While it is a shame that Sega dropped out of the console market, I think it was a smart move, (and it will save me a little bit of money every time the next wave of consoles come out. :p) Sega has a lot of great franchises that until now, were exclusive to a Sega-brand console. By going multi-platform on several of their games, they'll have a broader market and make it easier on the wallets of the fans of that particular franchise. (Although admittedly, I purchased the X-Box when it was $300 soley for Jet Set Radio Future and Toe Jam & Earl III which are both Sega titles exclusive to the X-Box. Thankfully, the X-Box is finally starting to pay itself off.)
To go a bit off-topic, I almost wish Nintendo would consider dropping out of the console market, and sticking strictly to software developement and portable systems, but I doubt their resolve will ever waiver.
And I hate to go even further off-topic, but the Sega CD was not the first CD-based console system, the Turbo Grafx CD system was (better known as the PC-Engine in Japan and Europe I believe.) I think it was also the first 16-bit system as well.
DISCLAIMER: I was typing this post about 4 hours before posting it and fell asleep. LoLz !!11
Con and Angst hit the nail on the head with Sega. me personally, I preferred the SNES to the Genesis, but I didn't get the Genesis until November 1994. I got Game Gear in 1993, and the only games I played on it were the Sonic games: Sonic 1, Sonic 2, Sonic Chaos, and for a short time... Sonic Triple Trouble. The Game Gear was an energy guzzler, but I had the battery pack and AC adaptor that I just carried with me. I had a similar device with my Game Boy as well --- provided many hours of play on a long roadtrip from Illinois to Florida and back (was the first time I beat Super Mario Land, FYI) ... but yes... I couldn't get enough of the Sonic series, so alas it was inevitable, I'd get the Genesis last, and just in time for one of the greatest concepts EVER... Lock-On Technology with Sonic & Knuckles! or not... I wonder why that fell through the cracks like it did, Sega had plans for utilizing that technology with other titles but never went beyond Sonic 2/3+Sonic & Knuckles.
1994 was an awesome year for the 16-bit consoles. I don't recall ever having so much fun with cool games. the greatest game ever also came out that year: mothersucking Earthworm Jim! I got the Genesis version cause it was infinitely superior in terms of gameplay... though the graphics weren't as great and the infamous garbled voices on the Genesis still plagued it.
Genesis had a meger 64 simultaenous color limit (vs. the Super Nintendo's 256). some companies, particularly Capcom with Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition, managed to get by just fine despite this. SF2 was another reason to get a Genesis, permitting of course you got a 6-button controller (Sega's first chink in the armor, I guess).
the Genesis was Sega's last real successful system, and I believe it was still outsold and beat out by the SNES. the Sega CD and 32X add-ons may have offered larger storage capacity (and cd audio) or more powerful processing power, but they cost money to obtain, and still had limitations (the color depth, the overall system hardware) ... so naturally they flopped. it's the same thing why multiplayer in game expansions on the PC never work out: you have to pay to get them. not everyone has the money to fork over to buy more stuff to play games.
Sega Saturn was quite the piece of hardware. I only got to play it once, and god damn, Virtua Cop was a sporking amazing game to play. the dual CPU design was a pain in the ass to code for, unfortunately. does anyone recall the Saturn's launch and there were NO games to play on it? Virtua Fighter... that's about it. Sony came out of nowhere and stole all sorts of business with the Playstation... props to them for it: they're winning the console war now, whether you want to admit it or not, Xbox tools--I mean fans. Nintendo delayed the Ultra 64 for too long and lost in the long-run. after all, Playstation got its start in '94, the N64 coming TWO years later. N64 offered up some great titles, nevertheless. I was talking to Angst about it last night, and realized that there were 10 excellent titles on there. the rest though, as part of Nintendo's not-so-surprising marketing shift, were all Pokemon-esque kiddie shit. the N64 faltered in the way of its expensive-to-produce and aging cartridge format that the inexpensive CD-ROM of the PS1 offered greater quantities of game titles for less money. I remember Zelda 64 costing me around $75 in X-mas 1998. I don't even think my Half-Life and Jedi Knight games equalled that! but it was an awesome game.
1999 rolled around, and Sega unveilled their next generation Dreamcast, and with its online capability, PowerVR graphics chip, and Windows CE design, you could do all sorts of cool stuff with it. the Playstation 2 came a year later and just mopped the floor with it. Sega gave up and went strictly to software publishing. who would've thought you'd find Sonic the Hedgehog on a Nintendo console? I didn't either...
for the record, the Dreamcast wasn't 128-bit either... in fact, none of the current generation consoles can be labeled by their "bits" anymore cause like PCs, they have all kinds of different sized pipes pushing data. Dreamcast was 64-bit, with a 128-bit graphics processor, if I'm not mistaken. the Turbo Grafix 16 also was not 16-bit... it had an 8-bit processor with a 16-bit graphic engine.
the last true generation rated by this system were the Saturn/Playstation/N64.
I found a cool site explaining the backgrounds of all the major consoles, but that was about 2 years ago... I imagine classicgaming.com had it, or some other gamespy site.
