Everybody loves the story of underdog made good. That was Sega’s story during the Genesis years, yet it quickly turned to a Greek tragedy that could have been penned by Bill himself.In 1994 Sega’s whimsical nature, especially towards periphery, took the form of CD-ROM add-on the Sega CD (Mega CD to us PALites). Its failure, for my own ends, was its success.The problem with the Mega CD was as much Sega’s poor handling of the system, and its lack of loyalty towards it, as it was it’s timing. There were a dark few years following 1994 where the 16-bit giants began to wane and a slew of consoles surfaced, panicked and sank, namely Atari’s Jaguar, Phillip’s CD-i and Trip Hawkins’ 3DO. Their problem was that they faced a rather difficult time in videogames history; in many ways this was a renaissance.During this period 3D was becoming a reality; PC’s were able to create low polygon models, but nothing as complex as a fully rendered, animated characters. Along with this came the new media of CD that allowed increased data storage and lengths of high-quality sound (and low quality video). The problem was that there weren’t any rules on how to use this technology; nobody knew what to do and how not to do what they did do.What this offered up was massive freedom to developers; they were the first to test this technology and were charged with making something fun out of it. Many Sega CD developers took an existing Genesis (Mega Drive) game, stuck a CD soundtrack over it (generally cheesy J-Rock) and resold it. That was easy to do as the Sega CD used much of the existing Genesis architecture, but it didn’t make for exciting future-proofed games.More adventurous developers took a different route. What I like to call the ‘Interactive Movie’; generally piss-poor anime from the ass-end of Akiharbara that featured a low-level of cognitive interactivity. A good example would be Sega’s pack-in ‘Road Avenger’, the movie plays (car, girl, bad guys), a symbol representing a button or direction appears on screen, you press it and more movie is played. Fail and a ‘crash’ movie plays out.Road Avenger’s problem was not in its lack of quality visuals but its lack of understanding the nature of play. Play, you see, is an instinct that improves us as humans; our joy is derived from our feeling of improvement, in becoming better and ultimately mastering the ‘game’. All I’m saying is pop psychology’s hunter-gatherer instinct. Take away the ability to improve (beyond remembering sequences) and all you have is a skipping DVD.These IMs are, in other words, crap. But what makes them intriguing is their uniqueness, for one brief moment these games were the future, they were what would shape what we have now. Yet what actually happened was that they were forgotten completely, erased from the collective minds of the videogames industry. So much so were these games removed that peopled praised Yu Suzuki’s inventiveness when he introduced QTEs in Shenmue. ‘How great’, everybody exclaimed. They obviously hadn’t played Taito’s ‘Time Gal’.The Mega CD did also play host to some original supercharged Genesis games, such as Sonic CD or the polygontastic Silpheed. Although few and far between, these games proved the system to be a little, but not much, more than a curio for modern gamers.There was a third type of game, these are beyond classification: an amalgamation of forgotten design techniques. Typified beautifully in Yumemi: Mystery Mansion, surely the inspiration for Resident Evil, this game is beyond explanation. And it doesn’t even appear to be quirky in the self-conscious happy-go-lucky way a modern Eastern title like Capcom’s ‘Gregory Horror Show’ personify. What was going on during the production of this title I don’t think anyone will know.The Mega CD is ultimately naff: technologically, theoretically and practically. But when you’re floating around modern gaming you very rarely see things come out of leftfield like you did in the short years around the Mega CD, mostly because the leftfield isn’t practical or functional. The Mega CD was the mutation in videogaming evolution that nature deemed not fit enough, yet it proves great memory nudging entertainment now and is without a doubts Sega’s best ill-fated Genesis add-on released in 1994.