Sega rises from the grave with the nationwide release of the Sega Genesis in September 1989


"RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!" With the thundering words of Zeus himself echoing around the world, Japanese game company Sega proceeded to do just that in September of 1989. Out on the coasts, in the sun-drenched, palm-tree swaying land of California and amid the staggering towers and mayhem of New York – always a step ahead, aren't they? – the first whispers had begun on August 14. Little black boxes, sleek and dark as a fresh-dug grave, had started appearing on store shelves. "Sega Genesis," the labels read, in a sci-fi font. But that was just the appetizer, a taste of what was coming, a single drop of blood before the main event. Because come September, that’s when the beast was truly unleashed. Nationwide.

Sega had spent the mid-80s as an also-ran underdog. The 8-bit Sega Master System had nowhere near the number of hot titles or library size that Nintendo's NES boasted. But as the decade reached its end, it was planning its revenge. The Genesis would deliver 16 bits - double that of the NES. And it would arrive in stores with the second-biggest grossing arcade title of the time - Altered Beast - right inside the box, for free. And booted up, it looked like an actual arcade game. Even Zeus deemed it worthy of his presence.

Altered Beast brought Greek mythology to life like your literature textbook never could. A hulking brute, raised from the dead by the king of the gods, transforming into a werewolf, a dragon, a bear, tearing through hordes of undead. The graphics, they weren't just better; they were like nothing gamers had ever seen on their wood panel Zenith. Edgier. More visceral. Less like a cartoon, more like something that could crawl right out of the screen and into your family room. The arcade experience, but no coin slot!

Genesis was planting a flag. It had true arcade games—real arcade ports, not watered-down kiddie stuff. Strider. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts. It even had sequels to arcade games - Super Thunder Blade, Space Harrier 2, Revenge of Shinobi. And the buzz was building. Word of mouth spread like wildfire in a dry forest: "You gotta see this thing, man. It’s like the arcade in your house."

Kids lined up, their eyes wide and a little too bright, a feverish glint in them. Parents, bewildered and a little wary, clutched their wallets, sensing a shift, a new hunger taking root. Systems arrived in stores around the country on September 14, 15, and 16, depending what city you were near.

You bought one, didn't you? Or maybe your friend did, and you spent countless hours huddled around the TV, the smell of warm plastic and microwave movie theater butter popcorn in the air, your thumbs aching, your eyes glazed. And as the hours bled into days, and the days into weeks, you started to understand that low, mechanical growl you'd heard in the summer. It wasn’t just a new system. It was a new world. And it was just getting started.

In the fluorescent-lit aisles of Toys “R” Us and Juvenile Sales and Kiddie City and Kay-Bee Toy and even in the glistening, consumerist temples of Sears, it was THERE. The box. A sleek, black box, a geometric monolith of capitalism, and on its face, in a bold, aggressive font, a name that fairly hissed with raw, technological power: SEGA GENESIS. You could practically hear Khan Noonien Singh saying it, if you listened carefully enough. Inside the plastic shell, a speedy Motorola 68000 processor, and a Yamaha YM2612 sound chip.  

Begun, the console wars had.

And so it was that as the autumn winds picked up, the nights grew frosty, and the leaves began to fall at a steady clip, the games you spent the summer playing in the boardwalk arcades were now coming home, into your toasty warm family room. "Genesis Does What Nintendon’t," Sega's ad campaign promised ahead of the holiday shopping rush, and it would keep on doing it until Nintendo could finally release its own 16-bit machine a full two years later, on September 9, 1991.

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