The Sega Saga

with what we're talking about. Awesome. Yeah, it's a great movie, isn't it. Yes, if you have not seen that movie, then you need to find out what that quote is from and then go see that movie. He likes corn. We could just quote that movie over this podcast, but that would be finept it wouldn't cover the topic that the title says true and it is one of our favorite gaming companies that we're talking about the history of today. Sega. Yes. Yes, Chris was the one who came up with the brilliant title,

the Sega Saga. Yes, it's an epic Sega saga, so and and and it has nothing to do with Iceland, right, completely different saga. No, No, there's no Bayowolf in the well, they might have made a Baowolf game. I didn't go through their entire arcade library anyway, and then it was disgrendled anyway. Oh man, we're you can tell we've already done one podcast this morning because we're really warmed up

with Lupi. Um. So, the funny thing is the Sega still exists, so we are we are not burying a company as we did with Midway so much, but it exists in a radically different form than it did many years ago. And uh, many people and I had no idea when I started the research for this, but many people think of Sega as another one of those Japanese arcade game companies. Are game companies like Nintendo or Tito

or Sony and some of the others not so much. Well, it is, but it began as an American company, Yes, in Honolulu, Hawaii, which I guess technically in Honolulu still was not in an American It was an American territory, wasn't a statement. I think you'd probably still call it an American company. And its name comes from Standard Games. Actually it comes from the second name. Standard Games was

their original name. Yes, but they then changed the Service games because they took they took the SE from service and the g A from games and became Sega. Now why was it called service Games because early on in its history the company made coin operated amusements. Yes, right, so these are the kind of the old style penny arcade type games and they made them specifically, they would they were making them for a very niche market, niche military basis. Yes, And that's where you got the name

Service Games because they were in the service exactly. And they the company had been around for a few years when um, they kind of got this idea of relocating to Japan. Yes, the company, originally as Standard Games, was founded by Martin Bromily, Irvan Bromberg, and James Humpert. And they started in um I, you know, oddly enough, right before the United States entered World War two. Um with Japan.

Of course, um event that happened in Hawaii, yes, um, but in one Bromiley was the one that said let's move to Tokyo. And that actually, uh, you might say, why did you bring that up right after the war thing? It actually had a lot to do with the war, not just because they were originally creating games for service locations, but also because you know, Japan had been damaged pretty heavily in the last days of the war, pretty heavily,

very heavily, and um the country. The country was rebuilding, and they saw an opportunity to get in on the ground floor of and and create an industry that that really didn't exist in Japan like it did in the United States. And the United States they had competition from other game manufacturers, where in Japan they would have a

much more open market. Yeah, this was really amazing foresight, right, because you have to remember at this time in history, no one was really looking to Japan to become a leader in electronics or or any any of those kind

of industries. I mean, Japan was a country that had been devastated by war, and UM and the United States of course invested quite heavily in in rebuilding Japan, as did other nations, and Japan, for its part, didn't just accept money and you know and coast the Japanese people, the Japanese government really dedicated themselves to building a new Japan.

And and boy did they The electronics industry alone became so important to Japan and they became so innovative that it in Japan, you could argue, became the leader in several electronics sub categories, to the point where you had countries like America say, wow, what happened? We were we were away in the lead there. What how did that happen? And the reason that happened was companies like Sega really

saw the opportunity and seized it. Um. Yeah, So in Sega merged with another company, rosen Enterprises, again founded by an American, David rosen In, and they that company had

been working on an instant photo booths and mechanical arcade games. Um. I think of that being sort of like pinball machines and those things with the cranes that never seem to work, yes, or the games where you get the coins that are right there on the edge and all it's gonna take is one more coin and it'll knock all those coins and you'll be rich. But somehow, despite the laws of gravity and the conservation of energy, it just doesn't work, which shows you that science is a lie. Okay, that

last part was a joke. I'm going to send in the stuff to blow your mind staff and they can they can have a talk with you about that. Explain how this is scientifically possible, I dare you. But it wasn't long after that that Sega released its first major hit, at least that I saw a reference, and that's called Periscope. It's a sub submarine simulator again with the war theme. UM and UH in giving you the concise history here and which is the one that's on the same A website.

