Nice to see the Sega CD getting some (belated) birthday love.

Hey, guess what? Octo­ber 15th was Sega CD’s 20th birth­day! (Don’t worry, I for­got too. I didn’t even get a card.) Yes, twenty years ago, Sega gave us its CD add-on for Gen­e­sis with its 512 kilo­bytes of RAM, 320 x 224 dis­play res­o­lu­tion, 64 max dis­playable col­ors and library of weird, choppy full-motion video games like Night Trap. Mmm…there’s noth­ing like grainy, pix­e­lated tits and ass. 

It’s no secret around here that I’m a huge Sega CD fan , so I was delighted to see 1Up pub­lish this great ret­ro­spec­tive piece on Sega CD this week which cel­e­brates the quirky system’s con­tri­bu­tions to the 16-bit era of gam­ing. I have to agree with author Jeremy Parish, who writes:

“Gamers love to look back­ward and cel­e­brate anniver­saries, but yes­ter­day came and went with very lit­tle to-do about the fact that it marked 20 years since the U.S. launch of the Sega CD. I sup­pose that’s because, in the eyes of many gamers, the Sega CD was some­thing of a flop. A dis­as­ter. A waste of time and money.  I dis­agree. The Sega CD was one of the best and most suc­cess­ful con­sole add-ons ever.”

He goes on to dis­cuss how the Sega CD was a great add-on for the Gen­e­sis, the evo­lu­tion of the Sega CD’s designs–including that elu­sive CD-X model which I always lusted after but never got–and explain, in gen­eral, why it’s a sys­tem that’s deserv­ing of respect. There’s also a hand-picked, staff-contributed list of Sega CD’s best games.

My own per­sonal list of best games for Sega CD would look some­thing like this:

• Lunar
• Lunar 2: Eter­nal Blue
• Pop­ful Mail
• Vay
• Dark Wizard
• Snatcher
• Shin­ing Force CD
• Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch: Make My Video!
• Juras­sic Park
• Willy Beamish
• Rise of the Dragon
• Keio Fly­ing Squadron
• Space Ace
• Dragon’s Lair
• …ahh, fuck it. There’s too many great Sega CD games to list them all.

Happy Birth­day, Sega CD!

I was going to cel­e­brate this momen­tous occa­sion by post­ing a pic­ture of a Sega CD-themed cake, but a Google Image search turned up noth­ing. Really inter­net? None of you have ever made a Sega CD-themed cake before? If the inter­net has taught me any­thing, it’s that peo­ple rou­tinely bake cakes and cup­cakes dec­o­rated with all kinds of obscure, nerd-centric themes. I’m feel­ing pretty let down here, guys. Not to be dis­cour­aged, I fell back on my Plan B  and used this  Birth­day Cake Gen­er­a­tor , which I’ve been mean­ing to find an excuse to use anyway.

More stuff and things!