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| Sega Mega Drive |
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| The Sega Mega Drive was first released in Japan in 1988, 1990 in America and Shortly after in UK. The Mega Drive had a good head start on the Big N's SNES and managed to sell more units because of this. The console had a strong lineup of 3rd Party developers and is hone to some of the best games of all time. Thes include the Sonic series, Phantasy Star Series, Ristar and Shining force, to name a small few. The Mega Drive had many variants, but commonly the Mega Drive 1 and 2. There were other variants such as the Multi Mega (Which also Played Mega CD Games without the need of a mega CD). The Mega Drive was the king of 16-Bit gaming until the SNES arrived, however it continued to sell well when it did. The Sonic Vs. Mario rivalry continued for many years and you either played one or the other. Different peripherals and add-ons were available for the Mega Drive including the Mega CD, 32-X. Peripherals available were the Menacer Lightgun (A Copy of the Super Scope from the SNES), Wireless Pads and the Mega Stick (For that arcade feel). The Mega Drive discontinued production in 1997 after the playstation and the N64 were released. A long life of over 9 Years and many hundreds of games released on the console show how poular this console was (And still is in many peoples eyes). You can still pick up Mega Drives easily at Car Boot Sales, GameStation and places like Cash Converters. As usual with any console, it tends to be worth more boxed. I reccomend you pay no more than �20 for this console, as it is really common. Specifications: CPU: Motorola Z-80 68000 running @ 7.61MHz ROM: 1 MegaByte RAM: 64 KiloBytes VRAM: 64 KiloBytes Colours: 64 Displayable out of a Palette of 512 Resolution: 320x224 Sound: PSG, FM Chip, 6-Channel Stereo. Pairing off against the SNES the Mega Drive is overall less graphically capable, not supporting Image Rotation or the cool Mode 7 graphics of the SNES. However the processor is faster by nearly 4MHz. The sound capabilty of the Mega Drive is also better. The Mega Drive was my First Console as a child and I grew up to hate Mario and love Sonic. I would Reccomend The Mega Drive to any Retro Collector as it is fun to play and a gaming masterpiece. Personal Top 10 Games: 1: Sonic The Hedgehog 3 2: Sonic and Knuckles 3: Sonic The Hedgehog 2 4: Sonic The Hedgehog 5: Ristar 6: Mega Bomberman 7: Soleil 8: Sonic 3D 9: Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine 10: Sonic Spinball Other Sega Consoles Include: Game Gear, Master System, Mega CD, 32-X, Saturn and Dreamcast. (Music Playing: Sonic The Hedgehog) |