Sega CD

The Sega CD's development began in 1989, when CD-ROM technology was rapidly emerging in the PC world. Sega's hardware engineers in Japan, led by Hideki Sato, saw CD-ROM as the natural evolution for console gaming. The primary motivations were threefold: massively increased storage capacity, the ability to use CD-quality audio, and the potential for full-motion video that could bridge the gap between games and cinema.

The decision to include a second Motorola 68000 processor at 12.5 MHz ??faster than the Genesis's own 68000 at 7.67 MHz ??was significant. This meant the Sega CD wasn't merely a storage upgrade but a genuine processing enhancement. The custom ASIC chip handled bitmap scaling, rotation, and color manipulation that the Genesis VDP could not perform natively, enabling pseudo-3D effects and Mode 7-like capabilities that had previously been exclusive to the SNES.

Developing the Sega CD was complicated by the relationship between Sega of Japan and Sega of America. Sega of Japan drove the hardware development, while Sega of America was responsible for marketing and much of the software publishing in the West. Tom Kalinske, then CEO of Sega of America, was initially enthusiastic about the CD-ROM add-on but grew concerned about its high retail price. He advocated for a lower price point to ensure mass adoption, but Sega of Japan maintained the $299 price to recoup development costs.

The FMV game explosion was partly driven by the technology's novelty and partly by economic incentives. Producing FMV content was cheaper per megabyte than creating traditional sprite-based game content, and the CD format had ample storage for video data. Companies like Digital Pictures (founded by former Hasbro executive Tom Zito) built their entire business model around FMV games. However, the heavy MPEG compression required for video playback on the Sega CD's limited hardware resulted in grainy, small-window video that disappointed consumers expecting television-quality footage.

One unexpected legacy of the Sega CD was its role in popularizing voice acting and cinematic storytelling in console games. Working Designs' English localizations of the Lunar series set a new standard for RPG production values, with hours of dubbed dialogue and animated cutscenes. These productions influenced the industry's approach to game localization and voice acting for years to come. The Sega CD also introduced internal backup memory for game saves, eliminating the need for battery-backed cartridge RAM that was prone to failure.