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

Was there ever any plans to localize Radiant Silvergun?
Did you ever get to try out an early version or debug version of Shenmue on dreamcast? And what were the differences if you did?
Any chance you got to try out a beta of a possible english version of policenauts?
Also did you play a version of sonic cd that had the so called missing level everyone keeps talking about?

 

Lol!
I come across them regularly here at thrift stores (the us equivalent of charity shop?) and they sell for $2.99-$9.99 depending on how new they look.

Some used serial ports it seems, so they'd do many no good unless you have a legacy system running somewhere...

question for donnyk

Maybe before your time but what was sega actually DOING with the sega cd. Were they targeting FMV as a real future thinking, wave of the future? Or did it just turn out that is what developers made?

Games like sonic cd were great. Why not admit they made a slightly mire powerful genesis with the add on that could have great audio?

They coulda dominated the rpg market!

 

If you need any help I've got an external zip100 and zip250 drive about that work great as well as multiple disks for both.

It's what developers were doing at the time to make some quick, easy cash. Some of the SegaCD FMV games were arcade ports (such as Mad Dog McCree).
A handful (such as Night Trap) were pseudo-exclusives for a while that did see action elsewhere. I believe the 3DO and the CD-I got FMV games as well and I'm 99% sure the Playstation did too. I sincerely doubt Sega was banking on the FMV genre for bringing the hoards over to the SegaCD.

 

Where to begin...

-- What was the real story with Propeller Arena getting canceled?
-- Was the rumored Saturn upgrade just that?
-- Do you have any information about Virtua Fighter 3 on the Saturn?
-- Same question as above for Shenmue on the Saturn?
-- What are your thoughts about Bernie Stolar?
-- Do you know of any canceled/unreleased games that never made news?

Much appreciation for answering everyone's questions.

 

What's your favorite game?

 

Why did the Saturn 1/4 MB carts never come out in the West? Was the cost really the only issue?

 

Geist Force? Someone tell Yakumo!!

 

Now those are my kind of questions!

Here's a really obscure one - do you remember anything about the four Dreamcast tech demos (focusing on animation, lighting, polygons and textures respectively, if I remember correctly) Sega of America produced for the 1998 E3? You can find a few screenshots on this page:

http://uk.dreamcast.ign.com/dor/articles/60253/dreamcast-technology-demo/images/room_1.html?page=mediaimgviewer

Along with the European "Future City" and Japanese "Tower Of Babel" demos, I'd love to get my hands on these US creations. Also, that "Iri-San" sequence from the first New Challenge conference and the early Katana development kit sample of Scud Race would be great to have as well, though I believe the latter is already in the hands of one known collector who may have plans to release this anyway...

 

I remember much of the marketing relied heavilly on FMV games to try and sell the system.

I doubt this was something sega was guilty of by itself. I know in nintendo power they bragged of the snes cd having fmv capabilities as well.

It seemed sega focused on it. Heck uneven remember an ad with an announcer yelling about the games and then 30 seconds of nothing but FMV games lol.

But I loved sega ads. They were pretty cool in their time.

 

You mean Angry Black Guy right?

Somehow it seems he would make more of an impact today than it did in the 90s.

Back then white guys could still pretend to be gansta, and do what archeologists say was called "rap".

 

If I said "angry black guy" where I lived I would be shot.

But yeah. Angry black guy.
He himself looked like a floating head in an FMV game.

 

Ok, you guys have so many questions it's hard to answer them all. I'm going to have to go back through here and make a list but I will answer this one.

You will hate me for saying this... and I'm not lying at all if you believe me or not... but I personally was the reason Propeller Arena was canceled. The game was pretty much all finished outside of a few random bugs and remember, this game was in test right during the 9/11 attacks. After the attacks the entire country was very, VERY sensitive about anything. Well, in propeller arena it was possible to put a big bomb on our plane then fly it directly into a skyscraper and the look of it on screen looked just like the what happened in real life. So we had a big meeting and when Peter Moore saw it, he canceled it on the spot. The idea was to wait and release it later but that time never came cause the system died. There was also talk of it being ported to the Gamecube but that never happened either. It may show up one day as a downloadable title. But in the end, that was the only reason it was canned. Sega just didn't want any bad press and again, the country was overly sensitive to things like that at the time.

