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"For the record, Nintendo was responsible for the Night Trap and Mortal Kombat outtake videos used by Lieberman's committee to illustrate their concern - again driving home the point that Sega was in large part responsible, if not totally responsible, for putting 'this stuff' in the homes of unsuspecting children. Armed with this 'evidence' and with endlessly hyped stories in the press about children going on violent rampages supposedly due to videogames, Lieberman and fellow senator Howard Kohl (D, Wisconson) eventually called for nothing less than a total ban on violent videogames and the dismantling of companies that promoted such fare - including Sega, the chief culprit behind the spread of violent videogames."
-- SegaBase Volume 4 - Sega CD / Mega CD

The emulation scene was starting then: it was a time when people were already fond of their older machines and software and began wondering if current machines would be able to run emulated versions just ok. And they did, at least the more basic stuff: emulators for NES, Commodore 64 and Infocom's z-machine were popping here and there. I was on the internet since the 1994 and saw these developments with great passion. :)

Here are some of those sites still around:
http://www.zophar.net/
http://www.ifarchive.org/
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/

Amazing. 1996 was when commercial web was beginning instead of just personal and community driven "homepages". I also remember first getting in contact with the GNU project when downloading a GCC-powered compiler for Windows in 1996. Would only switch to Linux in 2001, though...

A Console Too Soon

Why, this company was split into factions by country. The two factions didn't get along, and didn't consult with each other on major, company affecting projects. Eventually, the company died. The whole sordid story is here:

Project Mars: Anatomy of a Failure

Not sure what I think of their chances.

I'm not sure either, and IANAL, but if I wanted to contest this I would probably cite Sega v. Accolade (Scroll down, copied text appears here:

If you will recall from our earlier discussion, it was none other than Electronic Arts who first determined how to bypass the proprietary Sega code in the Genesis and thereby produce its own videogame cartridges. In response to EA's actions, Sega developed a new security system for the Genesis and quietly incorporated it into the system boot ROM starting with the 1991 production batches. Sega called this proprietary code the TradeMark Security System (TMSS). In essence, it was a simplified version of the 10NES lockout chip that Nintendo had used in the NES. Sega had elected not to go to the 10NES route because they felt that a complete lockout solution was needless overkill. Their solution, the TMSS, was based on very simple principles of intellectual property law. A piece of code burned into the Genesis boot ROM would look for a header code that was supposed to be part of every Genesis program stored in cartridge format. If the header code contained certain unique characteristics, then it was a legitimately licensed Sega product. If the TMSS did not find what it sought, then it would refuse to boot up the system. If the system booted correctly, then the TMSS would display the phrase PRODUCED BY OR UNDER LICENSE FROM SEGA ENTERPRISES LTD. on the screen for a few seconds before running the program contained inside the cartridge. Both pieces of code, the one in the TMSS and the correct cartridge header code, were copyrighted Sega property. The TMSS also generated a trademark display every time it was activated, that being the Sega name itself. In essence, the TMSS was a double tripwire for anybody trying to produce unlicensed Genesis cartridges. If you made an unlicensed cartridge that activated the TMSS, then you were in violation of both copyright and trademark law. If you could figure out a way to get your game running without tripping the TMSS, then you were legally in the clear.

Most of us know how that turned out - Accolade eventually won the right to continue to distribute their game cartridges. Sega went on to do the same kind of crap on the Dreamcast, but they weren't able to prevent clever programmers from putting a notice on the same screen that came up saying "licensed by sega" that says "no, it isn't, but this message has to be here".

Sega/Mega/Super 32X/CD 32X has good information on that.

SEGA Base

Essentially, I get from this that a lack of co-operation between the American and Japanese branches were it's biggest problem. (Oh, and Nintendo screwing them over with the Congress didn't help either.)

The Dreamcast would have had to have been a spectacular success to pull SEGA out of its financial doldrums, and the people at SEGA seemed to know it was a longshot (see the following article):

"Come on, Mr. Yukawa, get up!"

