Forget Call of Duty, Real Men Need the Retro Love: Happy Birthday, Sega Genesis!

Well, if we're being pernickety, the console was released in Japan twenty five years ago yesterday. But now we've got our shit together, we'll celebrate the only way we know how: with a heaping helping of snark.

This, right here, is hardly the most elegant console design. It looks like something you'd find on the instrument panel of Doc Brown's DeLorean; beside a flux capacitor or a ‘chances of Marty meeting his own sexy young mother and being attracted to her like the incestuous pervtastic he is' calculator or some such. Still, we can't blame Sega for that shortcoming. Eighties gadgetry always looked like hell. It was the law.

The Genesis (or Mega Drive as it's known outside the United States) arrived at a time when Sony and Microsoft had no interest in these newfangled ‘video game' things. Half a decade or so until PlayStation, its competition was the oldest bastards in the industry, Nintendo, with their SNES. What did this mean for Sega? It meant company bigwigs fouling their undercrackers at the thought of attempting to overcome the might of Mario, that's what.

In the earliest days of the Genesis, the best mascot they could muster was Alex Kidd. This little ballache with his craptacular sideburns and jumpsuit starred in some enjoyable-yet-generic toony platformers, but lacked the appeal of his mustachioed rival. What was needed, concluded Mr. Sega, was a flagship character with attitude, charisma and an increasingly dickish personality. A hedgehog, no less; preferably a blue one.

"But... but hedgehogs aren't fast! Or blue!" cried Mr. Sega's assistant. Mr. Sega fired his ass instantly, did a little screw you, I'm the boss and I damn welllikeoddly-colored anthropomorphic mammals dance with both middle fingers raised, and the Genesis's success was assured.

Sonic the Hedgehog arrived in 1991, with... Sonic the Hedgehog. It was a platformer as cutesy and jangly music-y as any before it, but one which implemented several unique elements to set it apart. The bull-busting sense of speed, the loop-the-loops, the ring-collecting health mechanic, the split-second reactions to a big ol' cavern suddenly looming beneath you... Where would the Genesis have been without Sonic and his ginger-mustached nemesis?

The ‘hog provided the poster boy needed for the console to compete with the SNES. And compete it did, this was as close as Sega got to console success before their brilliant-yet-ill-fated Dreamcast casually murdered that dream. Schoolyards across the world were rife with Mario vs Sonic wars, with sexuality questioned, mothers' weight problems mocked and other youthful bastardry where allegiances differed.

But he didn't carry the Genesis alone. Sonic went a little awry in later installments, after all, with his irritating entourage starting to invade the games (later, Big the Cat and all kinds of assholes muscled in. Who the hell cares about Big the Cat? Nobody, that's who). Luckily, the console had many other quality offerings.

This was the home of beloved brawlers like Streets of Rage and Golden Axe. Of Treasure's demented masterpiece shooters Alien Soldier and Gunstar Heroes. Of licensed games (Disney ones, at that) that didn't suck Satan's hairy balls, like Aladdin. Of reams of lost gems we can seek out very cheaply today, and which will delight our eyes, ears and asses as well as they ever did (Comix Zone, Haunting, insert your own memories).

Why not celebrate 25 years of the Genesis by doing so?