Contributing to its success was 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.

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, and Europe. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel. It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It plays a library of more than 900 games on ROM-based cartridges. ĭesigned 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. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung Electronics as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tec Toy in Brazil. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. 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. Sonic the Hedgehog (15 million, pack-in).

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