Advantages: Brilliant colour screen, classic sega games.
Disadvantages: Large, eats batteries.

...Back in the early 90`s, during the hey day of the 16-bit systems notobly the Sega Mega Drive and Super NES, there was a secret console war going on, it was on a much smaller scale (literally!), yet was fought with as much heart as the big boys. This was the hand held war, and for the most part, was between the Nintendo Gameboy, and the Sega Gamegear, in the end the Gameboy won, but not without a few scratches and a dented ego.... The Sega system was released in 1991, as Sega hurreidly rushed out the system to compete with nintendos machine. It is more or less based on the Sega Master System specs with only a few improvements. The machine sported a colour back-lit LCD screen (in my opinion still better then the Gameby colour) and was fairly small and portable. At the height of its popularity it boasted a fantatic catalogue of games, most... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: a good game
Disadvantages:

...Sega Rally 2 is the sequel to one of the sega Saturn’s best games: sega rally. Although a great improvement over the original sega classic it isn’t an amazingly good game, just a quite good game. If you really like racing games though (As I do) then you cant really go very wrong with this game. It has a huge variety of tracks and many modes including a 10 year championship mode. This game is really worth looking into if you enjoy playing racing games and / or you liked the original sega rally.... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: It was capable of producing good graphics
Disadvantages: Sega are not making any more games for it

...First the Sega Saturn and now the Sega Dreamcast as Sega announced a couple of months a go to stop producing games for the Sega Dreamcast. This seems similar to what happened to the Sega Saturn as it just died out due to compettion from other consoles. The sad thing was that the Sega Dreamcast had the capabillity to produce good graphics and play good games but the games were never there and the choice of good games was certainly very limited. I think people who rushed out and bought the console when it first came out must be disapointed now after spending so much on a console the games are not there to be used. Some may say that the Sega Dreamcast had internet and that no other console did but again it wasn't that good and with it being so much cheaper and easier ways to use it. So there just isn't the demand for the internet... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Next-to-perfect arcade conversion
Disadvantages: Small number of courses

...Rallying. In recent years, the ancient art of driving a car around the world in hazardous conditions has really caught on in gamers’ minds, and the recent flurry of PS2 rallying titles (the highlight of which is the awesome WRC, incidentally) indicate that videogame rallying may soon overtake Formula 1 as the dominant motorsport on games consoles. Not hard to see why, of course – rallying is a far more down and dirty sport than Formula 1 will ever be, and there’s only so much you can do with the F1 courses every year. So, has rallying always been so popular on games consoles? No. And its origins can be traced back to a certain little arcade game… AM3’s Sega Rally in the arcade really showed that when it came to arcade racing games, no one could beat Sega. The graphics were awesome, and the racing action was out of this world. But how... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Great graphics, storyline, exploration system, characters, freedom given
Disadvantages: Slightly clumsy or robotic controls

...When the Sega Dreamcast was released in 1999, it helped to restore Sega’s reputation in the gaming industry that had been greatly damaged by their earlier consoles, the Sega 32X, the Sega CD and the Sega Saturn. But the Dreamcast was a turnaround for them and the console, along with several highly anticipated titles, helped save Sega’s skin. One of those titles was Shenmue. Developed by Yu Suzuki, a major figure at Sega who has developed Virtua Fighter and Outrun, at the time of release, it was the most expensive video game ever released, at $70,000,000. Putting so much money into a game was a major risk, but one they felt would pay off. Shenmue is now widely regarded as one of the Dreamcast’s best titles and a sequel was released for the console and for the Microsoft Xbox. Now its eight years later but is the game still worth a look... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Graphics, some good games, internet play
Disadvantages: mostly poo games, internet play not used to potential.

...After the success of the Mega Drive and the mega failure of the Saturn proved to give Sega an awkward situation. They rushed to gether a new console as a last gasp attempt to keep the company in profit. This console turned out to be the Dreamcast. I have mixed feelings about the Dreamcast. It has a lot of power and can produce great graphics but until recently the games have been poor. The Dreamcast also allows you to connect to the internet and play games online. This service has also not been used to the full as games like Chu Chu Rocket are one of the only games to use the service, except Quake III which runs pretty fast over the internet but will soon get lag when more and more people start to play. Top quality games have only just started coming out for the Dreamcast such as Hlaf Life, Quake III, MSR and other games coming soon... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Pretty console, good games
Disadvantages: Highly priced games, couldn't handle 3D, very few games with save feature

...The Mega-Drive marked the beginning of the end of my social life. I got this, my first ever games console for Christmas in 1994 (is it really that long ago?) and whilst by today's standards its technologically ancient, it delivered a huge amount of simple fun. It must be said, the Mega-Drive II (same as the Mega-Drive, but smaller) is still one of the best looking consoles ever divised. A slick black colour, it was a nice size and everything you needed was right infront of you - power and reset buttons and a slot for the game cartridges. Simple and very accessible from the off. It was a 16-bit console, and because of the comparitive lack of power compared with today's 128-bit behemoth's, couldn't handle any 3D games. Still, the extra power over the Master System (Sega's previous console) meant that developers could use a lot more... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: C opinion
Disadvantages: C above

...of Sega hardware - notably the 32X and Mega CD add-ons to the Mega Drive machine, coupled with a supposedly awful basic development kit - compared to Sony's PlayStation at least, meaning the games just didn't look as great on the Saturn! The Saturn really started to tumble when the N64 arrived in March 1997, and so the life of the big black box, commercially at least, wasn't too great. Needless to say, the PlayStation is the definite 32bit winner. OK, so you've got your PlayStation, perhaps you've got a Dreamcast and/or a PlayStation 2, but I strongly advise you all to consider the ill-fated, short lived, Sega Saturn. Why? It's great really! I have a Sega Saturn, and I won't part with it for many reasons. I don't have any imported games, but there are plenty available, so if you don't want to miss out on the Japanese wonders, then head on off... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: The start of Nintendo's quest for gaming domination
Disadvantages: It's obsolete

...Ah the Nintendo SNES, back in it's day it was up against the SEGA Mega Drive. Games were being released like the Super Mario titles for Nintendo and the Sonic The Hedgehog titles for SEGA. But times have changed and now Nintendo or SEGA are no more the superpowers of gaming the new superpowers are The Sony Playstation 2 and The Microsoft XBOX. The SNES was around and started up in 1995 along with the SEGA Mega Drive. In those days you didn't use discs like they use now you used cartridges. Personally I prefer discs but technology wasn't that advanced back then. The games on offer for the Nintendo SNES were Super Mario titles which were loved by any gamer. The games were entertaining and fun to play and the graphics back then were also good for their time. But the sad fact is they look like tangerine brick walls compared to the graphics... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful

Advantages: Excellent system specs, quality games promised from quality publishers, brilliant system design
Disadvantages: No DVD player, not backwards compatible with the Nintendo 64

...Once upon a time, Nintendo were the king of console makers with their excellent NES ruling the games world. The successor to the NES was the Super NES (SNES) and although it was featured some classic games, the Sega MegaDrive was deemed the more successful. That was back in the early Nineties and Nintendo had to make do with second place. When the MegaDrive and SNES where on their last legs, everyone expected that Sega and Nintendo's new next-generation machines (the Saturn and the Nintendo 64 repectively) would be in a closely-fought two horse race. Unfortunately, they ignored a certain console from Sony called the PlayStation (which incidently was originally going to be the SNES's answer to the Mega-CD). The PlayStation was a huge success and practically forced Sega and Nintendo to rethink their stratergies. Sega's Saturn quickly... Read review

Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful