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Why wasn't the Genesis called the Mega Drive in the US?
- Thread starter NuclearCake
- Start date
It was incredibly popular in the US and ate the SNES's lunch for years until Nintendo changed their strategy. I'm not sure how anyone can argue against any marketing decisions for the Genesis, starting with the name.
I always thought all of Segas main console names were cool eg Genesis, Saturn, Dreamcast. Prefer Genesis to Megadrive although that could be because that's what I grew up with. That said I prefer the PAL SNES look even though I grew up on the US SNES look, so it cant be all nostalgia as to why I think Genesis is just a cooler name.
Yeah I grew with the Mega Drive and it's my favourite console name. It sounds like a game console. Genesis is truly awful.
Nobody would have cared about the Genesis with that wack ass name. The US was the biggest market for Sega at the time so whoever went with that name made the right the decision.
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Yeah, it would have messed with the "Genesis does" slogan but that stuff was mostly pre-Sonic, and I think Sonic still could have been advertised into big success in NA under the Mega Drive name.
It's not like weird system names held back Game Boy, Playstation, and Xbox anyway.
The Master System wasn't a mainstream console the US. It was extremely niche compared to the NES juggernaut. Sega's 16-bit home console was for the vast majority of Americans their introduction to Sega, hence the name Genesis.
Saying the words Sega Genesis out loud just gives me chills the same way hearing the PSX bootup theme play. It's superior sounding than Sega Mega Drive, simply put.
Genesis is a great name. And I'm a Nintendo kid. (Still am too) It wasn't until the GameCube that Nintendo started giving their consoles unique names. (Not counting GameBoy/DS portables, which TBH also just keep using the same for each revision anyway. I guess the Wii U was the one misstep but we already know that.)
The worst sins were actually what was done to the NES and PC Engine. Two of the prettiest and coolest looking consoles ever made turned into pure mediocrity.
The Sega names are some corporate executives huffing their own farts to some degree, but frankly I like that approach over literally just calling it "PlayStation 5." Early on in the gaming industry these companies (and I'd argue especially Sega) were trying to sell you on an experience, that each of these consoles represented some kind of milestone in technological advancement, even if at the end of the day they were playthings partly (if not primarily) designed for children.
Genesis marked the beginning of a new era, Saturn evoked images of space and the next frontier (also being the coolest planet, straight-up - don't forget that just shortly before the Sega Saturn launched, GM was releasing the Saturn line of cars), Dreamcast tied into the "it's thinking" motif for the console, which by that point was most peoples' first exposure to online gaming on console.
They're just dope names that suggest something more than "new GameBox 2.0!" or something generic as hell like that.
Yeah PAL kept the name but they wrecked the logo and console design with the bland white stuff.
The Japanese MD was designed to look like 80s AV equipment. Like Pioneer could have made the console.
PAL almost looks like a pirate knockoff
I've never understood why anyone really cares, honestly. Europe also got the toaster NES instead of the Famicom design, the NES name instead of Famicom and had to deal with poor conversions of games to PAL. that's just the tip of the iceberg.
I thought we were past this as a gaming world. :(
I thought we were past this as a gaming world. :(
thankyou.gif
You've overstepped now. Diss the better Sega name all you want, you don't touch the GOAT color scheme.
I never had either version and have no attachment but Mega Drive sounds pretty bland to me
Might as well have called it the Jumbo Player or the Great Box or the Appliance Plus
Just plain words crammed together with no imagination
Genesis is a bit more flowery and so sounds more interesting to me
I don't know which version had the red and which version had the white, but I like the look of the console with the red better
Might as well have called it the Jumbo Player or the Great Box or the Appliance Plus
Just plain words crammed together with no imagination
Genesis is a bit more flowery and so sounds more interesting to me
I don't know which version had the red and which version had the white, but I like the look of the console with the red better
I only lean towards Mega Drive because Mega CD sounds better than Sega CD, you can easily associate what it's for and it's less generic. Logos are better too.
I wonder if what you prefer depends on what marketing you were exposed to.
I live in the US so Genesis sounds better to me.
I don't think names really matter. The marketing will make it normal to you after awhile. All of the Sega console names are kind of weird in retrospect but now I think the Saturn sounds the coolest and Master System sounds the worst.
I live in the US so Genesis sounds better to me.
I don't think names really matter. The marketing will make it normal to you after awhile. All of the Sega console names are kind of weird in retrospect but now I think the Saturn sounds the coolest and Master System sounds the worst.
I still can't believe people like the dark/beige grey snes, when purple + light grey were so much better
This isn't correct in comparison to almost anything else. PAL NES has vastly more at least partial PAL conversions than almost any other system up until the 2000s at least.
