Gunstar Green wrote:Keep in mind Sega was using a lot of off the shelf parts so they were working with what they had available depending on cost. They also had manufacturing plants in a few different countries.
That's interesting; I had no idea the Genesis was built with off the shelf parts. That certainly goes a long way to explaining all the motherboard revisions. Well, that and the revisions that were intended to fix the ones that weren't so good in the sound department.
It's also an interesting coincidence - another of my favorite consoles, the Atari 2600, was also famously built using off the shelf parts. That's why Coleco was able to get away with selling an add-on to the Colecovision that allowed the user to play 2600 carts.
I wonder what it is about off the shelf video game hardware that I like so much? In general, the Genesis and its games have this "raw" quality (and I mean that in a good way), a certain rough and ready feel to them. Meanwhile the SNES often feels more polished and refined in some ways. Both good but very different from each other.