For the sake of context, I’ve lived in the UK my whole life, so forgive my use of the term Mega Drive, US chums, but it’s a far cooler name than Genesis and I’m willing to bet The Book Of Mega Drive will make for a higher quota of churchgoers if the Pope accepts my proposal.
I’m going to start this off with some of the variants of Sega’s greatest machine (grumbles from the Saturn fans in the cheap seats) as there are so blasted many of them. Make no mistake here, I’m not talking about the various tinkerings made to the Mega Drives 1 and 2 (like a white button here but a red one there), no, what we’re talking about are WHOLE NEW bits of plastic that do other a lot more.
Most impressive is the Sega Multi Mega (or Genesis CDX in the Americas), which combined the fairly useless Mega CD under the same hood as a regular Mega Drive. Though the machine clearly looks the business, it was incompatible with the console’s 32X add-on which meant if you wanted to play arcade-perfect versions of Mortal Kombat II or the wacky Sonic spin-offs that no one remembers because they were only released on stupid optional add-on consoles that no decent child’s parents understood, you couldn’t. No, I am not bitter that I never had a chance to play Knuckles In Chaotix. Not one bit.