^The first time I saw the Sega brand was playing a Commodore 64 version of Wonder Boy. It was 1986.

I actually played a lot of Sega Master System before playing Nintendo. Games like Altered Beast, Rambo 2, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Rocky and many more were just amazing for 1986-1987. I have very fond memories of Astro Warrior and Hang On. I will never forget how colorful those games were, incredible sound too, and if you'll look at the developers behind them it was all Sega.

Sega Genesis was my favourite 16-bit console too. Franchises like Streets of Rage, Phantasy Star, Sonic, Shinobi, just couldn't get enough of the exclusives. Sega has done it all, sports, action, adventure, fighters, arcade games, role-playing games, you name it. They always created new franchises, they never got stuck only developing the same stuff over and over again. They never had the best third-party support (got Street Fighter like 2 years later, to name one big example. Sega didn't have the Konamis and the Capcoms until very late and never got the tons of games they made for Nintendo's consoles) In Japan the Genesis just couldn't compete at all. Nintendo kept creating great content, very appealing for Japanese and then they had Enix....and Squaresoft....and you know... But in America the Genesis was so good it even beat SNES in year sales in 1994! They practically ended neck-to-neck in LTD sales in USA.

Unfortunately they made costly mistakes...yeah, Sega CD, Sega 32X...that practically killed Sega for the West. Sony got into the game and the messy Saturn (no a good hardware design) after getting off to a bad start was very bad-handled by Sega of America (the Saturn did pretty well in Japan, considering PS domination of course) and quickly faded away. All these losses got carried over to the next project, the Sega Dreamcast, and competing with the mammoth Sony was very uphill for Sega and people just didn't support it. The rest is history.

I love Sega. At least the Sega I knew, not the current Sega doing Mario and Sonic and Sonic Tennis...They were daring, they always tried to trail new roads for gaming (Game Gear-color handheld in 1992-, Sega Channel, SegaNet, etc.) even if many of their endeavours ended up not being very profitable. The were talented. I still consider Yu Suzuki, Yuyi Naka and Tetsuya Mitzuguchi videogaming Gods. Well, that's some Sega history/memories for you there. SEGA!!!

It's funny that you mention Sega Channel and Seganet, they seemed to blaze the trail for a lot of the stuff going on now, even if they got pwned.  The world wasn't ready for Sega.  Sony's my favorite, their pwnage of Sega is my only real problem with them.  lol   They did seem to make good games in just about every genre, now that you mention it. 

amen....:P

EDIT:and I'm agnostic :) 

^Yeah, we can also assume Sega's "second coming" will happen someday, so we shall have faith and wait, and wait....forever. This is it, I'm plugging in my Dreamcast dammnit!

Some of my best gaming memories were on the dreamcast. Going to get it from the cupboard now.

 If I still had it I would have still kept it, but I don't have a dreamcast now, mines got stolen a few years ago...

The DC was not long on the market but when it was there it was awesome.

I don't know if anyone already said this, but to the OP I think the Saturn was the first to go online. And actually I kinda remember some service for the Genesis that would do something similar, not sure on that one.

Thumbs up though! Dreamcast rocks. I passed up buying one for 20 bucks and Grandia 3 (?) for 5. Wish I had never gotten rid of my first one though.. Heh, I will always remember 9.9.99 and my jaw hitting the floor as we played Soul Calibur and Sonic.

the greatest gaming times for me ever was on dreamcast.

superb lineup of games

the ones that stood out for me was

• phantasy star online <---------- bring them days back
• phantasy star online v2 <--------- bring them days back
• quake 3 arena
• shenmue
• jet set radio
• seamen
• ferrari challenge
• le mans 24 (better draw distance that any racer on ps2+xbox)
• crazy taxi
• chu chu rocket
• and many many more

for many people it was the 1st time they could browse the web and have an email adress, back then pc`s were £700 cheapest near me

can i also mention dreamarena chat and dreamarena planet ring was memorable, met many cool charachters on there some i still stay in contact with. so yes the dreamcast was a superb console

Ah, Toy Commander, don't know if anyone played that but... excellent.