MEGA DRIVE To be This good Takes sega
MANUFACTURER: SEGA | YEAR: 1988
For all its achievements, the Mega Drive will perhaps be best remembered for being the first console to finally break Nintendo’s ironclad grip of the market (even if it was for the briefest of moments).
It might have trailed behind the PC Engine in Japan, but things were very different for Sega’s console in the West, thanks to strong developer support from the likes of Electronic Arts, a string of killer arcade conversions and a little blue hedgehog by the name of Sonic.
Trip Hawkins,
Founder of Electronic Arts
Why was the Mega Drive so important to EA’S early success?
Way back at Apple in 1978, Steve Jobs and I agreed on the need for a 16-bit processor and targeted the Motorola MC68000, which was in some ways the spiritual successor to the 6502. While the 6502 dominated through the Eighties, we put the 68000 in the Lisa and Mac. My biggest love affair was with the Amiga, but Commodore mismanaged the business and it did not help that it cost over $1,000. Of course, I also cared about graphics and sound chips and had seen what great things Rob Hubbard and others had done with the SID chip in the C64. The Amiga was so great that we were able to licence the coin-op code base for Marble Madness and do a simple translation to port it to the Amiga and have it look and play the same. In 1988 I heard that Sega would be bringing a console to market at a price under $200 that would have a 68000 and good custom graphics and sound chips. I led EA to make a bet on it and we helped it take off. The rest was history. You could say it was an overnight success that took more than a decade.
I’d known for all those years that to make the games I really wanted to make and to play, we would need a 16-bit system with custom graphics and sound chips. For there to be a meaningful market a lot of them would have to be sold, which made pricing critical. The Genesis/mega Drive was the first machine to have all that. Other choices at the time were either inferior 8-bit systems or too expensive. Also, the Mega Drive was perfect for EA Sports, where it is ideal to play with a friend in the same room and to have enough graphics speed for team sports. It even came with two joysticks!
David Perry,
Cofounder of Shiny Entertainment
Can you recall your first encounter with the Mega Drive?
Nick Bruty and I were a two-man team making games for ZX Spectrum, Amiga and Atari ST. The main flow of games we created was for Probe Software (run by Fergus Mcgovern), games like Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Dan Dare III and Paperboy II etc. Fergus managed to get us a Mega Drive and the licence to the movie The Terminator by James Cameron. Most exciting day ever!
Of course, we accepted the project, but we had no experience on this device, I had no idea how to program it and the manual was mostly Japanese. We also had no tools to make games for it. Back in those days, we felt invincible, so we just started typing!
What was it like to work with compared to home computers?
Programming on consoles was the best because they were a walled-garden, not constantly changing. Same with the controllers, only a few buttons and so the environment was as pure as it could be. Interestingly, I never personally made a PC game through my entire career. I did learn how to program 8086 assembly language, but never got around to making a PC game.
How important was the Mega Drive to the success of Shiny Entertainment?
Shiny was funded by Playmates Toys, they made the toys for Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and wanted to invest into games. The Mega Drive was the perfect platform as it allowed us to make games for their target audience. The result was not only getting to make Earthworm Jim on Mega Drive, but we also got a line of toys, a TV show, Marvel comic books, even licensed Halloween masks and underpants!
Why was Sega able to briefly top Nintendo with the Mega Drive?
Nintendo has always focused on the younger gamers and so when Mortal Kombat had blood and violence, they created a red line. While that made sense, all I saw was gamers wanting to sell their ‘Nintendos’ and buy ‘Segas’, let’s just say they didn’t welcome censorship.
Why do you think the Mega Drive remains so popular with our readers?
Mega Drive was the source of countless hours of entertainment for people. Wherever I go, people that grew up with it remember our games like Earthworm Jim and Disney’s Aladdin and gush about how much they loved Mega Drive gaming as a kid. This was before iphones, ipads and Netflix, it was the centre of many people’s entertainment universe.