Old Sega Veteran just joined... what did you want to know?

Hey guys, I'm a very... very old school veteran of Sega. Mostly in the test department but I started taking phone calls for the 32X and Pico back in 1994 when no one had even heard the name "Playstation" before.

But my main time was spent working on the Dreamcast in test. I started working there before the system launched in America and left right after we went third party. So... you guys want to know anything? Remember, the vast majority of games were made in Japan so we didn't get much time with the dev teams besides Sonic Team US.

Anywho, glad to be here.

 

My question is WHAT WENT WRONG? I kid I kid.

 

Any Saturn fabled add-on infos?

 

Sega of Japan could have went bankrupt 10 times over, and we couldn't stop the PS2 hype machine... even though we had a better product.

From what I heard, it was a pride thing with Sega of Japan picking PowerVR over 3DFX because they wanted to keep all the development in Japan. This pissed off all the Blackbelt guys which made almost the entire team quit on the spot. Since Electronic Arts had so much money in 3DFX stock, this decision killed them financially which is why they never supported the Dreamcast. I never saw any Dreamcast than the one you know.

Just the movie card add one that was released in Japan.

 

Do you have 'any' info about the canned Castlvania game? Wasn't it being worked on by an American team - I'd really like to know if you saw it up and running in some form.

Thanks!

 

Were there ever any plans to do anything with windowsCE? Like turn it into an entertainment type hub?

 

Game developers wanting to sell shit in a box if they could back in the late genesis - saturn era.

 

Also, is this image real?

 

Sorry, I was mostly working in the first party department so most of my involvement was with Sega themselves.

Nothing like that. We did show a DVD player attachment once at E3 and also an MP3 player that fit in the controller like a VMU. That and the Karaoke add on and the DreamEye.

Not that I saw. Also, that picture of the Neptune which was a 32X and Genesis in one unit was just a shell. I got to see it quite a few times. Wasn't a working unit at all.

 

The way I always saw it was that Sega had created too much brand confusion, similar to Atari.

Consumers generally do not like to have too many choices when shopping for a game console.

The fact that at one point Sega had on the same market:

Sega Genesis
Sega CD
Sega 32x
Sega 32x CD
Sega Gamegear
Sega Nomad
Sega 32x

and very shortly after that the Sega Saturn...

That just fragments the market so much... Nintendo never EVER had more than three different products on the market at one time (example, Gameboy/SNES/NES) and Now a days its even less that with Sony having 2 and nintendo having 2 (counting the variations of the DS as one product line)

So maybe that really led to the lower adoption rate for the Dreamcast. it wasnt a bad console after all, but people just got sick of too many choices?

 

I've got two words for you... GEIST FORCE!!

 

The producer was a good friend of mine. I played it.. and it sucked. You could "beat it" in like 3 minutes. I still have an old burn of it on a Katana disc somewhere in my house that I've been looking for and will sell. Even though it's labeled as a Geist TGS disc, the burn of it failed so I don't think there is a game on there but it's a cool piece of Sega history.

How dare you forget the Sega Pico!!!!!

 

lvsteven, if the variations of DS count as one product line so should the majority of the linked Sega stuff?

Theres like DS, DS Lite, DSi and soon 3DS all in a shitload of colours etc? The DS is easily comparable to the MegaDrive, the DS lite is easily comparable to MegaDrive II, the DSi is easily comparable to MegaCD and the 3DS is easily comparable to the 32X IMO in that they are all lif extensions of a base product line. I know they all were released at different times but so was the Sega shit too but at least for the most part there was little variation on colour (regional variations ignored for obvious reasons). The product line is only a really askiewed when viewed retrospectively?

I never had any brand confusion. I had a MegaDrive. It would play MegaDrive games.

Sooner or later there was a MegaCD but in the day I could never afford it, but it was obviously going to play MegaCD games.

Sega then repackaged these consoles in their Mk. II form. The only element of this which was strange is there was no obvious benefit to me as a 10 year old consumer.

There was a 32X, which I also couldn't afford but would obviously only play 32 bit games. Considering the base unit was 16 bit it was an easy distinction.

Then there was a MultiMega combo unit (misisng off your list) that was used as a competition prize in sonic the comic which no matter how many times I tried I never won

One thing I'd like to know though...

