Sega, one of Japan’s greatest exports in gaming history.
Starting off as a company based in Hawaii that sent games to US troops, they
would move to Japan by beginning to make amusement games throughout the 20
th
century. Games such as Periscope, punching bags, pinball machines, early jet
simulators and many more old school arcade games were what Sega made. After
many years of American service, the company would find a new home in Japan,
where they would start dabbling in electronic arcade games such as Head On,
Zaxxon, Frogger (in partnership with Konami) and others would turn Sega into
one of the most respected arcade amusement companies not just in Japan, but
mostly all over the world.
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Periscope 1966
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In 1982, Sega would expand into unknown territories
for them, the gaming industry. Their new President, Hayao Nakayama, would give
the thumbs up for the SG-1000; this would be Sega’s first console. It did not
sell well due to their stubbornness to release third party games for the
console, whereas Nintendo’s Famicom allowed other companies to make games for
them. Everything was going fine until 1983 when the Great Video Game Crash
happened. Atari allowed too many companies to make games for their 2600; many
of these games were buggy and unplayable, nearly bankrupting Atari. Despite this,
Sega’s SG-1000 sold over 100,000 copies in Japan and considered it a small
success. Around this time, Sega became a full Japanese company, they struck a
deal with Isao Okawa of CSK to form a new Sega that would focus on gaming and
arcades for the next generation.
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Sega Master System 1985
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From 1985 to 1987, Sega launched their second console. The
Master System was its name and this time it was released in other continents
such as Europe & North America. They would again try to battle against
Nintendo’s NES, but they were still 2nd place despite its rising
sales of over 10 million Master Systems. It even managed to sell well than the
NES in Europe, due to a deal with Richard Branson’s Virgin group. Many games
released for the console included Outrun, Alex Kidd, Afterburner and more.
After a surprising success story for Sega, they were not done yet. In 1988,
Sega outdid themselves by plunging into the 16 bit graphics scene with the Mega
Drive. It was named the Genesis in the USA because Rosen believed it was a new
beginning for Sega & the gaming industry. It’s main success was with its
aggressive advertising, which was mastered by Sega’s American CEO Tom Kalinske.
The company boasted how fast their console was, how they had better music &
graphics than Nintendo’s NES and featured many celebrity tie in games (Even
Michael Jackson, the King of Pop himself, had his own game on the console),
ending with a memorable slogan, “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”. Sega were up
everyone’s faces for the right reason. Outside America, the console was named
the Mega Drive. The UK’s adverts, however, were different and featured a
teenage boy promoting Sega everywhere he went with the slogan “It takes ages to
be this good”, with the word ages turned backwards to say Sega.
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Sega Mega Drive/Genesis 1988
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In 1991, Yuji
Naka was given the chance to introduce a new mascot to compete against Mario;
he was responsible for creating Sonic the Hedgehog and gave Sega a new attitude
against Nintendo’s upcoming SNES. The first 3 Sonic games were masterpieces
that gave players the chance to play as the titular character through speedy
yet controllable levels. Like with Apple vs Android, Mario vs Sonic was a huge
speaking point in the industry as Sonic was a breath of fresh air for Sega that
needed a mascot that was leagues different to Mario through attitude and
gameplay. Because of this, Sega secured over 50% of the videogaming Market
share and had become a gamechanger. They would continue this by agreeing rights
for TV shows based on Sonic, opening new amusement parks all over the world
(most notably in London, Akihabara & Sydney) and its total sales of over 30
million consoles. While Sega were enjoying its high rise to the top, it would
not be that long until they would face their first dark age.
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| The first Sonic game : 1991 |
In 1991, Sega released the Game Gear. This was a handheld
console that advertised that they had coloured graphics and the Gameboy did
not. Even though some admired its graphics, the Game Gear would struggle
against Nintendo’s Gameboy juggernaut with only 11 million Game Gears sold. 2
years later, Sega would jump onto the CD craze and release the Sega CD. Even
though it was revolutionary at the time, it failed to grab the public’s
attention due to mostly all of the games had cutscenes that had less full
motion than VHS tapes with a lot of acting being deemed cringy; even the
console was an add on to the Mega Drive on top. Therefore, the Sega CD was a
failure. This would also be when games such as Night Trap & Mortal Kombat
were being debated in American Congress on whether violent games should be
banned or sold with restrictions. This led to the formation of the ESRB &
PEGI, American & European companies that rated games through letters &
ages to determine and regulate the maturity and violence in video games. Sega
would yet again release another add on that would prove to be a disaster, it
would be released during the improvement of videogame graphics from the 16 bit
to 32 bit era. This was named the 32X and would be quickly released in 1994. It
was yet another failure for Sega; it had to have its own charger and the games
would easily glitch out. Not even the debut of Virtua fighter could save its
demise. One of the producers for Sega argued that the president released the
32X because of his concerns for Atari’s flop of a console named the Jaguar.
