Console: | Sega Mega Drive |
TV Standard: | Region Not Set |
Developer(s): | Sega |
Publisher(s): | Sega |
Release Date: | 1994-08-10 |
Players: | 1 |
Co-op: | No |
ESRB: | Not Rated |
Type: | Sandbox |
Game Factory was a service offered by Blockbuster Video in the United States for a short period after 1994. It was a joint venture between Blockbuster, Sega of America and the Blockbuster-IBM project New Leaf Entertainment (and manufacturing subsidiary Fairway Technologies).
The concept involved customers renting Sega Mega Drive video games stored on reprogrammable flash cartridges. Avoiding the need to stock potentially hundreds, if not thousands of official video game cartridges for rent, Blockbuster could instead use a Game Factory cartridge, flash the contents of a ROM image onto the memory inside, and distribute that instead. When the customer had finished borrowing the game, the cartridge could then be flashed with another ROM image and be recycled for further use