What was the first Sega console you ever played: Genesis? Master System? Some Japanese gamers were playing on Sega hardware long before that.

In July 1983, long before the advent of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sega released its first game machine. If you've never heard of the SG-1000, that's likely because it was obsolete before it even launched. Although its graphics were of better quality than most consoles on the market, it had the bad luck to be released in the same month as Nintendo's world-changing Famicom, which had killer apps like Donkey Kong and could run circles around Sega's hardware.

Thus, Sega didn't stick with the SG-1000 for very long, all but abandoning it within two years to introduce its more competitive Master System platform, which it launched worldwide. This leaves the SG-1000 as another footnote in gaming history: Few have heard of it, even fewer have played it, and the games weren't that great anyway.

It's so obscure that during all my trips to Japan, spanning the better part of a decade, I'd never seen an original unit for sale. So when I came across one in the box the week before Tokyo Game Show for a reasonable 5800 yen (about $58) – and knowing that the city would soon be set upon by a deluge of vacationing nerds – I decided to buy it.

SG-1000 was born into a very crowded marketplace: There were already at least seven different game machines competing for consumers' dollars, from established Japanese toy and tech companies like Takara, Bandai and Tomy as well as Japanese versions of American consoles like Intellivision and Atari 2600. By the end of the year, at least three more would be available.

Opening up the box, I soon discovered some of the reasons for the lack of demand of the SG-1000 on the collector's market – and also why Sega abandoned it so quickly at the time.

First off, the SG-1000 doesn't support composite A/V output – just RF. This is the norm for any piece of game hardware released prior to 1985, but it also means that anyone who wants to play SG-1000 software has a much better option: the Master System, which is a much more common piece of hardware, has A/V and is fully backward compatible with the older console.

But the SG-1000's fatal flaw, then and now, is its joystick. Like several other game machines of the day, Sega's system features a hardwired controller: The joystick is attached permanently to the console. This was often done as a cost-saving measure, but was quickly abandoned due to the fact that it was incredibly inconvenient.

And the joystick sucked: Held vertically, with buttons on the sides, it featured an unwieldy stick that required a heavy touch and had poor response. The SG-1000's joystick made games much harder than they had to be – it's actually easier to play them with a keyboard on an emulator, not that I ever tried such a thing.

In the end, Sega decided to quickly abandon the original SG-1000 model, introducing the Mark II less than a year later. Mark II featured joypad controllers like the Famicom's, which were detachable from the system.

Interestingly, it seems as if Sega originally designed the SG-1000's packaging to be sold in English-speaking territories. Note that the original boxes for the launch games like Congo Bongo, pictured above, had both English and Japanese descriptions. Although it never made it to America, the console, as well as a compatible Sega-made personal computer called SC-3000, were sold in Australia by a game publisher called John Sands Electronics.

By 1984, however, the large game boxes were gone, replaced by smaller ones that just barely fit the cartridge and the instruction book – and only featured Japanese text (above).

But ultimately, tweaks to the SG-1000's hardware weren't going to cut it, because the graphics simply weren't competitive. The games look like those of the Colecovision, and for good reason: The SG-1000's innards are practically identical to Coleco's game machine's. Both featured a Zilog Z80A 3.58-MHz CPU, a Texas Instruments TMS9928A 16-color video processor, and TI's SN76489 sound chip.

An unauthorized clone system called the "Telegames Personal Arcade" actually played both Colecovision and SG-1000 cartridges. Some hobbyists have ported SG-1000 games to the Colecovision, releasing them on cartridges.

It's not difficult to find some of the more common SG-1000 titles in Akihabara's game stores, with prices ranging from about 200 to 500 yen for loose common games like Champion Baseball up to around 8,000 to 9,000 yen for boxed rarities. I bought six games for between 480 and 2,000 yen each. (100 yen = about $1.)

Flicky (left)

Flicky sucks; it sucks worse than the SG-1000's joystick and it sucks even more because of the joystick. As a crippled, nearly flightless bird, you have to collect a screenful of black and yellow chicks and bring them to the exit without getting eaten by the two cats. This is, as it turns out, impossible. Unfortunately for you and your fluffy charges, the jumping control is so terrible that getting back up to the exit is insanely difficult. Cat food is you.

Congo Bongo (right)

Sega's attempt at a Donkey Kong clone ditches the goal of saving a lady – now you're apparently just trying to reach the top of the screen to cuddle up close to a monkey. Oddly, although the original arcade game had an isometric top-down viewpoint of the jungle cliffs, Sega shifted it to a direct viewing angle in the SG-1000 version. This is especially odd because the Colecovision version of the game kept the original design. Anyway, let's just say there's a reason they made a movie about Donkey Kong and not this.

Sega-Galaga (left)

Following in the footsteps of many console makers of the golden age, Sega licensed several classic arcade titles from other companies and reprogrammed the games itself. In this case, it even added its company name to the title of Namco's Galaga. Although it's not as bright and vibrant as the original, the alien-shooting gameplay is still intact, making this one of the more fun SG-1000 games I've played.

Golgo-13 (right)

SG-1000 even had a few licensed games, most notably this one based on the popular spy manga series Golgo-13. The Nintendo version is best remembered for its steamy scenes of pixelized seduction, but this one is pure action: Driving a car alongside a speeding train, you've got to snipe out the windows so that hostages can escape. Shoot anything but the windows and the bullet will bounce back and hit you, if you're not careful. Fun, although it seems like perhaps the designers used up most of their cartridge space on the title screen.

Sindbad Mystery (left)

I bought Sindbad Mystery largely because of the box art, which depicts a turbaned boy clinging to a rainbow camel. The game, sadly, has absolutely nothing to do with prismatic dromedaries: It's just a ploddingly slow Pac-Man clone in which our hero collects a maze full of question marks. The Escher-like dual-layer playfield injects a bit of novelty, but not enough.

Girl's Garden (right)

A landmark release for one reason: It is the first game directed by Yuji Naka, who would go on to create Sonic the Hedgehog. Girl's Garden teaches girls how to collect love and money. Specifically, you have to pick flowers from a garden full of bears, then bring them back to your boyfriend who's been minding the store. Finish a round and the music "Here Comes The Bride" plays for the pair. Of course he married her: How can you turn down any woman who just went out and battled fucking bears?

Colecovision-level graphics were pretty nice in 1983 – right up until the point that Nintendo entered the market. While the United States didn't get the Nintendo Entertainment System until 1985, the Famicom was released in Japan in July 1983, right alongside the SG-1000. It exploded in popularity.

While Sega scrambled to update its controllers to match Nintendo's innovative pads, and introduced the more graphically competitive Master System in 1985, the damage had already been done – not merely to Sega, but to all the hardware makers that comprised the rest of Japan's fledgling videogame industry. Sega would soldier on with the Master System, but the SG-1000 was all but dead within two years.

Photos: Chris Kohler/Wired.com

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