Bernie was a cool guy. You could disagree with him and tell him to go fuck himself and it was ok. Tough as nails guy and I really respected him and still do.

VF3 was shown internally on Saturn but just as an eval to see if it could be sold and it was decided that the death of the Saturn it was better to wait for the game on Dreamcast.

 

As sega was developing the Saturn, I understand that they did not plan on using a great deal of polygons. I wonder though why sega did not look at what Sony and nintendo were developing and push polygons as more important on the Saturn than they did.

If the newest thing in mobile phones is A touch screen and apple has demoed the iPhone, I wouldnt try and say "here's more of the same crappy interface" on my competing phone.

Was sega taken my surprise by the switch to 3d polygons?

 

That apparently makes you smarter than anyone who works for Nokia :lol:

 

DonnyK, thanks for answering our questions. Here are some of mine:

1. How did you become a tester for Sega? What advice would you give to the countless people who want to work at a video game company? My daughter (10) has this dream of working for Nintendo.

2. You were involved in testing for the Dreamcast. Did you enjoy the job or did you find it monotonous at times trying different scenarios over and over again in order to find bugs?

3. What was the reaction at Sega when people discovered that they could play pirated games on the Dreamcast due to MIL-CD support? Was piracy the major reason why Dreamcast died?

4. What is your reason to get out of the videogame industry?

 

I'm also really curious about that... Some say it was just bad marketing (or 'strange marketing strategies') and others say piracy killed it (and nothing else) Although as he suggested earlier, it was more than likely the onset of the ps2 that actually sealed its fate?

As others have mentioned here as well - What unreleased games do you remember? Or interesting stories about canned projects?

(and also thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!)

 

(Those who know me will surely have anticipated this kind of response. You have therefore been warned in advance! I realise much of this is repeated from earlier messages, but I'm rewriting a lot of it here for DonnyK's benefit as he may be able to help with a few things historically-speaking.)

I know it's a very, VERY long shot, but do you happen to remember the revision number of Virtua Fighter 3 that was used to evaluate a possible Saturn version in the US? Despite previously going into great detail about there being two complete revisions of this unreleased game, it appears there may have been a third that was being passed around internally long before the later two versions were even thought of...

According to various reliable sources now both within Sega's European and American divisions, a character movement tech demo for VF3 running on a stock Saturn was definitely seen in early '97 - this was even broadcast on UK television late one night, with at least one forum member here claiming to have owned a copy once. I am in absolutely no doubt such a thing did indeed exist, and hopefully one day we'll have the proof to back this up.

Continuing on from this point, it's also been suggested that none other than Core Design was busy converting VF3 and Scud Race to the Saturn using the long-rumoured Eclipse cartridge upgrade, which is believed to have been developed in Europe with possible links to Sega's US operations (perhaps with SOA acting as a through-route to either 3DFX or Lockheed Martin, who provided its main chipset depending on the version of events you follow).

I've never heard any confirmation of Core having anything to do with VF3, though it was involved with the later Scud Race tech demo that featured on some early Katana development kits as mentioned in an earlier post. Also, all of the main players at AM2 (including Yu Suzuki, Hiroshi Kataoka, Keiji Okayasu and Shin Ishikawa) deny such a character movement demo for Saturn VF3 ever being released.

On the other hand, early code may easily have leaked to outside Sega's Japanese offices. After all, Suzuki himself revealed at the "Power Up" press conference in November '96 that AM2 had conducted extensive research into whether a Saturn version of VF3 would be possible to his own satisfaction, concluding and confirming that development had been approved and would begin immediately.

Fast-forward to July '98, and now Sega was firmly in the middle of preparing to launch the Dreamcast. With the final disc sent to management for approval, Saturn VF3 was refused a release on the grounds an inferior version may harm sales of Genki's own 128-bit treatment. Ironically, Genki was handed the responsibility of converting VF3 on Yu Suzuki's request, partly down to AM2 lacking resources at the time and because he trusted this team of former colleagues.

