Sega's Mega CD......

So shall I cast my opinion about the Mega CD? Do you want to know the truth behind Sega's dream? do you give a fuck?

if you are hip enough to be reading this page you probably know all this already, but if not read on...Released in japan in 1991, the US in 92 and Europe sometime in 93, the mega CD was designed to unleash the power of "CD" games in your home, this console is up there as one of the biggest mistakes sega ever made, because quite simply it was pretty crap. To save money on production and at retail the decided that to use a mega CD you would need a megadrive (or genesis as they are called in the US) you stick em together like some sort of videogame meets hi-fi separates fuck up, they sat on top of each other, and not only could you play games on it, but also watch CD+G discs (crap music CD's with pictures) and listen to CD's. At the time CD players were still expensive, and this was actually a major selling point!

What they failed to point out to everyone buying the system was that despite it being new, it was still limited to using the megadrive hardware for graphix, so you were never going to get 3D or some kick ass 2D neo-geo crushing shit, no you were going to get a megadrive game with a CD audio soundtrack (wow!!!). I mean most the time when I played games in the late 80's early 90's I turned the sound off a listened to whatever teenage rock shit I was in to back then, so really a big fucking waste of everyone's time an money....but wait it could do more.....so much more....

Streaming Video!!! that's right, for the first time we could watch shit quality video in our video games (well not the first time, but the first time for me) so lets go back in time.....there is some crappy sega advert on the TV, and on it there is a bit of a game running on the new awesome mega CD, the obvious reaction - "fuck me up man, look at those shit hot kick ass graphics, there's like this mother fuckin' tunnel and it's all 3D, it looks shitting real and you're flyin' down it, in game!! fuck yeah I gotta get me one of those bitches, shit man the future has arrived and its called Sewer Shark on the Mega CD.....it's great to be alive" etc. etc. anyway what I and many other people failed to realise was that this "game" was really a piece of crap video running in a microscopic window in the middle of the black sea of your TV screen, and you were not actually controlling the ship flying down these tunnels you were just watching it whilst moving a cursor round and round and picking off shit ratigator targets, (yes you read that right. "ratigator", not rat, not alligator, but ratigator, apparently terrifying beasts that live in the sewers...fucking genius games designers what will they think of next) yup if you wanted to take a turning you couldn't, occasionally you would get a push left now kind of thing, if you did the ship would auto turn left, if you didn't you get a little bit of film showing your demise.

MegaCD II:

The mega CD went from strength to strength with these new "Video - games" titles like tomcat alley. microcosm and road avenger all sucking monkey ass, (actually I lie, road avenger was really mother fucking good, possibly the best game on the system, but I am probably alone in thinking that) add to that titles like sonic CD, which really looked no different from sonic 1 2 or 3 (but with more levels and a shitty mode 7 bonus bit) and you have a console people really wanted to shell out for, yup everyone who purchased one, felt like a loser and probably wanted to hang themselves....thanks sega! However I like my pair of mega cd's, they take up space, and play music CD's...and really despite this hiccup Sega still kicked ass...

It was also the first system to get a version of "Night Trap" which was heavily used in court during the attack on the video games industry that resulted in age restrictions being put on games...in the game was a picture of a house, and you could zoom in on windows which would let you watch videos of what was going on in each room, the aim was to try and find a murderer but you were often instead rewarded with chicks doing whatever it is chicks do in their bedrooms, revolutionary stuff indeed.

Boot Screen :

When you turned on the system of tomorrow today, you were greeted with this amazing screen, with the mega CD logo scaling in and out and up and down, I think the idea is that if you squash something in the x direction it looks like its turning in 3D, fuckin' A, actually it just looks shit, but better than that you got to "hear" the sound of tomorrow's games today, with some piece of shit midi piano crap, which is a shame seeing as sega have always been the kings of video game rock, which was sadly absent from the mega CD boot screen, and is probably the central pivotal reason why it failed...maybe.

Awesome Mega CD Boot music.MP3

MegaCD I box front..(MEGA CD - THE ULTIMATE GAME MACHINE, they couldn't call it the ultimate games console, because they'd written that on the megadrive, even so it still read a bit like "the best shit rock album ever 2" or some such shit.) :

MegaCD I box back(so much software was available on release that 2 of the six games advertised on the back were actually free with the console):

MegaCD II box front and back....yup the advertised "software library" features such hits as cobra command, sherlock holmes, and robo alesis??!! :

MegaCD II Inside the dream...:
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