Past meets present: Assault Suit Leynos

It’s the summer of 1990, and the Sega Genesis has already been out for nearly a year in North America. Barely anyone knows this, of course — the original Sonic the Hedgehog wouldn’t launch until the next June, and that’s when Sega’s little black box would truly take off in North America. According to collected sources, it sold half-a-million units in 1989, twice that in its second year, but then 1.5 million alone in 1991 and another 4.5 million in 1992, before hitting its single-year peak — and a 60 percent market share — in 1993. Before the summers of Sonic, though, the Genesis was already seeing some high-quality games that showed off what this 16-bit system was capable of. They just weren’t gaining much traction, which was a problem that persisted throughout the console’s life for non-Sonic titles, and the rapid growth of the platform itself didn’t alleviate this any. Just because, eventually, roughly 35 million Genesis and Mega Drive consoles were sold worldwide doesn’t mean that…