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133-416: Arcade Archives is a series of emulated arcade games from the late 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s for PlayStation 4 , Xbox One , Microsoft Windows , and Nintendo Switch , published by Hamster Corporation . A sub-series called ACA Neo Geo focuses on re-releasing Neo Geo titles in their original arcade format, unlike many services that attempt to emulate the console versions. Arcade Archives

266-749: A library of more than 900 games on ROM-based cartridges . Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel . In Japan, the Mega Drive fared poorly against its two main competitors, Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC 's PC Engine , but it achieved considerable success in North America, Brazil, and Europe. Contributing to its success

399-528: A palette of 512. The games are in ROM cartridge format and inserted in the top. The Genesis produces sound using a Texas Instruments SN76489 programmable sound generator , integrated with the Video Display Processor (VDP) , and a Yamaha YM2612 FM synthesizer chip. The Z80 processor is primarily used to control both sound chips to produce stereo music and sound effects. Most revisions of

532-489: A "Blood Code". This technicality allowed Sega to release the game with a relatively low MA-13 rating. Meanwhile, the tamer SNES version shipped without a rating. The Genesis version of Mortal Kombat was well-received by gaming press, as well as fans, outselling the SNES version three- or four-to-one, while Nintendo was criticized for censoring the SNES version. Executive vice president of Nintendo of America Howard Lincoln

665-651: A 32-bit console. Following tensions with Sega Enterprises, Ltd. over its focus on the Saturn, Kalinske, who oversaw the rise of the Genesis in 1991, lost interest in the business and resigned in mid-1996. Sega sold 30.75 million Genesis units worldwide. However, some sources claim that the console sold 40 million units during its lengthly lifespan. Of these, 3.58 million were sold in Japan, and sales in Europe and

798-512: A BIOS file, using high-level emulation to simulate BIOS subroutines at a slight cost in emulation accuracy. Newer consoles have introduced one or more layers of encryption to make emulation more difficult from a technical perspective but also can create further legal challenges under the DMCA, which forbids the distribution of tools and information on how to bypass these layers. The Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu had been sued by Nintendo because

931-606: A Genesis instead. The SNES debuted against an established competitor, while NEC's TurboGrafx-16 failed to gain traction, and NEC soon pulled out of the market. In large part due to the popularity of Sonic the Hedgehog , the Genesis outsold the SNES in the United States nearly two to one during the 1991 holiday season. Sega controlled 65% of the 16-bit console market in January 1992, the first time Nintendo had not been

1064-405: A ball through a long winding tube. This concept was developed with Ohshima's character design and levels conceived by designer Hirokazu Yasuhara . Although Katz and Sega of America's marketing experts disliked Sonic , certain that it would not catch on with American children, Kalinske's strategy to place Sonic the Hedgehog as the pack-in game paid off. Sonic the Hedgehog greatly increased

1197-584: A discount on the purchase of ACA2 Neo Geo titles. There are currently 336 games on the original Arcade Archives list and 108 games on the ACA Neo Geo list below. These are the arcade game compilations that use the core emulators used on the Arcade Archives series, generally going under the Powered by Arcade Archives remark. Video game console emulator The code and data of

1330-442: A game are typically supplied to the emulator by means of a ROM file (a copy of game cartridge data) or an ISO image (a copy of optical media). While emulation softwares themselves are legal as long as they don't infringe copyright protections on the console, emulating games is only so when legitimately purchasing the game physically and ripping the contents. Freely downloading or uploading game ROMs across various internet sites

1463-601: A given system, resulting in defects . Few manufacturers published technical specifications for their hardware, which left programmers to deduce the exact workings of a console through reverse engineering . Nintendo 's consoles tended to be the most commonly studied, for example the most advanced early emulators reproduced the workings of the Nintendo Entertainment System , the Super Nintendo Entertainment System , and

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1596-417: A mascot character to compete with Nintendo's Mario series . The winning submission was a blue hedgehog with red shoes, Sonic , created by Naoto Ohshima , spawning one of the best-selling video game franchises in history. The gameplay of Sonic the Hedgehog originated with a tech demo created by Yuji Naka , who had developed a prototype platform game that involved a fast-moving character rolling in

1729-401: A month. His work was reviewed by EA's lawyers before being disseminated to Hayes and Nitchals to verify its originality, and subsequently to the rest of the developers to let them build games. After a few months, EA began developing for the Genesis in earnest. The EA founder, Trip Hawkins , confronted Nakayama the day before the 1990 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), informing him that EA had

1862-471: A new partner to market the Genesis in North America and offered the rights to Atari Corporation , which did not yet have a 16-bit system. David Rosen made the proposal to Atari CEO Jack Tramiel and the president of Atari's Entertainment Electronics Division, Michael Katz. Tramiel declined to acquire the new console, deeming it too expensive, and instead opted to focus on the Atari ST . Sega decided to launch

1995-639: A pixel scaler mode and an effect that simulates CRT television displays. Due to differences in hardware, the Xbox 360 is not natively backwards compatible with original Xbox games. However, Microsoft achieved backwards compatibility with popular titles through an emulator. On June 15, 2015, Microsoft announced the Xbox One would be backwards compatible with Xbox 360 through emulation. In June 2017, they announced original Xbox titles would also be available for backwards compatibility through emulation, but because

2128-452: A purported Nintendo Switch emulator released by various websites as a front for a survey scam. Due to the high demand of playing old games on modern systems, consoles have begun incorporating emulation technology. The most notable of these is Nintendo 's Virtual Console . Originally released for the Wii , but present on the 3DS and Wii U , Virtual Console uses software emulation to allow

2261-683: A reason for supporting the development of emulators. Some users of emulation also see emulation as means to preserve games from companies that have long-since gone bankrupt or disappeared from the industry's earlier market crash and contractions, and where ownership of the property is unclear. Emulation can also be seen as a means to enhance functionality of the original game that would otherwise not be possible, such as adding in localizations via ROM patches or new features such as save states . In November 2021, Phil Spencer stated that he hoped for video game companies to eventually develop and propagate legal emulation which would allow users to play any game from

