The Sega Mega Drive, which ironically may yet be known to future scholars as 'the PlayStation of its day', was still sweeping all before it and Sega could do no wrong. The Mega CD was a great idea; a CD drive add-on intended to extend the console's life, not to mention the prospect of delivering richer and more involving games. Sadly we can't mention any games that were richer and more involving, as there weren't any.

The Mega CD had a retail price of £269, and it came with a CD containing six titles that were previously available on cartridge. This set the tone for the whole of the add-on's life, with titles being straight conversions from cartridge to disc or just having FMV intros. When these aforementioned future scholars are asked to pinpoint the reasons for the failure of Mega CD, they will undoubtedly answer in unison that it lacked a killer app - a software title so stunning that consumers buy the hardware it runs on.

The best the Mega CD could boast was Core's Thunderhawk, a chopper sim. Many Mega CD owners soon became disillusioned with their purchase, and this ultimately had a knock-on effect when Sega introduced their next Mega Drive add-on, the 32X. This too promised richer and more involving games and, to a certain extent, it delivered - a quite passable version of Doom, for instance, which could never have run on the standalone console - but by this time the hardcore gamers were either getting excited about next generation consoles, such as 3DO and Jaguar, or turning to PC.

Considering the Mega CD was designed to prolong the Mega Drive's life, its own was very short indeed, and two years later it was totally forgotten as Sega's marketing machine was gearing up for the launch of the Saturn.