Live Magazine June Issue 2017 June July Magazine Spiderman | Page 50

First released in 1988 in Japan
and the U.S market in 1989,
the Sega Mega Drive was a car-
tridge and, later on, CD based
game console. It was Sega’s
third console and it dominated
sales in in the U.S outselling
the SNES by double during the
1991 season (source Wikipe-
dia).
SEGA MEGA
DRIVE
(AKA SEGA
GENESIS)
The success was due to some
clever decisions by the new
CEO of Sega of America, Tom
Kalinske. The decision to re-
lease Sonic the Hedgehog
as the bundled game with the
console saw sales rocket and
Sonic called one of the great-
est video games you could buy
at the time. Also Sega had re-
leased the console in Japan
earlier then other markets and
so had a good library of games
available at launch in the U.S,
Australia and Europe.
Sega was considered “cooler”
in the U.S by male gamers then
the competing Nintendo system
and this enhanced with release