Give Me Genesis! 35 Years Ago, Sega Battled Nintendo and Almost Won

Certain electronic rebranding moments are hilarious in retrospect. In 1984, when the computer company Apple wanted to make it seem like its new computers were better than its old computers, the moniker “Macintosh” was applied, in an effort to remind people of different kinds of apples in real life. Apple, thankfully, stopped there and didn’t try to market any “Red Delicious” or “Granny Smith” computers, but the term “Mac” stuck anyway and is still used today. Interestingly, in 1989, just five years after the introduction of 1984’s Apple Macintosh, a similar name-game rebranding happened in the gaming world — but with a much shorter lifespan. Today, we don’t live in a world in which people casually refer to their latest gaming console as a “Genesis.” But from 1989 to about 1993, it really felt like we would all have Genesis forever.

Thirty-five years ago, on August 14, Sega released the Sega Genesis gaming system, a moment in which the Pepsi of gaming systems challenged the Coke of Nintendo and nearly succeeded. Because for those who were there, the truth about Sega Genesis is that at the time of its release, it felt different and better than Nintendo in every way, and not only because it had a cool name.

The arcade comes home

Technically speaking, the Sega Genesis was not the first home video game console created by Sega. Before the Genesis, there was SG-1000 and the underwhelming Sega “Master System.” But if you were a kid in the late 80’s or early 90’s, those previous Segas didn’t exist at all because nobody had ever heard of them. At the time, most gamers generally associated Sega with arcade games that it either created, like Pitfall or hit games that it distributed, like Frogger. But in terms of a mainstream crossover from the arcade to the home, Sega had not done anything close to what Atari had accomplished in 1977, nor even near Nintendo’s dominance which began in 1983.

In essence, the promise of the Sega Genesis was to give people something they couldn’t get with Nintendo, which couldn’t only be to replicate the arcade experience at home. Just like Nintendo had Mario, Sega needed their own mascot character. And if it wasn’t for the Genesis, that particular innovation would have never happened.

Enter Sonic

Today, Sonic the Hedgehog is an icon. The star of several movies and the inspiration for a variety of spinoff characters, the gold-ring-loving mole cousin with blue fur is as entrenched in the zeitgeist as Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny. And yet, unlike the Mario Brothers' journey from the arcade to the home, Sonic debuted on a home video game platform exclusively. In 1991, Sonic the Hedgehog was released by Sega, which took the fledgling Genesis platform (called Mega Drive outside of North America) to the literal next level.

For exactly two years, from 1989 to 1991, the relevance and staying power of Genesis was utterly unclear, and then, suddenly, with the advent of Sonic, it all changed. Every kid in the early 90s wanted a Genesis for their birthday or the holidays, and for a time, Mario and his ilk were left in the dust. The following year in 1992, Mortal Kombat hit the Genesis, with a slightly brighter version of the popular arcade game than the SNES version released the same year. The Genesis version of Mortal Kombat also sported remixed music, which meant that if you didn’t have a Genesis, you had to go to your friend’s house to get the alternate experience.

The larger point is that although the Genesis was born in 1989, it took a few years to truly grow up and find its audience. Thanks to Sonic and Mortal Kombat, other Genesis titles enjoyed success, too. While larger forgotten by gamers today, the fantasy adventure side-scrolling game Golden Axe was a staple of this period, which gave you a whopping three characters to control, a Dwarf named Gilius Thunderhead, an Amazon warrior named Tyris, and a ripped Conan knock-off known as “the barbarian” or “Ax.” Although this game has middling contemporary reviews, at the time of its Genesis heyday it was the closest thing you could get to playing a version of Lord of the Rings or Conan The Barbarian. While Sonic offered something new for all ages, Golden Axe tapped into the Dungeons & Dragons craze that began in the 80’s and made it clear that epic fantasy in the gaming world was never going out of style.

Saturn nukes Genesis

In some ways, Sega should have never tried to improve upon the Genesis. Today, of course, retro games and controllers are all the rage. We’re all still obsessed with the N64 or the classic NES, and in the same way, the Genesis represents the one pure moment of Sega nostalgia, even if you weren’t around for its release. This is probably the only time Sega released a console that everyone agreed looked great, played great, and had wonderfully unique games. In 1994, Sega followed that up by launching the CD-ROM-focused Sega Saturn which to this day is considered one of the greatest failures in all of gaming history. The Dreamcast fared slightly better in 1999, but by that point, an entire generation of gamers had forgotten the brief and fascinating heyday of Sega.

Like all technology, Sega had a need to demonstrate innovation, to become newer and better than it was before, while also retaining something of its past that defined it. Nintendo has arguably cracked this code of the years and attained a balance between newness and nostalgia that is virtually unparalleled among gaming platforms. And yet, for a moment, it looked like Sega was a true contender. Despite hardcore gamers’ naysaying, the core Genesis games hold up, and the world is much better off with Sonic than without him. The Sega Genesis may not have been able to collect and keep all the gold rings forever, but we’re all lucky that it tried in the first place.