Was Sega ever good?

[psychic_dream]

My older brother had a Mega Drive when we were growing up, and I used to mess around with it from time to time. I'm Gen Z, so most of my real exposure to games back then was 6th-gen stuff, mainly the PS2. Still, I was always curious about older tech. The idea of popping a cartridge into a game system instead of discs was super cool to my younger self.

I don't know anyone in my circle who had a Sega Saturn when it launched. The marketing for it felt about as bad as what we later saw with the Wii U — just really poor. It didn’t have many exciting, groundbreaking exclusives that would’ve grabbed the attention of Timmy and made his parents buy a Saturn instead of the shiny new PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII. Plus, the Saturn’s complicated architecture, with its two CPUs, made it difficult for developers to work with.

I only knew one guy who had a Dreamcast at launch. He mostly played Soul Calibur and sports slop on it, and that was about it. The system seemed promising, especially with its hardware and the heavy push Sega gave it to recover from the Saturn flopping. But it didn’t live long — by the time it properly hit the market, everyone was already way more hyped for what Sony had coming with the PS2.

Shenmue looked insane for its time, both in scope and graphics. But the bloated budget behind it ended up costing Sega big. Nowadays, they're mostly stuck running pachinko businesses and managing their old IPs, dropping something decent every once in a while. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying seeing them milk Yakuza and Persona forever. The only new IP they've put out recently is Metaphor. They're also planning to revive Virtua Fighter now that fightans are getting popular again, thanks to the FGC ****.

What could Sega have done differently to save themselves back then? Would the industry be in a better place today if they had stayed in the console game?

[psychic_dream]

Also, I never knew anyone who called the PS1 the "PSX." We either said PS1 or just PlayStation. The idea that most people in the late '90s called it PSX just because a few old magazine scans used the term seems pretty baseless and ridiculous to me.

[Vergil]

Sega = See Gay

[rusty_shackleford]

Also, I never knew anyone who called the PS1 the "PSX." We either said PS1 or just PlayStation. The idea that most people in the late '90s called it PSX just because a few old magazine scans used the term seems pretty baseless and ridiculous to me.

It was called PSX in American advertising.

4e5b7ge0vocd1.jpeg

Probably because the 'X' sounds cooler and the rest of the world is squaresville

[asf]

console players were casuals since time immemorial

[Rumbles]

They judged the market wrong when playstation was really picking things up. Sega's lean into the home arcade thing was a bit too heavy, their American and Japanese heads didn't work together at all and had different visions. Personally I think Dreamcast despite being great, had a lot of issues too mainly online content while internet wasn't that strong back then plus it's built in modem was wonky to say the least. Nomad was also ahead of its time being Switch before the Switch. My what if would be if Sega would have joined hands with Sony, which was close to happening thanks to Howard Lincoln. I think that would have lead us to even more superior playstations or some other great consoles. I still fondly love old sega games and consoles, Phantasy star 4 and Landstalker were peak.

[Irenaeus]

[Xenich]

Well, Sega Genesis had more RPGs to select from at the time (US releases) as I remember at the time. Super Nintendo had "some" good RPGs, but they were few and far between and Nintendo 64 focused more on "kids" games in that respect and less on traditional RPG games you saw in Nintendo and Genesis. Sega struggled with 32x/Sega CD/etc... and Sony pretty much stomped them with the PS1.

Play station was referred both PSX and PS1, mostly advertising and the like but saw both at different times. I really didn't play a lot of PS1 games, mostly rented them if anything interesting popped up, but PC games were my focus. The consoles I played a lot of though were ColecoVision and Nintendo, with a little bit of the Sega/Nintendo 16 bit era.


As for why Sega failed? Probably a lot of things, but I think game libraries was a big one. They just didn't have the companies pushing out the games like they did with Genesis. As I said, 32x was cool, but very small collection of titles, and Sega CD was a big flop with it being mostly novelty at the time as I remember. Most video rental stores didn't want to carry them due to cost and if I remember right, they had really bad problems with CD reads with even the smallest blemish.

I am sure @rusty_shackleford or someone else has a better more "industry" based reasoning they could comment on. Mine was just how it appeared at the time from being around video rental stores and software stores.

[Tweed]

The Genesis was the only time they had a real hold on the console market and they turned out some really good games. The Dreamcast is a great system, but it's more like an arthouse. A bunch of really weird games came out on it. I had the system at launch and it didn't help that every single copy of Ready 2 Rumble at the Software Etc and Bluestinger were bad burns. We finally sat there in the store going through all of them and not a **** one would run.

