Sega Genesis/Mega Drive

The Sega Mega Drive or Genesis in the US Market, was one of the big titans in 16-bit gaming in the early 90’s and sold over 30 million units in its lifetime. Although not the first 16-bit home console, It did predate its competitor the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo by 2 years in 1988. Powered by the venerable Motorola 68000, which was the main processing unit, and the Zilog Z80 which controlled sound and various sprites and graphical effects, it was the choice for many gamers who wanted to bring their arcade favorites to their homes. Standout games include Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe, Altered Beast, as well as notably, what many consider to be the definitive home port of Mortal Kombat due to it being able to be "uncensored" through a cheat code to perform the gory “Fatality” scenes from the arcade version. 

The Genesis also included a Yamaha soundchip, the YM2612, which was a stripped down version of one of their synthesizer chips the YM2608. Due to a bug, at low volumes, fading effects would distort and quantize creating unique effects. A lot of sound designers knew of this and would program their games with this effect in mind and utilize it for their tracks.

The Genesis had 3 revisions as well as two notable add-ons, the Sega CD and the Sega 32x, each with their own library of games. These would mount to the first two Genesis revisions and gave the console more features. The Sega CD mounted to the bottom of the Genesis, and allowed it to play games formatted on CDs. With the added storage capacity that the format had compared to cartridges (4MB vs ~700MB) games could have full motion video (FMV) cutscenes as well as CD-Quality audio. The other add-on, the Sega 32x, gave the Genesis a processor that could handle 32-bit software, and mounted to the cartridge port of the first two Genesis revisions. Powered by 2 Hitachi SH-2 RISC processors, the 32x was Sega’s attempt to buy time until they could release their actual 32-bit console, the Sega Saturn. It was not very successful, and only had a library of around 40 titles, a good amount of them being enhanced versions of games the base unit already had such as Doom.