On the 1st of December 1991, Sega released a CD-ROM unit called the Mega CD
(Sega CD in the US) to support the dying MegaDrive in Japan. It had
another 68000 CPU, additional RAM, and a new sound chip which made even more complex games
possible. Unfortunately, the price of the hardware was very high (49800 yen, approx.
US$500), and the first games (Heavy Nova and Sol-Feace)
definitely weren´t worth this much money. Again, Sega made the mistake to release a new
system without a top-selling game. A few months later, though, with the release of Game
Arts´ fantastic RPG Lunar, the sales increased noticeably and other
companies began to develop software for the system.
The device reached the USA at the end of 1992 with a slightly better software line-up (Batman
Returns, Sewer Shark etc.) than at the Japanese release. Still,
the system was far too pricey at the beginning, and only a few companies announced games
for it. Fortunately, the Genesis itself was a very strong system at that time in the US
(mainly because the SNES was released too late), and so quite a lot of people bought the
Sega CD anyway. This was definitely no mistake, because some of the best RPGs ever
written, namely Lunar - The Silver Star and Lunar - Eternal Blue,
were released for this system exclusively. Another great game is Snatcher
by Konami, a very atmospherical cyberpunk graphic adventure.
During the years 1991 and 1995, approximately 3 million Sega CD units were sold
world-wide, compared to 27 million Genesis/MegaDrive units. (Eidolon)