(Gameplay - 3474) Sega CD, Part 2/2 (ONL - 24)
1The Sega CD, also known as the Mega-CD in Europe and Japan, was a Compact Disc-based add-on for the Sega Genesis. As its name would suggest, it allowed the Genesis to take advantage of the higher-capacity CD-ROM storage medium, enabling features such as pre-rendered video playback (branded "Full-Motion Video") and Red Book CD sound. Unfortunately, the Genesis'/Mega Drive's own processing power wasn't quite enough to take advantage of these features to the fullest. It was released in 1991 in Japan, with North America getting it in 1992 and Europe in 1993. The launch price was $299 (£270 in Great Britain), twice of that of the Genesis itself after it was given a price cut in 1991.
The Sega CD came about because Sega heard rumors of Nintendo's deal with Sony to develop their own CD add-on, and also because NEC had just released a CD attachment for their PC Engine console (ironically, the SNES CD-ROM wound up becoming an albatross and never saw releasenote ; Sega wasted no time in mocking Nintendo for this in their ads for the Sega CD). Sega jumped the gun and pushed out their own attachment as a countermeasure: it allowed the Genesis to perform tricks similar to the SNES that would otherwise be impossible with the original hardware, such as Mode 7 effects and sprite rotation.
The add-on is probably best known for its association with Full-Motion Video games. While not the first or even last machine to host FMV games, they were prominently featured in Sega's aggressive marketing and a fairly common part of the library thanks to Digital Pictures, a major proponent of the game genre. One of these FMV games was Night Trap, which obtained infamy by being featured at a U.S. Senate hearing concerning portrayals of violence in video games and contributing to the creation of the ESRB. Hosting live action footage on a home console was impressive for the time, but it was heavily degraded by the Genesis's palette limitations and the visuals have aged poorly (the few CD games that also supported the 32X add-on don't suffer from this issue and fared much better). To quote Digital Pictures co-founder Ken Melville, "[footage was reduced to] the most horrifying, blurry, reduced-color-palette mess imaginable." The FMV games themselves were also notorious for their low production values, corny acting, and limited gameplay, and thus quickly gained a reputation for being shallow experiences not worth buying, which contributed to turning people away from the CD.
The Sega CD also received a number of enhanced ports of Genesis games, though many didn't have substantial changes outside of improved soundtracks and a bit of extra content. Despite ending up with a sizable library, the add-on was criticized for being improperly supported between the poorly-received FMV games and ports that didn't justify the high asking price. While completely original, non-FMV, and actually good games do exist for the Sega CD, they're very few in number and are often overshadowed by the library's poor reputation, with recognition of them being limited to the most hardcore of fans or retro enthusiasts. The only Sega CD game to break into mainstream consciousness as "good" is Sonic the Hedgehog CD, if only because of the sheer weight of the Sonic the Hedgehog brand recognition. Even then, it has become a rather divisive entry amongst the fanbase when it was made more widely available on modern platforms.
In addition to its tepid audience response, the Sega CD is also seen as a commercial failure, only selling 2.4 million units (compare the 30 million Sega Genesis units sold). While not as disastrous as the later 32X add-on, the lacking reception and sales were the first signs of Sega's eventual decline during the mid- and late-90s that would lead to them leaving the console hardware market. In retrospect the money poured into the Sega CD (and especially the 32X) would have been better invested in trying to create some more IPs instead of gimmicky hardware, but hindsight is 20/20 and all that. The combination of this and the PC Engine CD's poor sales outside of Japan (as the TurboGrafx-CD) are also credited as a likely factor in Nintendo choosing to stick with cartridges for the Nintendo 64 — right when CD-ROM technology became more readily practical for game developersnote . Oops.
The Sega CD is also noteworthy for how many hardware permutations it had. While you're probably familiar with either the bottom-mount Model 1 or the side-mount Model 2, there was also the Sega CDX, a much smaller unit that combined a Genesis, Sega CD, and a Walkman music player into a single unit: the console was actually small enough to double as a portable music player, and was marketed as such! Unfortunately, it had a high $300 price tag, was produced in small quantities, and its disc reading laser quickly developed a reputation for being finicky and breaking down quickly. It was also incompatible with any other Genesis add-on hardware, like the Power Base or 32X.note