its games attracted legal scrutiny on matters involving reverse engineering and video game violence. Controversy surrounding violent games such as Night Trap and Mortal Kombat led Sega to create the Videogame Rating Council, a predecessor to the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Specifications

Manufacturer

Sega

Developer

Sega

Type

Home video game console

Generation

Fourth

Discontinued

WW 1997 (Sega); NA 1999 (Majesco)

Launch price

¥21000; US$189; £189.99

Units sold

Sega: 30.75 million Majesco: 1.5 million (projected) Tectoy: 3 million

Media

ROM cartridge

Processor

Motorola 68000 @ 7.6 MHz Zilog Z80 @ 3.58 MHz

Memory

64 KB RAM, 64 KB VRAM, 8 KB audio RAM

Video output

Progressive: 320×224, 256×224 (NTSC) or 320×240, 256×240 (PAL) pixels, 512 color palette, 61 colors on-screen Interlaced: 320×448, 256×448 (NTSC) or 320×480, 256×480 (PAL)

Sound

Yamaha YM2612 Texas Instruments SN76489

Online service

Sega Meganet Sega Channel XBAND

Backward compatibility

Master System

Predecessor

Master System

Successor

Sega Saturn

Best-selling game

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991 video game), Sonic the Hedgehog (15 million, pack-in) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (6 million) (List of best-selling Sega Genesis video games, list)

Models

• Mega PC
• EZ Games Video Game System
• Sega Mega Drive/Genesis
• Sega Nomad
• TLV-K981G Game VCD Player
• Teradrive
• Sega Mega Drive 2/Genesis
• Sega Mega Jet

Model names as listed by IGDB.

More from Sega

• Sega SG-1000 1983
• Sega Master System 1985
• Sega Game Gear 1990
• Sega CD 1991
• Sega 32X 1994
• Sega Saturn 1994
• Dreamcast 1998

Sources

• Wikipedia overview and specifications
• IGDB model names
• Sega-Mega-Drive-JP-Mk1-Console-Set.jpg
• Sega-Genesis-Power-Base-Converter.jpg Evan-Amos Public domain
• Sega-Genesis-Model-2-Monster-Bare.jpg Evan-Amos Public domain

The overview is adapted from Wikipedia and shared under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence.

Checked October 2026.