The console wars between Sega and Nintendo hit full swing by the time the Sega Genesis hit in North America in October 1989. A large part of the rivalry between the company was driven by Sega’s marketing campaign, which proudly toted “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t.”

The Genesis launched first in Japan in 1988 as the Sega Mega Drive, but the company took a solid two-part approach to the North American launch, which involved building up a library of celebrity-tied gaming titles such as Pat Riley Basketball, Tommy Lasorda Baseball, Joe Montana Football, and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker, among other. The other part of the plan was the slogan-focused marketing scheme that meant to challenge Nintendo head-on, with the “Genesis Does” commercials highlighting how the Genesis featured more arcade-like gaming than the Nintendo Entertainment System.

The rebranding of the company focusing on the Genesis as an edgier, “cooler” console to have over the NES helped to drive Sega to end up with a 65% share of the home console market in the US for a brief period of time in the ‘90s. That was also helped along by the company’s new mascot, Sonic the Hedgehog.

While Sega was far more open to different styles of games than Nintendo was at the time, they still featured a tight approval process for third-party developers and publishers, leading to a diverse but still high quality library of available titles.

The Genesis was a massive success for Sega, selling more than 30 million units worldwide. The console was succeeded in 1994 by the Sega Saturn, and more recently the Genesis saw a miniature throwback release with the arrival of the Genesis Mini in 2019.

More information about the history of Sega and the Genesis can be found in The Overstreet Guide to Collecting Video Games.