Tangentially related Sega stories

I've also heard this was a thing - I think it's specific to the Super Deluxe versions of the game (i.e. the ones with moving seats), and for whatever reason it was tricky to emulate (although maybe because it secretly wasn't real??)

I went through a phase of hunting out arcade game cheat codes - I'm sure there was one that only be triggered once the machine had clocked up x hours of play, meaning realistically you'd never be see it unless it had been running in a real world venue for a few weeks or months.

 

The tangled webs we weave.

We had a slightly wrong redirect - "Mattel" was pointing to Mattel Interactive, the company's short-lived stint with video games. But of course, "regular" Mattel as an entity is relevant to Sega's history too, as its toys and games have turned up in Sega products, so check it out: Mattel no longer redirects.

But there's another part of this story - an earlier short-lived video game-related subsidiary that put out this thing:



The Intellivision, by "Mattel Electronics". That's what Wikipedia says, and when are they ever wrong? Mattel Electronics" is in the logo printed on the console and its accompanying box, printed material and various catalogues and advertising - what's the problem?

"Mattel, Inc." has existed as a toy company since 1945, and at some point in the late 1970s (77? 78?) they started producing electronic handhelds:



These were marketed under the "Mattel Electronics" brand (or at least later ones were), because that's what it was - a brand, like Barbie and Hot Wheels. If there were "electronics" involved, the product was marketed as Mattel Electronics (though given there was a product division associated with these things, I guess one could argue it was an "entity"), but the creator, manufacturer and name they put in the advertisments was still plain old "Mattel".

In 1979 Mattel released the Intellvision under this branding (kinda), and it became a cash cow for a bit. Thing is, while all (US) Intellivisions have MATTEL ELECTRONICS printed on the units themselves, Intellivision became its own brand, and the Mattel name was seemingly downplayed so they could sell the system up-market. But it was always Mattel, Inc. in the small print, and that seems to have been the case until 1981.

Judging from what I've read, the Intellivision was so successful that Mattel spun off its electronics division as a separate company, and this is where "Mattel Electronics, Inc." comes into play. This is the entity subsequently collapsed after the North American video game crash, and threatened the Mattel empire with near bankruptcy. It became the INTV Corporation in 1984, died in 1990, and the rights have bounced around ever since.


So by my reckoning, the Intellivision was released by Mattel in 1979, and then became a product of a newly created Mattel Electronics in 1981. So if anyone says "the console was made by Mattel Electronics in 1979", you can point out that at the time, "Electronics" was just a brand and didn't strictly "make" anything, and everybody on the internet is wrong.

Though Wikipedia already kinda knew this because it contradicts itself:

Yes this is absolutely top-tier pedantry. Welcome to the internet.

Spoiler

oh uh, top top top-tier pedantry:

The console (as in, the box you insert games into which makes them work) is technically known as the "Master Component". "Intellivision" refers to the system as a whole, i.e. the console, controllers, leads and games working together as one singular Intellivision platform. Back when systems were actually... systems.

You may remember this noise from later consoles: the NES "Control Deck" and the Sega "Power Base" - the "console" is part of the "system", it is not the system. But don't worry about it.

 

This was annoying me:

This is how dedicated I am to the cause: I "completed" this game this afternoon to see if there was a credits sequence. There isn't. And yes there is a story mode, and it ends in baking a pie.



Turns out this game was effectively re-released just a couple months later as the pie-less Get!! Colonies. Both were sold at a budget price, but they're a bit miserable for Dreamcast games (we're talking a similar level to Windows Minesweeper or Solitaire), so to release it twice strikes me as a huge waste of resources. At least without online play.


The origins of this are a bit weird though. According to Sega, the concept comes from a company known as "Midnight Synergy". They still exist and seem to want to sell you tat. Colony is still listed on the website - judging from screenshots it seems to have considerably more stuff in it than these Dreamcast releases, but it's the same basic idea. It was released (presumably earlier) in 1999, the product of what looks like two Dutch brothers, one doing code, the other graphics.

Thing is, I'm not sure Midnight Synergy really ought to get credit for this idea. I mean first of all, the 1999 game is a pseudo-remake of a 1991 Atari ST release the brothers put out:


it's not isometric, but the rules are the same. This is labeled as a "test version", but the internet seems to think this is a public domain release... and if the concept is in the public domain, is it yours to license to Sega?

And didn't you just steal the concept anyway?

Because this is Ataxx from 1990, and other than having fancy level designs, it's the same thing (it even uses the term "colony"). And Ataxx owes its existence to a 1988 home computer game called "Infection" - Virgin Mastertronic picked up the rights and handed them to the Leland Corporation, also releasing Spot: The Video Game (predecessor of Cool Spot) along the way. It was also in the 1993 PC game, 7th Guest .

