"The advertisement of blast processing was a thinly-veiled deception that fed its audience misinformation in regards to the speed of the system."
-Rebel Gamers

Blast Processing
Proof positive that Beta-7 wasn't Sega's first hoax.

The Sega Master System(AKA SMS) was Sega's first console released on a worldwide basis and more importantly their first major step into the American games market. Sega found out in a hurry just how powerful Nintendo was in that market when they got a taste of Nintendo using its iron grip on the industry of that time to prevent many stores from even selling the SMS. Because of Nintendo's vicious policy's and attacks the SMS never made it in the US market.

So when Sega returned to the American market years later with the 16-bit Genesis console they knew they were going to need every advantage they could get. But not all the advantages they used were honest ones. Such is the case with Blast processing.

The Sega Genesis hit the market in 1989, two years sooner than the Super Nintendo Entertainment System(SNES). So it seemed a bit odd that with the newer technology available to the SNES that its processor was less than half the speed of the processor in the Genesis. However, even though the Genesis processor was over 4 MHz faster than the SNES processor, it didn't actually effect the quality of the games any due to the fact that the SNES was superior in every other way. It had more than double the memory of the Genesis and could produce 4 times as many colors on the screen at once. Speed simply wasn't a concern for Nintendo who were more interested in the depth and creativity of their games. But Sega saw this one small weakness and thus Blast Processing along with one blue hedgehog was born to take advantage of it.

A misconception many uninformed Sega fans have is that Sega designed a hedgehog that runs fast because the idea is creative. This is not the case. Sonic the Hedgehog was nothing more than a pawn used by the marketing drones of Sega in the same way that the newly invented term "Blast Processing" was. When Sega saw that their console's only advantage was a slightly faster processor they decided to build on that idea. So they created a speedy mascot and used their new imaginary technology term to hype up the speed of their console. These efforts along with some mind numbing and false TV ads fooled many Americans into beleiving the Sega Genesis was the equal or better of the SNES.

Without a doubt, Nintendo had something to say about this house of lies that Sega had built around the Genesis but to this very day many uninformaed Sega freaks still think that Blast Processing was real. Now days Sega never says a thing about Blast Processing. Back in the early 90s "Blast Processing" was what made the Genesis so great but now Sega would prefer you know nothing about the term. I wonder why?

And the Sega policy of speed over quality still lives on today in the form of one of their few profitable games. Sonic the Hedgehog.

If you want to see some examples of the totally unfounded bullshit that Sega was "blasting" us with back in the old blast processing days you can check out this place which has quite a few old TV ads.