Retro Renegades - Episode: You Smell Like A Brewery

Homebrew, when applied to video games, refers to games produced by hobbyists for proprietary hardware platforms that are not typically user-programmable, primarily video game consoles. These often use storage formats that make distribution difficult (such as ROM cartridges or encrypted CD-ROMs). Many systems have hardware restrictions to prevent unauthorized development. A non-professional developer for a system intended to be consumer-programmable, like the Commodore 64, is simply called a hobbyist (rather than a homebrew developer). The Sega Genesis, known as the Mega Drive[b] outside North America, is a 16-bit fourth-generation home video game console developed and sold by Sega. The Genesis was Sega's third console and the successor to the Master System. Sega released it in 1988 in Japan as the Mega Drive, and in 1989 in North America as the Genesis. In 1990, it was distributed as the Mega Drive by Virgin Mastertronic in Europe, Ozisoft in Australasia, and Tec Toy in Brazil. In South Korea, it was distributed by Samsung as the Super Gam*Boy and later the Super Aladdin Boy.[c] Designed by an R&D team supervised by Hideki Sato and Masami Ishikawa, the Genesis was adapted from Sega's System 16 arcade board, centered on a Motorola 68000 processor as the CPU, a Zilog Z80 as a sound controller, and a video system supporting hardware sprites, tiles, and scrolling. It plays a library of more than 900 games on ROM-based cartridges. Several add-ons were released, including a Power Base Converter to play Master System games. It was released in several different versions, some created by third parties. Sega created two network services to support the Genesis: Sega Meganet and Sega Channel. 30.75 million first-party Genesis units were sold worldwide. In addition, Tec Toy sold an estimated three million licensed variants in Brazil, Majesco projected it would sell 1.5 million licensed variants of the system in the United States, and much smaller numbers were sold by Samsung in South Korea. By the mid-2010s, licensed third-party Genesis rereleases were still being sold by AtGames in North America and Europe. Many games have been re-released in compilations or on online services such as the Nintendo Virtual Console, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, and Steam. The Genesis was succeeded in 1994 by the Sega Saturn. Retro Renegades is the best gaming show on Tuesday Night!