The Top 3 Best Sega Consoles

Back in the early nineties, the video game market was a two-horse race. On one side was Nintendo, the boys from Kyoto, and on the other was Sega, a Tokyo-based rival with lofty ambitions of taking over the newest game in town. Both would be highly competitive with aggressive marketing campaigns aimed at taking swings at each other, but it would ultimately be Nintendo left standing, along with a few other rivals, at the end of the decade. However, let's look back on the top 3 consoles Sega gave us.

3. Sega Master System

With its 8-bit hardware and the first real competition to be offered to Nintendo's Famicom/Nes, the Master System was actually a remodel of the Sega Mark III, the Master System didn't sell well in North America, but was a smash-hit outside of the United States, with sales reaching six times the amount sold in its native homeland of Japan. Despite its limited catalogue, the system introduced a generation to the idea that Nintendo wasn't the only game in town and set stakes for a rivalry that would erupt into all-out war less than five years later. An interesting fact is to this day the system is still being sold in Brazil. The Master System received ports of Sonic the Hedgehog, Altered Beast, Golden Axe and many more, and despite not reaching the hearts of its American audience, it became beloved with their continental cousins.

2. Sega Dreamcast

The final entry in the Sega console story, and perhaps their well-deserved swansong. The Dreamcast was designed to compete against the GameCube, Xbox, and PlayStation 2, beating every one of them to the punch and being on the market first. The system was well ahead of its time, using standard off-the-shelf components and even featuring a modem to connect to the internet, the Dreamcast set the standard for what the future of gaming could be and included such legendary titles as Shenmue I & II, Virtua Fighter 3, Sonic Adventure, and many, many more, but a poor marketing campaign, and the announcement that the PS2 would be incoming, not to mention the '$299' bombshell when Sony announced the price of the original PlayStation four years earlier at E3 1995, a blow that cost Sega's Saturn console much market space, and set a successor up for an uphill battle, the Dreamcast was a last gasp of a once-great games company. Despite it dying an undeserved death, the Dreamcast lives on in the modding and homebrew community as a favourite for hobbyist software developers, along with its unique compartmental controller, in another reality it was the Dreamcast that came out on top, but that is not the reality we live in. Long live the Dreamcast!

1. Sega Mega Drive

You wanna hear another joke? What do you get when you cross a disgruntled second-place video games company, with a market that treats their console like trash? You get the console you f***ing deserve! Enter the Sega Mega Drive. The greatest games console to ever come out of Sega's doors and also the finest 16-bit console ever produced. Some would argue the Super Famicom holds that title, and whilst it can be said that there is a good case for that, it was only the Mega Drive that let you play a true port of Mortal Kombat with blood and all, and all of the Sega arcade classics, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Sonic the Hedgehog 1,2, and 3 and every other video game or video game accessory you could imagine. the Mega Drive, with its aggressive 'Sega does what nintendon't' campaign and streetwise attitude, it was the cool kid of its era. Whilst Nintendo focused on family-friendly fun, the Mega Drive set the mark for generations of what was to come with its adult-orientated approach and games selection, as well as producing every accessory you could imagine for the console, whether it be a lightgun, Modem or an add-on CD drive in the Mega-CD, or another plug-in called the 32x. Not to mention SegaNet, Sega's own version of a pre-online service. The Mega Drive deserves a seat at the High Table in any console cosa nostra and should be hallowed and respected at all costs. With its incredible stereo chip, extensive games catalogue, and life well beyond its intended years, people still play it to this day, and rightfully so.