The History of SErvice GAmes

From what I have read, SEGA fucked themselves in the ass with the Saturn by releasing it early, and not letting developers finish games.

 

its marketing and its kind of candy coated. to be honest slot machines and arcade games in either country stemmed from uhh.. lets just say. . "gangsters" ... it uhh rhymes with "coffee uh" or "blah kuza" . .so the military base content was interesting.

one sided and sort of like the two tales of sonic this is the american telling. it has a sunday afternoon movie vibe to it.

imo sega (as it relates to theUS) has a history of making one off hardware that is supported as long as the software money is good then the next one off hardware line is introduced. dreamcast was badass and who didnt think it would be supported?.. just like every other previous product that fizzled into obscurity. . .to say sega hurt in anyway in the transition to software only is incorrect. in short. you could give away the hardware for free as all the money is made on the games. so selling the same game to 3 consoles means thrice the money. develop game assets once and derive multiple properties from it. games as a rule are derivative. each incarnation of sega hardware has mostly alienated its predecessor. that was the failure. nintendo didnt sell a billion units of gameboy then suddenly make it obsolete with its next flagship product. production costs go down over time but you don't see a profit if you spend it all on marketing and fancy real estate and sister sites and more employees to end up showing a loss. ign couldnt do a story about the sega shell game that really was the history imo.

to say it is a game of catch-up or keeping up with the technology jones is incorrect. im only commenting on the 88-92 katz/kalinsky early origins timeline and sunshine and rainbow presentation of the past..many elements of history unmentioned.


but most puzzling is a japanese company started by us soldiers, moved to japan, ran, and fragmented the brand, and then dude dies in zurich switzerland?

"Sega originated in Standard Games, a company founded in Hawaii in 1940, which moved to Tokyo in 1951 to become Service Games (Sega) of Japan. The company began by producing coin-operated games for the US forces stationed in Japan" these three dudes single-handedly fired up the arcade industry in japan and subsequent global game surge by making games for servicemen seems dubious. someone must have snuck one of them machines off the base at some point because they seemed quite popular elsewhere as well. theres a history of sega and a history of sega of america fork in the road.

 

An amusing read to me, I usually don't have patience for even an article of 3 pages, but in this one, I've read it all.

What did bug me on the article was that when they were talking about Sonic the Hedgehog 1, they popped up Sonic Rush artwork and Sonic Advance 2 sprites, and when talking about Sonic Adventure, they showed a Sonic Adventure 2 Battle artwork. Seriously, what the fuck?

And I totally agree with the last sentence:

Shenmue, NiGHTS, Jet Set Radio, Panzer Dragoon, Sonic the Hedgehog (specially Sonic CD), SEGA has a large variety of great and incredibly creative titles. It's a shame that nowadays, those creative titles are too far and few in between, and even when they do such mediocre games like NiGHTS Journey of Dreams and Shadow the Hedgehog (seriously, why wasn't Iizuka fired yet?), you can see that SEGA still puts a lot of effort into some others. Phantasy Star Zero for the DS has graphics that even Square-Enix, known to be a great supporter of the DS and always pushing the Nintendo handheld's hardware to the limit, can even be jealous. No matter how abysmal the Sonic game is, you know that it will always have a great soundtrack. Sonic Next-Gen anyone?

 

ah but they didn't in Japan, that was one of the reasons the Dreamcast didn't float many boats there - because the Japanese market didn't really see much of a need to completely abandon the Saturn in favour of it.

Backwards compatibility is something that would have probably saved all Sega's consoles. But I guess it just wasn't to be.




But I've always seen IGN as Nintendo fans. I don't really think they know as much about Sega as they claim. They don't appear to know how to fix transparency issues on those Sonic Advance 2 sprites anyway - I'm sure I've seen that be used before too.

 

I found this article to be a particularly interesting read, I knew some of the stuff already as I had an old newspaper article about the early beginnings of SEGA and its formation, but its nice to see a positive article regarding SEGA, they deserve it!

 

Ok... I have been silent for a long time because im not a full member yet and I am (or was trying to) save my posts for a later better use but this is one topic I must respond.

First, there were many mistakes SEGA made but the biggest one of them in my eyes was the rejection of (what is now known as) "Sony Playstation". This really makes me angry but I have no idea why.

Second, SEGA could pick themselves up if they really want to and release another console but it's not really going to happen because others are too far ahead. The only way I think SEGA has a chance of getting a bit of a kick to start making consoles is ( thsi has been said many times and will be again) when sega makes a proper 2d comeback, restoring sonic like who he was back in the genesis era, but... thats not going to happen either, now will it?

Third, I have no idea why I just commented on this topic. It felt like it needed it. Seriously.

 

That's bad ass.

 

What's really crazy is that, Sega had the chance to use the hardware that would become the playstation and the N64, and they didn't take it. That has to be one of the dumbest decisions ever, instead of simple hardware, they choose extremly hard hardware to program to put in the saturn.

That has to be the smartest plan ever, drive walmart insane by advertising the headquarter town with sega software and hardware so they will beg you to stop it by selling the hardware and software in walmart, that's hardcore :P .

 

I thought something was off when I read that :/

 

The text before it said about Sony and SEGA's deals about doing or not a "SEGA PlayStation", it mentioned the Nintendo offer as well. Seems like both Nintendo and SEGA refused, Sony made the PlayStation all by itself and got bigger sales than both companies' consoles.

But then again, the text might be slightly innacurate. I trust more you Sonic Retro guys =P

 

I've always campaigned for Sega to be pronounced "Sir Gay," as it is more accurately based on the truncations.

 

See, but Sega had a CD-based system out on the market already, unlike Nintendo, as a Turbografx competitor. Seems odd that Sony would be contacting or working with them -- I wasn't aware Sega had any involvement with Sony ever, really!

This wins.

 

<!--quoteo(post=303200:date=Apr 24 2009, 04:28 PM:name=doc eggfan)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (doc eggfan @ Apr 24 2009, 04:28 PM)

 

Australians say Sea-gah, because it rhymes with Bega, a town on the south coast that makes Bega cheese. And since we were one of the first Western nations to get Sega in the home, if it can't be Sir-gay, then I reckon our pronounciation takes precedent.

 

Even as a dream, that actually sounds genuinely tragic.