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Background midi is the main theme from streets of rage. Sends
chills up my spine even after 10 years.
Managed to talk my parents into buying a Genesis for me and the kids the first year
it was available. 1989. The home system finally gets hi tech.
The price, $189.00. The list of available games totaled 18.
But there was something about that console I had a real good feeling about.
There was a promise of a 16 bit Phantasy Star. There were rumors of real arcade
conversions. It had a Motorola 68000 microprocessor. The same computer brain
that cost $1000 in a Macintosh and powered some of the best arcade games. And it
still had the Z80 that ran the SMS. What more could you
possibly want for a home video game. It had stereo. It had 64 colors. It had
three buttons on its controller :) 04/17/2002 and look what somebody gave me
today.
Now basically I already have 5 working Genesis
units. But my original one from 89 died a few years back but I kept the main
circuit board just in case I needed parts. But here was the same original one.
Still has the Electronics Boutique 189.99 price sticker on it. And inside. Mint
in the packaging, a first rev model. Back in 1990 electronic arts and one other
company made some games for the Sega that were not licensed. Since other
companies had lost some lawsuits about reversed engineered games Sega decided
just to add a lockout screen. If the game was not a Sega cart it froze. I was
unaware of this because I had an original. And one of my favorite games at the
time was Budokan. So when I fired up this system and plugged Budokan in it came
right up. Happy happy joy joy. Bye the way. To get
Budokan or Ishido or Populous or Zany Golf to work on a genesis with the lockout
screen you have to plug in another cart. I recommend an old Sega one without a
batter backup of course. Turn it on and wait till the SEGA title screen
finishes. Remove the cart without turning the power off. Insert the "Unlicensed"
game. again without touching the power. Then hit the reset button. The lockout
only runs on a cold start :) Warm booting does not clear all the registers.
Incidentally this was the subject of some early cheats. Swapping a Rambo III
with an After Burner or a Space Harrier bumped your lives up to 99. But I can't
remember which was first :) Another thing the first
rev has a special debug mode that was used by the programmers. The only game I
know of that has special cheats that use this is sonic 1. You can enter debug
mode and see all the graphics. Scroll through walls. And a bunch of other really
cool but useless stuff. If anybody reading this knows of other old Sega games
with special rev 1 cheats please let me know. Along
with the system were two of these.
The original Arcade Power Stick. $49.99 for a joystick? By the time the
Nintendo's and Sega's came along the problems with tricky joysticks had been
solved. But Sega still decided that along with an "Arcade" quality system you
might want an Arcade quality joystick. So they made a joystick that was
identical to the ones in arcade cabinets. This is NOT the 6 button arcade stick
that came out 3 years later. They have exactly the same shape But the 6 button
one is very poorly made. The original one is perfect. In my opinion the best one
ever made. And don't forget these work on Atari and Commodore systems also :)
No I would never have spent the $49.99 for one of these. I was so close to
buying one when toys r us had them on closeout for 9.99 but I opted to buy a
second copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga that day.
Here is my Genesis inventory
Sega Fans
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