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Sega Saturn : 1995
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Before the end of 1994, Sega finally announced their 4
th
gaming console for the next generation named the Saturn. It was a 64 bit
console that would start to release games in 3D, while most of the games would
continue to be made in 2D. At first, it did really well by selling over 200,000
consoles in Japan on the first week, thanks to its arcade ports of Time Crisis,
Virtua Fighter and Panzer Dragoon. Meanwhile, in the USA, Kalinske decided to
release the Saturn on ‘Saturn Day’ 2
nd of September. This never
happened. Why? Because in the very first E3 in 1995, Sega announced that they
would surprisingly release the Saturn on the day they had their conference in
May. This was an unfortunate announcement as Sony would announce that they
would be stepping into the gaming industry with their PlayStation in 1994 and
1995 in Japan and rest of the world. The main reason for Sony’s entrance was
due to a falling out with Nintendo on partnering up to make a CD add on for the
SNES. After the Play station’s release and also the Nintendo’s N64 in 1996, the
Saturn had lost its impact because of their prediction that the improvement 2D
graphics would be more important than 3D and would lose a lot of support for
the system.
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Bernie Stolar, Sega CEO : 1998-99
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Because of the console’s failure, Tom Kalinske left Sega in 1996,
due to differences between him and Sega of Japan. Irimajiri would be named the
new Sega of America CEO and then the President of Sega 2 years later after the
resignation of Nakayama. Around this time, Sega were planning to merge with
Bandai, another gaming company that made software for Sega and were responsible
for Digimon. Nakayama’s resignation and employees from Bandai acting sceptical
would cause the $1 billion merger to disintegrate. Bernie Stolar would take
over as CEO of the American Sega in 1998, after masterminding the release of
Sony’s PlayStation there. This felt like a betrayal to Sony as Stolar was the
man who gave the console a chance to sell millions of consoles in the USA. When
Bernie took over, one of the first statements from him was that ‘the Saturn is
not our future’, eventually discontinuing the Saturn all over the world. Sega
would later lay off over 30% of its
employees due to the Saturn’s demise. He would partner up with Irimajiri to
work on their next console, in order to secure their high ratings in the
marketplace again.
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| Rare pictures of concept designs for the Dreamcast |
As PlayStation & N64 were working wanders in the gaming
industry with games such as Crash Bandicoot, Metal Gear Solid, Parappa the
Rapper, Mario, Zelda, Pokemon and others respectively, Sega were busy planning
on their future. Both Sega of Japan & America would draft and design ideas
for what their next console would look like. They were both codenamed Blackbelt
(USA) & Whitebelt (Japan). Japan’s design won over America’s version
because it had bigger memory files and higher resolution graphics with the help
of NEC & Hitachi. Orignally, 3DFX of America were partnered up with Sega
until, 3DFX accidentally advertised their partnership on some gaming magazines,
leading to the partnership being called off. This would cause their first major
issue to occur; EA’s departure from making games for Sega. EA used to have a
healthy relationship with Sega by releasing games for them since the Genesis
such as Fifa, Madden and others. When they heard that the 3DFX was not being
used, they decided to quit working with Sega because they were not ready to
work on making games with graphics from both NEC & Hitachi. This mean that
there would no longer be EA games on Sega’s upcoming 6
th console.
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| Microsoft's Modem allowed online play for the console |
As
Japan’s design was chosen, the console’s codename was changed to Dural, named
after a character in Virtua Fighter; it would then be changed yet again during
development to Katana. Whereas, the Saturn failed due to being rushed into
release, Sega took a different philosophy and allowed the new console to be
developed in its time as Sony & Nintendo were continuing to support their
consoles. Sega made sure the console had a pleasing design, easier to make
games for, had a comfortable controller, secured more third party games and
(most importantly) have an added in Modem that allowed gamers to play online.
