The SEGA CD Overview

Back in the late 1980's Sega and Nintendo where fighting constantly to get the game licenses, the coolest accessories, the newest add-ons etc.. with which to garner the consumers attention of their consoles. With the advent of CD-Rom technology in the late 80's they new they had to enhance their consoles: The Genesis, and the Super Nintendo and make use of that format.

Sega began a very secretive process within the company to design and produce their CD-Rom based system, while Nintendo would take the outsourcing route and attempt to hand off development to 3rd party electronics manufacturers. Nintendo would go on to fail not once, not twice but 3 times with different systems before successfully releasing a CD based console or add-on. However these failures would spawn 2 competitors. The Phillips CD-i, and the Sony Playstation. While the Cd-i had a short life span, the Sony Playstation is now one of the main stay consoles on the market today.

Sega on the other hand successfully designed and revealed in 1990 at the Tokyo Toy Show the Sega-CD or Mega-CD as it was known in Japan. The first version of the add-on sat underneath the original Sega Genesis. While subsequent versions would plug into the side of the newer Genesis consoles.

With CD technology now available Game makers realized they cold go from a few kilobytes of game data in a cartridge or floppy to several hundreds of megabytes on a CD. This brought on the dreaded FMV (Full Motion Video) based games. In which live action video clips and/or animations would be integrated into the games for a more movie like experience. Sadly not even for computer based games did this actually help improve them. Most FMV's were rather badly made. Though there some FMV's that would go all out and get actors like Christopher Walken to act in the movie sequences. Still the color pallet for videos at the time was limited. (no truecolor technology yet) So most videos looked really blocky and oddly colored.

The Sega CD was even more limited in color display by the 16bit Genesis it was connected to, so the videos had an even worse quality than the PC ones. Sega however was keen on delivering FMV games on its CD add-on.

Its library is rather limited in comparison to other CD based systems but there are a few noteworthy entries into it. Once such entry is Jurassic Park.

Jurassic Park successfully brought to life great Dinosaurs and made them interact with real humans. However the games based around the movie really left a lot to be desired. Early action based games had a top-down/ isometric view with odd controls, and strange objectives. The Sega CD version opted for a more computer like point and click adventure style game play. Instead of going around the park shooting dinosaurs, you picked up items and used them to solve puzzles to advance.

Its very slow paced, but offers a different look into the franchise. However this is not to say its actually a good game. In reality the puzzle solving can get monotonous, and sometimes down right annoying. Honk an overturned jeep's horn 3 times in precise intervals to get a triceratops to attack it, and dislodge some useful items from it. Do it wrong and the trike charges at you and instantly kills you. Same with the T-Rex. Stay absolutely still or he immediately attacks. Gas him twice to get him to lift his head out of the way and immediately press the move button to move into the opened door. Do it wrong and your dead.



The game however, offers a look into Jurassic Park that no other game does. You get to see the Visitor Center, as well as other locations like the overturned visitor SUV in fron tof the T-Rex paddock, as well as the infamous Power shed. This makes the game feel authentic and connected to the movie, unlike the other versions. Yes you could play as the Velociraptor in one of them, but you saw no real locations within the games.

I think the game is a decent one to pick up, as long as you know what you are getting into.

Part 1 of the Video Playthrough is now online at Youtube.com



Part 2 of the Video Playthrough is now online at Youtube.com



Part 3 of the Video Playthrough is now online at Youtube.com



Part 4 of the Video Playthrough is now online at Youtube.com

Part 5 of the Video Playthrough is now online at Youtube.com