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Direct Link: Famicom Dojo S2 – Sega Family Tree Special

Also, in honor of the start of Season 2, the Famicom Dojo Season 1 DVD is on sale for $9.95 through the month of March! Get your copy today!

Wow, has it been over a year? Well, we don’t really think so. Season 2 officially started with the first Denshimail in March 2009, so it was quite strange to get questions for the last year about “when is Season 2 going to start?” You’re already watching it!

But we understood what you meant. You wanted the history. You wanted to hear about even crazier things you might not have known. But how do we top what we already did? Famicom Dojo, like the store after which it is named, was never meant to solely trade in Famicom information. There was just so much of it, however, it quickly filled up the first season. Hopefully with this episode, we can break away into the broader country of video game history.

…did I say “episode”? Well, that was originally our intention. But the Sega Master System and its history is just so fascinating, we had to give it its own spotlight — despite existing plans. I fear that the way we went about telling that story obscured some of the facts. But then you could just go to Wikipedia and look up the facts yourselves, right?

This isn’t the last we’ve seen of the Sega family…

The Facts

So in case we’re a little unclear about a few things (which we will cover again in more specificity, in case you hate reading):

• The SG-1000 series is technically part of the 2nd generation of consoles, designed to compete with the Atari — as evidenced from its cartridge and controller design
• Sega had to increase their specs to keep up with Nintendo, who released the Famicom the same year as the SG-1000. This is going to become a trend for the company all the way through the Dreamcast
• The Sega Mark III (i.e. SG-1000 III) is essentially the Japanese Master System
• Despite this, a Master System-branded console came out in Japan later (hence why you see one in the Rising Stuff store), but I’m sure we’ll get to that some time the future

Don’t worry, we’ll cover these topics in a more interesting fashion.

Episode Links:

Episodes:

Episode 00 – Train Your Game

Specials:

Midwest Gaming Classic 2009 Special

Denshimail:

Famicom Denshimail: Adapters (2009/03/09)
Famicom Denshimail: Batteries (2009/03/23)
Famicom Denshimail: Hookups (2009/04/13)
Famicom Denshimail: Homebrew (2009/04/27)
Famicom Denshimail: Rare Games (2009/09/28)