The rise and fall of Sega
by Blake Snow 
{ Jun 20th 2006 at 12:35AM }
2old2play has compiled a nice analysis of what may have been Sega's demise in the console business. The piece faults Sega CD, 32X genesis add-on, and the Saturn systems for the company's downfall despite a strong late showing from the Dreamcast. From the article: "Sega started as a small business from which spawned a gaming giant. As with all great Empires, they eventually rot, crumble, and fall from their own ever-grasping hand. After the Genesis [the Company] tried to go in too many directions at once and spread their resources too thin."If there's one thing we miss, it's those commercials with that guy that always yelled out "SEGA!" in the quickest and catchiest way possible. One more time, loud as you can, how does it go?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
George @ Jun 20th 2006 12:52AM
R.I.P. SEGA
Izuna Drop @ Jun 20th 2006 12:54AM
I, for one, loved both the Genesis and the Dreamcast. It's too bad. At the time, I actually preferred my Dreamcast to my PS2. They are now but a shadow of their formal self. Of course they did make one of their employees sit in a room for 8 months with no work to do. I wonder if he ever bought a Dreamcast?
Shogan @ Jun 20th 2006 1:02AM
For the first year or so of the Genesis/SNES war, the Genesis was absolutely dominating with quality titles. This was partly due to Sega having such a nice lead on the SNES, and Nintendo getting some really crappy 3rd party support that first year or so. Eventually, Nintendo came out ahead. But I do remember being disappointed in the SNES at first and loving the Genesis for having the absolute best gameplay overall.
MegaMatt @ Jun 20th 2006 1:12AM
I love SEGA. I still play my Dreamcast and with Virtual Console I'll be able to play my old Genesis games that were lost through the years.
jadenguy @ Jun 20th 2006 1:16AM
well, at least sega has found themselves to be profitable allying themselves with nintendo. the old sega/nintendo fight was whether it was better to release the best hardware as soon as possible at a premium or release tried and true hardware at prices right for the equipment. so as fine as the sega hardware still holds up today, it was overpriced and overambitious then. the multicore processors of the saturn were a coding nightmare and the addons too expensive. nintendo also had flopped addons, but were more conservative at every turn. anyhow, both developers rank in numbers 3 and 1 for me, so as long as the games keep coming on high standard software, i'll be a happy little gamer.
sony totally killed sega. sony totally outmarketed top of the shelf stuff.
oh, capcom is my 2. the mega man. how i love him. treasure 4, konami 5, namco 6, boy i could do this all day.
SickNic @ Jun 20th 2006 1:18AM
Sigh, they don't make game systems like they used to. I can certainly see some consoles doing the same thing, spreading out and focusing on media formats, media centers, music playback downloadable content...Etc.
It seems like nintendo is the only company that is 100% focused on games. Not bells and whistels. Who knows if it will work out for them or not. Gamers aren't the same as they were back in the day.
Sabre @ Jun 20th 2006 1:26AM
What helped to kill the Saturn's chances were that SEGA has intended it to be the ultimate 2D gaming system (hence why 2D fighters kick ass on it.) When Sega caught whiff of the Playstations 3D capabilities, Sega threw in some 3D chips at the last minute...hence why most(there are exceptions) 3D games look crap on the Saturn.
T-Man @ Jun 20th 2006 1:37AM
I continued in my reverie until Nintendo struck back with the Super NES in 1994
umm....90 in japan, 91 in the states, 92 in europe.
oz @ Jun 20th 2006 1:39AM
Well,jadenguy,not too many people know this, but SONY wasn't entirely the cause of DC's downfall although they were a big part of it. Actually, SEGA had invested a HUGE amount of finances into SHENMUE and they got in way over their heads in development and it was the final financial straw for them. I got a DC at launch and tried for quite a while to get SHENMUE and they kept delaying it and after that I'm not sure what became of it as DC went bust. As to who took up the reins on it I'm not sure. Maybe someone else can clarify this.
Kwipper @ Jun 20th 2006 1:44AM
ahhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHH SEGA!
The ZeroCorpse @ Jun 20th 2006 1:47AM
Pfeh! I will stand by my Sega Master System over the NES any day!
