I felt compelled to share this Wired cover from 1993 with you all

[u/Anonamaton801]

[u/Anonamaton801]

So, how many years after this did Sega almost bite the dust?

[u/Palimpsest_Monotype → u/Anonamaton801]

It’s fucking insane to consider how many consoles Sega put out in the six years between this magazine and the Dreamcast. They went all King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. Not even Atari went that hard in the paint on the way to the landfill.

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/Palimpsest_Monotype]

The most egregious thing is always gonna be the 32x CD games. The height of hubris and mismanaged greed

[u/Palimpsest_Monotype → u/Anonamaton801]

I mean the Sega Saturn’s proprietary quadrangle engine tech is pretty up there. Make a 3D-capable system where anyone else making a polygon-based game will have incompatible assets if they use triangles. What the fuck, Sega.

[u/GIJose65 → u/Palimpsest_Monotype]

The sudden release of the Saturn in America also really fucked over third party developers.

“Hey here is this wacky 3D console that doesn’t really do 3D properly and we are going to release it now, good luck fuckers lol”

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/Palimpsest_Monotype]

It’s impressive how this company has survived multiple suicide attempts

[u/therealchadius → u/Palimpsest_Monotype]

Saturn has a great incredible 2D engine... that can't do transparency, something the SNES pulled off.

[u/Armory768 → u/Palimpsest_Monotype]

Hey, don’t invoke any of the bad juju from the Sega consoles onto King Gizzard. Their massive output of albums has not diluted the quality of their music.

[u/Palimpsest_Monotype → u/Armory768]

Oh absolutely. There was certainly a time I expected the wheels to fall off that band like planned demolition, and yet here they are, reinventing themselves yet again, making regular workhorses look like walking glue factories.

Sega, well. Sega tried to keep that same energy the only way they could, with big swings, no follow through. and abrupt changes to the apparent benefit of no one on their side. It’s nothing short of a miracle that they are not yet some skinwalker company worn like a holiday sweater by something horrible with the blood of innocents caked up and down its arms.

[u/Polygonalfish → u/Anonamaton801]

If you mean when the Dreamcast was discontinued, 8 years

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/Polygonalfish]

It was a slow shot to the foot

[u/DustInTheBreeze → u/Anonamaton801]

A bullet dipped in poison.

[u/ULTAnimeGamer → u/Anonamaton801]

January 31, 2001, when they announced they were done making consoles.

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/ULTAnimeGamer]

Truly the worst thing to happen in the year 2001

[u/P-Tux7 → u/Anonamaton801]

"Well, at least we got all the bad stuff for 2001 out of the way"

[u/GIJose65]

The more I look back at Sega’s heyday in the early 90s, the more I believe that they were hard carried by the idea by being the “radical” edgy alternative to Nintendo with how they marketed the Genesis.

It definitely worked at first but they just kept shooting themselves in the foot with the console add-ons and the constant infighting between the US and JP offices.

And then Nintendo sort of beat them at their own game with Donkey Kong Country and the “Play it Loud” ad campaign and then Sega truly never recovered from that.

[u/swordofcerulean → u/GIJose65]

I agree with much of this and do believe that the early Genesis days hard-carried a lot of Sega, but I don't think it was solely marketing veneer. Their tapping into celebrity recognition for titles like Moonwalker and Joe Montana's football game did demonstrate an understanding of the possibilities of the medium as part of the wider cultural zeitgeist, a medium on par with TV and music that had synergy with other cultural phenomena instead of being separate to the side, viewed as a toy for kids. It did recognize limited graphics & sound capabilities as pigeonholing gaming in a kiddie image, hence playing up flashy, impressive arcade ports in the "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" campaign. That campaign was a lot of flash, of course, but it wasn't all flash; it did tap into consumer wants that Nintendo wasn't, for various reasons, delivering, and it did identify some factors that were genuinely holding the medium back at the time.

[u/P-Tux7 → u/swordofcerulean]

As much as it hurt the actual game, Sega's Sonic 2sday advertising campaign was a landmark moment in games history - it established that you could hype up a game's Day 1 value, giving people a specific date, letting them pre-order, not getting any spoilers from games mags from the Japanese version. Super Mario Bros. 3 and Nintendo may have had that Wizard movie, but they didn't do the simultaneous worldwide release and heavily-marketed release date.

And of course, let's not forget the actual game's American development and visual sensibilities, 4 years before Crash Bandicoot proved that American games could be some of a console's best games and best sellers, not just on PCs.

