Sega Mark III / Master System

About the family

Sega was founded in 1960 as Nihon Goraku Bussan, became SEGA Enterprises in 1965 and SEGA Corporation in 2000. According to the company's official history, its consoles were the 8-bit SG-1000 in 1983; the 16-bit Mega Drive (Genesis in North America) in 1988; the 32-bit Sega Saturn in 1994; and the Dreamcast in 1998. In 2004, Sega and Sammy joined to form SEGA SAMMY HOLDINGS. Outside that official list, the Sega Mark III came out in 1985, played SG-1000 cartridges and reached 1.7 million units in Japan; the Master System is essentially the Mark III in a different case, and it did much better in Europe and Brazil (Time Extension). The Game Gear handheld debuted in Japan on 10/06/1990 (Pocket Gamer, quoting Sega), and the Game Gear Micro, a miniature version with four games in each of its four colors, came out in Japan on 10/06/2020 for 4,980 yen, for Sega's 60th anniversary (Gematsu). The Mega Drive got two add-ons: the Mega-CD (Sega CD in North America), launched in Japan on 12/12/1991 (Famitsu and Time Extension), whose cheaper model, the Mega CD2, came out on 04/23/1993 for 29,800 yen, down from 49,800 for the first one (Famitsu); and the 32X, launched in North America on 11/21/1994, in Europe the same month and in Japan on 12/03/1994, with about 40 games and fewer than 1 million units, dropped in 1996 so Sega could focus on the Saturn (Time Extension). The Mega Drive Mini, with 42 built-in games, came out on 09/19/2019 for 80 dollars (VGC).