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[Celine]

Can't believe OP never cited "arcades".
That's what separated Sega from all the other console manufacturers that survive today.

Segata >> whatever Nintendo, PlayStation and Xbox.

 

[Humdinger]

I missed out on Sega consoles. Before my time. I've been in a retro mood lately, so maybe I'll go back and explore them at some point.

 

[Sorcerer]

But you like the PSP, DS, 3DS, N64 and Wii, don't you?
simply some of the most successful consoles in the history of video games

The mind boggling thing is that Sega traded a perfect controller for the VMU, a mere gimmick. Memory card slots on the system would have sufficed. If only they could have figured out a way to retain the shape of the Saturn controller while adding 2 analog sticks.
Thecable underneath the controller was just plain bad. Never stayed in its holder either. Those bumps on the analog stick were terrible as well.
I remember the system was easy to get, but not the VMU's at first. Playstation 2 was impossible to get as well as the memory cards, lol.

 

[thefool]

I miss it too. I think it was Dreamcast failure that led me to phase out about my gaming obsession to be honest. I haven't really been able to play a system that captured my imagination as Sega consoles did.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

The mind boggling thing is that Sega traded a perfect controller for the VMU, a mere gimmick. Memory card slots on the system would have sufficed. If only they could have figured out a way to retain the shape of the Saturn controller while adding 2 analog sticks.
The wire underneath the controller was just plain bad. Never stayed in its holder either. Those bumps on the analog stick were terrible as well.

Work by Yuji Naka. He swears he invented all the Dreamcast peripherals. The DC controller was purposely made with 4 buttons, because Sega wanted to boost the sale of arcade sticks, keyboards and maybe a controller with 2 analogues (but there wasn't time) I don't like Yuji Naka, he denied the Nights engine for Sonic Xtreme. In fact, I give thanks to Jupiter and Minerva that guy left Sega. Not all old Sega employees deserved to stay at SegaSammy, the tycoon Satomi was very generous with these losers. Sega only regained prestige when these old-fashioned developers retired.

 

[Sorcerer]

Work by Yuji Naka. He swears he invented all the Dreamcast peripherals. The DC controller was purposely made with 4 buttons, because Sega wanted to boost the sale of arcade sticks, keyboards and maybe a controller with 2 analogues (but there wasn't time) I don't like Yuji Naka, he denied the Nights engine for Sonic Xtreme. In fact, I give thanks to Jupiter and Minerva that guy left Sega. Not all old Sega employees deserved to stay at SegaSammy, the tycoon Satomi was very generous with these losers. Sega only regained prestige when these old-fashioned developers retired.

Wow, it never occured to me that the Dreamcast controller was purposely gimped so that other peripherals could be sold. I guess they could be called Sega Scammy!!! LOL!!!

 

[cireza]

He argued with Sega to put the chips in the cartridges and thought the 32X was a mistake and foresaw the disaster incoming. So, if he is to be believed it was certainly possible, maybe lower spec?
Not saying it's possible or not, just stating what I overheard from an insider who worked at Sega at the time.

You can put chips in cartridges but this does not override the limitations of the base hardware that has to render visuals and sound. So basically, a game like Virtua Racing is a demonstration of the best you can hope for (and it is by far the most impressive 3D game with a chip from back then). These consoles are tile based (they render 8x8 pixels squares exclusively, doesn't work well with unpredictable 3D ) and use set palettes of 16 colors, so 3D has to be rendered on a single palette. Which means not more than 16 colors for ALL the polygons (this also applies to SNES obviously). That's very low.

Although very primitive, the 32X VDP (Video Display Processor) was built with 3D in mind and assigns colors on a pixel basis. Which is slow (too slow for large 2D sprites), but a logical evolution for 3D. It also has a display mode where it is faster if subsequent pixels in a line are the same colors, which works very well with un-textured 3D games like Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter.

To summarize, with chips, they could have ported maybe the first Virtua Fighter to the MegaDrive (and I would have been curious to see the results !), but anything with textures was KO by default. Daytona would have not happened.

And I agree that the 32X was a commercial mistake. However the hardware was pretty well thought out and meant to be used in conjunction with the MegaDrive, but adding its own video out. All of these SEGA consoles are fascinating ^^

 

[cartman414]

32X even more bottlenecked by the Genesis than they were. Also, it had no utility when it came to 2d, making it a mismatch with the rest of the hardware.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Sega needs to return to consoles, Yeh a niche arcade with well-selected hardware and a 6-button front controller.

More than a thousand topics on the internet, and they insist on not seeing it, its crazy how they neglect us

 

[saintjules]

Evangelion?

 

[RayBoy]

Evangelion?

Yes

 

[Randall365]

I never bought a Sega console. Their first party games were poor compared to Nintendo and then Playstation blew them out of the water on the hardware front.

I cannot say I miss them.

 

[RJMacready73]

I would love a Sega Arcade Classics pack with all the model 2 & 3 games on it, so I can fire up the PS5 and get that outrun or scud race fix

 

[BlackTron]

I never bought a Sega console. Their first party games were poor compared to Nintendo and then Playstation blew them out of the water on the hardware front.

I cannot say I miss them.

Can't miss what you never had?

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Hell, Sega has the full capacity to create a console using old technology just like Nintendo does. What can we do to get the attention of this leadership? A Sonic open world cel shading edition can make a lot of money for Sega they don't see it ? a healthy investment, better than wasting 70 million on Hyenas. I buy day one if the company guarantees that the console will have a cycle of at least 5 years.

 

[cartman414]

Work by Yuji Naka. He swears he invented all the Dreamcast peripherals. The DC controller was purposely made with 4 buttons, because Sega wanted to boost the sale of arcade sticks, keyboards and maybe a controller with 2 analogues (but there wasn't time) I don't like Yuji Naka, he denied the Nights engine for Sonic Xtreme. In fact, I give thanks to Jupiter and Minerva that guy left Sega. Not all old Sega employees deserved to stay at SegaSammy, the tycoon Satomi was very generous with these losers. Sega only regained prestige when these old-fashioned developers retired.

Don't remember anything about Yuji there.

Interview: Kenji Tosaki talks Saturn/Dreamcast Peripheral Design, Reveals “Virtua Visor”

While the Saturn had a variety of great controllers and peripherals, a vast majority would agree that the 3D Analog Control Pad was perhaps one of the greatest. Dreamcast also touted several of its…

www.segasaturnshiro.com

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

Não me lembro de nada sobre Yuji lá.

Interview: Kenji Tosaki talks Saturn/Dreamcast Peripheral Design, Reveals “Virtua Visor”

While the Saturn had a variety of great controllers and peripherals, a vast majority would agree that the 3D Analog Control Pad was perhaps one of the greatest. Dreamcast also touted several of its…

www.segasaturnshiro.com

Naka, ' I do miss those old days when I was heavily involved in hardware making at Sega, I was involved in most of the consoles and controllers that Sega came up with'

 

[bobone]

What always make me think is the fact that Sega was only making (relevant) consoles in the US for about 10 years.
Genesis in 1989 - Dreamcast was dead in early 2001.
Hardly any time at all.
But I have a huge place in my heart for Sega. And hundreds of their games on my shelves.
There is noone else that has captured their feel; and they make my favorite game of all time (Skies of Arcadia)

 

[Crayon]

Genesis was good. Saturn was alright. Everything else was junk.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

At this point, asking Sega for a new console is like asking Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones to make a new Led Zeppelin album. We all know perfectly well how that would turn out.

We can still enjoy and play Sega videogames today, and we can enjoy the growing number of newly-translated Japanese titles that we missed the first time around. There’s no reason why you could’ve have a Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast connected to your 4K television, or vintage CRT if you were lucky enough to get one cheap.

As far as making it in today’s market, Sega was never mainstream enough for success. They were like a beloved indie band that had one breakout hit that sold millions, while everything else was ignored. And the costs of creating and selling a new console today requires billions of dollars that the company simply does not have. This industry became too expensive, and that’s the real reason why they were forced out in the first place. But that’s the way of things. The same thing happened to Atari and Commodore, and I’d still rather have an Amiga than a PlayStation 5.

 

[Daniel Thomas MacInnes]

What always make me think is the fact that Sega was only making (relevant) consoles in the US for about 10 years.
Genesis in 1989 - Dreamcast was dead in early 2001.
Hardly any time at all.
But I have a huge place in my heart for Sega. And hundreds of their games on my shelves.
There is noone else that has captured their feel; and they make my favorite game of all time (Skies of Arcadia)

The entire Beatles recorded catalog was from 1962-69. Life loves by pretty fast.

 

[BlackTron]

Genesis was good. Saturn was alright. Everything else was junk.

No DC lol?

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

As far as making it in today’s market, Sega was never mainstream enough for success.

I disagree, they were not popular but with their efforts they gained popularity. Sega Saturn is better known in Japan than the N64 and GCN. Sega Genesis is as well-known in the West as any mainstream console, Dreamcast has a name. and Sega has a name.

And the costs of creating and selling a new console today requires billions of dollars that the company simply does not have. This industry became too expensive

Wrong, the costs are similar to the times of the fifth and sixth generation depending on the type of strategy outlined and hardware chosen with 800 million dollars it is possible to re-enter the market with a simple console capable of running World Driver Championship and Sonic Frontiers.

 

[West Texas CEO]

Yes

Imagine the smell.

 

[Crayon]

No DC lol?

Nope. When that thing came out I said "can't wait to get one of those out the bargain bin". I thought it was interesting too, but sega had been swirling around the drain for a couple years by then.

 

[BigDeadFreak]

Just random musing. I loved them so much. They were like an intersection of modern PlayStation and Nintendo - cutting edge technology and more mature games, but with Nintendo’s spirit of innovation and gameplay focus and experimentation.

Sega was just amazing. People really only think of the Genesis, or the Sonic games, but Sega did so much more.

• They had a full color, backlit handheld way back in the 1980s.
• They had 3D and VR in the 1990s.
• The Nomad was basically a Nintendo Switch about 25 years before the Switch.
• The Saturn had online gaming at a time the internet wasn’t even a niche thing (Sega was crazy).
• The Sega CD helped normalize CD gaming.
• 3D games became what they did in very large part because of Virtua Fighter.
• The 32X was badly handled, but it was the original mid generated updated console that Sony and MS are now doing today.
• Sega was doing full native BC back when no other company did.
• Sega Channel was Game Pass all the way back in 1993!
• The VMU was basically the original “two screen gaming experience” that Nintendo/companion apps would try to do properly over the years to come.
• Shenmue was pretty much the first true modern open world game (and has a level of detail that’s still unmatched by many games today).

Sega’s death was sad because it basically said that unchecked innovation and experimentation has no place in the industry. And from a business point of view I get it but that bums me out. Sega was fucking insane, and trying out all sorts of ideas that the market and even technology did not exist for and would not exist for for literally decades sometimes.

I’m very happy with where Sega is right now but I think the console market is poorer for not having them. I’m happy Nintendo keeps some of that old Sega spirit alive, but Nintendo is Nintendo, not Sega. There was no one like Sega. In the console market drama of the last few days, I’m just reminded of this and I get sad.

I love Sega. I grew up with a Mega Drive and the Saturn is easily my favourite console.

However, the saddest part about your list is that almost every innovation they came up with was just a few years too early when the technology wasn't quite ready.

It's such a shame as there really is no one like them now.

 

[Happosai]

I believe I've posted here before and knowing the short answer; I probably agreed with the thread title alone. You need to consider how much output SEGA had and also recognize how many failures there were in such close proximity of years. Sega Saturn (N.A. version), 32X add-on, Core3 Megadrive/Genesis and Nomad all came out in very close time. They did not do well and that's probably an understatement. I loved Saturn and Nomad too. But that's the reality. SEGA was ready to drop the Neptune down in the middle of all that too. Dreamcast was only out a few years and despite some later shovel ware; it seemed like they could have rebounded. You'd have to consider the ratio of games from Segas in-house devs for DC too vs. those bigger ones who were migrating to either Sony, Nintendo and eventually Microsoft.

We can miss it but, they were horribly mismanaged for years and they were losing millions.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

SEGA fans deserve the company's return to consoles, Sega has total material conditions, IPs, passionate fans, solid operating profits, a recognized name and know-how as a third party and manufacturer, to put quality hardware on the market with performance similar to the Switch 2, naturally the Switch 2 will sell much more than this hypothetical console, however numbers like those of the Sega Genesis and N64 can be achieved.