New interviews with SEGA's Al Nilsen and Tom Kalinske

[Barry the Nomad]

Hey all! This month we're hard at work at SEGAbits obtaining audio interviews with Al Nilsen, SEGA of America's Director of Marketing from '89-'93, and Tom Kalinske, SEGA of America's President from 1990 to 1996. Both were incredibly influential in the creation of and the marketing of Sonic the Hedgehog. Al's claim to fame is creating "Sonic 2sday" and convincing Sonic Team that Tails was a better name than Miles Prower.

On our 60th podcast, recorded last night on Al NilSunday, Al came on and talked with us for an hour and a half! It's a great listen for any SEGA and Sonic fan. Next week we plan to have the author of Console Wars, Blake J. Harris, on as a guest and the week after that we plan to have Tom Kalinske on for an interview! I thought I'd share the podcasts here as they'll be chock full of Sonic content and are sure to feature behind-the-scenes stories never heard before (well, outside of the book) worthy of discussion.

Here's the Al show in full! Other listening options are on our news post:
http://segabits.com/blog/2014/05/05/swi ... ing-89-93/

[bacardipr05]

What Nintendon't Genesis does...Genesis..

[Barry the Nomad]

For this week's podcast, the Console Wars author Blake J. Harris joined us to talk about his influences, the process of writing such an epic story, his upcoming documentary, and his teaming up with Scott Rudin and Seth Rogen. Blake also shares stories that didn't make the final cut, and his thoughts on modern day SEGA and Nintendo.

http://segabits.com/blog/2014/05/13/swi ... -j-harris/

[Barry the Nomad]

Our interview with Tom Kalinske is ready for your listening pleasure!

http://segabits.com/blog/2014/05/23/swi ... ent-90-96/



Some of the stuff we covered:

Tom's early years
Tom's favorite game and preferred Genesis model
SEGA's charity efforts
Tom's thoughts on the Pico, Game Gear, 32X, and Nomad and their success/failures
Tom's opinion of the Saturn and his thoughts on a SEGA/Sony hybrid
Why Sonic had two cartoons
Why the SEGA Channel failed to catch on
How Masters of the Universe influenced Sonic
Tom's opinion of Nintendo pre-SEGA
The consoles's code names - to be honest, Tom doesn't recall much from this, mainly because he knew the real names of the Game Gear, etc, so code names really didn't run through his mind much
Nintendo sending C&D orders to SEGA
Tom's memories of the SEGA Jupiter
How SEGA influenced LeapFrog

[ExedExes]

I just wanted to say that Console Wars is a super awesome book, so far. Lots of stuff you never knew about Sega has been revealed, even the videogame industry as a whole. Check it out.