Little things you wish Sega had done differently

I'm British and live in one of the most poorest parts of not just Wales, but the entire UK. Everyone I knew, from close friends to people I would talk with in the two local games shops who were all buying a PS2 Pal launch day or had a imported PS2 wanted a PS2 for a games machine not some DVD player. It was about the hype of the system being so powerful it could handle ToyStory in real-time, over 77 million polygons, how Iraq was buying over 500 units for its defences and talk of games with 'emotion'. IMO, even if the PS2 didn't have DVD playback it would have sold millions and millions regardless. I remember travelling up to my import shop and talking with Lee (the boss) not long after E3 2000 and it was so.... depressing because all the SEGA fans in the shop knew it was over with that E3 2000 MGS2 trailer It was just so good and so far ahead of anything on the DC. It was a game any system loves, a game that makes people want to buy the hardware, like for Sonic, Mario 64, GT.


Also, I don't think Piracy played a part, if anything it helped sales of the PS1. I saw sales explode in the late 90's thanks to how easy and simple it was to mod your PS1; In my local Tesco's car park a guy would mod your PS1 or sell you a collection of copied games every Wednesday night, he was rolling it in. I really didn't know anyone who didn't have their PS1 modded, much like the OG XBox. I'm sure for both it helped make people buy the hardware and SONY made so much money on the back of massive hardware sales and what it could then charge in royalties

SEGA's trouble was it couldn't sell enough hardware in the UK never mind software and this was the case in Japan too. Japan just gave up on the DC the day SEGA had to cancel 400,000 Pre Orders in Japan and delay key software , the Japanese launch was even worse that SEGA American's handling of the Saturn launch and that's saying something, SEGA Europe was run by muppets, spending SEGA's money for fun on football without a clue what they were doing or having a good football game and their project management was shocking, with basically every 1st party game going over budget and being delayed, other than Toy Commander

It's truly shocking. SEGA Europe also delayed the launch of Virtual Tennis in the UK for the New York Open instead of launching it during Wimbledon. It was just the muppet show running SEGA Europe

 

Speaking of games and what I wished SEGA would have done.

I really wanted and hoped the rumours were true of AM#2 making a Racing Mega mix title that would have been so cool. I would have loved to have seen AM#2 make a sequel to Power Drift using the Outrun 2 engine for it to use the Chihiro board and to have supported the Cycraft Cab
For SEGA to have ported both Virtua Cop 3 and Oille King to the OG XBox and to have used the Spikeout engine and team to have made a Police Story Jackie Chan game with QTF events like Jackie hanging on the bus. To have a made a proper sequel to F355 but with a choice of various Ferrari cars. I also wish SEGA had handled the mergers differently (Smilebit into UGA, AM1 into AM3) and also looked after Yu Suzuki far better, he should have been top of SEGA control, not Toshiro Nagoshi


I still feel Yu Suzuki got one more amazing racer left in him

 

The print advert is almost as bad, save for presence of a single screenshot.

 

Truly shocking mate, SEGA Europe were run by muppets in those days.

I can't agree with that at all. If we talking Master System me and brother played the hell out of Great Soccer (the game had the best overhead kicks ever) The Mega Drive was king of the sports games and I really loved Evander Holyfield and Greatest Heavyweights is still for me the best boxing game ever made. World Wide Soccer and Baseball were some of the best reasons to own a Sega Saturn, Decathlete is the best track and field game ever made and NFK 2K and Virtua Tennis are some of the finest sports games ever made.

Also, you aren't being that fair SONY didn't make or publish MGS or Resident Evil and SONY were also making or producing Sports games... F1 helped sell millions of PS1, SONY also published GameDay on the PS which really helped with the PS launch in USA and developed and published Addais Soccer in the UK, along with This Is Football and other sports titles

 

But Sega's Japanese sports titles totally are that. The extra modes in Virtua Tennis are also more goofy just as one example.

An an arcade company that was always on the brink with new technology (3D graphics, printing cards...), it made sense to ride the wave with new sports titles.