[rusty_shackleford]

I'm going to lay the blame for Sega failing at the feet of having too **** many consoles/adapters/etc.,
You'd go to the video game store as a kid and see games, and not know if you could even play them because this one required 32x, this one needed a sega CD, this one is for the sega saturn

The point of consoles is for them to Just Work. Sega failed.

[Tweed]

Learned nothing from Coleco or Mattel.

Also, people tend to focus on the console era and forget the excellent releases SEGA made during the arcade years. They had something good going, but they didn't read the room. 32x was rushed to market and still came out way too late, but probably shouldn't have been developed at all with the Saturn on the way. The Saturn itself was a nightmare to program for and couldn't even into transparency properly.

[Magick]

Only ******* didn't think it had good games. Some of the best RPGs I played growing up were on the Saturn.
Master System & Megadrive had a wide library of fun games too. (And some of them were **** hard!)

Saturn:
Shining Force 3
Shining The Holy Ark
Shining Wisdom
Panzer Dragoon Saga
Dark Savior
The Story of Thor 2
Nights Into Dreams

Also fun multiplayer (had a blast with me, my mom and my mates lol):
Virtual On
Street Racer
Blast Chamber
Bomberman

There were others too but I forget, unfortunately the console and games got stolen so I have to rely on emulator nowadays. I still love to go back and play them.
It had quite a large and fun library of games.

Other than FF7 and Xenogears, I had way more fun on the Saturn than I did on the PS1.

► Heart and SOVL

I still get goosebumps listening to the Shining intros. I love how all 3 were completely different, too, despite having a "hero is a generic white warrior dude with a big sword (as it should be).
Shining Force 3 is a tactical, turn based war RPG. Shining Holy Ark is a first-person dungeon crawler. Shining Wisdom is a top-down old zelda style adventure. Princess captured, save her.
Panzer Dragoon Saga, ******* wow.
Dark Savior such a great platformer RPG.
Nights into Dreams - ******* weird and made to show off the analogue controller, but I've never seen anything like it.
The list goes on. These games were non-tryhard, made for pure joy and fun.

Ahh making me want to go and play them again already.

[Vergil]

Certified old people thread

I was barely alive when the Dreamcast was a thing and didn't even know of Sega as a console developer until much later. I don't think they did a very good job with exclusives. Other consoles have so many beloved classics with wide appeal. Sonic just isn't enough to compete with stuff like Halo, the extreme number of classic PS1 games or all of Nintendos IPs.
What does the Dreamcast have? Shenmue?????

[rusty_shackleford]

What does the Dreamcast have?

annoying youtubers blowing it 25 years later

[SniperChris]

My older brother had a Mega Drive when we were growing up, and I used to mess around with it from time to time. I'm Gen Z, so most of my real exposure to games back then was 6th-gen stuff, mainly the PS2. Still, I was always curious about older tech. The idea of popping a cartridge into a game system instead of discs was super cool to my younger self.

I don't know anyone in my circle who had a Sega Saturn when it launched. The marketing for it felt about as bad as what we later saw with the Wii U — just really poor. It didn’t have many exciting, groundbreaking exclusives that would’ve grabbed the attention of Timmy and made his parents buy a Saturn instead of the shiny new PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII. Plus, the Saturn’s complicated architecture, with its two CPUs, made it difficult for developers to work with.

I only knew one guy who had a Dreamcast at launch. He mostly played Soul Calibur and sports slop on it, and that was about it. The system seemed promising, especially with its hardware and the heavy push Sega gave it to recover from the Saturn flopping. But it didn’t live long — by the time it properly hit the market, everyone was already way more hyped for what Sony had coming with the PS2.

Shenmue looked insane for its time, both in scope and graphics. But the bloated budget behind it ended up costing Sega big. Nowadays, they're mostly stuck running pachinko businesses and managing their old IPs, dropping something decent every once in a while. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying seeing them milk Yakuza and Persona forever. The only new IP they've put out recently is Metaphor. They're also planning to revive Virtua Fighter now that fightans are getting popular again, thanks to the FGC ****.

What could Sega have done differently to save themselves back then? Would the industry be in a better place today if they had stayed in the console game?

Heh... Was Sega ever good?

Let me put it this way, kid... Ever hear of a little guy named "Sonic?"

[Vergil]

What does the Dreamcast have?

annoying youtubers blowing it 25 years later

How many of them were even of age to experience it when it was actually out? I feel like it has a sort of mystique precisely because it failed and is a big "what if" in a world where there's three consoles that have been dominating for almost 30 years now.