DCrooKZ @ Jun 20th 2006 1:48AM
Sony may not be ENTIRELY the cause, but its certainly the biggest one. I waited on Shenmue as well, I was so excited, and it was awesome... but goddamn did I wait, I even had a import of shenmue 2.
jadenguy @ Jun 20th 2006 1:49AM
i heard that shenmue was one of the most expensive games ever produced. i could check wikipedia. but final fantasy 8 and ps2 totally killed the burning embers of sega that the dreamcast was fueling.
Eric @ Jun 20th 2006 2:01AM
I met my best friends in college one day when I passed by their dorm room while they played on their Dreamcast. They were drunk, I was drunk, and we played Soul Calibur until we passed out…good times…I would not have stopped by had I not overheard a sweet game being played, thus I owe the best friends I ever had to Sega, while I owe my childhood to Nintendo. I owe my teens to mid 20’s to Sony.
That’s my life story according to the gaming consoles.
T-Man @ Jun 20th 2006 2:18AM
@oz
shenmue came out in 99/00 (jp/us), shenmue 2 came out in 01.
cringer8 @ Jun 20th 2006 3:30AM
Sega isn't completely out of it. They now own the GameWorks arcade franchise. They are developing arcade games (pretty interesting ones at that) and I think they'll be pretty successful with it.
They can rebuild their console empire with some brilliant business decisions (first and foremost, give up on Sonic).
dl @ Jun 20th 2006 3:44AM
I own almost every SEGA consoles Genesis CD 32X, Saturn, Dreamcast and Nomad except Master System, Game Gear and Genesis CDX. I hope one day Sega will come back into console business.
jadenguy @ Jun 20th 2006 4:03AM
i think sega will do just fine letting nintendo design consoles. nobody's gonna trust sega again. even though the dreamcast was sort of a success, the downward momentum the company was facing drove it to extinction regardless, and it actually sullied the dreamcast's name. and sonic is still viable; if you played the ds version, you will see the sonic you remember. maybe the mythos has gotten too big. but the gameplay is still there. i think sega needs to revive jet grind radio. badly. it's the one dc game i will have with me for the rest of my life i hope.
Kasumi-Astra @ Jun 20th 2006 4:06AM
#7: Incorrect. The SH2 CPU is considered superior for 2D games, but Sega did not add any "3D" hardware at the last minute. Apparently the initial design of the Saturn had only one SH2 CPU, and when the Playstation was announced with superior hardware specifications, it was hurredly re-designed with a second SH2 CPU.
That's just one story, anyway.
What we do know is that while the Playstation offered a conventional platform for making 3D games and offered enough power to make them fast and detailed, the Saturn had a much more complex architecture that demanded parallel processing to take advantage of the two CPUs. Not only that, but the shared cache between the two meant you had to manually distinguish which parts of the cache are used for each processor. This is why the Saturn is so difficult to emulate compared to the Playstation and N64.
The Saturn's hardware is apparently much more accurate than the Playstations, and draws polys which less glitches.
Ports of 3D games were usually terrible because to save time and money spent porting the game, many developers opted to only use one CPU for intensive tasks. This meant they only used a tiny fraction of the system's power.
Only a few programmers ever had the skill to get the most out of the Saturn, but if you look at games like Sega Rally, Burning Rangers, Shenmue (demo only on the DC version) and Sonic R, you'll see that it's capable of some impressive feats.
Now, what I wouldn't give to see the Saturn work-in-progress of Virtua Fighter 3...
Donutta @ Jun 20th 2006 5:02AM
The Saturn itself didn't kill Sega; it was the way that Uncle Tom and co. were forced to market it by Sega of Japan. Sure, the actual cost of the hardware and the lack of deep pockets to cushion the razorblade theory meant that they had trouble going toe to toe with Sony, but the situation wasn't impossible. The NES' best year was in 1990, when the Mega Drive was already out, so it's nothing to do with power of specs. It was just that Sega of America was forced to sell the weaker machine at a higher cost and Americans don't really care about Virtua Fighter like the Japanese do.
Yeah, that's a simplified version -- surprise launches hardly helped -- but basically it wasn't the Saturn as a console that killed Sega, but the way they were forced to market it coupled with the losses from their other ventures.