Why did Sega bother with the Lock-on laserquest things? It was hardly their traditional market. My mate(s) and I used to play 'army' with cheap shit block or cap guns, or even twigs. I remember reading about them in the Argos/Index catalogues but never felt like spending my pocket money on them =/

 

Hi! Welcome!

Why just five games for the NetLink?

Any info about Sonic X-Treme?

Do you have any info on a said contract between Eidos and Sony about Tomb Raider 2 and 3 to be released only for PS? Do you know/heard about something TR 2 for Saturn, maybe an alpha?

And a personal question: do you like seeing games being released to the Dreamcast until today?

 

From talking to some of the guys at core design / rockstar north when I happened to be a bar when they bought several bottles of 100 quid champagne many a year ago (the bar bill was a 4 figure sum and there were only about 10 of us...). There was nothing but basic concept work on the Saturn, the golden handcuffs deal meant that they got more money then they did from the Sega Saturn version of Tomb Raider so there was not much point doing TR2 on it.

 

Donny, I can't think of an original question that someone else wouldn't put better than I can. But as long as I have the opportunity, I want to thank you for working your ass off to give us those great gaming products. The Dreamcast is my second favorite gaming system (close behind the Saturn) and it's still occupying the number one slot on my video switcher. That there are still Dreamcast conversions on modern platforms (like Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Sonic Adventure) speaks to the quality of that stuff, no matter what the market position ended up being. I hope everybody you worked with has a sense of how much western gamers appreciated your efforts.

 

Saturn was on the market at the same time as those (32x is repeated in there btw, and as pointed out the Pico should be there too). As far as "confusing" the customer, I'd have to agree, at least as far as the 32x/CD addons go. In hindsight the Mega-CD wasn't a particularly worthwhile move, but at the time it was exciting. Even to me as a kid, though, the 32x seemed weird.

 

Welcome, we have had a lot of debates about SEGA through the years

Was the DVD drive for the DC meant to also play games or just movies? did a working version exist?

When the GBpocket was released in mid 96 did anyone at SEGA consider the possibility of releasing a smaller more energy efficient version of the GG? or even better, one of the Nomad?

We knew the Neptune was just a shell, but did SOA had a working PCB for it? or it never went past the concept stage?

During the DC years, did anyone at the office mention the possibility of MS buying SEGA? were there any rumors about that?

 

That was Sega Toys. Different division. They made all kinds of weird stuff. I still have my IR7000!!!

Believe me, we tried to get them to do more Netlink games and I worked on all of them and the browser. Funny fact, it was my job to surf porn all day cause of all the craziness with porn like pop ups, crazy flash, java and the link it would break the PlanetWeb browser like crazy but it was good to fix those bugs for other websites. The lack of games was directly related to the userbase of the Netlink.

As for Sonic Xtreme... who do you think came up with that original disc a few years back? Keep a look out on this site for the next few weeks if you want to score a copy yourself.

The Tomb Raider deal was straight money hats from Sony. Eidos had already submitted the game for pre-approval (design docs) so Sony bought the rights.

I don't care about the new Dreamcast games to be honest. I was a first party man through and through. I loved Sega of Japan devs with all my heart and still do. When Sega went third party, many of the dev teams left and I didn't feel like it was the same Sega so I took off too.

Thanks, we did work our ass off for the fans. I stayed till Midnight on 9/9/99 to make sure the downloadable outfits for Sonic Adventure were ready just in case some kid came home with his new Dreamcast and wanted to try them out. We were a great bunch of people there and everyone really poured their hearts into that system.

The DVD only played movies. It was an add on and an SOJ employee actually flew it from Japan with him to E3 that year but it broke in flight so they could never show it off on the show floor. They told me the Dreamcast didn't have a DVD drive in it originally because Sega couldn't afford to do it... only reason.

The vast majority of hardware came from Japan so I wouldn't have seen anything on the portable scene. I was working on the gameplay hotline when the Nomad came out.

Neptune never got past concept from what I heard.

Sega would never sell to anyone. The president of Sega Japan loved the company and put his entire personal fortune into it. He would have never sold it and the company only exists today because of his generosity.