TECH TITANS SEGA

To be this good at ranking its finest consoles takes ages

Super bang-on

A six-button controller replaced the standard one after a few years, proving perfect for fighting games like Mortal Kombat.

Altered feast

The first pack-in game with the Mega Drive was arcade scrapper Altered Beast, but that soon changed to Sonic the Hedgehog.

01 MEGA DRIVE

The Mega Drive, also known as the Genesis in North America, wasn't the first Sega console, but it was the one that cemented the firm's place as a major player. And, launching just before Nintendo's SNES, it meant console wars were inevitable.

While Nintendo had the might of Super Mario in its roster, here was Sonic the Hedgehog - the fastest little mammal around. Some of its best games featured the perky blue hedgehog and friends, but there was also the launch lineup of Altered Beast, Columns, Golden Axe and more.

This console was widely considered the cooler one for teenagers, with a string of high-quality arcade game ports like Strider, Shadow Dancer and Super Hang-On bringing arcade thrills into your home.

In later years, the Mega Drive evolved with add-on consoles - the Mega CD and the Sega 32X - adding CD-based and 32-bit games (see panel). There were also innovative cartridges with some games - for example, Micro Machines: Turbo Tournament '96 included built-in controller ports so four players could play the same game.

Its game catalogue may not be remembered as fondly as that of the SNES, but the Mega Drive offered truly distinctive titles like Ecco the Dolphin and Streets of Rage, bringing an imaginative approach when it was most needed. RELEASED 1988 (1990 in Europe)