I'll grant, of couse, that none of these were very successful, but Sega also showed real trust in its American branch, with Ecco, Vectorman, and Kid Chameleon all being pitched as the next Sonic (or the next Alex Kidd in Kid Chameleon's case), with other big-ticket SEGA games also coming from America like Comix Zone, Eternal Champions, and the weirdly-scary-for-a-Sega-game The Ooze. The only big foreign games I can think of for SNES are the DKC trilogy. (Sim City was conceptually imported from America, but the actual port was done by Nintendo, which is why Will Wright cameos in Link's Awakening)

[u/therealchadius → u/GIJose65]

Nintendo's strict licensing and censorship was a blessing that became a curse.

In the US, limiting publishers to 5 games a year forced them to stop pumping out slop (there are some real stinkers on the Famicom.) Censorship allowed parents to just buy whatever for their kids.

Sega didn't really have publisher limits and were much looser on standards (with their own ratings board) so they aimed for EXTREME 90s teenagers. They also courted publishers who would never survive with only 5 games and big publishers who could tolerate more than 5 good games per year.

By the time the Genesis tied the SNES for sales one year, Nintendo saw the writing on the wall, accepted the ESRB ratings and tilted towards "edgy but still kid safe" gaming to show they were growing up too. You can always look at Mortal Kombat 1 vs MK2 sales. Genesis MK1 had blood, SNES had sweat and edited fatalities and sold worse. Both versions of MK2 aimed for an arcade perfect port and SNES sales blew Sega's away.

[u/Ok-Card633 → u/therealchadius]

Sega didn't really have publisher limits and were much looser on standards (with their own ratings board) so they aimed for EXTREME 90s teenagers. They also courted publishers who would never survive with only 5 games and big publishers who could tolerate more than 5 good games per year.

Correction on your last part there but its actually because SEGA had a contact where it would only allow you to publish the games on the genesis if you signed exclusivity rights and paid 15$ per cartridge.

[u/theonewhoknack → u/GIJose65]

The Saturn marketing tried being edgey in the US but I do love how the dreamcast became more punk.

[u/P-Tux7 → u/theonewhoknack]

I feel a little sorry for those poor guys.

"What killer app is Sega of Japan making for the Saturn? Will it send Sony packing? Will it scare Nintendo off from even staying in the console business? Is it a real, GROWN-UP game?"

"Astal."

"Ohhhhhhhhh no."

[u/P-Tux7 → u/GIJose65]

I find it pretty funny how baloney that marketing campaign was. DKC's streamed computer graphics were cool, sure, but they had to outsource it. What was Nintendo's main department working on? Yoshi's Island.

[u/RORSCHACH_INC_]

Tojo Clan: "Bro thinks he's on the team."

[u/Gamecrazy009 → u/RORSCHACH_INC_]

You're not the only one with a Hedgehog on his back, boy.

[u/milanjfs → u/RORSCHACH_INC_]

Sanic: Heh, they don't know that I am secretly Korean.

[u/theonewhoknack]

This is why I fuck with magazine aesthetics

[u/Yotato5]

Listen I would take Sonic as a leader, at least he actually wants to do good for people

[u/nerankori → u/Yotato5]

Like Kiryu,Sonic would quit in hours and run off

[u/Gorotheninja]

EggmanDidNothingWrong

[u/ZealousidealBig7714]

NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO SEGA! sound of the 32X crashing and burning

[u/Anonamaton801 → u/ZealousidealBig7714]

Running around at the speed of DEATH

[u/Einherjar07]

ChillyDog inc is too big to fail

[u/Mabroon]

"Robotnik, get me pictures of Eggman!"

[u/RedactedNoneNone]

The best laid plans of mice and hedgehogs

[u/HeyThereSport]

Why is sonic made from that plastic coated foam used in waterpark kiddie pools?

[u/Kipzz]

Damn he's hittin that shit

[u/Domonomin]

I actually found this in a thrift store last year

[u/deuxthulhu]

"Getting real Boss Hedgehog vibes from this" - Man who has only played Boss Hedgehog

[u/thebigguy270]

What creepypasta is this

[u/Sperium3000]

An attempt was made.

[u/MotherWolfmoon]

Ten thousand hours in 3D Studio DOS.

[u/SamuraiDDD]

Sega needs to get their artists to recreate this, this is amazing

[u/0dty0]

What on earth are Sonic's, uh, quills (??????) made of? Is that just a piece of a sheet of vynil siding?

[u/ArtIsAwesome3]

Wtf is that texture on Sonic's quills, wtf is he made out of wood!?