2394-554: A rounded shape, a directional pad , three main buttons, and a start button. In 1993, Sega released a slightly smaller pad with three additional face buttons, similar to the design of buttons on arcade fighting games such as Street Fighter II . Sega also released a wireless revision of the six-button controller, the Remote Arcade Pad. The system is backward compatible with the Master System. The first peripheral

2527-477: A stronger name. After reviewing more than 300 proposals, the company settled on "Mega Drive". In North America, the name was changed to "Genesis". Rosen said he insisted on the name as he disliked "Mega Drive" and wanted to represent "a new beginning" for Sega. Sato said some design elements changed, such as the gold "16-bit" wording, in case it was mistaken for yellow. He believed the changes represented different Japanese and American cultural values. Sega released

2660-495: A successor to the Master System almost immediately after that console launched. In 1987, Sega faced another threat to its console business when Japanese computer giant NEC released the PC Engine amid great publicity. To remain competitive against the two more established consumer electronics companies, Ishikawa and his team decided they needed to incorporate a 16-bit microprocessor into their new system to make an impact in

2793-556: A target of online scams in the form of trojan horse programs designed to mimic the appearance of a legitimate emulator, which are then promoted through spam , on YouTube and elsewhere. Some scams, such as the purported "PCSX4" emulator, have even gone so far as to setting up a fake GitHub repository, presumably for added trustworthiness especially to those unfamiliar with open-source software development. The Federal Trade Commission has since issued an advisory warning users to avoid downloading such software, in response to reports of

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2926-538: A technical protection mechanism into a new edition of the Genesis released in 1990, referred to as the Genesis III. This new variation of the Genesis included a code known as the Trademark Security System (TMSS), which, when a game cartridge was inserted, would check for the presence of the string "SEGA" at a particular point in the memory contained in the cartridge. If the string was present,

3059-810: A two-part approach to build sales. The first part involved a marketing campaign to challenge Nintendo head-on and emphasize the more arcade-like experience available on the Genesis, with slogans including "Genesis does what Nintendon't". Since Nintendo owned the console rights to most arcade games of the time, the second part involved creating a library of recognizable games which used the names and likenesses of celebrities and athletes, such as Pat Riley Basketball , Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf , James 'Buster' Douglas Knockout Boxing , Joe Montana Football , Tommy Lasorda Baseball , Mario Lemieux Hockey , and Michael Jackson's Moonwalker . Nonetheless, Sega struggled to overcome Nintendo's presence in consumers' homes. Tasked by Nakayama to sell one million units within

3192-731: A version was operated in Brazil starting in 1995. Another phone-based system, the Mega Anser, turned the Japanese Mega Drive into an online banking terminal. In 1994, Sega started the Sega Channel , a game distribution system using cable television services Time Warner Cable and TCI . Using a special peripheral, Genesis players could download a game from a library of fifty each month and demos for upcoming releases. Games were downloaded to internal memory and deleted when

3325-515: A well-regarded soundtrack. ASCII Entertainment reported in early 1993 that Genesis had 250 games versus 75 for the SNES, but limited shelf space meant that stores typically offered 100 Genesis and 50 SNES games. The NES was still the leader, with 300 games and 100 on shelves. Sega's advertising positioned the Genesis as the cooler console, and coined the term blast processing , an obscure and unused graphics programming method, to suggest that its processing capabilities were far greater than those of

3458-465: Is a necessity for most console emulators, as most computing devices do not have the hardware required to run older console games directly from the physical game media itself. Even with optical media system emulators such as the PlayStation and PlayStation 2, attempting to run games from the actual disc may cause problems such as hangs and malfunction as PC optical drives are not designed to spin discs

3591-428: Is considered to be a form of piracy, and users may be sued for copyright infringement . By the mid-1990s, personal computers had progressed to the point where it was technically feasible to replicate the behavior of some of the earliest consoles entirely through software, and the first unauthorized, non-commercial console emulators began to appear. These early programs were often incomplete, only partially emulating

3724-633: Is even possible to use high-resolution texture pack upgrades for 3-D games and sometimes 2-D if available and possible. Software that emulates a console can be improved with additional capabilities that the original system did not have. These include Enhanced graphical capabilities, such as spatial anti-aliasing , upscaling of the framebuffer resolution to match high definition and even higher display resolutions, as well as anisotropic filtering (texture sharpening). Emulation software may offer improved audio capabilities (e.g. decreased latency and better audio interpolation), enhanced save states (which allow

3857-437: Is obtained regarding how the hardware interprets the game software, an emulation on the target hardware can then be constructed. Emulation developers typically avoid any information that may come from untraceable sources to avoid contaminating the clean room nature of their project. For example, in 2020, a large trove of information related to Nintendo's consoles was leaked , and teams working on Nintendo console emulators such as

3990-587: Is the Power Base Converter (Mega Adaptor in Japan and Master System Converter in Europe), which allows Master System games to be played. It is designed for the Model 1 revisions and will work with the Model 2 revisions, however the shell blocks the power and AC ports of the Model 2 revision, meaning that the converter must have its shell modified or by using a pass-through adaptor. A second model known as

4123-509: The Dolphin emulator for GameCube and Wii stated they were staying far away from the leaked information to avoid tainting their project. Once an emulator is written, it then requires a copy of the game software to be obtained, a step that may have legal consequences. Typically, this requires the user to make a copy of the contents of the ROM cartridge to computer files or images that can be read by

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4256-581: The Game Boy . The first such recognized emulator was released around 1996, being one of the prototype projects that eventually merged into the SNES9X product. Programs like Marat Fayzullin's iNES, VirtualGameBoy, Pasofami (NES), Super Pasofami (SNES), and VSMC (SNES) were the most popular console emulators of this era. A curiosity was also Yuji Naka 's unreleased NES emulator for the Genesis , possibly marking

4389-486: The Game Boy Advance , saw significant progress toward emulation during their production. This led to an effort by console manufacturers to stop unofficial emulation, but consistent failures such as Sega v. Accolade 977 F.2d 1510 (9th Cir. 1992), Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc. v. Connectix Corporation 203 F.3d 596 (2000), and Sony Computer Entertainment America v. Bleem 214 F.3d 1022 (2000), have had

