Sega CD

The Sega CD, also known as the Mega CD outside North America, is a CD-ROM accessory for the Sega Genesis produced by Sega as part of their Sega Genesis line of consoles. Since this unit is a significant upgrade to the Genesis Retrobug felt that it warranted a separate entry in our database.

Sega wanted to keep up with the CD-ROM feature that the PC-Engine platform released and joined forces with JVC to produce the Sega CD. The main benefit of the CD-ROM was of course the increased capacity to store games over a ROM cartridge. CDs were cheaper to produce and offered approximately 160 times more space than the Sega cartridge games. Games could now benefit from full-motion video and other features.

The unit notably included a separate CPU, it was equipped with a Motorola 68000 running at 12.5MHz. It also included a new sound processor, the Ricoh RF5C164. The faster CPU and graphics enhancements of the ASIC chip allowed better sprite scaling and rotation. In addition, the unit could play audio CDs and CD+G discs.