 

Hey some of Sega's sports titles were quite literally Blue Sky experiences... because they were made by BlueSky Software


I think you do yourself a disservice treating things like Virtua Tennis as a sports game. I mean yes, it is a sports game, but it's also one of the "take a mundane thing and make it amazing" games Sega were all about in the 1990s and early 2000s, e.g. turning NASCAR into Daytona USA. I've sat through a lot of old sports games for Sega Retro and the Japanese output in particular holds up. Decathlete might still be the best track and field game. Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 has a much more pleasant vibe than FIFAs of the era and likely holds up well today.


I'm not sure I ever got a definitive answer on this but they say Sega's NFL/NBA/NHL/baseball games are better than their EA counterparts. It's not the same level of shovelware as you'd get from other companies.

 

Hey disagreements are fine and make Forums far more interesting. SEGA can't really help what games 3rd parties make and also Konami made a few sports games themselfs on the PS and PS2. I wished SEGA did more racers on the Saturn and DC myself

 

Yeah, I've got to disagree on sports games too. Whether you're talking about the more serious releases (Wimbledon, Sega Worldwide Soccer, the 2K games) or those that prioritised arcade fun (Decathlete, Virtua Tennis, Beach Spikers), these are games that I had fun with in the past and do return to today.

This depends on the era - for example, NFL 97 on the Saturn is renowned for being a steaming pile of garbage. The 2K era was when Sega really had to take sports development seriously because EA didn't support the Dreamcast, and it shows.

NFL 2K was competitive in quality terms with EA's Madden games right out of the gate, but couldn't compete in sales terms in the third party landscape. In an attempt to get people to try its game, Sega dropped the price of ESPN NFL 2K5 to $19.95 on launch. EA was genuinely scared by this development, and responded by dropping Madden 2005 to $29.95. It subsequently secured an exclusive licence to produce NFL games in December 2004, effectively killing all competition and allowing it to raise its prices once again. (EA was sued for this in 2008, and settled in 2012.) Some players still consider ESPN NFL 2K5 to be the best NFL game ever.

NBA 2K was also considered to be an extremely strong basketball series right from the off, and quickly became competitive with EA's NBA Live series. These days, NBA 2K is the dominant brand - EA withdrew from the basketball market between NBA Live 10 and NBA Live 14, and hasn't produced a game since NBA Live 19.

NHL 2K's first outing was considered to be decent, but a step behind EA's games. NHL 2K2 was a marked improvement and the subsequent three games under Sega were generally considered to be better than EA's NHL games. Post-Sega, the quality of the NHL 2K games declined through the HD generation and the series was ultimately discontinued.

World Series Baseball 2K1 was generally considered to be disappointing, and 2K2 wasn't a great deal better. The 2K3 effort was widely praised over EA's MVP Baseball 2003, but by the time Sega's association with the series came to an end with ESPN Major League Baseball 2K5, EA's series was on top. Take-Two signed an exclusivity deal with MLB in 2005, ensuring that only 2K Games and first-party developers could produce MLB games. The quality of 2K's efforts declined during the HD generation, lagging behind Sony's MLB: The Show series, and the 2K series was officially discontinued in 2014.

 

You see, I've got to disagree with that too and it also depends on what sport you are into, because while SEGA America made sure to have a quality NFL game on the DC SEGA America did not for the Saturn and while SEGA Japan made sure to have a quality football game on the Saturn (and also the MD) SEGA Japan did not for the DC. For me SEGA started to take sports seriously midway through the Mega Drive life and produced some quality sports games. For me Greatest Heavyweights is still the best boxing game ever made, F1 Beyond The Limit was a labour of love for the team and had so many features way ahead of most console F1 games.

On the Saturn the WBS games still stand as the best baseball games around, WorldWide Soccer series while overrated, were still quality football games and better than anything footy game on the DC by SEGA Japan. NHL 98 on the Saturn is the closest any developer got to a 3D version of EA hockey on the MD and NBA Action and NBA Action 98 were quality basketball games, you also have the likes of All Japan Pro Wrestling, Winter Heat, Deacathlete which were all top quality sports games.

