SEGA SAGA
The Japanese gaming company known as Sega still occupies a warm place in many gamer’s hearts. From their humble gaijin beginnings to the slow rotting corpse known as the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise, Sega was a company that had 50% market share in the 16bit market place and pissed it all against the wall. What went wrong? Everything.
Sega is a legendary name in games. There was the little known Master System which utterly failed to beat the NES (apart from Australia where it was easier to find in stores) and then the Genesis/Mega Drive which took the fight straight to Nintendo in the early 90′s. Of course the SNES came out and Sega’s response was the 32X add on, then the Sega CD, then the Saturn, then the Dreamcast and then the white flag. Unfortunately, that’s not where the story ended. It should have but it didn’t.
Sega managed to get a headstart on Nintendo with its 16 bit Genesis/Megadrive console. It was capable of great graphics and sound and game makers where champing at the bit to make games for someone without Nintendo’s restrictive noose around their necks. For a while it looked as if Sega was about to usurp the king until Nintendo’s 16 bit Super NES came back. Although the SNES eventually triumphed, it was not an easy thing. But then Sega, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, fragmented their market all too easily with the peripherals like 32x and the CD ROM- the source of so much ‘collected wisdom’ that peripherals didn’t sell (until the plastic guitar was invented). Gamers weren’t biting. Sega reacted like the man who hit his head against concrete and then couldn’t remember why he had a headache so he hit his head against concrete some more to try and jar his memory.
Saturn was an even bigger disaster. Designed as a 32 bit 2D powerhouse, Sony’s upcoming Playstation spooked them into trying rejig the device as a 3D machine. It was not going to be an easy battle. Sega compounded the problem by sneak launching the Saturn at US$400, announcing the console was now on sale, six months earlier than most Saturn developers were planning for. Of course Sony then announced the PSX was $100 cheaper in an equally famous announcement. So at this point you’re wondering what the hell was going on in the heads of Sega’s upper management in 1994? “Will Ross and Rachel get together?” We all know the Playstation obliterated the competition through a superior machine and much better marketing and just smarter business sense.
Of course, there was the Dreamcast in the late 90′s. The first 128 bits system was meant to herald the Next Generation but instead was just midway between PS1 and PS2 for many early adopters. The games were nice even if there were some noticeable absences *cough* EA *cough. Sonic Adventure was a step in the right direction (possibly the last time anyone would ever use that phrase to describe a Sonic game), and new IP such as Crazy Taxi, Soul Calibur, Jet Set Radio, Space Channel 5, whilst hits in their own right, couldn’t overcome… a press release with the PS2 specs. How screwed are you when your machine won’t sell because someone else had promised something better two years down the track. “I’m not going to watch The Dark Knight on Blu Ray because it will be in 3D in 15 years time.” The Dreamcast didn’t last long after the PS2′s introduction and Sega announced in early 2001 that they would cease to be a hardware manufacturer and become solely a software maker. Fucking Shenmue!
Skip ahead to 2009. We got one okay sequel to Jet Set Radio on the original Xbox that sold worse than deodorant in France. Two TERRIBLE Crazy Taxi sequels. And dozens upon dozens of incredibly shithouse Sonic games, each one more fecal than the last. Or have they? Condemned has been a decent new franchise for them. The execrable Iron Man game did quite well and the Yakuza games are critical favourites. And despite the diminishing returns of each new Sonic game, they are still selling. Mario and Sonic at the Olympics seems to have outsold the far superior Super Mario Galaxy on Wii.
So what Sega games are you hanging out for? Will they ever make another Space Channel 5 or Jet Set Radio game? Will they just make 3 Sonic the Fudgehog games a year and hope some shit sticks to the charts? Will we care?