4522-481: The GameCube , would not be released until 2001. UltraHLE was the first emulator to be released for a current console, and it was seen to have some effect on Nintendo 64 sales, though to what degree compared with diminishing sales on the aging consoles was not clear. Nintendo pursued legal action to stop the emulator project, and while the original authors ceased development, the project continued by others who had gotten

4655-573: The IBM Personal Computer BIOS around 1984. The process began in 1989, led by Steve Hayes and Jim Nitchals. They created a controlled room in EA headquarters nicknamed "Chernobyl", to which only one person was allowed access, Mike Schwartz. Schwartz reviewed Sega's copyrighted development manuals and tools, studied the Genesis hardware and games, and wrote original documentation that summarized his findings. The process took him about

4788-690: The Mega Drive outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega . It was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System . Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tectoy in Brazil. In South Korea, it

4921-876: The Nintendo eShop on March 3, 2017, initially focusing on Neo Geo games before adding other arcade games, including titles from Nintendo. The Windows version of the service was launched on December 15, 2017, through the Microsoft Store and, like the Xbox One version, only includes Neo Geo games. ACA Neo Geo games were released on iOS (via the App Store ) and Android (via Google Play ) on November 30, 2021. In May 2024, Hamster announced ACA2 Neo Geo for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S . Main features of standard ACA2 Neo Geo games include Time Attack and Network (online play) modes. Users who previously purchased ACA Neo Geo titles on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One receive

5054-446: The PC , Sega 32X , and 3DO . According to Digital Pictures founder Tom Zito, "You know, I sold 50,000 units of Night Trap a week after those hearings." Although experiencing increased sales, Sega decided to recall Night Trap and re-release it with revisions in 1994 due to the congressional hearings. After the close of these hearings, video game manufacturers came together to establish

5187-537: The Retrode allow emulators to directly access the data on game cartridges without needing to copy it into a ROM image first. Outside of official usage, emulation has generally been seen negatively by video game console manufacturers and game developers. The largest concern is nature of copyright infringement related to ROM images of games, typically distributed freely and without hardware restrictions. While this directly impacts potential sales of emulated games and thus

5320-492: The Sega Saturn . In the early 1980s, Sega Enterprises, Inc. – then a subsidiary of Gulf+Western – was one of the top five arcade game manufacturers active in the United States, as company revenues surpassed $ 200 million between July 1981 and June 1982. A downturn in the arcade business starting in 1982 seriously hurt the company, leading Gulf+Western to sell its North American arcade manufacturing organization and

5453-551: The United Kingdom , with former Sega of Europe development director Mike Brogan noting that " Night Trap got Sega an awful lot of publicity ... it was also cited in UK Parliament for being classified as '15' due to its use of real actors." This came at a time when Sega was capitalizing on its image as an edgy company with attitude, and this only reinforced that image. By far the year's most controversial game

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5586-645: The United States District Court for the Northern District of California , on charges of trademark infringement, unfair competition , and copyright infringement. In response, Accolade filed a counterclaim for falsifying the source of its games by displaying the Sega trademark when the game was powered up. Although the district court initially ruled for Sega and issued an injunction preventing Accolade from continuing to reverse engineer

5719-612: The Winter Consumer Electronics Show in January 1991, where Sega showed the new Genesis III and demonstrated it screening and rejecting an Ishido game cartridge. With more games planned for the following year, Accolade successfully identified the TMSS file. It later added this file to the games HardBall! , Star Control , Mike Ditka Power Football , and Turrican . In response to the creation of these unlicensed games, Sega filed suit against Accolade in

5852-453: The 4 Way Play and Team Player. Codemasters also developed the J-Cart system, providing two extra ports on the cartridge itself, although the technology came late in the console's life and is only featured on a few games. Sega planned to release a steering wheel peripheral in 1994, and the Genesis version of Virtua Racing was advertised as "steering wheel compatible", but the peripheral

5985-543: The BIOS image with their emulators. Unauthorized distribution of copyrighted code remains illegal, according to both country-specific copyright and international copyright law under the Berne Convention . Accordingly, video game publishers and developers have taken legal action against websites that illegally redistribute their copyrighted software, successfully forcing sites to remove their titles or taking down

6118-510: The Genesis 3, projecting to sell 1.5 million units of the console by the end of 1998. As of 2012, Tectoy had sold an estimated 3 million Genesis units. The main microprocessor is a 16/32-bit Motorola 68000 CPU clocked at 7.6 MHz . An 8-bit Zilog Z80 processor controls the sound hardware and provides backward compatibility with the Master System. The Genesis has 64 KB of RAM , 64 KB of video RAM and 8 KB of audio RAM. It can display up to 61 colors at once from

6251-561: The Genesis, Accolade appealed the verdict to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit . As a result of the appeal, the Ninth Circuit overturned the district court's verdict and ruled that Accolade's decompilation of the Sega software constituted fair use. The court's written opinion followed on October 20, 1992, and noted that the use of the software was non-exploitative, although commercial. Further,

6384-555: The Hedgehog games. Before the Virtual Console , Nintendo also used this tactic, such as Game Boy Advance re-releases of NES titles in the Classic NES Series . Although the primary purpose of emulation is to make older video-games execute on newer systems, there are several advantages inherent in the extra flexibility of software emulation that were not possible on the original systems. Disk image loading

6517-561: The Hedgehog , Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Disney's Aladdin . Sega Enterprises focused on developing action games , while Sega of America was tasked with developing sports games . A large part of the appeal of the Genesis library was the arcade -based experience of its games, as well as more difficult entries such as Ecco the Dolphin , and sports games such as Joe Montana Football . Compared to its competition, Sega advertised to an older audience by hosting more mature games, including

6650-471: The Hedgehog 3 and Sonic & Knuckles sold a combined 4 million copies worldwide. After the release of the Genesis in 1989, video game publisher Accolade began exploring options to release some of their PC games on the console. At the time, Sega had a licensing deal in place for third-party developers that increased the costs to the developer. According to Accolade co-founder Alan Miller , "One pays them between $ 10 and $ 15 per cartridge on top of