Their choice of online gaming also gave them an unlikely partnership with
Microsoft, who also added in Windows 98 to allow people to surf the internet on
the console.
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The official Dreamcast logo (U.S. Version)
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Finally, the Katana was finished and had a new design. The
controller was shaped to felt comfortable on hands, the colour changed to white
in order to please people to buy it and it was less heavier than the Saturn.
Only one thing did not fell right for Sega, they wanted to change the name for
its initial release as they thought it would scare away people who were not as
competitive as others. A huge competition was set up for all Japanese employees
to search for a new name with over 5,000 people taking part. According to one
of the employees, someone named Kenji Ito won the competition and even made a
spiral logo to go with it, the winning name was the Dreamcast. It was a word
that combined both ‘dream & ‘broadcast’ as if it felt like a dream playing
a video game. Its start-up sound when turned on was composed by famous musician
Ryuichi Sakamoto, famous for composing music for the Barcelona 1992 Olympics,
‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’ & ‘The Revenant’. Originally, Sega did not
want their name on the Dreamcast, just like Sony did to the PlayStation; they
would change their minds later as they wanted Sega’s name to show that they
were back from dark times.
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Sonic Adventure : 1999
|
In late 1998, the Dreamcast was launched in Japan.
This was done to test how the console would do, just in case if they had to
cancel the release everywhere else. During the launch, Sega announced that
Sonic was getting a major redesign and a new main game after 6 years as the
Saturn’s Sonic got cancelled due to motion sickness. Sonic Adventure was
released to critical acclaim for its comfortable debut into 3D. Decades later
and reviews became mixed due to the game not timing well and audio voiceovers
not being synced correctly. Before the launch, Sega failed to meet shipping
goals with NEC as many graphics chips were not made yet and thousands of people
had to wait a few weeks after the launce to finally get their Dreamcast. Sega
would sell nearly 1 million consoles in Japan and were ready to plan for the
Dreamcast’s release around the world.
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| American promotional poster for the Dreamcast |
In the USA, Bernie Stolar used the same tactics he had used
while working at Sony to launch the Dreamcast. Luckily, the Launch date was set
for 9/9/99. All 9s in one date felt perfect to Stolar as the number 9 in
numerology terms meant universal love, yet again relating to online
multiplayer. 15 games were released on the Dreamcast’s launch in America and it
looked like it was going to be extraordinary. Many Sega fans were expecting a
launch event just like in 1989 with the Mega Drive/Genesis. 300,000 Dreamcasts
were pre-ordered, even though Final Fantasy 8 for the PlayStation was also
competitively released on the same day. When it came to their games, Sega
managed to find success with Sonic Adventure, Virtua Fighter 3, Segs Rally
Championship, Seaman, Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, Samba De Amigo and also Sega’s
own sports games such as NBA 2K, NFL 2K, Virtua Tennis & Virtua Striker.
Sega would use their online capabilities to allow gamers to compete against
others around the world with games such as Chu Chu Rocket, Power Stone, Soul
Calibur and Phantasy Star Online; one of the first online RPGs to be created,
this was before World of Warcraft & Runescape were released. Its
advertising on TV focused on its multiplayer, online, its games and
(importantly) its graphics. Even though there was no physical contact of
‘bullying’ other companies, Sega’s launch of the Dreamcast was also invading
newspaper front pages; all with the slogan “It’s Thinking”, to show the power
of the console.
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A collection of Dreamcast games
|
Even though the launch was on the horizon and just a month
before the Dreamcast hit shelves, Bernie Stolar was fired as the CEO of Sega of
America. In an interview with G4, Stolar would state ‘I didn’t agree with Mr.
Okawa, so we had parting of the ways and I left the company’. In his place,
Peter Moore (who helped out with the launch) took over as CEO. Finally, the
Dreamcast was launched. With a price of $199, it sold over 500,000 consoles in
two weeks and fared better than the Saturn in the USA. Just a month later, the
Dreamcast sold 1 million units and was ready for a European launch for
14/10/1999. Sega of Europe, instead, focused more on online multiplayer with
adverts displaying player 1 and player 2 in real life from who can shave
someone’s head off first or who can throw a stone the furthest. Most music came
from Robbie Williams, his single ‘She’s the One’ was released during the launch
and was used as the main music for the Dremacast’s launch in the UK. It even
reached #1 and was bundled with the console as a bonus. Also, Sega made
sponsorships with football clubs, most notably with Arsenal from 1999 to 2002.
