Sega Mega Drive

Released in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive (MD) and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis, the Sega Mega Drive is a fourth-generation 16-bit console and the successor to the 8-bit Sega Master System. The console was originally launched to compete with the Nintendo NES and the NEC PC Engine, however, it ended up competing with the Nintendo SNES.

• Initially sold for $189 in the US (1989) something like $470 in today's money
• It is estimated that it sold more than 30.5 million units worldwide
• There was a Mega Drive 2 console (released in 1993), however, the Sega community considers the original Mega Drive as the best MD console ever built

THE SEGA MEGA DRIVE AT A GLANCE

The Sega Mega Drive is a legendary game console that sold millions of units worldwide. Based on MC68000 and using a dedicated chipset for graphics and sound, the console managed to offer many arcade-perfect video games. Note, that there are multiple variations of the console from Sega but also from third parties.

• There are three regions for Mega Drive hardware {US, Japanese, and Europe/PAL}
• There are about 900 officially licensed games for the MD (not including the tiles released for the X32 and Sega CD)
• The Mega Drive can also play Sega Master System games (requires the Power Base Converter)

Tech Specs

• 2 CPUs (Motorola 68000 running at 7.6 MHz and Zilog Z80 running at 3.58 MHz)
• 2 sound chips: Yamaha YM2612 and Texas Instruments SN76489 offering 5 FM channels + 1 PCM channel
• 64 KB RAM plus 64 KB VRAM
• 512 color palette and 64 colors on-screen
• 80 hardware sprites (on screen) and multi-featured hardware scrolling
• Cartridge memory: 512–8,224 KB
• Enhanced with hardware expansions such as the X32 and the Sega CD

Graphics

• Sega 315‑5313 VDP (Yamaha YM7101) graphics chip
• 64 KB VRAM is used to store graphics tiles, layers mappings, and horizontal scrolling
• 512 color palette (9-bit RGB)
• 61-64 colors on-screen
• Shadow/Highlight mode (1,536 colors)
• 80 hardware sprites on screen, 20 sprites per scanline, 16 colors per sprite
• Integer sprite zooming, sprite flipping, sprites can be combined into larger sprites and up to 1280 sprite tiles (80x 32×32 sprites)
• Vertical and horizontal line scrolling, column scrolling, parallax scrolling, line and row scrolling

Graphic Modes

• Basic resolutions: 320×224, 256×224 (NTSC), 256×240 (PAL)
• Overscan resolutions: 427×262 (NTSC) and 423×312 (PAL)
• Interlaced reslutions: 427×524 (NTSC) and 423×624 (PAL)

Sound Capabilities

• FM synthesis by the Yamaha YM2612 chip plus the Texas Instruments SN76489
• 8 KB audio RAM
• FM sample rate 52.781 kHz (PAL) and 53.267 kHz (NTSC)
• 6 FM channels as default (4 operators per channel, 24 operators total)
• 5 FM channels + 1 PCM channel as an alternative hardware configuration
• The third channel can enter a Special Mode where each operator has a different frequency
• The sixth channel can enter a DAC mode by streaming 8‑bit PCM sound to mix directly into the output waveform
• PCM sample rate up to 32 kHz

Hardware Expansions

• Sega CD (sold about 2.25 million units)
• 32X (sold about 800,000 units) -Featuring 2×RISC CPUs, 256 KB RAM, 256 KB VRAM, and 32,768 on-screen colors

Basic Add-ons

• Everdrive (SD-based storage module)
• Power Base Converter (allows the Mega Drive to play Master System games)
• Arcade Joystick and Steering Wheel
• Mega Modem
• Game Genie (cheat systems designed by Codemasters)
• J-Cart (ROM cartridge developed by Codemasters which allows 2 additional gamepad ports)

I/O Ports

• 2 joystick ports (on the front, male DE-9 controller ports)
• Cartridge port (on the top)
• Video-out (supporting RGB SCART)
• The modem port (also called EXT port)

Game Titles

• The Mega Drive has a software library of about 900 officially-licensed games
• There are additional releases for the Sega CD and 32X add-ons
• There are many homebrew games for the Sega MD, many of which are very well-made
• Sonic the Hedgehog sold 15 million units and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 sold 6 million units

■ Sega Mega Drive Games Console

Binaryvalue.com (c)

Games:

• https://cdromance.org/sega_genesis_roms/

Sources:

• https://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega_Drive/Technical_specifications
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Genesis