As this contest drew increasing attention to the video game industry among the general public, the Genesis and several of its highest-profile games attracted significant legal scrutiny on matters involving reverse engineering and video game violence. The North American release in 1991 of the Super Famicom, rebranded as the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, resulted in a fierce battle for market share in the United States and Europe that has often been termed as a 'console war' by journalists and historians. Contributing to its success were 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 the system as the cool console for adolescents. In Japan, the Mega Drive fared poorly against its two main competitors, Nintendo's Super Famicom and NEC's PC Engine (aka TurboGrafx-⁠16), but it achieved considerable success in North America, Brazil, and Europe. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel.

It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It plays a library of more than 900 games created by Sega and a wide array of third-party publishers delivered on ROM-based cartridges. The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Driveĭesigned 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.

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