Talk:Sega Genesis

I don't know who created this article, but its origin is clearly a move of the original Genesis article, so I've attempted to merge in a bunch of information from the old Mega Drive text.

For archived discussions of those pages, see Talk:Sega Mega Drive and Talk:Sega Genesis. ThomasHarte 18:49, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Colors

The Genesis can only display 61 colors without tricks. There are 4 16 color palletes; however, color 0 is used as the transparent color for background planes and sprites so the color 0 entry can only be used for the background color. Since you can only have one background color without using raster effects, we get 4*15+1=61 colors. With tricks the color limit is only 1536 colors not 3072 (unless there's some trick I'm not aware of). Raster effects allow all 512 colors in the pallete onscreen (though only 61 per line) at a time. Shadow/Highlight adds a shadow and highlight version of each color effectively tripling the available pallete (though it imposes some other limitations). When both these effects are combined we get 512*3=1536. No games actually use this many colors, though there have been one or two tech demos that use the technique. I am changing the colors spec back to the older numbers.

Mask of Destiny 01:07, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Lightening the article?

I think it might be a good idea to split off something from here, into it's own article. Perhaps the "Genesis-derived" hardware section (a.k.a. "Other variations of the Mega Drive and Genesis"), in which those specific devices can be detailed a little more by themselves. That way we can lighten the article a bit. Arekku 21:08, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Na --Herzog 06:09, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Title again...

I can see this has been brought up before, but I dont think that is reason enough to hault all discussion on the topic.

I propose this article be renamed Sega Mega Drive.

• Only one country calls it the Genesis because of silly copyright reason whereas 99% of the planet refer to as the Mega Drive (perhaps an exaggeration, but the majority nethertheless).
• It was reffered to as the Mega Drive in its country of origin (Japan)
• Most games came from regions where it was called the Mega Drive
• The console was *far* more popular in countries where it was reffered to as the Mega Drive
• Their would be an outrage if the Star Fox article was renamed Star Wing because it was called that in PAL regions because of silly copyright reasons, this situation is comparative.
• There is no merit to Genesis shareing this pages title with Mega Drive except that it is the American name for it... and let's not go down that road.

- UnlimitedAccess 06:44, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

No, I disagree. The current name is already a compromise between the two names (and a merge between two seperate articles). Also, if my memory is correct, the U.S. was not at all a trivial part of the Mega Drive/Genesis market. As for the "country of origin" argument... "Super Famicon" directs to the Super Nintendo article. It's already a contentious issue, IMO, the current name is pretty close to a NPOV. Arekku 06:32, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

A compromise is neccessary if both names have equal claim, this is not the case as per my above points. Sega was always much more dominant in Europe than in North America - in *every* generation. Again it's silly to share the Internationally standardised brand with the title from one coutries which came about from a copyright conflict, as per Star Wing or Hungry Jacks. - UnlimitedAccess 13:22, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

Changing the name to "Mega Drive" is going to confuse a hell of a lot of people. There's certainly more of the Genesis than 1% of the planet. I'd say perhaps more than there were Mega Drives in Europe. Certainly more than there were MDs in Japan. Although if I'm wrong, let me know.

Basically, it may not be 50%, but it's close enough.

"There is no merit to Genesis shareing this pages title with Mega Drive except that it is the American name for it... and let's not go down that road."

Oh? You seem to be leading that direction anyway.

The name should stay as is. Arekku 04:02, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

How about one of you provides us with some actual information instead of vague and quite possibly imagined statistics? If it can be shown that Mega Drive is the more common name, move it, if it can be shown that they are equally known, leave it. - 211.28.79.52 02:41, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

I think its hard for anyone to argue that the combined sales of the Sega console in question in the entire globe is even close to the sales of only America and Canada, especially considering typically Japan alone matches US sales in video games, and back in the 90's even exceeded it (despite having like half the population). Sadly I wish we had the figures but console tracking espeically through non Western and much of European countries is impossible, but just taking into consideration Japan and America, historically (until the PS2/GameCube), Japanese Consoles have always sold more in Japan then in America. - UnlimitedAccess 04:45, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

No, actually... of all three major markets, the Mega Drive was the least popular in Japan. Japan was mainly dominated by Nintendo, and later on by Sony. In America, the Genesis might've actually (at least slightly) outsold the SNES (resulting in Nintendo even marketing Mortal Kombat for the Genesis, IIRC), until the SNES finally matured, the Sega CD/32X fiasco, and finally the launch of the PlayStation.

The whole premise behind this is stupid. If the article was simply named Sega Genesis, then I would've recommended adding the second name, as like you said, it was the Genesis only in America. But the North American market was very large compared to the European and Japanese markets, perhaps even combined. Both names should be used equally for the article.