In sixty nine, Sega, Rosenan and the other people who were shareholders in Sega decided to sell out to Gulf and Western, which, according to Britannica, was founded in ninety eight uh and just became a It was a huge conglomerate company. UM. It owned Paramount Pictures UM and then it changed its name Gulf and Western. I remember seeing that on the Paramount logo and wondering what the connection was. Well, it changed its name to Paramount Communications UH in nine

and then Viacom gobbled it up in UM. But that that's uh, you know, sort of sort of how it became a worldwide entity, because first it had to hit with with Periscope, and then it was you know, became part of a very large media distribution company, right and UH, I thought it was interesting that just this's just kind of an aside that I don't really have a whole

lot of de tail about this. But then in the seventies, Sega really kind of tried to branch out beyond just doing the amusements and the games and created its own Sega branded television screen TV. Yeah. I didn't see that. Yeah,

it's one of those just odd things. Obviously it was not not the it what ended up not being the direction the company moved in, but it was something that they were, you know, they were trying out different things, and UH, as the arcade game began to evolve, you know, late seventies, that's when we started seeing arcade games up here. As I began to involve, Sega got involved in that because you know, that was sort of Sega's thing was

they were they were all about coin operated amusements. And then after the coin operated UH games started to really take off, that's when you started to see companies developed the home game consoles. Now, um, I have to say that as I was doing research for this, I started of course with Sega, but ended up on a really awesome lengthy history of Sega at I g N, done by Travis Foss f h s and Uh. He really gets into a lot of depth about the company UM.

According to his article, UM, it was Space Invaders release in by Tito UM causing a coin shortage in Japan. Uh that helped spur the industry, the video game industry in in Japan and UM. Sega at that point picked up an American company called Gremlin Industries to come up with ideas for arcade games. Did they feed them after midnight? It's always midnight somewhere, well, not always, but at the top of the hour, um, and head On was the

result of that. Applied directly to forehead it was Amazed game. UM. Amazing No uh not not completely dissimilar to another famous May's game not created by Sega. Yes, UM. But I remember some of the games that Mr Foss mentions in his article, including Zaxon, which was a three D space

shooter that was a great game. I loved Zaxon, fantastic game. Um. And he also mentioned Buck Rogers Planet of Zoom, which I can't remember if it was in the corner of Pizza Place where I used to spend all my parents quarters. For me, it was skate country, but was the name of the skating rink at my hometown. This was that's a pizza. There's some free plugs for businesses that no longer exist. Yeah, but as Jonathan mentioned, uh, they started getting into home games with some They started out with

a very very very ugly console named SG one thousand. Yeah. Now this was marketed only in Japan. Yes, it did not get worldwide distribution, and it's probably a good thing. It came out around and it was a card cartridge based system, right, Yeah, that was That was during the game crash that we talked about in an earlier podcast, which is interesting because it came out. I would say that was the second wave of home big wave of

home consoles and Sega. Sega had some amazing timing with its console releases, of the first being that releasing a console shortly after the massive home gaming crash that happened if you remember from our podcast about that that that crash.

What happened was that the market became glutted with various consoles and games, many of which were of a poor quality, and so the home market enthusiasts became disenchanted with video games in general, and a lot of people were making the move towards looking at personal computers, which really had not hit big time yet, but we're starting to gain a lot of traction. So home consoles were hurting at this time now. And the the this console that Sega released,

the s G one thousand, it had some problems. Uh, it only had RF connection, so if you were to buy one today, you would actually have to probably find an adapter in order to play it. I have one and r F adapter, yeah, yeah, somewhere, and you haven't. No, I don't have an S one. You know, they were pretty affordable. They only cost fifteen thousand yen, which you know was about hundred thirty dollars according to I haven't. I didn't need the pricing for today. I can look

