


Who knows how Sega would have proceeded if they stayed in the hardware game. Sega got out of the console racket afterward, and of course, Pluto was removed from our celestial batting order in 2006. Obviously, this is the direction the Dreamcast went in 1999. And it’s interesting that Pluto was looking like a Sega Saturn with built-in networking. Some of the early EA releases and early SEGA launch titles may require you to use the MODE bottom to operate properly. The screen size and detail does make some games harder to play, especially if they have lots of small text. It will work with most of the SEGA Genesis game library. Neptune was a thought exercise in combining a Genesis with the 32X attachment, but it got no further than internal planning. You'd need to add a video-in port too: if the nomad's LCD accepts RGB and composite sync that should simply involve a bit of soldering and making a custom cable. The SEGA Nomad was the first 16-Bit handheld released in the US. What of the rest of the planets? Jupiter was supposed to be a cartridge-based successor to the Mega Drive/Genesis, but it never launched. The Nomad packed much back, by the way - it doesn’t look like much in the front, but remember, this thing could play Genesis cartridges, so it was by no means a pocket gaming system. It looks larger than the Nomad, but that’s probably because of the asymmetrical design of the production Nomad’s case. That makes the Nomad the first prototype to have a planet codename on the unit Sega manufactured. In the rousing gaming documentary Console Wars, the good guys win - and lose, too