Arekku 18:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No. This entire WIkipedia is U.S centered. The Japanese SMB2 is Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, its USA name. The USA release of Super Mario Bros. 2 takes the real title. This example shows just how US-centered Wikipedia is. I believe this article is a good compromise between the two names. Let's keep it that way. - Hbdragon88 21:55, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Hbdragon that this article should keep its current name (or be moved to Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, but whatever), but I have to protest against the claim that "this entire Wikipedia is US centered" as all of the examples apply not to just the USA but the entire English speaking world. I also have to point out, as I often find myself doing in these discussions, that the official policy of wikipedia, as stated in Wikipedia:Manual of Style is that "For the English Wikipedia, while a nationally predominant form should be used, there is no preference among the major national varieties of English." so the mere fact that many other articles are written in the American predominant form has no bearing on what should be done with this article.

What would be good would be to state in the introduction something like "references to the Mega Drive also refer to the Genesis except where in a region specific context" and then stop labouriously writing "The Mega Drive/Genesis" throughout. Even that would probably be too controversial for some users though, so I guess the best solution is just to reduce such references to a bare minimum for readability reasons. — ThomasHarte 22:39, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

"The Lost Levels" was the name of the game bundled in Super Mario Allstars in both USA and Europe. But yes, enwiki is USAPOV. As with the Starwing example, this article should be under Sega Mega Drive. The same goes for Fatal Frame which should be moved to Project Zero, which is the name for that game series in the entire world except USA. And so on. /81.170.235.234 10:16, 11 April 2006 (UTC) (User:Grillo)

You know, I MIGHT be able to support the whole name thing if it wasn't for the fact that "Mega Drive" is such a boring name. And yeah, it will confuse a bunch of people and we'll just end up having the name changed again.--SeizureDog 15:26, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Nintendo/Sega info

I'm not sure where this should be placed in the article, so I'll toss it here and let you guys decide. Iwata just announced in his GDC keynote speech that the Nintendo Revolution would offer some Sega Genesis games, similar to how they'll be offering NES, SNES and N64 games. They won't have the complete library, but they'll carry the best/most popular. Ladlergo 20:22, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

As this article is almost entirely dedicated to the console hardware, I don't believe the Nintendo/Sega bit should be headlined at the top of the page and probably should be removed. It's mention later in the 'History' section is fine, though. --Millbrooky 02:26, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, it should be inside the article, not in the headline. Move it in a section named "Nintendo Virtual Console agreement" or something like that. -- ReyBrujo 03:01, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Brazilian release

Erased: "The console was very successful, but only overcame the Master System in 1996" I really can't buy this story. In Brazil, as early as 1992/93, everybody was playing Genesis and SNES. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 201.31.229.219 (talk • contribs) .

Citing references

We need proof of this statement: "Since the System 16 made by Sega were very popular, Hayao Nakayama, Sega's CEO at the time, decided to make their new home system utilize a 16-bit architechture." Was this really Hayao's decision, when it would almost certainly be the decision of the engineers? Was System 16 truly *that* popular at the time? (Sega had multiple 16-bit arcade platforms in existance, why System 16 in particular?)

And again: "Signetics 68K only found in early revisions as this CPU is known to be inefficient." I have seen *many* Genesis consoles and tons of arcade games using the Signetics-manufactured 68K with zero problems (same with any other 68000 manufacturer: Hitachi, Motorola, Toshiba, etc.). Additional information to back this statement up is needed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 69.110.36.224 (talk • contribs) .

Article neglects major handicap vs. Nintendo

The current version of the article fails to note why the Master System and then the Sega Genesis struggled to build marketshare until a certain point and why the NEC TurboGrafx never overcame this problem.

This is quoted from the Wiki entry on Nintendo:

By the end of the 1980s the courts found Nintendo guilty of anti-trust activities because it had abused its relationship with third-party developers and created a monopoly in the gaming industry by not allowing developers to make games for any other platforms. They changed this rule during the Super NES era, allowing Sega to start a massive console war against Nintendo with the Sega Genesis and Game Gear. This would occur once more in 1996, when Sony released the PlayStation.

In more detail, a third party publisher getting ready to release a US NES game for manufacturing had to sign a contract with Nintendo of America covering a variety of things. One of these was a clause that obligated the publisher not to allow this game to be published on any competing platform for a minimum of two years. I encountered this contract myself when my then employer, Cinemaware, was readying some NES ports from our C64 titles.

This was a devastating weapon against Sega, NEC, and anyone else who wanted to be in the game system business. During the Master System era, Sega failed to understand the critical need for third party support anddidn't really accept this until the Mega Drive/Genesis was being readied for a US launch. NEC understood this, especially since the PC Engine was rapidly grabbing marketshare. Much of that came from having highly superior version of popular third party hits seen solely on the NES in the US market.

NEC's semiconductor operation sold a lot of memory and other chips to Nintendo. The complaints from the video games division were overruled by the much larger semiconductor business' need not to upset a major customer.

Sega didn't have any such restraints and brought suit against Nintendo. The details of the settlement have never been made public (to my knowledge) but the effects were immediate and dramatic. Capcom shipped a version of Street Fighter II for the Genesis within weeks of the settlement's annoucement. For the first time, Sega had a level playing field in the US market. Nintendo's marketshare has never approached the NES peak or the high level it had before the settlement.

Sonic and Madden helped but Sega never had a chance until they broke Nintendo's stranglehold on third party publishers.