Dirk Dorkelson @ Jun 20th 2006 5:31AM
This article wasn't every good. It's presented as a sort of historic look back, but the writer, a gamer not an industry person, doesn't even quote anyone or link to any articles to back up his points. It reads more like, "my experience as a Sega gamer." Meh.
Felix Andrews @ Jun 20th 2006 7:15AM
A large part of the Saturn's problem regarding 3D visuals is that it didn't render polygons with any more than four corners - or 'quads' as they were also known.
This was a huge bind for modellers, as complicated shapes were forced to use more polygons on a system that already had inferior 3D processing power - something of a Catch-22.
Kasumi-Astra @ Jun 20th 2006 7:33AM
#22: Actually, the Saturn was incapable of rendering triangles. The Saturn rendered square-shaped polygons. This meant that it was difficult for the Saturn to achieve the kind of detail that the Playstation was able to render.
Games like Tomb Raider, whose home platform was the Saturn, were initially designed with square polygons in mind, and were altered for the Playstation and PC versions.
Preowned Games @ Jun 20th 2006 7:40AM
The Dreamcast was one of the top 3 consoles ever in my opinion, it was ahead of it's time and had some fantastic games. There are actually plenty of new DC games still being made. It's just a shame it wasn't enough to save Sega's console business.
KNS @ Jun 20th 2006 8:09AM
For a complete history of Sega's last years in the hardware market :
http://www.eidolons-inn.net/segabase/index-segadchistory1.html
the_game_master @ Jun 20th 2006 8:13AM
I don't really see the Sega CD as a failure, here is an add-on that lasted from 1992-1996. In Japan from 1991-1995. It lived out its entire generation which was the 16-bit era, had plenty of game titles released for it Fighters, FMV, racing, RPGs, Sports, etc. no other 16-bit CD console was more popular than Sega CD. There may have been one console that existed at Sega CD's time that was more powerful than it i.e. Philips CD-i but it was more expensive and it flopped from lack of sells.
Sega CD's success pushed Sega to produce their next CD system, the 32-bit Sega Saturn which ultimately failed against its main competition the PlayStation.
32X on the other hand was Sega's 32-bit alternative, I dont think this theory has ever been mentioned. But I believe the 32X was meant to continue Sega's rival against Nintendo. I think even Sega knew that Nintendo would be hessitant to go CD-ROM like the other next gen products that were popping up then. So they made the 32X initially a cartridge upgrade add-on for Genesis base users, and eventually planned a standalone 32X system (codename Neptune). One could wonder how the 32X system would have been if Sega didn't kill it off prematurely. (I still have my 32X title hits Pitfall, Doom, Virtua Racing, and Virtua Fighter :D) Nintendo would have still likely had an advantage as the N64 arrived as 64-bit Nintendo would have surely tried a market campaign against 32X gloating how its system was higher than 32X's 32-bit.
Sega loss its battles against Sony, Sony took Sega's old lead spot in the industry with better hardware and better games.
Sega tried to make a comeback with Dreamcast and Sony return again with another blow to them with the PlayStation 2,
and the rest is video game history. :-D
Join us on our next Joystiq discussion of system wars history, where we cover the rise and fall of the.
Atari Corp.
Dignan17 @ Jun 20th 2006 8:18AM
I love my SMS. I still play it occasionally, and it still works the same today as it did over 15 years ago. Anyone I know with an NES still has to blow in it for 20 minutes to get it to work :) Oh boy, now I'm going to be called the very first Sega Master System fanboy :)
Oh, and I loved the Game Gear too. I sold my first generation Game Boy and about 30 games just to buy it, and I loved every one-hour gaming session I got on that battery sucker :)
DG @ Jun 20th 2006 8:18AM
I think the following factors combined to kill the Saturn in the US:
1) A truly terrible add campaign in the US and a lack of publicity push for the best games not called NiGHTS or AM2 ports (Great games with zero push: Panzer Dragoon, Guardian Heroes, Burning Rangers, Astal, Clockwork Night 2, Powerslave, etc.)
