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Sega Genesis (aka Mega Drive)


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  • 2 months later...

3 second Google search says:

 

"The Sega Genesis is a home video game console released on October 29, 1988 by Sega as the Mega Drive (メガドライブ Mega Doraibu?), the name it is known as outside North America. The reason for the two names is that Sega was unable to secure legal rights to the Mega Drive name in North America. As a fourth-generation console, the Sega Genesis is Sega's third console and the successor to the Sega Master System with which it has backward compatibility when the separately sold Power Base Converter is installed."

 

It's in the very first paragraph:

 

Sega Genesis - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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  • 7 months later...
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I'm from the UK so have always known it as the Sega Megadrive and I never realised that the Genesis was the US version, I thought it was a different system entirely. After all these years I have finally been educated lol :dance:

 

I had an imported Super Famicom :eek:

 

Named Super Nintendo in the UK. Famicom was named way to close to a females contraceptive though. :D

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Ahh the Genesis...my second major console I owned as a kid (first was the NES), a lot of great times on that console. I always preferred it to the SNES which my brother had.

 

ahhh the sega genesis i still have my model one almost 25 years later it still works to this day [ATTACH]7524[/ATTACH] this is a picture of my model 1 sega with my wii and ps3 taz in escape from mars is in the console

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I'm from the UK so have always known it as the Sega Megadrive and I never realised that the Genesis was the US version, I thought it was a different system entirely. After all these years I have finally been educated lol :dance:

Im the exact opposite, had no idea Genesis = Megadrive lol. Used to love playing Streets of Rage.

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I knew the reason it had two different names but didn't know, as Wikipedia seems to suggest, that Mega Drive was the original name and had to be changed for North America, I always assumed it was the other way round.

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Its because another company held the rights to the name megadrive, and sega were unable to secure the rights at the time. Its the same reason the biohazard series was renamed resident evil when they're released in the EU and US.

 

Wow!!! I never knew that. Thank you for the info :

 

Edit: Wait I'm confused...at least for Biohazard, didn't the same company (Capcom) release the game in both countries? (Japan and America). They couldn't get the rights to their own game? :confused: Same with the Sega Genesis. Can anyone explain? Thanks :)

Edited by janne-da-arc24
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Edit: Wait I'm confused...at least for Biohazard, didn't the same company (Capcom) release the game in both countries? (Japan and America). They couldn't get the rights to their own game? :confused: Same with the Sega Genesis. Can anyone explain? Thanks :)
This has nothing to do with the game as a whole, only with the name itself.

 

I think it's because patents/rights aren't managed globally but separately for each region. If a trademark is available in one region, it doesn't mean that it hasn't been registered somewhere else.

 

The name Biohazard was available in Japan at the time but was probably already taken in the US (there's a band called like this, I don't know if it has anything to do with them).

Edited by kinjall
typo
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