I read a GamePro and it all became clear...

[17daysolderthannes]

No, they'll rot in a landfill and millions of trees and their families will have been MURDERED!

exactly, they'll rot and decompose. Do you have any idea how long it would take for a plastic genesis case to decompose? I mean, water bottles allegedly take 1,000 years, so a Genesis case definitely would take more than a couple millennia.

[17daysolderthannes]

Try to find an answer on how FMV was "the next level".

is that a quote from somewhere? I don't think Sega personally thought FMV was solely the next generation of gaming, after all, many of those same games were featured on the PC and more multimedia-like platforms like the CD-i. I think more than anything it was just an experimental phase. Sure, people raised on the NES were like "wtf" and rejected them, but I bet a few people were brought into the scene because of them. Look at the Wii, we all know and hate the games that come out for it because of their lameness, but people that never picked up a video game controller before pile into stores trying to buy those shitty shallow mini games. Plus, Laserdisc arcades were somewhat popular at the time and CD systems allowed for people to play those games at home, and if you've played the NES version of Dragon's Lair, thats a damn good thing. Personally, while I don't like the "watch a movie and push left when we tell you" FMV games, Novastorm and Mega Race are very cool concepts and work very well in practice (though are marred by the limited color palette when compared to the PC versions). Many of GamePro's reviews for pure FMV "push left now" games were usually like graphics: 5 sound: 5 control: 1.5 fun factor: 2.0. On the other hand, I think Novastorm had solid 4's across the board (maybe a 4.5 or a 3.5 in there somewhere). I wish more Sega CD/32X games came out rather than the short list of FMV games (what was it, 4?).

[Joe Redifer]

exactly, they'll rot and decompose.

But they won't be recycled, causing the need to murder more trees and their babies. Here is my thoughtful article about Earth Day and how environmentalists are great people.

Do you have any idea how long it would take for a plastic genesis case to decompose?

#1 - What the hell would a Genesis case be doing in a landfill? That is just ridiculous.

#2 - That's one thing that makes the plastic cases better, they are tougher and last longer.

Food for thought - Nuclear power kicks ass. Totally serious, we need it. Badly.

[Iron Lizard]

Hmm. If I just dig through some land fills I can find all of those thrown away Genesis boxes!

[GelmiR]

I don't remember Sega games in cardboard boxes over here (Netherlands), I don't think they had those in Europe? The only one I know of is Sonic & Knuckles. Even the Lost World from 1997 came in a plastic box.

[playgen]

Sega didn't introduce card boxes as a replacement in Europe or Japan. Other than Sonic and Knuckles as you say, theres the 32x games, and the early unlicensed Accolade games like Winter Challenge and Turrican, everything else had proper plastic cases in Europe, like all games should.
I expect Sega gave U.S people card cases as a punishment for not buying the Master System, unlike the sensible Europeans who shunned the Nes!

[The Sports Guy]

that would have made a great article!

[Joe Redifer]

I expect Sega gave U.S people card cases as a punishment for not buying the Master System, unlike the sensible Europeans who shunned the Nes!

Hmmmm...

[Kollision]

Thanks to a coleague I just found out that 32X games came in very nice plastic cases also in Brazil. Damn, I should've known that before I got the games I wanted....

EDIT: Man, this Novastorm game seems to be awesome! I didn't even know it existed!

[17daysolderthannes]

Thanks to a coleague I just found out that 32X games came in very nice plastic cases also in Brazil. Damn, I should've known that before I got the games I wanted....

EDIT: Man, this Novastorm game seems to be awesome! I didn't even know it existed!

behold, the reason Sega consoles never got the respect they deserved: BECAUSE NO ONE EVER HEARD OF ALL THE AWESOME GAMES! I know as a kid I didn't know of any good Sega games except for Streets of Rage 2 and Sonic. All my friends had Super NESs so I did too (because everyone convinced me that dA grAfIx WeRe TeH BeTTuRz) so the only good games I ever heard about were for that. In fact, I didn't know about most of the best Sega games until I started collecting and came across games in one place or another and said "hmmm, whats that?" and watched a video or played it on an emulator. Novastorm just happened to be one of the few Sega CD games that were in stock at Play N Trade when I bought my Sega CD last week, so I tried it out and liked it, so I picked it up.

[Psy]

#3 The Sega CD was a rip off and a flop and all it ever had was FMV games.

While most of the people here know there is certainly more than just FMV games, even Sega collectors sometimes identify the Sega CD as a flop, but it wasn't. For starters, CD systems were EXPENSIVE back then, and $300 for the Sega CD was a bargain in 1992. Think about it, the 3DO and the CD-i were the only CD systems available at the time (besides the Turbografx-16 CD add on which was pretty much unavailable and unheard of to most of the US because of shitty marketing on NEC's part) and if you already had a Genesis, the $300 price tag wasn't that bad (and it came down in price with time). Also, remember, many people at that time didn't have computers at home and even the cheapest of computers were still several thousand dollars,

Hey the Amiga 1200 launched in 1992 for $599 US of course the CD drive for the Amiga back then was very costly but you wouldn't be spending several thousand dollars unless you were buying a high end computer.

[j_factor]

I think he meant to say, the cheapest of computers with CD-ROM drives were still several thousand dollars. The absolute cheapest of computers would have been the remaining Commodore 64's, which I believe were around $50 at that point. I would say that "several thousand" is a bit of an exaggeration and you could probably get a CD-ROM computer for about $1500 at the time, easily.

On another note, how come you can't buy ridiculously outdated computers for $50 anymore? Imagine if fifty bucks could get you a Windows 98 machine or something.

[Iron Lizard]

I never find old computers intact. It seems that the are always gutted before they get to the thrift stores.

[Dirt Ball Gamer]

Good post with the game pro stuff. I agree with Joe sega probably did switch to cardboard because it was cheaper. They probably said well nintendo does it so F it.

[Melf]

If Sega switched to cardboard because it was cheaper, then why did it stick to plastic cases for its next two consoles? If it was because they had a large stock/were already making Sega CD cases, then it nullifies the whole "it was cheaper" argument.

I suspect the real reason was that Sega was full of itself at the time and making all kinds of wrong decisions, and it basically just didn't give a shit by that point.