2) A gaming press that actively rooted for the Saturn to fail. If you think there is pro-Sony or pro-Nintendo bias today, you should have seen they way the Saturn was treated in 1995. Expectations were completely through the floor and neither the system nor its games was never cut any slack. I never understood why professional reviewers gravitated to the PSX by default, but looking back, they certainly did and they did it quickly.
3) Sega's miserable hardware history. I won't say that Sega CD was a complete mistake because it was one of the first mass-market home CD-based entertainment systems that was relatively affordable. However, the new hardware craze simply got out of hand, and got out of hand quick. Sega CD to 32X to CDX to Nomad to ideas of "Mars" and "Venus" and who knows what else. Sega's flooding of the market with various hardware "upgrades" dilluted everything. The 32X was an admirable idea -- next-gen "power" for $160 -- but the results was turning your Genesis into a souped-up SNES. It was bad.
4) No Sonic for Saturn! By the time a Sonic game had finally come out for Saturn, Sega had lost it for good. Sonic 3D Blast was way too little way too late, and Sonic R wasn't enough of a console prescence for Sega's mascot. There should have been a new Sonic game for Christmas 1995, and there wasn't. Panzer Dragoon was great, but not the type of title that sells systems. Not enough systems, anyway.
5. $399 versus $299 with the only difference being an included Virtua Fighter. Simply not enough.
6. Sega of America. There were many terrific Japanese games that never made it to the US because SOA never gave them a chance. There was a very strong import market for the hundreds of Saturn RPGS that never came out in the US because SOA was inept. Totally inept.
Of all the video game systems I've owned, the Saturn remains by far my most beloved. I still put Daytona ahead of all other arcade racing games and to me, there is no better looking 32-bit game than Virtua Fighter 2. That an entire gaming generation has grown up without recognizing some of the incredible software that came out for the Saturn is a terrible shame.
turtleboy @ Jun 20th 2006 9:39AM
I think Sony is trying to go to many diffrent ways right now. I don't think they will fall like sega but this will hurt them almost all the polls I have seen are showing people don't care that much or want blue ray. Blue Ray is going to kill their system. I sure miss Sega that's one reason I look so foward to the Wii. I can play some Sega again
KilgoreTrout XL @ Jun 20th 2006 9:55AM
The Saturn will always have a place in my heart as it carried one of the best video games of all time-
Sega Rally Championship
Now who's with me?
Gareth @ Jun 20th 2006 10:00AM
Hey Kasumi-Astra, add Quake and Duke Nukem to that list! They both featured lighting that not even the PC versions had due to Lobotomy Software's extreme coding abilities.
Also, I have a Saturn VF3 video at home (I'm at work atm) so if you're interested I'll upload it to some webspace and stick a link on here. I found it on some obscure Saturn fansite a few years ago. It's low quality, but it shows the game.
Gareth @ Jun 20th 2006 10:06AM
DG, I read an article that said the 32X was at some point going to be Sega's next console. The Saturn was only conceived when Sega heard about Sony and Nintendo getting into bed together.
If true, it shows how much they took for granted from their fans - that they'd release a barely-souped up SNES and call it 'next generation'. Their plan B wasn't any better - release the Saturn for 400 quid.
Sega had a lot of arrogance in those days, and despite them doing a lot of good and providing me with some great experiences, if you get as arrogant as that then you deserve to lose. Sony, take note.
32_Footsteps @ Jun 20th 2006 10:08AM
I always thought the Dreamcast's biggest flaw was that it just didn't have enough games with wide appeal. I remember when the Dreamcast came out, and I saw three games in total that I wanted to play: Skies of Arcadia, Ikaruga, and SoulCalibur. And even that latter one, I was mostly just interested at playing at a friend's place and not bothering with owning it myself. Meanwhile, most of the games I did get to try were on the level of Dynamite Cop and Soul Fighter.
Quite a few gamers felt the same - while the hardware was alright, there weren't really any games worth playing for it. The crap on the system had far too much prominence compared to the good games. I think that's an underappreciated reason for Sega's problems as a console manufacturer.
David @ Jun 20th 2006 10:09AM
Yeah, the Saturn was great. And still is - so many Saturn games stand up much better then PS1 games.
