Its hard to believe that its been over three decades since the Sega CD was released in Japan. Sega CD came out in late ’91 and was one of Sega’s many ideas to capitalize on the growing success of their Genesis console from 1988. The Sega CD add-on was designed to provide players with a more advanced gaming experience than the Super Nintendo, which was the Genesis’s main competitor during the early 1990s. Similar to the Neo Geo AES, which was released in 1990, the Sega CD pushed 2D gaming to another level, providing players with more immersive gameplay and arcade-like graphics. The Sega CD was not released in America until 1992 and was originally priced around $300. One of the reasons why Sega CD is considered to be legendary is because it utilized CD-ROM for gaming media a few years before PlayStation did. Sega-CD was probably the first piece of gaming hardware that provided players with CD quality audio along with full motion videos. The CD-ROM’s used for Sega CD also featured a much higher storage capacity than anything on an actual video game cartridge. Sega-CD felt like a spiritual predecessor to Sony’s original PlayStation console which came out in 1994. The main difference is that Sega-CD lacked high profile titles ended up achieving the massive commercial success that PlayStation did from the mid to late 90’s. As impressive as the Sega-CD looked back in the early 90’s there were only a handful of popular games old-school gamers remember from that time period. When people think about Sega-CD titles like Sonic CD, Popful Mail, Final Fight CD along with Lunar: Eternal Blue comes to mind.

While Sonic CD is highly underrated it still sold less than the Sonic the Hedgehog 1-3. Final Fight was more popular on Nintendo while Popful Mail and Lunar: Eternal Blue only appealed to a niche audience of gamers. There are many who believed Sega CD should of been its own separate console opposed to just an add-on. The concept of the Sega-CD felt more experimental than anything especially since they started using CD-ROM’s for the Sega Saturn in 1994. Sega being one of the first major video game companies to seriously utilize CD-ROMs as a gaming medium is legendary in itself. The Sega CD was experimental, but it also represented Sega taking a major step toward the optical-media future that would become standard with the Saturn and later consoles. In fact, PlayStation and Xbox have been using CD-ROM’s for gaming media for over the past two decades. The Sega-CD is one of those concepts that does not get the type of recognition that it deserves. If anything Sega-CD is another example as to why the Sega Corporation was a pioneer in gaming in the gaming world.