Nostalgia has been a major facet of video game culture for a long time now, but it seem🔯s to have reached a fever pitch in recent years. From prices of retro games skyrocketing to Nintendo struggling to keep up with the insanely high demand for its "Classic" line of console revivals,  it's obvious that both the hardcore gaming crowd and mainstream casual gamers have really developed a taste for the simpler days of 8- and 16-bit video gaming goodness-- and are willing to shell out big bucks to satisfy that craving.

Sega in particular seems to be seeing renewed excitement for its iconic franchises lately. In response to the success of the NES and SNES Classics, Sega recently announced that it would be developing its own classic version of its beloved 16-bit console, the Genesis (or Mega Drive pretty much everywhere besides North America). The company also recently released another collection of its games for PS4, XB1, and PC called Sega Genesis Classics, and has committed to bringing many of its legacy titles to the Nintendo Switch in the coming mo☂nths.

Remarkably, we are just five months shy of the Genesis celebrating the 30th anniversary of its initial Japanese debut. For as old and depressed as it makes some of us feel when a console we grew up playing hits tꦿhe three-decade mark, it's al🌺so a cause for celebration. In this case, we're honoring the iconic Sega Genesis with a list of some its lesser-known facts.

20 Sonic The Hed♏gehog Wasn't The First Pack-in Game ❀

When you think of the Genesis, one of the first-- if not the first-- game you probably think about is Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic became t✨o the G𝓡enesis what Mario was to the NES and SNES, a character that did double-duty as both a corporate mascot and also the star of the console's marquee game series.

Because Sonic and the Genesis became so intertwined with each other-- and because millions and millions of Genesis buyers had a free Sonic game bundled in with t⛄heir new system-- it's easy to forget that Sega's speedy blue hedgehog actually wasn't w🐷ith the system from the beginning, nor was his debut adventure the first game that ever came packed in with the Genesis.

With Sonic the Hedgehog not debuting until 1991, that left the Genesis Sonic-less for the first three years of its existence (or two years in North America). So what did early Genesis adopters have as their free pack-in game before Sonic was born? The Genesis port of Sega's popular Altered Beast arcade game actually served as the system's original freebie game. Among the other games available for the Genesis' Sonic-free launch were The Revenge of Shinobi, Space Harrier II, Golden Axe, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, and Super Thunder Blade.

19 ✅ "Blasꦦt Processing" Wasn't Just A PR Buzzword

No matter where you fell in the great Mario vs Sonic debate of the 16-bit era, one thing was impossible to argue: Sonic was much, much faster. Compared to the blazing speed of Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario World almost seemed to run in slow-motion, a point that Sega's a💟ggressive marketing at the time frequently pointed out. Said campaign also explained that there was a reason that Sonic moved faster than Mario-- the Genesis🌱 was capable of something called "blast processing," which the SNES supposedly lacked.

Over the years, there has been some confusion over the validity of blast processing. When va✅rious people behind the Sega marketing of that era later admitted that the term was basically made up to sell more Genesis systems, the knee-jerk reaction by many was to dismiss the implicatio𝕴ns of the term altogether. In reality, there really is some truth behind both the phrase itself and the assertion that the Genesis was faster than the SNES.

It's all too complex and techy to get into here, but to put it in layman's terms, the Genesis essentially did have a faster CPU than the SNES which gave it some advantages over Nintendo's 16-bit system. As proof of this, look no further than the EA sports games of the era, which ran noticeably faster and smoother on the Genesis than on the SNES. The SNES did have better sound, more colors, and other technological advantages over the Genesis-- but the Gen൩esis truly was the "faster" console.

18 Nintendo's Ego Was A Blessing For Sꦡega

Late Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi played as big a part as just about anyone-- with the possible exception of Donkey Kong, Mario, and Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto-- at making the company into the multi-billion⛄-dollar powerhouse that it is today. Yamauchi, who was a third-generation owner of the longtime family-owned company, had transformed it from a moderately successful playing card and mechanical toy maker into one of the biggest and most influ꧋ence media companies of all time.

But Yamauchi was also known for being a somewhat ruthle🔴ss businessman who wasn't above old-school business practices. After the monstrous success of the NES, Yamauchi had felt emboldened to force third-party game companies into restrictive, one-sided deals that disproportionately benefited Nintendo. For a time, companies didn't really have a choice but to comply as the NES was the only game in town, so to speak-- but once the Genesis launched and began to gain a foothold in the market, there was suddenly a second viable console in the market with which to produce blockbuster games for.

