The Videogame Solipsist: Genesis

I forgot the thing originally had a headphone jack...

Today is my birthday. I'm 24 years old, and it's occurred to me that the 16 bit era was probably the happiest time of my life. The era began, roughly, when I entered first grade and ended sometime around when I was in middle school, so the SNES and--especially--the Sega Genesis are irrevocably tied up with the happiest of times. I also tend to be a 16 bit fundamentalist because I think the early to mid 90s were the golden era of videogames, both on PC and console.

Anyway, it's my birthday and I want to talk about the Sega Genesis. Which my sister and I actually got for Easter. I know, right?? It was strange. Sometime during the NES era we began to see and hear about the Sega Genesis. For whatever reason, we didn't want a SNES. Mostly, I think, the Genesis had a lot of games we wanted. A neighbor came over and hooked up his Genesis and we were completely blown away by the first Sonic game. Once we saw the other games for the system in Toys R' Us (for that was videogame mecca for children at the time), especially Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2, my sister and I begged our parents to get it for us. So, instead of any Easter candy, we got a Genesis. It must've been Easter of '92, because by then Sonic 1 was a pack-in with the system.

Looking back on it now, owning a Genesis was when I became a serious gamer. During the NES era, nobody really thought in those terms because everybody had the fucking thing. Sometimes you would go to clean your chimney and you'd find three NES's inside, black with soot. But during the Genesis era, I was a bit older and a bit nerdier, and I became what the kids today call "hardcore." I had a subscription to the Sega Visions magazine and would look forward to releases, sometimes even knowing their release date and going to find them on said day. All of my friends made the move to Genesis, and it's now I pause to emphasize the significance of the name. For the U.S., this was the beginning of Sega. I had a friend who owned a Master Sytem, but he was a bit off, and hid the thing under his bed in shame. Sadly, Sega would squander all momentum they had built up with the Genesis, so in the end I guess the name the rest of the world knows the system as (Mega Drive) was a bit more apropos.

My fondest memories of the Genesis are easily the Shining Force games and playing various games co-operatively with friends and my sister. I used to rent Sega games based on how cool they looked on the boxart and screenshots on the back, so Shining Force II fell unto my lap during 1994. My friend Dave and I latched unto this game like addicts, and between the two of us we probably paid for it in rental fees. It remains my favorite strategy RPG because I love the way Camelot designs interfaces, and I think they hit the sweet spot between simplicity and complexity in the gameplay/battle system department. One of my best memories is going to some mall in another part of Ohio for a flower show for my Mom and begging her to buy me the first Shining Force for $35. That seemed like so much money at the time, but I had never seen it for sale anywhere, so...

I digress.

Playing Genesis with friends seemed like a huge deal. It was a moment of pride to show off a new game to friends, either playing together or passing the controller around. General Chaos was probably our favorite because, at the time, we were all military fanatics. However, Genesis was also the last time my Sister ever devoted time to videogames. We routinely kicked ass in Streets of Rage 2 and Golden Axe 2 together, though she had to be the cliche and always play as the girl character.


Toward the end of the Genesis's lifespawn, you got the feeling that Sega had lost their fucking minds. The Sega CD seemed cool, but it was so damn expensive your parents would never spend that much on an add-on for a console that was perfectly fine on its own. I never knew anyone who had it, and the only game I've ever played for it was some shitty Dracula FMV adventure game that my friend Dave bought years later with the system, all under the intention of eventually getting Shining Force CD. As for the 32X, well, I actually played a few games for it, but that was always on the demo station at one of the videostores. It was just another expensive add-on my parents would never go for, and what made it worse was that by the time I might have convinced them to get it for me, a combination of wanting a SNES for Chrono Trigger and the announcement of the Saturn effectively killed any small interest I had in the 32X.

So it goes.