Genesis Launch – 1989

The year was 1989….I was 14….it was still the 80’s, barely. Popular music was in a very different state….the last gasp for rock as the dominant genre before hip hop/R&B took over in the early 90’s. The Bash Brothers (McGwire/Canseco) were dominating over in Oakland and the NES was THE dominant console 3 years and running. Atari 7800? 3 years too late. Sega Master System? Alex Kidd was not Mario, sorry. But Sega wasn’t giving up….they had more powerful hardware to unleash on the American Nintendo kids in the late summer of 1989 and some very good launch titles to back it up. The marketing was brilliant, Genesis does what Ninten-don’t. Enough said.

I love collecting early launch titles and the original incarnations of any home console. I have multiple models of consoles that lasted long enough to remodel themselves. If I don’t own the original launch model of a console or handheld system, then I want that too. With the Genesis, it was easy to collect the original model 1 as that was the model in circulation from 1989-1993. Prime years in the lifespan of this popular console. That being said, the Genesis was still going strong during the model 2 years (1993-1998) since the Sega Saturn launch in 1995 didn’t immediately render the Genesis obsolete.

From what I can tell, there were about 8-9 different titles available when the Genesis launched in Aug/Sept 1989 (depending on where you lived). Of these, I own only 3. I know I could complete the set of launch titles fairly easily as many of these games are common but I haven’t put the effort in yet.

Model 1 Genesis owned: 2

I like the look of the model 1 Genesis, it’s my favorite of the variations released even though I typically use the model 2 for playing.

Launch titles owned: 3

• Altered Beast – B+ “Rise from your grave.” I just love the old school arcade feel of this game and the digitized voices. Very cheesy and very late 80’s.
• Ghouls n’ Ghosts – B+   High level of difficulty only reason this isn’t an A title in my book.
• Tommy Lasorda Baseball – B- Hard to play retro sports titles anymore unless they were in constant rotation as a kid (nostalgia factor). This game does not have nostalgia going for it, so I almost never play it. Doesn’t make it a bad game for the era though.