[Vergil]

My older brother had a Mega Drive when we were growing up, and I used to mess around with it from time to time. I'm Gen Z, so most of my real exposure to games back then was 6th-gen stuff, mainly the PS2. Still, I was always curious about older tech. The idea of popping a cartridge into a game system instead of discs was super cool to my younger self.

I don't know anyone in my circle who had a Sega Saturn when it launched. The marketing for it felt about as bad as what we later saw with the Wii U — just really poor. It didn’t have many exciting, groundbreaking exclusives that would’ve grabbed the attention of Timmy and made his parents buy a Saturn instead of the shiny new PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII. Plus, the Saturn’s complicated architecture, with its two CPUs, made it difficult for developers to work with.

I only knew one guy who had a Dreamcast at launch. He mostly played Soul Calibur and sports slop on it, and that was about it. The system seemed promising, especially with its hardware and the heavy push Sega gave it to recover from the Saturn flopping. But it didn’t live long — by the time it properly hit the market, everyone was already way more hyped for what Sony had coming with the PS2.

Shenmue looked insane for its time, both in scope and graphics. But the bloated budget behind it ended up costing Sega big. Nowadays, they're mostly stuck running pachinko businesses and managing their old IPs, dropping something decent every once in a while. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying seeing them milk Yakuza and Persona forever. The only new IP they've put out recently is Metaphor. They're also planning to revive Virtua Fighter now that fightans are getting popular again, thanks to the FGC ****.

What could Sega have done differently to save themselves back then? Would the industry be in a better place today if they had stayed in the console game?

Heh... Was Sega ever good?

Let me put it this way, kid... Ever hear of a little guy named "Sonic?"

Sonic sucks and has more "fans" that jerk off to his feet than actually play the dogshit games. Sonic ******* sucks. The whole concept is stupid. Oh yeah side scrolling platformer where you're incentivized to go too fast to tell what's coming next so you have to memorize levels through trial and error or get knocked back 6 million times. No wonder it's so popular with autistics and other freaks. It fosters the same sort of mentality as speed runners (sped runners I call em!) and we all know how those "people" are. **** you Sonic. **** you.

[Magick]

Admittedly I never had a dreamcast so no idea what was on that.
But I spent more hours on the saturn than I did the rest of the consoles, and love to go back and replay those games now.
Most of the graphics haven't aged well, but the absolute purity of those games is worth every modern brown "realistic" game combined.

Psst, other than speedrunning, you're not actually meant to just zoom through the levels at full speed in Sonic. At least the older games). Smashing into obstacles is the game punishing you for doing so.

[Irenaeus]

My older brother had a Mega Drive when we were growing up, and I used to mess around with it from time to time. I'm Gen Z,

Oh, I thought your lack of soul was that you were just Chinese

[Irenaeus]

They judged the market wrong when playstation was really picking things up. Sega's lean into the home arcade thing was a bit too heavy, their American and Japanese heads didn't work together at all and had different visions.

Reminded of this video

[Stack of Turtles]

The only good Sonic game is Sonic 3D Blast. It's an isometric 3D action game where you only run on a track like 7 times, once per emerald.

[Vergil]

you're not actually meant to just zoom through the levels at full speed in Sonic.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

SEGA's problem was mismanagement. SEGA of America in charge of bringing games to the West decided not to bring over the best 2D games. Sakura Taisen was enormous in Japan and had those great looking CGI FMVs that were used to promote FF7 in the West and caused that franchise to blow up into a house hold name, but SoA were idiots and didn't bring it over. Atlus tried repeatedly to bring over Sakura Wars and SEGA didn't commit despite the overseas interest. SEGA didn't get a lot of third parties to jump ship from Nintendo to their platform like Sony did. And no big Sonic game for the Saturn was made.

What could Sega have done differently to save themselves back then?

Convince more third parties to defect to them, greenlight a big Sonic game, SoA stops being anti-Japanese snobs and bring over Sakura Wars and the other good games that remained Japanese only.

[rusty_shackleford]

the actual genesis itself had a massive collection of great games, it didn't need anymore than it had.

I completely disagree with any interpretation that tries to lay the blame on the Genesis(the console itself, not the addons)

[rusty_shackleford]

I had gamepass before it was full of slop, btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega_Channel

[Val the Moofia Boss]

My older brother had a Mega Drive when we were growing up, and I used to mess around with it from time to time. I'm Gen Z, so most of my real exposure to games back then was 6th-gen stuff, mainly the PS2. Still, I was always curious about older tech. The idea of popping a cartridge into a game system instead of discs was super cool to my younger self.

