History
Development
Development began in 1990 by a team led by Tomio Takami, who was assigned with creating a cheap, high quality CD-ROM add-on for the Genesis. Meaning to counter the TurboGrafx-CD.
SEGA had partner with JVC to design the CD aspect of the system. But, after difficulties with designing the hardware, SEGA of Japan begrudgingly contacted SEGA of America for help. After NEC had raised the TurboGrafx-CD’s RAM from .5 Mbit to 3 Mbit, SEGA went two times more to 6 Mbit. SoA had brought it down to 4 Mbit to make it more cost effective.
The SEGA-CD also originally had its own CPU, Sound, and even a built-in DSP to allow for hardware scaling and rotation, all of which were also removed.
Launch Day
The SEGA-CD had originally launched in Japan under the name Mega-CD, on Thursday December 12th, 1991 for a price of 20,000 yen. Launch titles include of Sol-Feace, Heavy Nova, and Road Blaster. By the end of the week, it had sold 7,500 units.