6783-623: The Mark III for release in North America as the Master System. This was followed by a European release the next year. Although the Master System was a success in Europe, and later in Brazil, it failed to ignite significant interest in the Japanese or North American markets, which, by the mid-to-late 1980s, were both dominated by Nintendo. With Sega continuing to have difficulty penetrating the home market, Sega's console R&D team, led by Masami Ishikawa and supervised by Hideki Sato, began work on

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6916-782: The Master System Converter II was released only in Europe for use with the Mega Drive II, which works with other region Genesis consoles and revisions but lacks the ability to use Master System cards. Both the original Power Base Converter and the Master System Converter II do not work with the Nomad or the Genesis 3. Other peripherals were released to add functionality. The Menacer is a wireless infrared light gun used with compatible games. Other third parties created light gun peripherals, such as American Laser Games and Konami . Released for art creation software,

7049-518: The Mega Drive in Japan on October 29, 1988, though the launch was overshadowed by Nintendo's release of Super Mario Bros. 3 a week earlier. Positive coverage from magazines Famitsu and Beep! helped to establish a following. Within two days of release, the console's initial production run sold out. However, Sega only managed to ship 400,000 units in the first year. In order to increase sales, Sega released various peripherals and games, including an online banking system and answering machine called

7182-569: The Mega Drive to all ages, unlike the Famicom, which was aimed primarily at children. According to Sato, the Japanese design for the Mega Drive was based on the appearance of an audio player, with "16-bit" embossed in a golden metallic veneer to create an impression of power. The console was announced in the June 1988 issue of the Japanese gaming magazine Beep! as the Mark V, but Sega management wanted

7315-629: The Mega Drive's launch and marketing in Australia, as it had done before with the Master System. In Brazil, the Mega Drive was released by Tectoy in 1990, only a year after the Brazilian release of the Master System. Tectoy produced games exclusively for the Brazilian market and brought the Sega Meganet online service there in 1995. Samsung handled sales and distribution in Korea , where it

7448-468: The November/December timeframe". Nakayama's decision to focus on the Saturn, based on the systems' relative performance in Japan, has been cited as the major contributing factor in this miscalculation. By contrast, Nintendo concentrated on the 16-bit home console market, as well as its successful handheld , the Game Boy , and took in 42% of the video game market dollar share without launching

7581-545: The PAL version of Final Fantasy X which added more ingame skills, changes to some bosses, and even more bosses, Dark Aeons, that weren't available in the North American NTSC release of the game. Although it is usually possible to modify the consoles themselves to bypass regional lockouts, console modifications can cause problems with screens not being displayed correctly and games running too fast or slow, due to

7714-430: The ROM or BIOS dump to fix incompatibilities with newer platforms or change aspects of the game itself. The emulator subsequently uses the BIOS dump to mimic the hardware while the ROM dump (with any patches) is used to replicate the game software. ROM files and ISO files are created by either specialized tools for game cartridges, or regular optical drives reading the data. As an alternative, specialized adapters such as

7847-584: The SNES port of Mortal Kombat II was released uncensored. Sega released two add-ons to increase the Genesis capabilities: a CD peripheral, the Sega CD (Mega-CD outside North America and Brazil), and a 32-bit peripheral, the Sega 32X . Worldwide, Sega sold 2.24 million Sega CD units and 800,000 32X units. Following the launch of the next-generation 32-bit Sony PlayStation and Sega Saturn , sales of 16-bit hardware and software continued to account for 64% of

7980-573: The SNES to outsell the Genesis from 1995 through 1997. According to a 2004 study of NPD sales data , the Genesis maintained its lead over the Super NES in the American 16-bit console market. However, according to a 2014 Wedbush Securities report based on revised NPD sales data, the SNES outsold the Sega Genesis in the U.S. market by 1.5 million units. To compete with Nintendo, Sega

8113-420: The SNES. A Sony focus group found that teenage boys would not admit to owning an SNES rather than a Genesis. With the Genesis often outselling the SNES at a ratio of 2:1, Nintendo and Sega focused heavily on impression management of the market, even going to the point of deception; Nintendo claimed it had sold more consoles in 1991 than it actually had, and forecasted it would sell 6 million consoles by

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8246-564: The Sega Activator the third-worst video game controller ever made. Both EA and Sega released multitaps to allow more than two players to play at once. Initially, EA's version, the 4 Way Play, and Sega's adapter, the Team Player, only supported each publisher's games. In response to complaints, Sega said a new Team Player, which would work with all Genesis multitap games, would be released. Later games were created to work on both

8379-561: The Sega Mega Anser. Nevertheless, the Mega Drive was unable to overtake the venerable Famicom and remained a distant third in Japan behind Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine throughout the 16-bit era. Sega announced a North American release date for the system on January 9, 1989. At the time, Sega did not possess a North American sales and marketing organization and was distributing its Master System through Tonka . Dissatisfied with Tonka's performance, Sega looked for

8512-650: The Sega Mega Mouse features three buttons and is only compatible with a few games, such as Eye of the Beholder . A foam-covered bat called the BatterUP and the TeeVGolf golf club were released for both the Genesis and SNES. In November 1993, Sega released the Sega Activator, an octagonal device that lies flat on the floor and was designed to translate the player's physical movements into game inputs. It

8645-414: The U.S. are roughly estimated at 8 million and 18–18.5 million as of June 1997 (at which time Sega was no longer manufacturing the system) respectively. In 1998, Sega licensed the Genesis to Majesco Entertainment to rerelease it in North America. Majesco began reselling millions of unsold cartridges at a budget price, together with 150,000 units of the second model of the Genesis. It released

8778-533: The Wii also includes games for platforms that were known only in select regions, such as the Commodore 64 (Europe and North America) and MSX (Japan), as well as Virtual Console Arcade, which allows players to download video arcade games . Virtual Console titles have been downloaded over ten million times. Each game is distributed with a dedicated emulator tweaked to run the game as well as possible. However, it lacks