it up on That's all right. I didn't do I got I got messages last time. How irritating it was do the full conversion. But it did launch on July fifte at the same day as you know the fan Colm, Yes, the famicom, which was known to those of us in the United States as entertainment system. So yes, right out of the gate, Sega released this on the same day

as a an icon in the video game industry. Now, of course, then Nintendo Entertainment System would make its way to the United States a little later, yes, but the does not. And let me tell a little bit more. I'll give you a little more detail about this this console. Uh. It also had a hardwired, permanently attached joystick, so it wasn't a joystick that you would unplug and pack up, and the reason for that was that it made it less expensive to produce. But apparently the joystick had problems.

It was had poor response time. You had to really press on it to get things done. And it was rectangular, kind of like the shape of a remote control, with a joystick towards the top end in the center and buttons on either side. Not the most comfortable thing in the world to hold. Actually, read an article in Wired where one of the Wired writers found one while attending a game conference in Japan and purchased it for about fifty eight dollars to bring it back and try it out,

because hardly anyone bought this thing. That then Tendo beat the pants off of it in Japan, and of course never saw worldwide distribution. Yes, so his review was that you could see why never saw worldwide distribution the games. He said, we're pretty much not that great, and the controls were really difficult, and the Nintendo was just a superior system. Yep, yep, and in fact, it scared away

the corporate parent. Now, lest you have paused the podcast and corrected me on Viacom owning Sega, UM Golf and Western before Paramount even entered the picture, before they changed their name, they said okay, no, Mr Rosen, you want your company back. Um. And they were asking thirty eight million dollars for Sega, which you know I would have

considered a bargain in today's terms, probably right. Um. So basically, uh, David Rosen found some other willing partners and uh uh including a company named c s K Holdings UM, a Japanese company. UM. And basically they bought it back from Gulf and Western headquartered in Japan, and uh Rosen stayed in Los Angeles, California to manage the United States operation. UM. So, yeah, the ST one thousand not a hit, and Gulf and Western says, no, no, no, you go ahead, you can

have it back. And a couple of years later, Sega launches a new console, the Sega Master System. So we're skipping the SG one two. Yeah, I'm skipping all the twos. Most of the several of the consoles will be talking about had follow up consoles and Sega Mark three, let's

let's just talk about the ones that are important. It's funny if you if you go back to the if you go back to the um list of if you go find this article and find these boxes, they are the most depressing looking beige chunks of plastic kind of kind of reflects their their their eventual fate, yes, however,

but not their eventual successes, which looked far cooler. So the Master System, the Sega Master System you have thought, it came out in Japan around and then it got worldwide release the next year, and that was another eight bit based video game console system. So this is the same same general processing level as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

It was a thirty two color system as opposed to the sixteen from the previous UH console, and again cartridge based, but it also had a slot for a card system. The cards would actually hold games that were not as complicated, that didn't need the full capacity that a cartridge could hold. But you could like walk around with the whole pocket full of games and and trade them with your friends. Right, these would be the it's like pog now, these were them.

You could play Pog with the cards if you really wanted to. Now that the cards were for the games that were much less complicated, So you might have uh, you know, You're You're a title games. Those would all be on cartridges because they needed that space. But then you would have these very simple games that were not that uh demanding as far as um storage space goes, and so those would be used on the cards. The

card thing did not last very long. The later versions of the Sega Master System just did away with it because hardly anyone was purchasing these card games, and then they would just they would release like batches of these card games all contained to one cartridge instead. So it's kind of like if you've ever played a more modern console where they release the classic games, where you'll get like maybe thirty or forty classic games on one desk.