Other clubs included Sampdoria, St Etienne & Deportivo la Coruna from
Italy, France & Spain respectively. After two months of being in the
shelves, over 500,000 Dreamcasts were sold, doing nearly the same Numbers as what
Sega did in North America.
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Sony's PlayStation 2 : 2000
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While Sega was enjoying another successful release since the
Genesis and taking the whole world by storm, Sony were secretly planning their
second PlayStation in an attempt to rain on Sega’s parade. It would be
confirmed on March 1999 that Sony were indeed developing the PlayStation 2. It
had the same but clearer graphics, more third party games and the addition of
allowing to play music CDs & DVDs. This was their attempt to rise the sales
of their next consoles as they understood a lot of families would love to buy a
console that played games, music, movies and tv shows. When Sega heard about
the announcement, they realised that it was too late to change the Dreamcast or
make a newer version for the next few years; they decided to keep strong and
continue to support the Dreamcast until they plan to make changes when the
PlayStation would be released in Japan on 4/3/2000. Also, Nintendo announced
that their were working on ‘Project Dolphin’, their next console with the same
graphics as the Dreamcast and would promise that CDs were being used. Even
Microsoft gate-crashed into the gaming industry with their Xbox planned for a
2001 release.
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Phantasy Star Online : 2000. An online game
|
As all of these consoles were announced, Sega saw a change of
sales with the Dreamcast. They were decreasing and were starting to lose their
early lead yet again, they had secured 27% of the gaming marketplace when the
Dreamcast was launched. When the PlayStation 2 was finally released, 980,000
consoles were sold on day one! Only the Dreamcast sold over 200,000 consoles in
the first week and this felt like a huge blow for Sega. They were losing money
and the first thing they did was not to decrease the price of the Dreamcast;
instead, Sega closed over 200 arcades over the world. Sega closed down the
Sydney arcade due to the place not ageing well, they resigned from London’s
huge arcade due to criticism and low foot traffic and others were closed
because they were not achieving a lot of visitors. Sega of America would later
start up a gaming service named SegaNet. Sega of Europe would also form an
online service named Dream Arena; it was launched a year before America’s
version. Both these online services allowed gamers to chat, email and surf the
internet; it even added more online games such as Quake Arena, Unreal
Tournament and other games. Even though this addition of online services kept
Sega alive and dropped the Dreamcast’s price to $149, the PlayStation 2 was
about to be launched in America, Europe and everywhere else on October &
November 2000.
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Sega's response to Sony's shipping failures
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As the PlayStation 2 arrived with its quirky advertising
lead by David Lynch of ‘Twin Peaks’, Sony had overseen a massive amount of
units sold. By early 2001, over 10 million PS2s were sold around the world. On
the other side, the Dreamcast was losing the battle. Shenmue, a revolutionary
game at the time, was supposed to be the game that would change people’s minds
to buy a Dreamcast and ditch the PlayStation 2 at the final minute. The game
would only sell over 1.2 million copies, even though the game had a massive
amount of praise. Sega of America stated that they needed to sell over 5
million units in order to stay up in the gaming industry; they would fall short
with only 3 million Dreamcasts sold since its launch date of 1999. Sega would
then lose over $400 million dollars and would be in an enormous pile of debt.
There was still a bit of hope as Sony’s launch of the PS2 was having problems
with their stock being bought too quickly, Sega would still sell the Dreamcast
and were still surviving; only for the original PlayStation’s smaller brother
PS One to outsell the Dreamcast during the holiday season of 2000. Even Sega
were being dwarfed in the market share with only 15% as compared to Nintendo’s
35% & Sony’s 50%. Because of this, Irimajiri stepped down as the Chairman
of Sega; in his place, Isao Okawa (who helped Sega become a full Japanese
company) took over.