8911-683: The Xbox original runs on the x86 architecture, CPU emulation is unnecessary, greatly improving performance. The PlayStation 3 uses software emulation to play original PlayStation titles, and the PlayStation Store sells games that run through an emulator within the machine. In the original Japanese and North American 60 GB and 20 GB models, original PS2 hardware is present to run titles; however all PAL models, and later models released in Japan and North America removed some PS2 hardware components, replacing it with software emulation working alongside

9044-468: The ability to disable the framelimiter entirely (useful for benchmarking purposes). Some consoles have a regional lockout, preventing the user from being able to play games outside of the designated game region. This can be considered a nuisance for console gamers as some games feature seemingly inexplicable localization differences between regions, such as differences in the time requirements for driving missions and license tests on Gran Turismo 4 , and

9177-404: The ability to run its own licensing program if Sega refused to meet its demands. Sega relented, and the next day EA's upcoming Genesis games were showcased at CES. EA signed what Hawkins described as "a very unusual and much more enlightened license agreement" with Sega in June 1990: "Among other things, we had the right to make as many titles as we wanted. We could approve our own titles ...

9310-440: The company increased the order by 10,000 units when advanced orders had exceeded expectations, and another 10,000 units was later added following the console's success at the ECES event. The projected number of units to be sold between September and December 1990 had eventually increased to 40,000 units in the United Kingdom alone. Other companies assisted in distributing the console to various countries worldwide. Ozisoft handled

9443-432: The console leader since 1985. The Genesis outsold the SNES for four consecutive Christmas seasons due to its two-year lead, lower price point, and larger game library compared to the SNES at its release. Sega had ten games for every game on SNES, and while the SNES had an exclusive version of Final Fight , one of Sega's internal development teams created Streets of Rage , which had bigger levels, tougher enemies, and

9576-541: The console through its own Sega of America subsidiary, which executed a limited launch on August 14, 1989, in New York City and Los Angeles . The Genesis was released in the rest of North America later that year. The European version of the Mega Drive was released in September 1990, at a price of £ 189.99 , i.e. $ 337 (equivalent to $ 732 in 2023). The release was handled by Virgin Mastertronic , which

9709-636: The console was powered off. The Sega Channel reached 250,000 subscribers at its peak and ran until July 31, 1998, well past the release of the Sega Saturn. In an effort to compete with Sega, third-party developer Catapult Entertainment created the XBAND , a peripheral which allowed Genesis players to engage in online competitive gaming. Using telephone services to share data, XBAND was initially offered in five U.S. cities in November 1994. The following year,

9842-454: The console would run the game, and would briefly display the message: " Produced by or under license from Sega Enterprises, Ltd. " This system had a twofold effect: it added extra protection against unlicensed developers and software piracy and forced the Sega trademark to display when the game was powered up, making a lawsuit for trademark infringement possible if unlicensed software were to be developed. Accolade learned of this development at

9975-519: The console's branding and of games' assets that could be misused, though these are issues less with emulation itself but with how the software is subsequently used. Alternatively, emulation is seen to enhance video game preservation efforts, both in shifting game information from outdated technology into newer, more persistent formats, and providing software or hardware alternates to aged hardware. Concerns about cost, availability, and longevity of game software and console hardware have also been cited as

10108-467: The court found that the trademark infringement, being required by the TMSS for a Genesis game to run on the system, had been inadvertently triggered by a fair use act and was the fault of Sega for having caused false labeling. Ultimately, Sega and Accolade settled the case on April 30, 1993. As a part of this settlement, Accolade became an official licensee of Sega, and later developed and released Barkley Shut Up and Jam! while under license. The terms of

10241-486: The emulator's built-in cheating system, and even allow cheats to be toggled from the menu. The debugging tools featured in many emulators also aid gamers in creating their own such cheats. Similar systems can also be used to enable Widescreen Hacks for certain games, allowing the user to play games which were not originally intended for widescreen, without having to worry about aspect ratio distortion on widescreen monitors. Sega Genesis The Sega Genesis , known as

10374-438: The emulator, a process known as "dumping" the contents of the ROM. A similar concept applies to other proprietary formats, such as for PlayStation CD games. While not required for emulation of the earliest arcade or home console, most emulators also require a dump of the hardware's BIOS, which could vary with distribution region and hardware revisions. In some cases, emulators allow for the application of ROM patches which update

10507-450: The end of 1992, while its actual U.S. install base at the end of 1992 was only just more than 4 million units. Due to these tactics, it was difficult to ascertain a clear leader in market share for several years at a time, with Nintendo's dollar share of the U.S. 16-bit market dipping down from 60% at the end of 1992 to 37% at the end of 1993, Sega claiming 55% of all 16-bit hardware sales during 1994, and Donkey Kong Country helping

10640-487: The enhancements that unofficial emulators provide, and many titles are still unavailable. Until the 4.0.0 firmware update, the Nintendo Switch system software contained an embedded NES emulator, referred to internally as "flog", running the game Golf (with motion controller support using Joy-Con ). The Easter egg was believed to be a tribute to former Nintendo president Satoru Iwata , who died in 2015:

10773-574: The fact that the console itself may not be designed to output to the correct format for the game. These problems can be overcome on emulators, as they are usually designed with their own output modules, which can run both NTSC and PAL games without issue. Many emulators, for example Snes9x , make it far easier to load console-based cheats, without requiring potentially expensive proprietary hardware devices such as those used by GameShark and Action Replay . Freeware tools allow codes given by such programs to be converted into code that can be read directly by

10906-404: The family-friendly GA rating to the more mature rating of MA-13, and the adults-only rating of MA-17. With the rating system in place, Sega released its version of Mortal Kombat , appearing to have removed all the blood and sweat effects and toning down the finishing moves even more than in the SNES version. However, all the arcade's blood and uncensored finishing moves could be enabled by entering

11039-458: The faster drawing speed of the Genesis made it more suitable for sport games than the SNES, and credits EA's success on the Genesis for helping catapult the EA Sports brand. Another third-party blockbuster for the system was the port of Mortal Kombat . Although the arcade game was released on the SNES and Genesis simultaneously, the two ports were not identical. The SNES version looked closer to