Sega was able to woo many major game publisher over to the still-fledgling Genesis simply because it was willing to offer better, fairer deals than Nintendo was.

If Nintendo had treated its partners better, many of thos♏e companies may have never bothered taking a chance on the Genesis in the first place. In effect, Nintendo's hubris basically created what became its first legitimate competitor.

17 New Geneꩲsis Games Are Still Being Made ༒

There once was a time when a system would stop receiving new games once its plugged was officially pulled by its ౠmanufacturer. All of that changed with the introduction of the homebrew game scene, where creative programmers would design and release new games for "obsolete" consoles. Homebrew games were largely for late-70s to early-80s consoles like the Atari 2600 when the scene was first born, but it has ended up progressing well beyond just people putting together simple little golden era-style games-- consoles as recent as the Dreamcast continue to get a fairly steady stream of new games 15+ years after they have been put out to pasture.

In recent years, some of the people who would've made homebrew games in the past have instead taken to making retro-styled games for newer systems. The result is games like Shovel Knight, made very much to look and sound like an NES game. Even major publishers have taken up the trend, with franchises like Mega Man and Double Dragon getting official modern sequels designed to look like the𒉰y 🐭were created in 1988.

But some people still like their old-school game making to be more...well, old-school. As such, there are games like Tanglewood (pictured above☂) that have been made using actual Genesis development softꦦware and being released for the system, even as we are now past 20 years since it was officially discontinued by Sega.

16 It Had On෴line Features

These days, taking video games online has become as ubiquitous as analog sticks and X buttons. In fact, in many cases, video games require an internet connection in 🍒order to play them at all. It's a far cry from the days when games could still specifically set themselves a♌part for having the "novel" feature of online play, which doesn't seem all that long ago.

On a mass mainstr♛eam level, online gaming became a thing around the turn of the millennium, especially on consoles. As they often are, Sega was a major trailblazer in this regard, taking the big step of having the Dreamcast be the first console to ever ship with a built-in modem for online play.

In fact, Sega was even more of a pioneer in online gaming than that. As far back as 1990, Sega was toying with internet connectivity with the Genesis console through the "Mega Modem" that was released for the Mega Drive in Japan. It offered users access to 17 different games that, for their time, were only available through the service. Later, in 1994, Sega launched the Sega Channel service which connected the Genesis to the internet through a cable TV provider and let its users access various features like demos, news, tips, and even access to complete, Sega Channel-exclusive games like Mega Man: The Wily Wars. Though never a huge success, it was popular enough to last for a respectable four years before Sega ෴pulled the plug in 1998.

15 It Had A Mas꧂cot Before Sonic 🐬

As we previously discussed, Sonic is to Sega as Mario is to Nintendo, both its company logo and its superstar game character. So interwoven are Sega and Sonic that Sega doesn't even always feel secure enough to market products entirely on its own brand strength without including Sonic's name in there, as they did with mouthful titles like Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing and Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection. But not only was Sonic the Hedgehog not th🌳e first pack-in title for the Genesis, Sonic wasn't even the system's first mascot. In fact, Sega didn't have him along for the ride at all for their previous console, the Master System. So who was Sega's "Mario" for all those years?

Before Sonic, Sega had pinned their platformer mascot hopes on Alex Kidd, a character who looks like a cross between a monkey and a human child and took on various abilities and personae as his games dictated. Alex Kidd only had one adventure on the Genesis, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, before Sonic all but made him obsolete-- but he was pretty prolific on the Master System, starring in five separate games (including, interestingly, one that came out after his Genesis outing).

While Alex Kidd faded into obscurity for a time after his final solo game-- Alex Kidd in Shinobi World-- in 1990, he started popping up as a cameo character again in later Sega games and continues to⛦ be a mainstay in games featuring ensemble Sega character rosters.

14 𓂃 Sega Of Japan Vs Sega Of ﷽America

The Mega Drive was kind of a bust in its native Japan. But as a lot was riding on the company's 16-bit console being a success, and Sega knew they needed to do something to reverse their fortunes. With Japan looking like a lost c♑aus꧙e, Sega decided to let their American branch do whatever it saw fit to make the system-- redubbed the Genesis-- a success in the States.

