Video games have insidiously found their way into every other form of media. Even if you’re not a gamer, you’ve surely been exposed to If you are, you probably have strong opinions on which comic book or movie heroes absolutely deserve their own games right now.
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Either way, there’s no denying the tremendous impact that the major players in video games have had on popular culture. Sega, for instance, is out of the console-making business now but produced a total of ten different gaming systems before calling it quits as far as hardware goes. Which was the best? Let’s take a look!
8 SG-1000
There’s something about good retro games, like good retro TV shows or anime, that just brings fans right back to their childhoods. Nostalgia is a heck of a powerful force! Why else would the likes of theTony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 remakesbe so warmly recieved?
Gamers of a certain age, then, may remember the SG-1000. This obscure device first launched in 1983 in Japan, Sega’s first foray into the home console market. It’s super significant in the fact that it marked the company’s turning point from a more arcade-oriented gaming focus, but it had a limited launch and is almost entirely forgotten today in an international sense. Odd titles such as Girl’s Garden, an arcade action game with dating sim elements, marked the humble beginnings of the career of Yuji Naka of Sonic the Hedgehog fame.
7 Sega Pico And Advanced Pico Beena
This joint entry highlights another of Sega’s lesser-known efforts in the gaming hardware arena. The Sega Pico hit the West in 1994, a rudimentary sort of ‘console’ offering simplistic gaming experiences for children. It was an adorable little system that utilized inspired cartridges that looked like books, emphasizing its ‘edutainment’ leanings. The quirky device was a hit in its native Japan but failed to really catch on elsewhere.
Much later, in 2005, the Advanced Pico Beena arrived. It had another decade’s worth of technological advancement behind it and was certainly a creative and unique device (a trait shared by a lot of Sega’s hardware), but it didn’t launch outside of Japan after the original’s failure elsewhere. This version of the system was able to be played handheld, unlike the original, but keeps the same focus of teaching children about important things like healthy eating and safety dos and don’ts through its games. Advanced Pico Beena remains the last console" Sega launched.
6 Sega CD And 3DX
The much-beloved Sega Genesis will crop up later in this list. Before that, though, here are two glorified peripherals for that system that technically qualify as consoles in their own right: 1992’s Sega CD and 1994’s 3DX.
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After Nintendo’s super-popular NES, the SNES arrived in North Americain 1991. Presumably recognizing that they’d need some extra firepower to combat this threat, Sega launched the Sega CD followed by the 3DX. Both devices increased the capabilities of the mainline Genesis, offering certain games that could only be played using them (think the New Nintendo 3DS). Neither made much of a splash, though, even if they were much more notable in a general gaming history sense than the Sega Pico and its successor.
5 Game Gear
What incredible times the nineties were. The Internet was just starting to become a reality, nobody knew what a meme was, Will Smith was wearing some of the brightest and most fashionable clothes in history on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, not to mentionBatman was wearing some utterly fantastic costumes too.
The Game Gear was also considered the height of handheld gaming power. In the early/mid-nineties, this handheld blew Nintendo’s Game Boy out of the water in terms of tech specs, with a newfangled color screen and everything. Sadly, its power came at a cost, with the system draining its battery supply at a lightning-fast pace. It just didn’t get the support it needed, either, leaving it ultimately doomed to be eclipsed by the comparatively humble Game Boy. Even so, it was an impressive device for its time.
4 Master System
Sega’s Master System dates back to 1985, seeing a North American release the following year and a European launch in 1987. It had the unenviable task of rivaling Nintendo’s NES,and its often brilliantly bizarre box art, and got the worst of that battle, meaning that history hasn’t been especially kind to it.
It may have been a little primitive and only really struck a chord in Europe, but the foundations of some of Sega’s biggest hardware successes can be seen in its DNA. It has the looks of a prototype Sega Genesis and, in a lot of ways, that’s just what it was.
3 Sega Saturn
The fifth generation of games consoles in the mid-nineties was as vicious a battle for sales as any before (or after). Some real heavyweights were represented here, with Sony throwing their hat into the ring for the first time. Their PlayStation fought against the Nintendo 64 and Sega’s newest offering: the Sega Saturn, the fourth console the company released.
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This system had some bold ideas, including the Sega Netlink/SegaNet Internet functionality, but technology at the time just wasn’t ready for that sort of thing. In the end, Sega Saturn came third and last in the race, but it also played a crucial part in Sega’s legacy, establishing franchises such as Virtua Fighter.
2 Dreamcast
The Dreamcast remains one of the greatest cult classic consoles in history. The sixth console generation introduced the PlayStation 2, GameCube, and Xbox alongside it. While the Dreamcast really couldn’t compete against consoles of that caliber, it has a very special place in the hearts of nostalgic gamers around the world.
With its neat controller and one-of-a-kind VMU (Visual Memory Unit) device, this stylish system really made an impression. Legendary titles like Shenmue, Jet Grind Radio,and ChuChu Rocket! gave it an appeal all its own, but this futuristic console ultimately didn’t have the staying power in its own time. It would be the last big home console Sega would release, after which the company switched focus to exclusively developing and publishing titles.
1 Sega Genesis
The Genesis was the third console the company created, arriving in the U.S. in 1989. Four years later, a sleeker and more compact model, the Genesis II, launched. This perhaps, was the pinnacle of Sega’s console efforts, in terms of the design of the system itself and, much more importantly, its game catalog.
With the Genesis, Sega was at the peak of its power. Alongside Sonic the Hedgehog, the company proved it was a force to be reckoned within the industry, vying for the loyalty of gamers around the world against Nintendo’s juggernaut of a mascot, Mario. The Genesis’s library includes all-time classics such as Sonic the Hedgehog and its 16-bit sequels, Comix Zone, arcade ports like Altered Beast, andthe Golden Axe series. It was also the home to legendary Treasure titles like Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy, and Alien Soldier. These iconic titles are revisited so often by fans that, really, the golden age of the Genesis never went away.
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