11172-546: The first instance of a software emulator running on a console. Additionally, as the Internet gained wider availability, distribution of both emulator software and ROM images became more common, helping to popularize emulators. Legal attention was drawn to emulations with the release of UltraHLE , an emulator for the Nintendo 64 released in 1999 while the Nintendo 64 was still Nintendo's primary console – its next console,

11305-568: The first year, Katz and Sega of America sold only 500,000. At the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (Winter CES) in January 1990, the Sega Genesis demonstrated a strong line-up of games which received a positive reception for approaching arcade-quality graphics and gameplay as well as for providing non-arcade experiences such as Phantasy Star II . In mid-1990, Nakayama hired Tom Kalinske to replace Katz as CEO of Sega of America. Although Kalinske knew little about

11438-472: The front of the console produces stereo sound. On the Model 2, the DIN port, RF output port, and headphone jack are replaced by a 9-pin mini-DIN port on the back for composite video , RGB and stereo sound, and the standard RF switch. Earlier Model 1 consoles have a 9-pin extension port. An edge connector on the bottom right of the console can be connected to a peripheral. The standard controller features

11571-688: The game was only accessible on July 11 (the date of his death), Golf was programmed by Iwata, and the game was activated by performing a motion gesture with a pair of Joy-Con that Iwata had famously used during Nintendo's video presentations. It was suggested that the inclusion of Golf was intended as a digital form of omamori —a traditional form of Japanese amulets intended to provide luck or protection. As part of its Nintendo Switch Online subscription service, Nintendo subsequently released an app featuring an on-demand library of NES and SNES titles updated regularly. The app features similar features to Virtual Console titles, including save states, as well as

11704-491: The group behind the emulator had provided such information on how to obtain the required decryption keys, leading the group to settle with Nintendo and removing the emulator from distribution. Forked projects from Yuzu since appeared, taking the route of informing users what decryption items they would need but otherwise not stating how to acquire these as to stay within Nintendo's stance against emulation and copyright infringement. Due to their popularity, emulators have also been

11837-420: The growth of the ROM hacking and fan-translation . The release of projects such as RPGe's English language translation of Final Fantasy V drew even more users into the emulation scene. Additionally, the development of some emulators has contributed to improved resources for homebrew software development for certain consoles, such as was the case with VisualBoyAdvance , a Game Boy Advance emulator that

11970-425: The hardware's specifications which can be used to start efforts on emulation but there are often layers of information that remain as trade secrets such as encryption details. Operating code stored in the hardware's BIOS may be disassembled to be analyzed in a clean room design , with one person performing the disassembling and another person, separately, documenting the function of the code. Once enough information

12103-411: The licensing rights for its arcade games to Bally Manufacturing . The company retained Sega's North American R&D operation, as well as its Japanese subsidiary, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. With its arcade business in decline, Sega Enterprises, Ltd. president Hayao Nakayama advocated that the company leverage its hardware expertise to move into the home console market in Japan, which was in its infancy at

12236-489: The licensing, including whether or not any special arrangements or discounts were made to Accolade, were not released to the public. The financial terms of the settlement were also not disclosed, although both companies agreed to pay their own legal costs. In 1993, the American media began to focus on the mature content of certain video games. Games such as Night Trap for the Sega CD , an add-on , received unprecedented scrutiny. Issues about Night Trap were brought up in

12369-466: The marketplace and once again turned to Sega's strengths in the arcade industry to adapt the successful Sega System 16 arcade board into architecture for a home console. The decision to use a Motorola 68000 as the system's main CPU was made late in development, while a Zilog Z80 was used as a secondary CPU to handle the sound due to fears that the load to the main CPU would be too great if it handled both

12502-403: The month. The first Genesis version of EA's John Madden Football arrived before the end of 1990, and became what Gordon called a " killer app ". Taking advantage of the licensing agreement, Gordon and EA's vice president of marketing services, Nancy Fong, created a visual identifier for EA's Genesis cartridges: a yellow tab molded into the casing. Sega held a company-wide contest to create

12635-496: The opposite effect, which has ruled that emulators, developed through clean room design, are legal. The Librarian of Congress , under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), has codified these rules as allowed exemptions to bypass technical copyright protections on console hardware. However, emulator developers cannot incorporate code that may have been embedded within the hardware BIOS, nor ship

12768-462: The original Genesis contain a discrete YM2612 and a separate YM7101 VDP; in a later revision, the chips were integrated into a single custom ASIC (FC1004). The back of the Model 1 console provides an RF output port (designed for use with antenna and cable systems) and a specialized 8-pin DIN port, which both provide video and audio output. Both outputs produce monophonic sound; a headphone jack on

12901-496: The past that they already owned a copy of, characterizing it as "a great North Star" for the industry to aim towards in the future. As computers and global computer networks continued to advance and become more popular, emulator developers grew more skilled in their work, the length of time between the commercial release of a console and its successful emulation began to shrink. Fifth generation consoles such as Nintendo 64 , PlayStation and sixth generation handhelds, such as

13034-490: The plan, but all four points were approved by Nakayama, who told Kalinske, "I hired you to make the decisions for Europe and the Americas, so go ahead and do it." Critics praised Sonic as one of the greatest games yet made, and Genesis sales increased as customers who had been waiting for the release of the international version of Nintendo's Super Famicom, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), decided to purchase

13167-487: The popularity of the Genesis in North America, and the bundle is credited with helping Sega gain 65% of the market share against Nintendo. Similarly, in Europe, Sega captured a 65% share of the European console market, where the Mega Drive maintained its lead over the SNES through 1994. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 set records for the fastest-selling game, selling 3.2 million copies worldwide within two weeks, and Sonic

13300-644: The publishers and developers, the nature of the value chain of the industry can lead to potential financial harm to console makers. Further, emulation challenges the industry's use of the razorblade model for console games, where consoles are sold near cost and revenue instead obtained from licenses on game sales. With console emulation being developed even while consoles are still on the market, console manufacturers are forced to continue to innovate, bring more games for their systems to market, and move quickly onto new technology to continue their business model. There are further concerns related to intellectual property of

