Top Five: RPGs on the Sega Megadrive

        Hello and Welcome to this episode of RPGGamer Top 5s, and as part of our series on the top RPG's on each system, today we're going to be doing the top five RPG's on the Sega Megadrive.
        The Sega Megadrive, called the Genesis in the United States, is a 16 bit console released in 1988 by Sega. Although it struggled in it's homeland of Japan against the SNES, the Megadrive sold well in the United States and Europe, achiving sales of some 30 million units worldwide.
        Built around the same 68000 processor as the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, and incorporating a Zilog Z80 as sound controller, the same chip used as a processor in the ZX-81 and ZX-Spectrum, it had a dedicated video system supporting hardware sprites, and a 320-240 resolution in 61 colours from a palette of 512.
        Sega marketed their console aggressively against Nintendo, with slogans such as "Genesis does what Nintendon't", aiming for a older market than their competitor who would prefer the cooler attitude of Sega against the child friendly Nintendo, a rivalry summed up by the company mascots, the cool and confident Sonic, vs, the cheerful and cuddly Mario.
        Nintendo had most of the arcade conversion market sown up, leaving Sega with only it's own catalogue of games, which although meagre, did impressively contain Space Harrier, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Ghouls and Ghosts and Shinobi. So Sega set out to develop their own catalogue of unique titles, and the Megadrive ended up with some of the most interesting and innovative titles of the time, including many RPG's.