Sega people say Sega things on Twitter

RDNexus · Jul 21, 2024

https://twitter.com/Genki_JPN/status/1813492743798432251

Does anyone here know anything more specific about this?
(not sure if it's the right topic to present this matter...)

Chimes · Jul 21, 2024

It pains me to say that I don't actually know who that would be... because there's a lot of people who say mean things about Sega on the internet
Since they're the Sonic guys the people who do that stuff are like blades of grass

Pirate Dragon · Jul 23, 2024

Ted909 said:

Okunari is reckoning the original NiGHTS website (albeit with a different URL) may well be the oldest official Sega example still online as it once was, in response to some more Sega Fax Club postings from Tadashi Takezaki. Have we ever tried to quantify this?
Click to expand...

Yeah, that seems likely, Sega's US site launched in 1994, but I'm pretty sure nothing has survived from early on. Sega's Japanese site launched in 1995, the earliest I've seen is ~1995-09;

Late 1995/Early 1996;

~1996-03;

It was rebranded as "Entertainment Universe" in June 1996, and we get the first archive from 1996-11, which is actually a mirror which had stopped getting updated then and was archived a bit later.

The NiGHTS pages have update dates on them, the earliest is 1996-03-27, but the modern URL drops the update dates at the bottom of the page, and some other pages have minor differences. This page from 1996-05-24 had the update date at the top, instead of below the bottom bar, thus the modern URL contains exactly the same content. This is probably the oldest page exactly as it was, but the other ones are still very close, and some are largely how they would have looked 1996-03-27.

Here's the NiGHTS "site" from 2001, and it still has the update dates and some other minor differences to the modern URL.

Overlord · Jul 23, 2024

My favourite bit of that last screenshot is that the character encodings are wrong. Obviously taken from an English computer, not from Sega Japan.

Pirate Dragon · Jul 24, 2024

Yeah, here's one with the correct encoding, but a bit blurry;

And an expanded screenshot of the previous layout;

I managed to find the original gif from that home page;

Prior to sega.co.jp they did have some corporate pages on parent CSK's website, this one is from ~1995-07;

That page did get archived in 1997, with the data for FY 1995, so it's a bit later, but the sega logo looks the same, so that gif may well be the oldest surviving file from Sega's Japanese web presence. Some other corporate pages on CSK's site as of 1995-10-21;

Introduction to "SEGA" .
-- Japan (SEGA Enterprises, Ltd) and U.S.(Sega of America)

Some of which probably migrated to here when sega.co.jp launched. The corporate history page goes up to April 1995, so that was probably transferred directly over.

There was also a page on CSK's site with clips from Sega Video Magazine which I've also seen links to back to 1995.

Edit: Removed some of the content from CSK's site as it was related to CSK, not Sega.

Level Zone Act · Sep 9, 2024

Peter Moore posted this for the anniversary of the Dreamcast's US launch. Apparently he's doing a book!

https://x.com/PeterMooreLFC/status/1832866845256483283

A quarter of a century ago tomorrow, on 9/9/99, we launched the @SEGA Dreamcast here in North America. While the journey did not end the way we wished it had, we remain proud of the path we paved in online gaming, and it remains a console that is beloved by so many.

Here is an extract from my upcoming autobiography that details that wonderful, wacky, groundbreaking period in video game history:

The Dreamcast was going to be the first console in history with online capability, and a broad variety of functions unlike anything that had gone before it. The console had the Windows CE operating system, so it was much easier to program games for than the Saturn, and also possessed a NAOMI mother board, similar to what was found in the arcades, so that those games could easily be transferred for home consumption.
By April 1999, in front of packed house of magazine writers and other media people and gamers in San Francisco, I made the public teaser/pitch for the new console: The Sega Dreamcast would roll out that September, and revolutionize video games. “We’re taking gamers where gaming is going,” was my message. Capitalizing on the industry-wide penchant for numerical shorthand, we announced that the Dreamcast would launch September 9th—9.9.99. By then, we had locked down all the advertising on MTV’s Video Music Awards to be broadcast the night of the Dreamcast’s release. From there, it was a sprint to the day of release.
With one jarring bump. In the midst of the intense buildup, in June of 1999, Bernie Stolar was relieved of his duties as president. The official announcement was vague, but it was clear that Bernie’s blunt personality had been rubbing the Japanese the wrong way. So three months before the launch that would make or break the company’s future, the president was out, and the new president was… me. I received a call late one afternoon from Big Sato, who said simply, “I want to let you know that Mr. Stolar is no longer in his position. We would like you to assume his role as president and COO.”
It was a classic case of battlefield promotion. I had been in the video game industry for six months and suddenly I was running Sega of America. Of course, if Sega hadn’t been 90 days out from the Dreamcast launch, they likely would have conducted a more rigorous search and picked someone with more experience. But I had bonded well with the company’s intermediaries—including Makoto Kaneshiro, the embedded executive in San Francisco (who undoubtedly was an informant for Japan), whose office was across the hall from mine—and received good reviews for how we delivered the big rollout announcement in April.
It was clear that this was the chance for Sega to transcend all the bad publicity around the demise of the Saturn. In addition to the launch of the Dreamcast, we also boasted an unprecedented lineup of games. Typically, a new console rollout would be accompanied by eight to ten new games on the day of release. Between our nine in-house studios and the licensed games through third-party developers, the Dreamcast launch would include some 19 new games, the majority of which were based on new intellectual property. Almost every studio of consequence in the business – save EA, which was gearing up for the following spring’s PS2 launch – delivered a game. In addition to Sega’s perennial hit Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic Adventure, the first 3D Sonic game), there was the epic martial combat game Soul Calibur, racing games like Hydro Thunder, sports simulations like NFL 2K and NBA 2K (with icons like Randy Moss and Alan Iverson signing on for the massive “It’s Thinking” ad campaign accompanying the rollout.)
In the weeks leading up to launch, as we started fielding orders from all the relevant buyers, it became pretty clear that we were going to do a staggering amount of opening-day business. That started me wondering where our opening day revenues would land in relation to other entertainment releases. I did some checking, and realized that the movie Stars Wars: Phantom Menace had enjoyed the biggest opening 24 hours in movie history, grossing over $24 million in ticket sales. Based on our estimates, we were going to go well past that mark. I started talking about the Dreamcast launch being the biggest opening day in American entertainment media history.
On the day of release, 9.9.99, I was in New York City for the VMAs. That morning, I walked into the Toys R Us in Times Square. The executives at the chain were still peeved because they’d received only 30,000 consoles for their initial shipment (they’d wanted twice as many, but we were striving to balance our initial production run of about 300,000 consoles between all our major retailers). The line to get into Toys R Us that morning snaked around the corner, and the sight of people buying as many as a half-dozen games along with their console confirmed all our hopes. The VMAs that night were energetic and revelatory, featuring Ricky Martin livin’ la Vida Loca and Britney delivering a crowd-pleasing Baby One More Time. At almost every commercial break in between, Sega was peppering the audience with variations on the “It’s Thinking” campaign.
By the next day, back in San Francisco, it was clear that we’d not only broken the single-day record, we’d destroyed it, showing $99.4 million in sell-through revenue. This was big news in the mainstream media, which was just then starting to grasp the broad reach of the video-game business. Sega’s numbers remained encouraging all the way through the Christmas season and a bit beyond, as we were selling consoles as quickly as we could produce them.
Click to expand...

Ted909 · Sep 19, 2024

According to Kenji Sasaki, the cover background graphic for the recently-announced Sega Rally Championship 30th Anniversary Album was made up of temporary assets and data only used on the game's location test at Ikebukuro GiGO - and he thinks it was originally put together for a subsequent overseas magazine article whilst the original arcade version was still in development. The car bonnet polygon texture at the bottom was apparently also made quickly to replace one for a car they had to remove because of licencing issues.

I can't find the piece that uses it among the ones we have linked on Sega Rally Championship/Magazine articles. Does anyone recognise where it came from?

Black Squirrel · Sep 19, 2024

I've seen that image before - I'll have a hunt.

EDIT:
https://archive.org/details/sega-magazine-17-may-1995/page/n74/mode/1up
Hey look, Richard Leadbetter.

This has pre-release arcade screenshots so it might be this piece. It was also used for Sega Rally Championship Hisshou Kouryaku Hou

Nicolaas Hamman · Jan 11, 2025

Back in 2018/2019, Hiroshi Kawaguchi would every now and then show off images of his old documents for sound making.

I know the SEGASONIC THE HEGDEHOG ones were already uploaded
https://info.sonicretro.org/SegaSonic_the_Hedgehog/Development

But I don't think his other ones for Fantasy Zone, Dynamite Dux, Sword of Vermilion and Rent A Hero were, so I've added them.
https://segaretro.org/Fantasy_Zone/Development
https://segaretro.org/Dynamite_Dux/Development
https://segaretro.org/Sword_of_Vermilion/Development
https://segaretro.org/Rent_A_Hero/Development

Also Pit Pot, those images aren't sound-related even though he did later realise he was the composer.
https://segaretro.org/Pit_Pot/Development

Still should upload the sheet music he's shared for Out Run and GP Rider, I'd assume that still fits in the Game development images category.

Sega people say Sega things on Twitter

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