13433-621: The purchasing and playing of games for old systems on this modern hardware. Though not all games are available, the Virtual Console has a large collection of games spanning a wide variety of consoles. The Virtual Console's library of past games currently consists of titles originating from the Nintendo Entertainment System , Super NES , Game Boy , Game Boy Color , Nintendo 64 , Game Boy Advance , Nintendo DS , and Wii, as well as Sega 's Master System and Genesis/Mega Drive , NEC 's TurboGrafx-16 , and SNK 's Neo Geo . The service for

13566-522: The rating system and put ratings on it. In response, Sega of America vice president Bill White showed a videotape of violent video games on the SNES and stressed the importance of rating video games. At the end of the hearing, Lieberman called for another hearing in February 1994 to check on progress toward a rating system for video game violence. As a result of the congressional hearings, Night Trap started to generate more sales and released ports to

13699-541: The rating system that Lieberman had called for. Initially, Sega proposed the universal adoption of its system, but after objections by Nintendo and others, Sega took a role in forming a new one. This became the Entertainment Software Rating Board , an independent organization that received praise from Lieberman. With this new rating system in place for the 1994 holiday season, Nintendo decided its censorship policies were no longer needed, and

13832-418: The real hardware manufacturing costs, so it about doubles the cost of goods to the independent publisher." To get around licensing, Accolade chose to seek an alternative way to bring their games to the Genesis. It did so by purchasing one in order to decompile the executable code of three Genesis games. Such information was used to program their new Genesis cartridges in a way that would allow them to disable

13965-423: The royalty rates were a lot more reasonable. We also had more direct control over manufacturing." After the deal was in place, EA chief creative officer Bing Gordon learned that "we hadn't figured out all the workarounds" and "Sega still had the ability to lock us out ... It just would have been a public relations fiasco." EA released its first Genesis games, Populous and Budokan: The Martial Spirit , within

14098-436: The security lockouts on the Genesis that prevented unlicensed games from being played. This strategy was used successfully to bring Ishido: The Way of Stones to the Genesis in 1990. To do so, Accolade had copied Sega's copyrighted game code multiple times in order to reverse engineer the software of Sega's licensed Genesis games. As a result of piracy in some countries and unlicensed development issues, Sega incorporated

14231-483: The service was extended to the SNES, and Catapult teamed up with Blockbuster Video to market the service, but as interest in the service waned, it was discontinued in April 1997. The Genesis library was initially modest, but eventually grew to contain games to appeal to all types of players. The initial pack-in game was Altered Beast , which was replaced with Sonic the Hedgehog in 1991. Top sellers included Sonic

14364-408: The source code. Since then, Nintendo has generally taken the lead in actions against emulation projects or distributions of emulated games from their consoles compared to other console or arcade manufacturers. This rise in popularity opened the door to foreign video games, and exposed North American gamers to Nintendo's censorship policies. This rapid growth in the development of emulators in turn fed

14497-533: The store. Emulators can be designed in three ways: purely operating in software which is the most common form such as MAME using ROM images; purely operating in hardware such as the ColecoVision 's adapter to accept Atari VCS cartridges. An emulator is created typically through reverse engineering of the hardware information as to avoid any possible conflicts with non-public intellectual property. Some information may be made public for developers on

14630-550: The system in the United States and smaller numbers were sold by Samsung in South Korea. By the mid-2010s, licensed third-party Genesis rereleases were still being sold by AtGames in North America and Europe. Many games have been re-released in compilations or on online services such as the Nintendo Virtual Console , Xbox Live Arcade , PlayStation Network , and Steam . The Genesis was succeeded in 1994 by

14763-584: The time. Nakayama received permission to proceed with this project, leading to the release of Sega's first home video game system, the SG-1000 , in July 1983. While it had sold 160,000 units in Japan, far exceeding Sega's expectations, sales at stores were dominated by Nintendo 's Famicom which had been released the same day. Sega estimated that the Famicom outsold the SG-1000 by a 10-to-1 margin. The SG-1000

14896-450: The uncensored version of Mortal Kombat . The arcade hit Street Fighter II by Capcom was initially released on the SNES. As the Genesis continued to grow in popularity, Capcom released a Genesis version, Street Fighter II: Champion Edition , which sold more than a million copies. One of the biggest third-party companies to support the Genesis early on was Electronic Arts. Trip Hawkins , founder and then president of EA, believed

15029-443: The user to save a game at any point for debugging or re-try) and decreased boot and loading times. Some emulators feature an option to "quickly" boot a game, bypassing the console manufacturer's original splash screens. Furthermore, emulation software may offer online multiplayer functionality and the ability to speed up and slow down the emulation speed. This allows the user to fast-forward through unwanted cutscenes for example, or

15162-651: The video game console market generated between $ 200,000,000 (equivalent to $ 400,000,000 in 2023) and $ 250,000,000 (equivalent to $ 500,000,000 in 2023) in Russia, with Sega accounting for half of all console sales in the country. However, only about 15% of the sales were official Sega units distributed by Bitman, while the rest were unofficial counterfeit clones. For the North American market, former Atari Corporation Entertainment Electronics Division president and new Sega of America CEO Michael Katz instituted

15295-647: The video game industry, and the Genesis and several of its games attracted legal scrutiny on matters involving reverse engineering and video game violence . Controversy surrounding violent games such as Night Trap and Mortal Kombat led Sega to create the Videogame Rating Council , a predecessor to the Entertainment Software Rating Board . 30.75 million first-party Genesis units were sold worldwide. In addition, Tectoy sold an estimated 3 million licensed variants in Brazil, Majesco projected it would sell 1.5 million licensed variants of

15428-427: The video game market in 1995. Sega underestimated the continued popularity of the Genesis and did not have the inventory to meet demand. Sega captured 43% of the dollar share of the U.S. video game market and claimed to have sold more than two million Genesis units in 1995, while Genesis software such as Vectorman remained successful, but Kalinske estimated that "we could have sold another 300,000 Genesis systems in

