Sega

[Ack]

Hey man, Sega did do a lot of great stuff back in the day, but I have to see this stuff all the time. And often times I also see the "I hate Sony for killing Sega" or "Sega is better than Nintendon't" messages throughout them. It's like we're living out personal grudges a decade after the fact. Look, at one point, I was a dire fanboy for some of Sega's greatest competitors, and I can say nice things about Sega. Why don't you guys take a step back and think about it. Do you really hate Sony or Nintendo that much? They've all got some good games. Let's just concentrate on playing them.

Fair enough about Atari, though every now and again I do get a hankering for some Pong... And while the PlayStation may have hurt the Final Fantasy series, look at all the other RPGs on the console. It did give us Final Fantasy Tactics too.

Oh, and as for the VMU/Pocket Station thing, just go to Wikipedia and scroll down to the SEE ALSO section of either's entry.

[fast]

I think he meant using it during gameplay. VMU playcalling is one of the reasons the NFL2k series is superior to all other American football simulators.

[AwesomeMonstar]

I wouldn't call many of us Sega fans as much as Sega apologists. We can all acknowledge that Sega has done some amazing things for gaming and has produced some of the very best games ever made. That doesn't mean they haven't made some of the worst. While this is far more evident today it has been happening throughout the entire lifespan of Sega. Look at alerted beast. Hyped launch title... and it sucked. Look at the 32x... if somebody can honestly tell me a good game for that machine that makes it worth a purchase, well color me surprised. Bernie stolar, crappy division of the American and Japanese companies, and well, who actually wants to play a new sonic game?

Truth is, we neglect so, SO many of their glaring flaws because they have created some of our best experiences in the past. That's why we try to brush aside all the crap from sega as a business and focus on all the gold they've made in the past. Yeah, the werehog may be the single stupidest idea ever but... without these dudes i would never have my JGR. Basically, the crux of what I'm saying is... well to be honest, I'm not completely sure. I guess, that it makes no fucking sense to be a sega fan today but to cherish what they have already done... naw that sounds dumb. Anyways, the whole sega apologists bit is basically saying that we always have an excuse for their stupid crap they do, even if it isn't really valid.

[lost_within]

Look at the 32x... if somebody can honestly tell me a good game for that machine that makes it worth a purchase, well color me surprised.

uhm...simple



Virtua Hampster...duh who the hell never owned that one?!?...


seriously....


I think Knuckles Chaotix is worth spending the 15$ for a 32x to play it on.

[MrPopo]

I grew up with Nintendo, and got a Super Nintendo around 93 or so. This was the golden age when you were required to violently defend your console choice or the men in black suits would break into your house at night and take it away for disloyalty. I had two kinds of friends: those with a Super Nintendo and those with both but acknowledged the Super as better. But we were magnanimous. We all agreed that the Genesis had the better sports library. Good thing the only sports game necessary was NBA Jam.

Sega started coming out with the Sega CD and the 32x, neither of which got any high profile games, and many parents looked at them with disdain. By an addon for the price of a new console? No junior, you're getting underwear this Christmas.

I did end up getting a Genesis at the end of its life, as there were two games that I was really interested in from a GamePro. Sonic & Knuckles had this crazy lock on technology that was just so very cool, and a guide to the first ten stages of Shining Force 2 had me really intruiged. This was quite different from the RPGs I was used to, and after getting it I fell in love.

Then the 32 bit era hit. You had Saturn with its god-awful annoying commercial, something involving a talking hand and a high pitched voice. You had Sony, this new upstart (from a console perspective) that stole my Squaresoft, so I'm automatically pissed at you. And then the new Nintendo console coming out in a year. The choice was obvious: I waited the year and spent my Bar Mitzvah money on it. My cousin had the PSX, and I'd play it when I was over there, but Crash Bandicoot was ass, and Final Fantasy VII could not match up to the SNES trifecta: FF6, Chrono Trigger, and Secret of Mana. And then it came out on PC, so I could experience it (and freeze at Cosmo Canyon). It wasn't until five years later that I ever actually beat it, due to the bugs. Meanwhile, at this point I've discovered the FFV and SD3 translation patches and fall in love with the SNES all over again.

Now comes the next generation. The Playstation 2 was going to be the hottest thing ever, but here comes the Dreamcast half a year earlier. My brother was considering getting one, but I kept telling him to wait for the PS2 if he didn't want to wait for the Dolphin (aka the Gamecube). I was going to get the Dolphin if he didn't, since by this point I was Nintendo or bust. I kept telling him that Sega first started screwing with us with the Gensis addons, and then abandoned the Saturn with no notable games. Yes, the Saturn had some great stuff. But if you didn't subscribe to a gaming magazine at the time then you didn't hear about any of them.

