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

Don't worry about it - you've already done more than enough by confirming the existence of this long questioned Saturn holy grail in the first place, despite the fact AM2 members Shin Ishikawa and Hiroshi Kataoka have been playing down the possibility of such a version for years now, while on the contrary Yu Suzuki has been quite vocal about the game's cancellation providing his comments remain unpublished. Any information you are able to give us about other recollections from your time at Sega are equally just as welcome, if not more because at least you may be able to fill in a lot of blanks elsewhere in the company's vast history for us...

 

Antheamia, that tape you got is the more common of the two I had. That is the New World promo tape. Still a great one to own.

 

I don't have access to it at the moment (as it's currently on my other system), but the New World title definitely rings a bell as I'm sure the section featuring the early build of Clockwork Knight is incorrectly labelled "Fantasic World" instead of Fantastic World... good old Engrish, eh?

 

Are these legit or are they fake?

http://bp1.blogger.com/_h327jbSGoh0/R179Uy5a50I/AAAAAAAAC1c/MKvyEjO0pu0/s1600-h/1mn7.jpg

http://bp2.blogger.com/_h327jbSGoh0/R179VC5a51I/AAAAAAAAC1k/TJeY1aONEo0/s1600-h/3vy9.jpg

http://bp3.blogger.com/_h327jbSGoh0/R179VS5a52I/AAAAAAAAC1s/iV6C8fzCoU8/s1600-h/5ci8.jpg

http://bp3.blogger.com/_h327jbSGoh0/R179VS5a53I/AAAAAAAAC10/LD90RnAIqOM/s1600-h/6gs0.jpg

UPDATE: Doh! It's the model 3 version running under a crappy emulator.

 

shameless repost :redface:

 

Don't tell me that was the rather large building in San Francisco with SEGA in blue on the outside? Friend of mine had an apartment down the street from it.

 

Not exactly what I meant, but interesting nonetheless, specially the nokia part

Maybe thats why the ngage was horizontal instead of vertical/flip like most phones and gameboys are?

Anyways, Sega should've inflated the price, sell it to AOL for a truckload of money and use that on the DC...

 

No problem with the repost... like I said there were so many questions I wanted to get to them all but some where overlooked.

I didn't have anything to do with security, that was all SOJ. I was surprised to see that the Dreamcast didn't use the same two boot disc system that the Saturn had since at the time all my friends were pirating Playstation games but not Saturn games. Not sure if it was because they hated the Saturn or it was just easier.

And I think Japan gave up on the Saturn in the US... not much people could do as Japan held all the purse strings.

Yup, 650 Townsend. Sega was on the sixth floor and sega.com was on the fifth along with Sega Arcade. For Genesis/Saturn we were down in Redwood Shores right by the Oracle buildings.

 

i have a interesting question for you

can you share any fond memory's you had in the ARCHIVE room?

here is SEGA of America's flicker album of the Archive

http://www.flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/sets/72157606602243465/with/2742924274/

follow up question about when were there murmurs of going software only
after the saturn failed or after the merger with CSK with its Chairman Isao Okawa
basically forcing Sega to go the software only route?

because on G4 6 or so years back they did a history of the dreamcast
and one of the former employees of sega said in the interview for G4
that there were talks of giving the console market one last go after the dreamcast
but basicly Isao Okawa would have none of that

actually it apparently was a company named " sammy " that bought the CSK shares and twisted SEGAS arm into software only

here is the IGN history of the dreamcast where i found the info about Isao Okawa
pushing hard for software only

http://retro.ign.com/articles/974/974695p11.html

 

Interesting thread!

Any info on Virtua Fighter 4 Dreamcast, there was a proto? And about Super Monkey Ball/Beach Spikers?

Any 3dfx Dreamcast techdemo or any specs for the Saturn upgrade?

 

Good question! Remeber the Satcast? It was a rumored Saturn emulator to the Dreamcast by SEGA.

Just google for it, I'd love to know if it was real or not.

 

As interesting as the question is, surely Sega never thought that the Dreamcast (in its final configuration) could ever emulate all of the Saturn's various CPUs at any playable speed?

 

Thank you Donny for such an awesome thread and interesting answers.

I have a few questions

1. Was Planet Harrier, the arcade multi player Space Harrier sequel, ever intended for the dreamcast?

2. How far along was Jambo Safari for the dreamcast?

3. In the company culture, what was everyone's thoughts on the competition? Like nintendo and sony? Besides thinking Sega was the best and how amazing your company was (which is the truth) I'm curious what the internal employees really thought of the rival companies.

 

Thanks for the thread Donny. I'd too like to know what happened with Streets of Rage 4 I heard Sega of America didn't have an idea how popular the series once was so it was cancelled.

 

Do you happen to know at all if Japanese Dreamcast keyboards had different key layout setups to the US and Europe ones?

 

Wow this thread has been a great read so far- thanks for taking the time to answer questions! I was reading an article on joystiq a while back (http://www.joystiq.com/2010/10/11/report-rez-2-prototype-was-in-the-works-project-lmno-canned/) and they mention that there was a Rez 2 in development for the Dreamcast. Any chance you know anything about it?

 

Retro, I could probably have began looking it up, but I'm on my iPod with relatively bad internet and no PC access right now. Such a thing would be tedious, and time consuming. Preparing for interviews too.

I probably should re-word my question to answer something related. I wondered if it is possible for a developer to assign different keys to different buttons on Dreamcast keyboards? (For example, pressing the _ key will send the @ signal to the console). I wonder because using a PAL keyboard with the Rez beta provides a different key layout to what the keyboard itself should be using.

 

I would imagine that was, once again, country profiles. If the game is looking for a Japanese keyboard, it'll probably have different keys from a UK keyboard. On a UK keyboard, if you tell Windows you have a US keyboard, you'll get @ instead of " and # instead of £. I can see from the photo I posted that the latter example is true of the Japanese keyboard layout, too.

 

dp

 

Not to ignore the rest of your post but I only have so much time to answer. As for the Sammy merger... check this out. A long time ago Sammy was in trouble in Japan and CSK bailed them out by investing in their company. Well, when Sega was hurting really bad, it was Sammy that returned the favor. Sega would have went under had it not been for Sammy. That's why a lot of folks don't understand the merger... but it was more Japanese pride than them needing to merge with each other.

Planet Harrier was Arcade only, no Dreamcast port was planned as it was too short of a game. Perfect for arcade, not so much home. Speaking of short games, I personally was a big motivator in getting Jambo Safari brought over to the Dreamcast. They told me it was because the game was too short and no money for more dev along with the team moving on to other things. I then brought the proposal since I was a huge Sega Arcade fan for the company to put Emergency Call Ambulance, Brave Firefighters, and Jambo all on one disc and call it the Real Life Arcade collection or something like that. My idea went all the way to SOJ but was turned down as the games were on different arcade hardware and couldn't be ported to one disc. My sad face was sad

Moving cross country ain't cheap you know...

No, never thought they would. They don't have the money. Back in the day you could make a new system on faith and a few good first party games but now the biggest players in the market (HD at least) weren't even game companies. Remember Sony's first party games used to be SEGA CD FMV games based on movie licenses and Microsoft's first party was plane and train simulators. The market is more about money now than games so I don't think Sega could survive in that environment.