Raptor @ Jun 20th 2006 10:13AM
OK here is some of my reasons why the Saturn and DC Failed. All to MOST the games that I bought where from Japan. The games that they released in the US where some what lacking. Like they tried to get close to nintendo's age range more so then the older teens. Most Arcade games came to japan first. Now my era is all about the arcade games. So when I hear they came to Japan I had to have them. But State side we all read about them over and over for months before even TALKS of comen to the states. So most of my friends got the Japanese verisons. Then Sony came in and took over the older teen market and then Sega tried to follow falling at it. And thats would be some of my reaons why Sega kinda Failed. But I will always have my Saturn,and My DC and all the great games they had to show my children one day.
And I think Sega ad ninteno should try making a system togeather. Show sony how to make a gaming system. Now that would kick ass!
Gareth @ Jun 20th 2006 10:13AM
Kasumi-Astra, Tomb Raider was in no way designed to run on the Saturn. The following is taken from an interview with Ezra Dreisbach (lead programmer of Lobotomy Software) in 2002.
Ezra: ..There are a lot of things about the Saturn that are totally dumb. Chief among these is that you can't draw triangles, only quadrilaterals.
Matt: I think I've seen an example of this in Tomb Raider on the Saturn. Very early on, in the caves, you can find a rock with a triangular side. In the PSX version, a rectangular texture was cut down the diagonal and mapped onto that triangle. In the Saturn version they had mapped the entire rectangular texture into the triangle, reducing one side to a point (in the sense that a triangle is a degenerate quadrilateral with one side of length zero).
Ezra: Ha! That's pretty weak. What you do if you're really trying is you pre-undistort the texture so that when you pinch one side down like that you end up getting what you wanted. We had to do this for the monster models in Saturn Quake.
tiremfej @ Jun 20th 2006 10:14AM
No one seems to be mentioning third party support. After the Saturn debacle nearly all third party support lost interest. When it came time for Dreamcast, no one was around. It's sad to see, but EA really did make some converts. Hate Madden as much as you want the games sells systems.
Also Sega, seemed to be going in all directions early on with the Dreamcast, talking about a DVD add-on, ethernet adapter add on's...sounds vaguely familiar. The console world has changed entirely in six years, there are now three very capable systems, (well two capable, one inventive)and I don't know what will happen. It's sad to see Sega out of the hardware business. It was the Genesis that got me back into consoles, and it was Sega who kept me into consoles.
When Dreamcast went under I personally lost a ton of faith in the console world. I wasn't about to buy a Sony product, even back then. Nintendo, well, my niece has one and she's 11. MS, what had they done? Some new console with a stupid name? That is as big as cinder block? I chose the later, and I've been considering it my estranged Sega console ever since...
Anticrawl @ Jun 20th 2006 10:24AM
SEGA! Ahh I get goosebumps remembering those days. Genesis, we miss you. But not for long. SEGA is about to rebirth on the Wii this fall. Eh I could make a very lame joke right now, but I won't do it infront of SEGA.
"SEGA!"
Anticrawl
Anticrawl @ Jun 20th 2006 10:25AM
Also yeah uhh SEGA isn't dead.
Anticrawl
delerious @ Jun 20th 2006 11:07AM
Mmm. This reminds me. I need to go to the flea market this weekend to get a new Genesis. My JVC X'EYE broke a while back. It was a lovely machine.
ipodfanboy @ Jun 20th 2006 11:31AM
Before I right let me show you the movement of the casual gamer over the past 20 years. Casual gamers jumped from the Nes to the Sega Genisis from Genesis to the ps1 from the ps1 to the ps2. I dont know about you guys but the sega saturn was a failure only in the united states. Before the Saturn the Genesis was extremelly popular among many american gamers espicially casual gamers, Genesis had alot of games that fit well with adult gamers like madden and mortal kombat even EA liked and favored sega over nintendo. such add campaigns like sega scream clicked with adult gamers over the kiddy Snes. Those sega genesis add ons were stupid economically, 32x was just another way to beat the graphically superior snes and the sega cd well i dont know. I guess the 32x and segacd were just add ons to prolong the genesis lifespan if you ask me because by 1993 the genesis was already a weak system. Genesis for some reason was not that popular in Japan with medicore sales. Saturn was very succesful in japan saturn lasted well in to the days of the sega dreamcast in japan, sega sold abotu 12million saturns in japan, even the saturn was more poplular then the n64 in japan. What screwed saturn up was America. Americans could not stomach the fact that the sega saturn cost 400 bucks, thats way too much money on a console for mainstream people. Saturn did not launch with much games which is ok. Development for the console was a problem, saturn was supposed to be superior to the snes and be the ultimate 2d gaming machine, but most of the game industry was moving over to 3d gaming. According to Yu Suzuki, One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think that all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs - most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think only one out of 100 programmers is good enough to get that kind of speed out of the Saturn.