But my brother, being the type of person he is, felt that money burning a hole in his pocket and got the Dreamcast. Off the top of my head, the games we had were some sports titles, Tony Hawk 2, Ready 2 Rumble 2, and that's it. There wasn't anything compelling about the Dreamcast for us, as we weren't into fighters at the time, and the RPGs came very late in the system's life. By the time the RPGs hit the Gamecube was already out and purchased, and good times were being had with Rogue Squadren and Smash Bros.

Once I got a job I started coming here, and saw a lot of Sega love. I saw this game, Panzer Dragoon Saga, which was $200+ on the Saturn because it was just that good. I had always had in the back of my mind that I wanted a Saturn at some point for some hot Shining Force action, and now I had an excuse. And the Saturn has some really good stuff on it. And then you guys slowly started worming into my mind and have left me with a collection that includes nearly every notable console since the Atari era.

In my mind I think Sega seems to constantly be upstaged by its old rival Nintendo. As mentioned, in the early years they made a lot of moves that were to counter what Nintendo had. But I find it notable that while there were only two core Mario titles (and one could almost be considered a spinoff) on the SNES, there were four Sonic games on the Genesis. Nintendo seems to take an almost Blizzard-like approach to their core franchise games (the Mario platformer, the Zelda game, the Metroid game), while Sega seems to lean more towards the EA method of treating a franchise. Sega saw that Nintendo had this successful franchise and tried to build one of their own. But they don't seem to understand how to properly maintain the franchise. That's what really feels like Sega's problem: they see how others are successful and try to emulate it, without understanding the underlying why.

[glynnahab]

Well said, MrPopo.

I can't believe I read all that.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

Very good 'rant'? Mr Popo.

[Zork]

They had terrible ideas about marketing

I call bs on this. If you're saying this you don't know or remember much of Sega's history.

Do you not remember all the advertisements for the Genesis era, especially the Sega Scream and Pirate TV for the UK and Europe? These ad campaigns gave the Genesis a notable boost in popularity and sales back then, their Sega CD commercials and ads were even good, it's just that people knew the inherent flaws with it and didn't buy into it. On the advertisement side, it was pretty much the same style and attitude they had with the Genesis, which was perfect, it was on the production side that they messed up and everyone knew it.

Now the Saturn was the down period in terms of ads and whatnot, they pretty much ditched the "'tude" and got serious which I think was a mistake but then again, there were a bunch of management shuffles and what not that caused this. When the Dreamcast came around, the ads were reminiscent of the Genesis ones, there was that old attitude in them that people fondly remembered from back then, also what about 9/9/99? That was brilliant stuff honestly.

Anyway as for my honest take on Sega. I grew up on Sega, I stayed loyal to them until the Dreamcast's death, so all their systems and the name it's self and the games it brought with it, I'll always have a soft spot for it. Anything from Sega's past I usually really like, they were able to produce a lot of good games on all three of their main consoles and they also had nice 3rd party titles for the most part. The Sega of now, I'm not so sure what to think. They still produce Virtua Fighter, that game is always good, but they just can't seem to get their heads around anything else. If anything is to blame, it's poor management.

Poor management has always been the downfall of Sega. But besides that, if you're curious about some of the heaps of Sega love you do find here, it's mostly because a good amount of people here, migrated from an old Sega site's board if I remember right. I was one of those people.

[jfrost]

I have certain fondness for Sega if for no other reason than the fact that they gave a shit about markets other than America and Japan. Damn, Brazil's got all Phantasy Stars localized in Portuguese. :) No other company really believed or believes nowadays in these alternative markets, and Sega did (Nintendo likes to whine about piracy once in a while, even though it never actually launched any of its consoles outside the US, Japan or Europe).

Now, nobody killed Sega but itself. When people wonder why the Dreamcast wasn't successful albeit being a great machine, I roll my eyes. Who would trust a company that launched a bunch of crappy addons to the market and dropped support for them shortly after? Or a company that made a console wholly unprepared to host newer gaming mechanics (3D on Saturn), adding them afterwards? Or that, seeing the poor support for its console, dropped it in 3 years? I wouldn't trust it, and most people didn't trust it either. Dreamcast might have been great, but its producer clearly wasn't.

[jfrost]

Sega saw that Nintendo had this successful franchise and tried to build one of their own. But they don't seem to understand how to properly maintain the franchise. That's what really feels like Sega's problem: they see how others are successful and try to emulate it, without understanding the underlying why.

I think this depends on your definition of what is a successful franchise. From a commercial standpoint, Sonic games (even newer ones) are a success. They might not appeal to the hardcore fans, but they sell.