 

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that Sega wasn't making good sports games pre-Dreamcast. I just feel that it wasn't quite as important for the company to do so when EA's dominant sports games were available, and that Sega didn't really have so much of a joined-up sports market strategy as a result. It's hard to really pick out an identity for the Sega Sports in the Saturn era in particular, as the logo was slapped on a whole bunch of games that don't really feel like they have an awful lot to do with one another - everything from content-light arcade conversions like Sega Rally and Decathlete to games that were meant as proper sims like NFL 97 and World Series Baseball 98.

Once the Dreamcast era rolls around, the American sports side of things clearly gets a lot more focus - there's an in-house studio (Visual Concepts) handling things for the biggest sports, and the establishment of the 2K brand gave a level of cross-game brand cohesion that never existed before. I only wish that the effort had been broader and incorporated more popular international sports, beyond the late-era rebranding of Virtua Tennis 2 as Tennis 2K2. If Sega had produced a UEFA 2K (or whatever) that came anywhere near being what NFL 2K or NBA 2K were for their sports, some of the money spent on football shirt sponsorship might have made a little sense.

 

Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000 -> Sega Worldwide Soccer 2000: Euro Edition -> UEFA Dream Soccer
Word on the street is they get better with each revision, but I haven't sat down long enough with either to say whether that means much. Everything I've read over the years suggest the Saturn SWWS games were better.

Football was a bit of a problem for Sega in Europe - the console had to make do with Virtua Striker 2 for a while, and then it got these. I don't think they ever quite matched the efforts on the PlayStation.

 

As someone who never cared for sports games, I definitely would have preferred to get something like MGS on Sega consoles over Sega sports games.

On a less subjective level, I feel the Saturn would have sold better if it had more games like that. The problem with the Saturn was that it was too focused on brief arcade experiences despite being such an expensive system, so players didn't get enough hours of play for their money. More games like MGS or Panzer Dragoon Saga would have quelled that thirst for longer games.

That, and actually bringing RPGs to the west.

 

The SEGA sports logo was put on all sorts of Games in the Mega Drive era too even the FMV game Prize Fighter had the SEGA sports logo LOL. I agree with you on cross game use on the DC mind.

Where I felt SEGA messed up on its sports range was not having the full F1 season in F1 LIVE on the Saturn and not having the World Wide Soocer Team, make a sequel on the DC with near Model 3 visuals.

I also felt SEGA Rally 2 on the DC needed to be delayed. It needed it's visuals to be closer to the Mode! 3 game and it needed to be a showcase of the modem with online head to head, uploading and downloading replays and also online rankings.

 

Not trying to downplay the popularity of sports games. But sports games and short arcade experiences alone can't sustain a system like the Saturn. When it came out, the industry was undergoing a noticeably shift. Consoles were switching from cartridges to CDs, and players expected to get more content for their money. Especially on an expensive system like the Saturn. Yet this one focused on shorter games, and the few longer ones it got tended to stay in Japan, or came out too late.

The N64 had less games than the Saturn, and the games it got were much more expensive. That didn't stop it from surpassing the Saturn in sales, as players actually felt they were getting their money's worth with it.

 

Oh, one thing Sega definitely should've done differently: be more aggressive in securing third-party support during the development of the Dreamcast. The Saturn's lack of it carried over to the Dreamcast and it definitely put Sega at a pretty big disadvantage compared to Sony. Not just EA, plenty of popular franchises skipped the Dreamcast - I think the thing would've been a much easier sell for a lot of consumers if it got the likes of Tekken, Metal Gear, Duke Nukem, Castlevania, etc. early in its lifespan.

 

Again though, MGS was not developed or published by SONY It was a 3rd party title and Konami didn't look to bring it's AAA stuff to the Saturn or DC sadly . Also, SEGA made plenty of different games for the Saturn that had nothing to with sports I mean what other game looks sounds or plays like NiGHTS SEGA even looked to developer it's own In House RE game with Deep Fear.

Sadly many of the better 3rd party Saturn games or SEGA's own RPGe never made it over to the West, but you can thank the muppets at SOA for that ...