Thats from wikipedia. Saturn had dual processors that made it difficult to make 3d games and many 3rd party developers particularly the western developers like EA and activision jump shiped on sega and moved over to the playstation instead while japanese supported both saturn and ps1 equally but did not like the n64. THe biggest factor in my book on why the saturn failed is because if development of 3d games, No madden then your console will fail and the price point was too expensive, 400 bucks is too much for the average gamer, this is why the ps3 is going to fail 600 is too much. We all know why the dreamcast failed so i wont talk about that.
zero2dash @ Jun 20th 2006 11:38AM
Saturn had almost no US 3rd party support whatsoever. Gee what came out in Japan that never made it here?
-Practically every arcade fighting game SNK released in the mid-90s came out with the 1 meg ram cart (this includes Samurai Showdown 3 and 4, KOF 95 through 97, Metal Slug, WakuWaku 7, Fatal Fury: Real Bout and Real Bout Special)
-Tons of A++ Capcom titles that used the 4 meg ram cart including the first 2 titles in the Vs. series (X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter), Street Fighter Zero 3, Vampire Savior (Darkstalkers 3)
-Radiant Silvergun...need I say more?
-Dracula X (ie Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - and it was 10x better than the PSX version 'cause it had better animation, more items/weapons, and 2 more areas to explore)
-There were also other fighting games that rocked that most people have never heard of like Groove On Fight which was the first real-time 2 on 2 tag battle fighting game (came out at least a year before XMvSF)
-Tons of shooters...Twinbee Collection, Parodius Collection, several Don Pachi titles
Saturn had no US support. While Japan was getting Guardian Heroes (which EVENTUALLY made it here with horrendous box art), non-import friendly US Saturn owners were stuck playing Bug.
Saturn also was AFAIK the first console to be able to surf the internet in addition to having online play (Duke Nukem 3D). I had a NetLink along with the mouse and the PS/2 keyboard adapter and it was awesome back in the day.
Tull @ Jun 20th 2006 11:40AM
Ha, my Genesis is still my main console. Great quality games that are to this day some of the most fun I can have with a console. I've got three back-up genesis's in my closet, just in case. I've got my Sega CD and 32X hooked up, not as good as the original genesis though. And to this day I still bring my Nomad on trips.
segafanboy @ Jun 20th 2006 11:51AM
I still love all my Sega's systems, especially the Saturn, here are the great games that I have for the Saturn:
Virtua Fighter series
Pazer Dragoon series
Night
Fighting Viper
Fighter MegaMix
Daytona USA
Sega Rally
Dead or Alive (import)
Street Fighter Alpha 1, 2 and (zero 3 import)
Samurai Shodown 3 & 4 (import)
X-Men vs. Street Fighter (import)
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (import)
X-Men: Children of the Atom
Shinning Force 3
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Virtua Cop series
House of the Dead
WipeOut
Manx TT Superbike
and many more.....
I think Saturn is better than the PlayStation, its just that US programers are lazy i.e. Acclaim way they porting Mortal Kombat 1 & 2 to Sega CD, Genesis, 32X and Saturn, and look how they did really good job for Super NES version, unlike Williams and Eurocom.
Kasumi-Astra @ Jun 20th 2006 11:53AM
#36: I beg to differ...
From Wikipedia:
"Tomb Raider was originally designed for the Saturn's quadrilateral-based hardware and as a result was incapable of displaying levels containing any triangular parts. This restriction remained in place for most of the 32-bit sequels. In the other hand, the quadrilateral ability allowed the saturn to render First-person shooter games better than other consoles at the time, games like Quake, Powerslave, Duke Nukem 3D, Hexen. Also, the extra video RAM allowed larger levels than in PlayStation versions."