The ads star an actual senior managing director of the company, a man named Yukawa Hidekazu, who looks much like what you imagine Japanese salarymen look like. In the first, Yukawa eavesdrops on two kids saying, "Sega video games suck. Playstation is much better." Melancholy, Yukawa heads to a bar, gets drunk, and on his way home scuffles with some thugs, who beat him up. The commercial ends with him collapsed in the doorway of his house, as an offscreen voice exhorts, "Come on, Mr. Yukawa, get up!"

In the second ad, Yukawa is on a remote mountaintop, dressed in a business suit, talking to a group of seemingly friendly children who tell him that Sega has changed for the better. "Really?" he asks, at which point the children's eyes turn black and they scream, "No, it's a joke! We don't need Sega--we want Playstation!" The earth then opens beneath Yukawa and swallows him, just before he wakes up on the floor of his office to realize that his secretary has caught him daydreaming. The ad ends with him reflecting on his nightmare.

Video games for the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and in Japan only, the Sega Mega-CD have been created with entirely different story lines, although they all take place within the same Shadowrun universe.

Well, that prompted me to look it up. According to this site, it was available to some extent in the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Norway. If you look up Flextech and Sega Channel there's other corroborating information in the form of press releases and the like (such as this. I don't know how UK cable works, if it's divided up into regional franchises like the US or what, but I'm assuming it just wasn't available anywhere near you.

The whole CD-R thing was because the developers left something enabled in the BIOS that they shouldn't have. While it was nice for speeding development it shouldn't have made it into the retail model.(Read about that here under the "Pirates Strike Back" entry about 1/2 way down the page) From what I have read some of the early games had checks to make sure they were on the GD-ROMs, but then they just kinda forgot about checking it because it was hidden.
Some of the last Dreamcasts wouldn't work with that method, although a way around Sega's fix was found.

You then had people writing the programs to dump out the GD-ROMs (after they booted their code via a CD-R) out the serial port (1GB via a 115Kb/s RS-232 connection) or later the broad band adapter (10Mb/s). You shrink some of the data and now you have a 700MB CD image. (Shrink as in downsample audio, decrease bitrate in videos, drop unneccsary files, ect.)

Read and learn.

Project Mars: Anatomy of a Failure

Not so. The sims was simply an improvement on the Amiga/C64 game (and it's MANY clones and forerunners) known as "Little Computer People" or "House on a Disk". Also the sims was nothing but a capital-oriented twist on a Tamagochi and the various Home Design programs around at the time. Even Sim Town seemed like a cut-down version of The Sims.

While I primarily agree with this article I don't see it as a problem. I realise that there are a lot of FPS games out there that seem pretty much the same except you're blowing up different stuff. What has to come to the fore is plot and story. I would forward games such as the original No One Lives Forever as excellent examples of how this genre can be improved. I remember when Duke Nukem 3D came out, it had personality compared to all the other 3D-blaster games out there. It's personality that wins in games. It's personality that makes a game different from it's peers.

I think the attraction of games like GTA is not that you get to carjack people and complete missions, but more that you're free. You're free to explore the city and just drive around at high speed, which is what people who've been frustrated by racing games with "forcefields" around the track have been wanting to do for years. After completing the game, you do want to drive irresponsibly all over the grassy area in the middle of the track or smash into the grandstands, this is why people who've completed or got frustrated with racing games often derive so much pleasure from driving backwards around the track smashing into stuff. GTA gave you complete freedom to be an irresponsible fuckwit around a whole city, with no need to bother to complete the next mission. You could just explore, ride the monorail, do whatever, it was almost sightseeing.

So for a good game, not only do you need some personality, some good plotline, but also some serious freedom / exploratory element. Then you're onto a winner. I admit that most games I've played recently have not satisfied me and I tend to turn towards a bygone age of originality where the focus was not on graphics (everyone knew they could do fuckall graphically with a ZX Spectrum or a VIC-20) but on concept. The games of yesteryear ranged from "game where you serve drinks in a bar" to "game where you try to defy gravity in your little spaceship and get crystal balls off planets before a reactor explodes". I think we're actually heading back towards that. I know everyone cites Uplink as a fantastic move and bla bla, but I see that as the dawn of renaissance in gaming, where there are less graphical improvements to make and the big companies either die or have to seek games that actually engage interest. Novelty is coming back, and in a big way. Just be ready for it when it hits.