By Kieren Hawken

Even if you have only a passing interest in retro gaming you are going to be aware of the Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis if you are in North America).

It’s widely regarded as one of the best consoles of all-time and rightly so with its amazing library of around 1000 different titles, excellent controllers and having been the first home of a certain blue hedgehog.

But for all you do know about the Sega Mega Drive we would be willing to bet that there’s a great deal you don’t know too. So here at Geekly we thought it was time to lift the lid on the 16-bit powerhouse and reveal ten facts you never knew about the Sega Mega Drive.

Sega’s Biggest Success

Let’s start off with one that you probably did know, with sales of around 40 million units the Mega Drive still stands tall as Sega’s most successful console.

In fact it does it by quite a margin, with the Master System topping 14 million followed by the Dreamcast and Saturn at just under 10 million units a piece.

This figure still has room to rise even further too as new versions of the machine is still being sold by manufacturers such as AtGames and Tectoy in Brazil.

Never Officially Discontinued

And speaking of our Brazilian friends at Tectoy, did you know that they never stopped manufacturing or retailing their own versions of the Mega Drive in South America?

This means that although Sega themselves stopped selling the Mega Drive in the rest of the world in 1998, the system was never actually discontinued due to the presence of the officially licensed Tectoy models in Brazil.

Tectoy even continued producing new games for the Mega Drive well after we had all forgotten about it with titles such as Duke Nukem 3D, Woody Woodpecker and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Samsung Surprise

Tectoy were not the only company to officially license the Mega Drive for the their home market however, as Korean electronics giants Samsung also did the same.

Due to historical tensions between Japan and South Korea, the government of the latter had banned all imports of Japanese products into their country. This meant that many companies licensed their products out to local manufacturers in South Korea.

Samsung had previously sold their own version of the Sega Master System in their homeland called the Gam*Boy and them followed suit with the Mega Drive too, renaming it the Super Gam*Boy. Both were very successful for the company.

Compatibility Clues

Anyone who’s into the Mega Drive will be well aware of the excellent Powerbase Converter, which allows you to play Sega Master System games on your 16-bit beast.

But did you know that this add-on doesn’t really do anything at all? That’s because the Mega Drive hardware is already backwards compatible with the Master System thanks to being an evolution of the same hardware. All the Powerbase Converter does is change the shape of the cartridge slot for you so the games fit!

You can test this for yourself by simply using a Mega Everdrive cartridge and filling it with Master System ROMs, your Mega Drive will play them flawlessly!

Crappy Codename

It’s very rare that any console keeps the name it was given during development and they often go through several other names too before the manufacturer settles on one that it likes.

The Mega Drive is no different in this respect as the original name designated by Sega was the Mark V. This might sound strange but it does make sense, as it followed on from pervious consoles with the two different versions of the Sega SG-1000 (Mark I and Mark II), then the Mark II, which was turned into the Master System for the west (Mark IV) and thus Mark V.

It would seem weird calling the Mega Drive or Genesis that today though, it just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Sega Tomahawk

And from one rejected name to another with this great little factoid!

When Sega came to release the Mega Drive in North America they discovered that another company who produced hard drives already owned the trademark. This meant they would have to come up with something else and decided to go with Tomahawk, as they felt this was very “American sounding”.

Obviously this name didn’t stick and the reasons why will be revealed as we head on to the next entry on our list . . . .

Atari Genesis

Without doubt my favourite fact about the Mega Drive is that the North American version of the system wasn’t going to be a Sega console at all!

After Sega failed to achieve success with Master System in North America they decided to cut ties with their distributor, toy company Tonka, and turn to somebody else. That somebody was Atari, who at the time were the No. 2 player in that region behind Nintendo and already had a strong legacy in video games.

It was in fact Atari who changed the name to Genesis, for a new beginning, but the deal fell through when Atari CEO Jack Tramiel was refused European distribution, which had already been given to Virgin Mastertronic.

Answer Me This

There were a lot of different add-ons released for the Sega Mega Drive over the years. Some of these were good, such as the Mega CD and aforementioned Powerbase Converter, but others were not so good, like the Mega Anser.

This strange device was only ever sold in Japan and brought a wide range of new functions to your Sega Mega Drive such as online banking, the ability to connect up a printer and act as an answering machine to collect all your missed calls!

It’s safe to say that the device was less than successful and the Mega Anser was never considered for other markets.

Online Adventures

The Mega Anser was far from the only unit that took your Mega Drive online though as there were other far more useful services available too.

There was the Sega Mega Modem in Japan, which allowed games such as Cyberball and Nikkan Sports Pro Baseball to be played online, while in America Sega released a different version of the device that allowed users of Time Warner’s cable service to download and play 50 different games, some of which were exclusive to the service such as Teddy Boy Blues and Pengo. The line-up of games changed constantly and also let subscribers play demos of new and upcoming titles too.

Shortly afterward a third party competitor was released in the form of the XBand, which allowed proper online play. Sadly this was less than successful, mainly due to the high costs and poor internet speeds of the time.

Sega Does What Nintendon’t

Anyone who was Sega Genesis owner back in the day will be more than familiar with this slogan and the many claims around it – most notably “Blast Processing”.

In more modern years people have claimed to have debunked all Sega’s advertising as misleading lies with no factual evidence. In fact many people will simply scoff if you even mention the term “Blast Processing” in the present day. So what if I told you that Blast Processing is a real thing that is very much based in fact?

So let’s explain in a bit more detail. The Mega Drive has a Motorola 68000 CPU that runs at 7.6 MHz, while its great rival the SNES has a 5A22 running at just 3.58MHz. From those numbers it’s clear to see what system is faster but it’s not just down to that. A big speed is also gained from the fact the Mega Drive has a 16-bit data bus, while the Super Nintendo’s bus is only 8-bit – a real bottleneck. Lastly there’s the fact the Mega Drive also has a second processor, a Zilog Z80 running at 3.5 MHz. This gives extra support when needed, such as drawing 3D polygons. This is why such a huge amount of SNES games feature extra chips in the cartridge to boost performance while the Mega Drive only has one such game in Virtua Racing. Blast Processing indeed!