Understanding Sega serials 101 – Japanese SEGA published games
For the 101 I’ve took the easiest part. It’s the easiest because SEGA published all their game serial (see http://sega.jp/archive/segahard/) and all games follows “almost” strict rules.
Part 1 – SG1000/SC3000
Game cartridges serial is G-10XX. G means Game and XX is the software unique identifier.
Card game serial is C- XX. C means Cart and XX is the software unique identifier
Educational cartridges serial is E-1XX. E means Educational and XX is the software unique identifier (the only two software that don’t have serials are 物理(運動と力編) and 物理(エネルギー編)
Basic cartridge serial is B-XX. B means Basic and XX is the software unique identifier.
Part 2 – MarkIII/SMS
Gold cartridges serial is G-13XX.
Silver cartridges serial is S-00X (only two are known).
Card game serial is C-5XX.
Part 3 – Game Gear
Game cartridge serial is G-3XXX.
Part 4 – MegaDrive
Here comes the only tricky part of the serials system, most of the games have a serial in the form of G-4XXX (130 to be exact), but a small amount of games have an G-5XXX serial (37) and Virtua Racing have for serial G-7001 (which can be understandable considering that it’s the only game with Sega SVP chip).
There is no clear relation between those games so I really don’t know why they don’t have an G-4XXX serial.
Part 5 – MegaCD
Game serial is G-6XXX, nothing fancy.
Part 6 – 32X
Game serial is GM- 40XX, except for Virtua Racing Deluxe, Golf Magazine Presents 36 Great Holes Staring Fred Couples and Chaotix which have GM-500X serials.
I assume that the M is for Mars (code name of the 32X). Again no clear relation between game who have G-500X serials, maybe it’s the same for MegaDrive games ?
Part 7 – Saturn
Almost all games have serial GS-9XXX. The S is for Saturn I think.
SegaNet title serial is GS-71XX
Part 8 – Dreamcast
Dreamcast is easy too, all games have for serial HDR-XXXX.
For the 102 we will explore the world of third party publisher, and it is a mess 