SYSTEM 24 HEAVEN

SEGA'S SYSTEM 24 ARCADE HARDWARE HAS BEEN CALLED 'OBSCURE' BY SOME, AND THE GAMES THAT RAN ON IT CONSIDERED 'CURIOSITIES'. AT RETRO GAMER WE FEEL THERE HAS BEEN SOME KIND OF MISUNDERSTANDING. JOIN US AS WE UNCOVER THE REALITY

- MARTYN CARROLL

When you think back to Sega’s arcade heyday in the Eighties, games like Space Harrier, Out Run and After Burner spring to mind first. It was these show-stopping SuperScaler titles, in their deluxe sit-down forms, that drew crowds and defined Sega as perhaps the most exciting arcade developer of the era.

Yet the arcade industry was a battleground back then, with manufacturers fiercely competing for floor space. Sega couldn’t rely on one or two high-profile titles per year to keep itself at the forefront of the scene, so it utilised different arcade hardware to produce a steady stream of releases that provided operators with the widest possible choice in terms of cost and game type. Take 1988 as an example. In the year that Sega released Galaxy Force and Power Drift, two stunning titles running on its then flagship Y Board hardware, it put out another 14 arcade games. Among these were several System 16 titles such as Altered Beast, Dynamite Dux and Passing Shot, plus games on three other formats, including an arcade version of Tetris that ran on what was essentially Master System hardware.