So it's not really 1999, or 1991, but 1988.

Or 1883, because all of these implementations are glorified Reversi.

Infection is different to Reversi (or Othello, the "standardised" version of Reversi), but you can play it on a Reversi board and the goal is the same. It would be a faff to play it manually with all the disk flipping , but I have a hard time believing that nobody invented the idea in the 105 years before Infection was programmed.


And anyway, who wants to play the "square" versions of these games, when Hexxagons are the bestagons.


A better job was done in 1993. And an online remake has existed since time immemorial:

https://hexxagon.com/

 

I'm sure I could solve this if I could be bothered, but I can't, so I won't.

I noticed a few places on Sega Retro were pointing towards Cartoon Network, so I thought I'd write a quick page. Nickelodeon has had one for a while, so it only seems fair.


So here's a fun fact: the internet doesn't know what Cartoon Network is. A company? A television channel? An animation studio? Is it secretly Turner? Is it secretly Warner Bros.? It is secretly Hanna-Barbera? Is it everything? Is it nothing?


Wikipedia claims to have the answer - "The Cartoon Network, Inc."... except if you search for that online you find... Wikipedia, and people copying Wikipedia. The sources are a bit flimsy and it's not mentioned on Cartoon Network's own website... which means they're either hiding their history, or the history is wrong. You can track the life and times of Ted Turner and the parent companies pretty easily, but the current business structure isn't forthcoming - I'd have to dig into annual reports and the Wayback Machine, and I don't feel like doing that today.

Do we care? Kind of - Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku credits "Cartoon Network", but if it really means "The Cartoon Network (Inc.)", the page needs renaming. Shenmue the Animation credits Adult Swim, but the page says Cartoon Network - I'm not sure how correct the terms are.


Thing is, millions of kids were exposed to Cartoon Network, and some of us grew up to be pathetic single men with too much time on their hands. Wikipedia might be right, but I'm surprised it isn't super obvious - it has that "Sonic the Hedgehog was released on the 23rd June 1991" vibe about it.


Just a curiosity - a few days ago YouTube notified me of KnowledgeHusk's "nobody cares about AI anymore" video, and while I'm not sure I fully agree (because it's still an active buzzword where I'm from), it did make me think about the productivity question. I would guess that if I ask any AI algorithm about the history of Cartoon Network, they'd all tell the above tale, because they all use the internet as a base, and Wikipedia's claims are so widespread. In this situation, I'd want to double check anything the script generated... and at that point, you might as well do the research on your own.

 

I was checking Sega's 1995 annual report for something, and a couple of paragraphs caught my eye:

https://archive.org/details/sega-annual-report-1995/Sega Annual Report (1995)/page/n5/mode/2up
(we have this on the wiki, but it's easier to read on archive.org)

I came across some similarly weirdly worded language the other day from a similar point in time. It turns out, the whole concept of "multi-media"... didn't exist until 1993. As in, it wasn't a word that was used.

But unlike other words that weren't used until a specified point in time, e.g. "e-mail" or "internet", apparently for the briefest of periods, this term was being used to entice investors. You know, just like "blockchain" and now "AI" - doesn't matter what it means, it just sounds modern and on-trend. And so Sega uses the term three four times and tries to invent a new buzzword, "network multimedia". Sega's business didn't change much between 1990 and 2000 - they made video games first and foremost, but amazingly they found themselves producing "multimedia" around this period, despite there being no such thing at the beginning of the decade. What a coincidence.


It's when you look on MobyGames and find there are 10,000+ results for "multimedia". Companies springing up called "xxx Multimedia". Special "multimedia" versions of games. Pentium "MMX" technology.... which apparently doesn't mean anything but people assumed it was multimedia and therefore investible.

I was there in 1995, and while yes, I was very young... I don't remember this. I remember "information super highway" and the dot com bubble, but I don't recall anyone buying into something on the grounds it said "multimedia". When I think of the term, I think stuffy CDs with Encarta 97 on them or something - even if it was technically innovative, it wasn't very exciting, even then.

 

I like the way even the "tangentially related" stories end up being Sega stories.


Sega MultiMedia Studio (demo) dates back to Summer CES 1992, which means
a) the internet lied to me again
b) Sega of America might be a contender for the first technology company to use the term.

no the Mega-CD doesn't refer to itself (in any region) as a multimedia device. The Mega-CD 2 does, but we're into 1993 then anyway so who cares.