I don't know anyone in my circle who had a Sega Saturn when it launched. The marketing for it felt about as bad as what we later saw with the Wii U — just really poor. It didn’t have many exciting, groundbreaking exclusives that would’ve grabbed the attention of Timmy and made his parents buy a Saturn instead of the shiny new PlayStation with Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy VII. Plus, the Saturn’s complicated architecture, with its two CPUs, made it difficult for developers to work with.

I only knew one guy who had a Dreamcast at launch. He mostly played Soul Calibur and sports slop on it, and that was about it. The system seemed promising, especially with its hardware and the heavy push Sega gave it to recover from the Saturn flopping. But it didn’t live long — by the time it properly hit the market, everyone was already way more hyped for what Sony had coming with the PS2.

Shenmue looked insane for its time, both in scope and graphics. But the bloated budget behind it ended up costing Sega big. Nowadays, they're mostly stuck running pachinko businesses and managing their old IPs, dropping something decent every once in a while. Honestly, it’s kind of annoying seeing them milk Yakuza and Persona forever. The only new IP they've put out recently is Metaphor. They're also planning to revive Virtua Fighter now that fightans are getting popular again, thanks to the FGC ****.

What could Sega have done differently to save themselves back then? Would the industry be in a better place today if they had stayed in the console game?

Heh... Was Sega ever good?

Let me put it this way, kid... Ever hear of a little guy named "Sonic?"

Sonic sucks and has more "fans" that jerk off to his feet than actually play the dogshit games. Sonic ******* sucks. The whole concept is stupid. Oh yeah side scrolling platformer where you're incentivized to go too fast to tell what's coming next so you have to memorize levels through trial and error or get knocked back 6 million times. No wonder it's so popular with autistics and other freaks. It fosters the same sort of mentality as speed runners (sped runners I call em!) and we all know how those "people" are. **** you Sonic. **** you.

Sonic had games that weren't just "go fast on a 2D plane". There was 3D blast which was isometric and was a slower pace game. There was also another slower paced 3D game (before Adventure) that I remember playing.

The only good Sonic game is Sonic 3D Blast. It's an isometric 3D action game where you only run on a track like 7 times, once per emerald.

Beat me to it.

[Tangerine]

I remember Sega had solid marketing in the early 90s, but it lost steam after the mid-90s.

Found this, which backs up my impression.

No one but Sega knows why Goodby, Berlin, & Silverstein was dropped as its ad agency in 1996, ending what was not only the most successful marketing campaign in its history, but perhaps in the entire history of the industry. It has been suggested that Sega decided to change its philosophy completely with the Saturn, opting for a more passive and family-orientated approach in an attempt to give a fresh face to its new console. If this is true, it was the worst thing Sega could have done at the time, as it totally alienated the audience it had worked so hard for so many years to obtain. An attempt was made to revive the Sega Scream for the Dreamcast in 1999, but by then it was too late. Sega’s audience had long since left it. While things may not have turned out the way Sega had hoped, no one can deny the mastery of advertising that it wielded during the early ’90s that allowed it to dominate a market few people had thought it could even survive in. Maybe the lesson to be learned here is that in some cases, the clothes do make the man…or the company.

[rusty_shackleford]

sega was the console for the cool kids, nintendo was for babies

[Stack of Turtles]

Heh... Was Sega ever good?

Let me put it this way, kid... Ever hear of a little guy named "Sonic?"

Sonic sucks and has more "fans" that jerk off to his feet than actually play the dogshit games. Sonic ******* sucks. The whole concept is stupid. Oh yeah side scrolling platformer where you're incentivized to go too fast to tell what's coming next so you have to memorize levels through trial and error or get knocked back 6 million times. No wonder it's so popular with autistics and other freaks. It fosters the same sort of mentality as speed runners (sped runners I call em!) and we all know how those "people" are. **** you Sonic. **** you.

Sonic had games that weren't just "go fast on a 2D plane". There was 3D blast which was isometric and was a slower pace game. There was also another slower paced 3D game (before Adventure) that I remember playing.

The only good Sonic game is Sonic 3D Blast. It's an isometric 3D action game where you only run on a track like 7 times, once per emerald.

Beat me to it.

I didn't know there was another one, but 3D Blast was great.

[Vergil]

sega was the console for the cool kids, nintendo was for babies

Xbox is for cool chads who get their big cocks sucked by hot *******