On that mission, Sega of America succeeded with flying colors. The Genesis not only became a legitimate competitor to the Super NES, but even outsold it for large stretches. There is little doubt that Sega's overall success during that era was thanks in large part to the decisions made by Sega of America. In fact, SoA even made some pretty significant software contributions as well, with the celebrated Sonic the Hedgehog 2 actually being ♓d🐎eveloped in the U.S. instead of Japan by a team of mostly-American designers.

Unfortunately, Sega of Japan-- like many Japanese companies-- was very proud and very traditional, and didn't like a lot of the edgie🦂r decisions that SoA made in order to make the Genesis a success. Rather than being happy for what SoA did, SoJ was mostly bitter and resentful, and that led to a growing tension between the two branches of the company that played a large part in Sega's series of bad decisions throughout the 90s that ultimately led to its demise as a hardware maker by the turn of the millennium.

13 Nintendo Convinced Stores Not To Stock The Genesis ☂

The clout that Nintendo had earn꧋ed after the runaway train that was the NES's success didn't just give it power over its third-party partners-- it also gave it🀅 some control over retail stores as well.

As detailed in Blake J. Harris' book, Console Wars, Nintendo had decided to flex some of its muscle on retailers as a response to the growing threat of Sega's Genesis.💟 With the NES still a huge seller and bringing in big bucks for any stores that sold it and its games, Ninteඣndo was in a position to threaten stores with pulling the NES if they didn't do what Nintendo wanted -- which, in this case, was for the stores not to stock Sega's products. While this was a pretty easy sell in the Master System days, the Genesis was earning some big buzz already, and stores wanted in on the action.

For a brief time, Nintendo was successful in stalling the Genesis' debut in some major store chains, including Wal-Mart, because Nintendo was threatening to pull out of those stores if they didn't comply.

While it may have kept the Genesis from making much traction in its first year or so, once Sonic hit the scene, even Nintendo wasn't able to talk stores out of getting in the Sega business. And by that point, Nintendo needed retailers just as much as retailers needed them, and didn't end up pulling their product from stores even once the stores started se🔴lling the Genesis.

12 🍷 There Were $100 Genesis Games

We alဣl have complained about how expensive today's games are at one time or another, but what we forget is that $60 was often a steal for a brand new video game in the early-90-- and that isn't even taking into account how much more expensive $60 was in those days when you factor in inflation.

Moreover, games during the 16-bit era were often priced on a case-by-case basis, rather than games costing a flat rate across the board as his largely been the case for the last three or four console generations. One of the things that would make one game more expensive than another was if a game had some kind of extra technology built into its cartridge, with that flexibility and room for growth being one of the few advantages to cartridges over discs. When a game had some extra horsepower under the hood, it was often priced higher as a result-- sometimes, much higher.

In fact, there were Genesis games that actually reached a three-digit price tag. One of the first examples of this was groundbreaking RPG Phantasy Star II, which infamously retailed for $99.99 upon release. Late in the Genesis' life, Sega came up with a technology similar to the SNES' Super FX chip that gave the system the ability to produce rudimentary 3D polygons. The only game that ever used the impressive tech was the Genesis version of Virtua Racing-- and that, too, dꩲebuted on store s꧙helves for 100 big ones.

11 ဣ It Pioneered The Concept Of Actual Game Release Dates

With some exceptions, the generally-accepted day of the week that most new games are shipped to stores is Tuesday in the United States. However, this wasn't always the case. As anyone who has ever tried to do any kind of research on the video game industry prior to the mid-1990s knows, release dates for games and systems is extremely sketchy from gaming's early days. In olden times, games kind of just got to stores whenever they got to stores. All we really had was a vague window of time when a new game was expected, and then we had to just call Toys R Us day after day for weeks on end, bugging the poor 17-year-olds who worked about whether they got Castlevania III in yet.

In one of Sega of America's many cunning PR movies, they set about changing all that with Sonic 2. In order to build hyp🔯e for the highly anticipated sequel, they made the almost unheard of move of having an actual release date in the game's public marketing-- and with that date being on a Tuesday, they cleverly called it "Sonic 2sday." It was such a successful marketing move that Tuesdays became the default game release day going forward, and more and more games began being promoted with actual release dates.

The idea of games not having release dates seems crazy now and we have Sega and Sonic 2 to thank for that.