SEGA failed miserably in the hardware dept. The list goes on and on....Nomad,32x,CDX,Sega Master System,Sega CD 1,2,,,Genesis 1,2,3 ,Saturn ,Game Gear and the never to come true NEPTUNE. I am not even mentioning pre SMS when Atari was king.The company just scrambled around to try to out do Nintendo and Sony but they could not. They came close for a spell but eventually fell behind in sales. Too many ideas and changes in a short period of time frustrated,angered,alienated and confused too many gamers.
Bit harsh. Pre SMS Sega were a relatively small Japanese affair, amongst many others. While the SMS was more powerful than the NES, and launched earlier outside Japan, really it ought to be given how old the Famicom design was by then. Still, they brought out some cracking games for it, and one thing I like about it is how long they supported if for - they produced SMS versions of quite a few MegaDrive games.
As I understand it, the Mega CD/32x cockup was mainly due to Sega not keeping their north American arm on a short enough leash, so yeah, that's a fair call. The Saturn as originally designed was underpowered, and as far as I can tell, really quite strangely designed, and Sony got one up on them by designing a simpler more powerful system. Still, at least the hardware itself is robust and my second hand Saturn is still in perfect working order, which is less than can be said for a lot of Playstations out there.
On the other hand the Game gear was a great bit of kit. Shame it ate through batteries and they made it with cheap capacitors that all went pop after a few years (and mostly seem to be weird sizes that I'm having trouble sourcing). But for me it was the right thing at the right time - the Gameboy felt really old tech by 1991.
It's fair to say Sega dropped the ball with the MD/Gen expansions and the Saturn, but the SMS, base MD and Dreamcast are easily amongst my favourite consoles still.
Out of interest, what's the best way to play Virtua Fighter on the Pandora? There was a 32x version, wasn't there?