Undeterred by the decision against Saturn VF3, Suzuki pushed for a more faithful Saturn conversion, which resulted in what is known today as the second revision. An insider within SOJ confirmed years back that paperwork still exists confirming this build's official rejection date as September 17th 1998, and this document remains firmly locked away in the vault along with a tape containing all of AM2's work, final cover artwork (by Akira Yamanaka, no less) and even the master disc that was returned from a pressing plant just before the final product was scheduled for release!

After finally (and begrudgingly) accepting that Genki's less-than-perfect Dreamcast conversion of VF3tb would be the only home conversion Sega was prepared to support, he scrapped a similarly complete Saturn treatment of Sonic The Fighters, which may already have been seen as fighting impossible odds when you consider that Bernie Stolar and a few others within Sega's western divisions felt at the time a Sonic combat title may not have been the best vehicle for their corporate mascot.

In the end, Suzuki knew the Saturn was no longer Sega's priority, and in his own mind he would have preferred a slightly more delayed launch - at least until AM2 could produce first generation titles far superior to those that had appeared early on the Saturn. As it is, his once unrivalled department was now being undermined within Sega's hierarchy by newer teams such as Hitmaker! and Smilebit. Of course, Suzuki had one hidden weapon left that he'd been working on secretly throughout much of the Saturn's troubled lifespan, and that was later resurrected on the Dreamcast following a short break as Project Berkeley then finally Shenmue.

Even then, his consolidation back at the top of Sega's internal department tree was short lived, as Shenmue never really took off with consumers despite heaps of critical praise for what is undoubtedly a technical masterpiece. So back he went again, churning out a fourth Virtua Fighter that lacked many of the revolutionary features its predecessor had introduced, perhaps in part because he felt responsible VF3tb had not taken off with Dreamcast owners when in reality it was Genki's half-baked conversion to blame.

As was mentioned earlier in this very thread, the Sega of today is a mere shadow of its former self, and I can only imagine what incredible games would have come from the imagination of Yu Suzuki had his position within the company not been marginalised - first by management's lack of faith in his late Saturn technical showcase and then the ambitious Shenmue, which could easily have seen a third installment back in the day were it not for the purse strings being cut around the time going third party was seen as the only survival option.

Today, barely anyone cares for the VF series and those desperate to play Shenmue III weren't making enough noise ten years ago when reviews of the first two were still favourable. In the last decade Suzuki's contributions to the gaming world have been a far cry from his Smithsonian-inducted highs or classic "SuperScaler" arcade titles. I can't really picture this changing in a hurry, though as a positive footnote it would be great if there was at least some way to get a little closure by revealing to the world just what could have been. For example, many people still can't believe the prototype Shenmue footage included with its sequel was really taken from a vanilla Saturn. Let's remember Yu Suzuki and Sega for the better times, rather than living off past success stories and mostly failing to create anything of worth now.

 

Another question:

why saturn and dreamcast had almost ZERO press launch in most of europe? the market wasn't as big as now but already important and swelling in size...

 

The Dreamcast Swatch peripheral and the compatible Swatch watches: did you do any of the testing for this new system with Propeller Arena? Was it fully implemented and ready to release by both companies? Any other games that were supposed to use it? Did you all get given free watches for testing purposes :dance:

I'm sure everyone would like to know more about the whole Swatch thing.

Did you ever see anything at all of Black n' White for the Dreamcast? What about Gun Valkyrie? Have you personally had a go on the Scud Race demo?

Gutted to hear that Geist Force is crap. :-(

Thanks for your time.

 

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Scud Race tech demo just a non-playable sequence with the camera floating around the beginner circuit? I'm sure there was also a separate demo with the same development kit revision that featured two cars from this game running over a bridge with overhead lights to demonstrate the Dreamcast's real time shading and surface reflection capabilities. Finally, the F40 also appeared in another tech demo, but again this one only allowed you to rotate the polygon model. I doubt there was much substantial ever done of Scud Race, despite all the potential being there for a great conversion...