Mega-Tech
From Sonic Retro
The Mega-Tech was an arcade cabinet that featured ten interchangeable Mega Drive or Master System games in an arcade cabinet, similar to Nintendo's PlayChoice-10 as coins can be inserted to increase gameplay time.
It was released in Europe in 1989 with some of the best titles at the time, such as Thunder Force II, Altered Beast, Tetris, Last Battle, Space Harrier II, and Golden Axe. Other popular Mega Drive games became availalbe as time passed, such as Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Eventually a few Master System games were ported, but the amount of games ported was small.
The arcade cabinet housed two monitors, the bottom screen is where the gameplay was displayed, the top screen housed information, such as Gameplay time remaining (which flashes green when time runs short), the game list, instructions, and a short synopsis of each game.
Hardware
It was basically a Mega Drive with timer control for arcade operations but lacked expansion hardware which would allow for connectivity to the 32X and Mega CD. The games supplied were stored in a cartridge which was the same shape used in Japan. The labels were silver and red and only had "Mega-Tech" printed on them. These cartridges are not compatible with a regular Mega Drive/Genesis due to the extra information on them stored to run the second monitor, and differences in the length of the edge connector, number of pins, pinouts, and spacing. 8 Mega-Tech game cartridge ports were stored on the system.