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| The success the PS2 caused Sega to leave the console business |
Because of what happened with the Dreamcast, Okawa desired
Sega to abandon making consoles and instead make video games and arcades for
other companies, meaning that they would make video games for Sony, Nintendo
and Microsoft. Even former CEOs of Sega shared the same ideas. David Rosen, who
left Sega in 1996 after 31 years as the Chairman, also believed that Sega
should stop making consoles as it limited their potential as a video game
company. Bernie Stolar believed that Sega should have sold themselves to
Microsoft and made games for them. Judgement day had arrived on October. Both
Peter Moore & Charlie Bellfield (Europe CEO), were chosen to seal the fate
of the Dreamcast and both decided that it was time to abandon making videogame
consoles and focus more on software. Both CEOs would later resign from Sega
afterwards. On the 31st of January 2001, Sega officially announced
that the Dreamcast was Discontinued. The 31st of March would be the
final day of Dreamcasts being manufactured. Over 930,000 units were sold, these
were unsold inventory Sega quickly sold during the final 2 months with price
reductions from $99 to 49.95. The last few Dreamcast consoles were autographed
by the Heads of many video game studios that Sega worked with, including Yuji Naka
& Yu Suzuki.
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Isao Okawa, Saviour of Sega
|
The dream was over, and it even looked like Sega’s life was
nearly over. With over $500 million of debt and financial problems, Sega was on
the verge of going out of business. Even more mournful news came when Okawa
passed away. Luckily, when it came to sorting out his wealth, it was written in
his oath that his earnings would be donated to Sega when he dies. A total of
$695 million was transferred to Sega and kept them alive to transfer into
making games for other consoles. And because of that, Sega were ready to leap
into their next adventure. They would go on to make games for the Xbox such as
Panzer Dragoon, Jet Set Radio and more; Sony were given the rights to Virtua
Fighter, a remake of Altered Beast, Shinobi and others; and lastly, Nintendo
were given the rights for many games made by Sonic Team, the company that made
games based on the Sonic franchise. Even though Sega are not as mighty and transcendent
as they used to be in the 90s, they are still a major video game company to
this day. Recently, in 2013, they bought independent games developer Atlus, who
are responsible for the Persona & Catherine series. Other companies that
ally with Sega include Football Manager’s company Sports Interactive and even the
Games Workshop, who own Warhammer and even offer Duke of Edinburgh places for Warhammer
for its painting and strategy.
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| Sonic 25th Anniversary event : 2016 |
Sonic, on the other hand, has not had a
receptive future since Sega’s abandonment of console gaming. Games such as
Sonic Heroes, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic Lost World and recently Sonic Forces had
divided many fans due to its comfortability on nostalgia, self-aware jokes and
its lack of originality from its past games. The remake of Sonic the Hedgehog
in 2006 was critically panned for its buggy gameplay, over the top story line
and the useless need for a human character to fall in love with the titular
character. Sonic Boom: Rise Of Lyric also faced the same criticism 8 years
later. The series has also had some success with Sonic Generations, a game
based on the 20
th anniversary of Sonic; Sonic Mania, a 2D game based
on the first trilogy; and the Movie that came out this year. It was originally
and infamously going to use a new design for the character, but had to get Sega
involved to fix the design. This was a perfect turn of events, which lead many
to enjoy the movie and gain over £300 million in the box office. Sega even
dabbled into returning into the arcade amusement scene too. They struck a deal
with British bowling company Superbowl UK to add arcade ticket areas and
amusements that made people reminisce of the days when Sega used to run Sega
World in the 90s. Even though Akihabara shut down their Sega Arcade in August, at least Sega is still a name to be aware of when it
comes to video games and arcades.
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| Dreamcast launch event in a Babbage's : 1999 |
To conclude, Sega is still going strong. Even when people
would favour the PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube or Microsoft Xbox, the
Dreamcast still lives on in people’s hearts. It was a console that was ahead of
its times, revolutionised the way we played online, gave Sega a lot of hope to
continue to make perfect games in 3D and showed that when going through many
trials and errors in the late90s, the Dreamcast was a sign that Sega were not
giving up and introduced many people into what videogames have become. There may have
been problems with the PS2’s hype, the concern of Sega’s future, the lack of
games from Squaresoft & EA and poor timing; these problems may have killed
the Dreamcast, and the people that owned it still kept owning it and played on
it when it comes to looking back at Sega’s last hurrah in the console gaming
industry. And for all of that, the Dreamcast's legacy lives on.
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