Master System for example has essentially zero PAL optimised games (the closest are a few very late PAL ONLY games, but they have no 60Hz comparison point). NES has hundreds where at least the music was sped up.
I already said that "Megadrive" sounds like a boring name, but the point that it sounds like a computer accessory is also a good one; that name sounds like some boring computer accessory. Genesis, though? That's a name with promise, and some definite cool factor.
Mega Drive is a name very much in keeping with the kinds of names Japanese companies were using for computer and videogame systems in the '80s. It's probably a fine name for that region, even though it doesn't have any (hard or floppy) drives for it. But just like all of the other consoles of the era, when it came to bring it to the US it was renamed because they wanted a name that would work better for this region. Sega did a great job of coming up with a much better, more marketable name with "Genesis".
And the market agrees on this point: the Genesis outsold the Mega Drive worldwide.
As for the US SNES vs. the EU/JP SNES/Super Famicom, design-wise, I have never seen a SFC in person so I can't say I have a definite opinion on this, but I do like the look of the US SNES. It has better-designed cartridges for one thing -- they stack perfectly, unlike the annoying rounded-top EU/JP ones, and have end labels so you know what each game is. US SNES carts are a LOT better than Japanese ones, and I do have plenty of both so I know this. Japanese SFC carts look nice in concept but in function they are flawed. Otherwise, I'd need to see a SFC in person sometime to say for sure, but just based at looking at pictures of them online both designs seem good, but I'd probably go for the nostalgia factor and say I prefer the US one. The American one is more visually interesting with the various raised parts and such, while the Japanese one has that not great looking dark grey top. It's close, I don't really understand the "US SNES looks horrible" stuff some people say.
Mega Drive is a name very much in keeping with the kinds of names Japanese companies were using for computer and videogame systems in the '80s. It's probably a fine name for that region, even though it doesn't have any (hard or floppy) drives for it. But just like all of the other consoles of the era, when it came to bring it to the US it was renamed because they wanted a name that would work better for this region. Sega did a great job of coming up with a much better, more marketable name with "Genesis".
And the market agrees on this point: the Genesis outsold the Mega Drive worldwide.
As for the US SNES vs. the EU/JP SNES/Super Famicom, design-wise, I have never seen a SFC in person so I can't say I have a definite opinion on this, but I do like the look of the US SNES. It has better-designed cartridges for one thing -- they stack perfectly, unlike the annoying rounded-top EU/JP ones, and have end labels so you know what each game is. US SNES carts are a LOT better than Japanese ones, and I do have plenty of both so I know this. Japanese SFC carts look nice in concept but in function they are flawed. Otherwise, I'd need to see a SFC in person sometime to say for sure, but just based at looking at pictures of them online both designs seem good, but I'd probably go for the nostalgia factor and say I prefer the US one. The American one is more visually interesting with the various raised parts and such, while the Japanese one has that not great looking dark grey top. It's close, I don't really understand the "US SNES looks horrible" stuff some people say.
Mega Drive is pretty cool, but it's just a scientific fact that Genesis is cooler.
And the US SNES is coolerER, you heathens.
And the US SNES is coolerER, you heathens.
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???
Are you talking about the power and reset switches, or the overall case? Because mine was gray. Also, I'd argue the shape of the system was way more of an egregious change than the color scheme.
Bought the Genesis on launch day, and then when it was later revealed to be called "Mega Drive" outside of the US, all I could think was "Why did we instead get the console with the same name of a pop rock band and Bible book?".
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The colored buttons, but the shape wasn't good either. Really the design is just hideous. Thank god Nintendo kept all systems looking the same globally post SNES.
The Atari ST and the Commodore Amiga predate the Megadrive (let alone the Genesis) by 4 years.
Because Genesis is a way better name. It's momentous. It's god damn biblical.
Mega Drive is so tepid sounding by comparison. What's it supposed to be, some kind of hard drive with a complex? Get outta here with that.
Mega Drive is so tepid sounding by comparison. What's it supposed to be, some kind of hard drive with a complex? Get outta here with that.
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Yeah, this is all speculation as there is no real way for us to see how a Mega Drive would have fared in the US but personally, I don't it would have done worse. You can come up with potentially a thousand marketing buzzwords around Mega Drive. It practically writes itself. It would have likely sold as well if not better.
Genesis is an amazing name for a console. Master system and mega drive are kind of boring. I'm glad they stuck with an interesting naming convention moving forward with the Saturn and Dreamcast.
It's almost as if the xy-bit thing largely is just marketing bullshit that gamers like to parrot as if it actually means anything.