Let's not forget that the Saturn was extremely successful in Japan for Sega, and only flopped so dramatically in western markets. It didn't beat the Playstation, but certainly gave it a run for it's money. We mustn't forget also that the Saturn was a golden console for many cult games, many of which are highly collectable today.
#31: Yeah, I have Duke, Quake and Exhumed for the Saturn. Labotomy did an excelent job of converting these games, and also brought the world Deathtank!
DG @ Jun 20th 2006 12:06PM
To #32: That article isn't very good. I'm actually surprised joystiq linked to it after reading it. How can that person be qualified to talk about Sega if he never even had a Saturn?
The 32X was a stop-gap. The Saturn was always the next step. The 32X, however, did significantly more harm than good to Sega's image.
If I could amend my list, I would certainly add lack of 3rd party support. That was huge, especially when the PSX got all of the popular third party games first (Destruction Derby, Wipeout, Resident Evil) or exclusive (Silent Hill, Metal Gear, etc.)
the_game_master @ Jun 20th 2006 12:17PM
44) you are right, what was with Acclaim and they're screw job on Mortal Kombat 1 and 2 for Sega Genesis and 1 for Sega CD the arcade ports were completely undeveloped compared to the SNES version. What hurts the worse is that the bad ports that Acclaim made for Genesis gave Genesis a bad reputation to few, cause the Genesis is no way under powered and couldn't get a better port, we saw how good a game could be made for it when Mortal Kombat 3 was ported to Genesis from Williams Inc. Acclaim could have done a better job on the Genesis and Sega CD versions of the older Mortal Kombats and wouldn't had to resort to fixing them on 32X and Saturn.
segafanboy @ Jun 20th 2006 12:24PM
#47, that's why they went out of business.
Eric @ Jun 20th 2006 12:40PM
I remember ponying up $400 when I was a kid to buy the Sega CD-X...remember that? It was the Sega-CD that didn't need to be plugged into the Genesis. It was also “small” enough to also be a portable CD player, which I used it for---ate batteries worse than my Game gear.
I had to take out a loan from my parents and gradually pay it off...with a $5 dollar a week allowance:/ Yea it took a long time, but at the time I thought it was worth it.
It lasted me a long time until Christmas 96 when I received a Playstation.
My CD-X didn't age very well; later on it had a very hard time reading CD's, it was very fickle.
Another problem I found with it was that it didn't play some Sega-CD games. My parents had given me Jurassic Park, but it happened to be one of the games that the CD-X didn't run. (Like the PS2 vs the Slim)
As stupid as it was in hindsight, I have played few games so far that I've liked as much as SNATCHER, Sonic CD, Lethal Enforcers was just badass at the time, and I especially liked the Sega Classics CD that came with the system.
Thank god I was still a bit in the hole when the Saturn came out otherwise I would have bought that too. I remember LOVING Daytona USA in the arcades (back before Arcades were killed by consoles) and I was really looking forward to playing it on the Saturn. When I played it at a friends house, I was awestruck by the graphics but I was disappointed there was no way for force-feedback like the arcade wheels had…(thanks for taking that away Sony:/)
Anyway long story short, long live Nintendo.
Gareth Jones @ Jun 20th 2006 1:49PM
DG: Destruction Derby and Wipeout were developed by Psygnosis (based in Liverpool, England), which Sony owned.
Kasumi-Astra: I'm suspicious of that article, because if Tomb Raider was indeed designed for the Saturn hardware: 1. Why was it so badly done? As the interview with Ezra says, they completely messed up textures that were on triangle polygons. 2. Why did Core Design can Tomb Raider 2 for the Saturn because of 'technical difficulties with the hardware'?
Wikipedia's information is only as accorate as the people who write it. We have proof within the very game that it wasn't made for the Saturn, plus the fact that the original is the only version that ever made it. Later games did appear on the Dreamcast though so it wasn't any kind of anti-Sega move or anything. I believe Core just couldn't code the Saturn well enough to obtain the necessary power.