15561-443: The video game market, he surrounded himself with industry-savvy advisors. A believer in the razor and blades model , he developed a four-point plan: cut the price of the console, create an American team to develop games targeted at the American market, expand the aggressive advertising campaigns, and replace the bundled game Altered Beast with a new game, Sonic the Hedgehog . The Japanese board of directors initially disapproved of

15694-589: The video hardware to achieve partial hardware/software emulation. In later releases, backwards compatibility with PS2 titles was completely removed along with the PS2 graphics chip, and eventually Sony released PS2 titles with software emulation on the PlayStation Store . Commercial developers have also used emulation as a means to repackage and reissue older games on newer consoles in retail releases. For example, Sega has created several collections of Sonic

15827-501: The visuals and the audio. The 68000 chip was expensive and would have driven the retail price of the console up greatly, but Sega was able to negotiate with a distributor for a tenth of its price on an up-front volume order with the promise of more orders pending the console's future success. The appearance of the Mega Drive was designed by a team led by Mitsushige Shiraiwa that drew inspiration from audiophile equipment and automobiles. Shiraiwa said this more mature look helped to target

15960-407: The way those consoles do. This, however, has led to the advantage of it being far easier to modify the actual game's files contained within the game ROMs. Amateur programmers and gaming enthusiasts have produced translations of foreign games, rewritten dialogue within a game, applied fixes to bugs that were present in the original game, as well as updating old sports games with modern rosters. It

16093-422: The websites entirely. Under United States law, obtaining a dumped copy of the original machine's BIOS is legal under the ruling Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. , 964 F.2d 965 (9th Cir. 1992) as fair use as long as the user obtained a legally purchased copy of the machine. To mitigate this however, several emulators for platforms such as Game Boy Advance are capable of running without

16226-467: Was Midway 's Mortal Kombat , ported to the Genesis and SNES by Acclaim Entertainment . In response to public outcry over the game's graphic violence, Nintendo decided to replace the blood in the game with "sweat" and the arcade's gruesome "fatalities" with less violent finishing moves. Sega took a different approach, instituting America's first video game ratings system, the Videogame Rating Council (VRC), for all its current systems. Ratings ranged from

16359-443: Was cancelled. In its first foray into online gaming , Sega created Sega Meganet , which debuted in Japan on November 3, 1990. Operating through a cartridge and a peripheral called the "Mega Modem ", this allowed Mega Drive players to play a total of seventeen games online. A North American version, dubbed "Tele-Genesis", was announced at the Winter Consumer Electronics Show (Winter CES) in January 1990 but never released, though

16492-592: Was distributed by Samsung Electronics as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy . Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU , a Zilog Z80 as a sound controller, and a video system supporting hardware sprites , tiles , and scrolling. It plays

16625-547: Was first released for the PlayStation 4 on May 15, 2014, via the PlayStation Network . It supports various system-specific features, allowing players to share screenshots and videos and compete with others for online rankings. The Xbox One version of the service launched on February 23, 2017, via the Xbox Games Store and exclusively includes Neo Geo games. The Nintendo Switch version was also launched on

16758-401: Was first shown at the January 1993 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), where it was demonstrated with Streets of Rage 2 . Several high-profile games, including Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition , were adapted to support the peripheral. The device was a commercial failure, due mainly to its inaccuracy and its high price point. IGN editor Craig Harris ranked

16891-428: Was its library of arcade game ports , the popularity of Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog series, several popular sports franchises, and aggressive youth marketing that positioned it as the cool console for adolescents. The 1991 North American release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System triggered a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe known as the " console war ". This drew attention to

17024-566: Was later purchased by Sega in 1991 and became Sega of Europe. Games like Space Harrier II , Ghouls 'n Ghosts , Golden Axe , Super Thunder Blade , and The Revenge of Shinobi were available in stores at launch. The console was also bundled with Altered Beast . The Mega Drive and its first batch of games were shown at the 1990 European Computer Entertainment Show (ECES) in Earl's Court . Between July and August 1990, Virgin initially placed their order for 20,000 Mega Drive units. However,

17157-411: Was more open to new types of games, but still tightly controlled the approval process for third-party games and charged high prices for cartridge manufacturing. The American publisher Electronic Arts (EA) sought a better deal, but met resistance from Sega. They decided to reverse-engineer the Genesis, using a clean-room method similar to the method Phoenix Technologies had used to reverse-engineer

17290-523: Was named Super Gam*Boy and retained the Mega Drive logo alongside the Samsung name. It was later renamed Super Aladdin Boy. In India, Sega entered a distribution deal with Shaw Wallace in April 1994 in order to circumvent an 80% import tariff, with each unit selling for INR₹ 18,000. In Russia, Sega officially licensed the console to local distributor Forrus in 1994, replaced in 1996 by Bitman. That year,

17423-535: Was noted by author Casey O'Donnell as having contributed to the development of tools for the console that were seen as superior to even those provided by Nintendo, so much so that even some licensed game developers used the tools to develop games for the console. On April 17, 2024, Apple began allowing emulators on the App Store, lifting a ban that had lasted nearly 16 years. Following this decision, numerous emulators such as Delta, Sutāto, and RetroArch appeared on

17556-516: Was quick to point out at the hearings that Night Trap had no such rating, saying to Senator Joe Lieberman : Furthermore, I can't let you sit here and buy this nonsense that this Sega Night Trap game was somehow only meant for adults. The fact of the matter is this is a copy of the packaging. There was no rating on this game at all when the game was introduced. Small children bought this at Toys "R" Us , and he knows that as well as I do. When they started getting heat about this game, then they adopted

17689-539: Was replaced by the Sega Mark III within two years. In the meantime, Gulf+Western began to divest itself of its non-core businesses after the death of company founder Charles Bluhdorn , so Nakayama and former Sega CEO David Rosen arranged a management buyout of the Japanese subsidiary in 1984 with financial backing from CSK Corporation , a prominent Japanese software company. Nakayama was then installed as CEO of Sega Enterprises, Ltd. In 1986, Sega redesigned

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