It was kind of the equivalent to that, uh and that one was around two hundred dollars when it launched. Now at this point, UH I believe a man named Hayao naka Yama was in charge of Sega in in Japan and Rosen was handling things here in the United States. They didn't always so much get along. Um. And that that's important because that story is going on behind the

scenes here. We don't really see that. Those of us who are are Sega fans, Um, we don't really see all that stuff because you know, this is not the kind of thing where you know, you would typically know about that. What you're looking at is you know whether or not uh, Space Harrier and out Run and Zaxon

are coming into your house. Um. But the thing is that the decisions made by Sega in Japan and Sega in America had a great deal to do with the successes and failures of the companies we're gonna see coming up shortly because at this point, this is when uh, Nintendo was launching Super Mario Brothers. Yeah, around that time, the Sega Master System was seeing some success in Europe. They were they were actually selling fairly well in Europe, but in the United States and Japan they were trailing

sales of the in s and uh. Really the Sega's strong suit at this point was their intellectual property for their arcade games, like you were saying, right, and they had that leverage, and Nintendo had Mario. Right, Nintendo had an identifiable mascot, yes, right, and and Sega needed something like that because I mean you could say that Atari had pac Man. True, yeah, Atari had licensed pac Man from Namco for you or for worse that that was

another podcast. Um, but yeah, it's uh um. They were really looking for some character that they could use, they could leverage, and I know who you're thinking of, but it wasn't him yet. It was Alex Kidd that they settled on. If you haven't heard of him, that shows that it was not a huge success, right. Um. No, They tried to make him into a franchiseable character that they could parlay at home, but he just didn't. Alex Kidd in Miracle World just didn't take off like they

hoped it would. Well, who would have thought that jump Man would eventually become an iconic character. I mean, a shortish plumber and overalls Mario started off as jump Man. No one would have thought this guy is going to become the icon for a company. Yeah, and he did showed us. So at this time, we're getting into the late eighties, Saga starts to plan its next big console. How do you follow up? Name the mass your system, especially one that didn't do so well in the United States.

In Japan, well, you could call it the Mega Drive if you want to do, but why would you do that. Well it did do that for some countries, but in the United States it was called Genesis. Yes, not that Genesis. What it was This thing didn't like make dead planets turn alive. This is I never bought one. Then the Master system was was had changed from that really boring beige color to black, but it still looked like a

box with ports on it. The Genesis was black and shiny and round, round dish, It had curves, and it was a lot cooler looking than it's previous. Not that that sells, however, altered beast being packaged with the system that helps. And I'll keep in mind the Sega Genesis was still a cartridge based system. We haven't moved away from cartridges yet, but it was superior to the NES. It was a sixteen bit system, yes it was. The NES was an eight bit system, and when it came

out in Japan that was before the Supernintendo. Yes, not a whole lot longer before the Supernintendo, but but long enough so that Sega had a jump on the sixteen

bit market. Yes. Now, the the I g N article points out that it didn't take off right out of the gate in Japan, maybe partially due to and I didn't know this either, that Super Mario Brothers three had been released the week before, great timing Sega, so everybody was still kind of invested in Well, yeah, Nintendo had an amazing market penetration to so you get to some point it's just like, you know, the to to jump over to another company for a second PlayStation had such

a great depth of games that the the original PlayStation was going strong well after the PlayStation two came out, and then when the play stay and three came out, the PlayStation two did the same thing. In fact, they were still making PlayStation two games long after the PS three came out, So there's a there's a level of loyalty among gamers. Also. I mean, let's face it, it costs a lot of money to upgrade from one system

to another. So if you are a gamer and you have a console and they're still getting new games coming out for that console, there's not a whole lot of reason for you to jump ship to another system unless the games are just phenomenally better. Now, you could argue that the Genesis games were at least phenomenally better from a graphical standpoint or or even sound effects standpoint. The

specs on the Genesis were superior to the nes. But again, the market penetration that Nintendo had, particularly in Japan, was hard to to to just dismiss. Yeah, the Genesis only sold four hundred thousand units in its first year, which is not I mean, especially by today's standard, where gaming is far more um entrenched in the market than it used to be. That's that's nothing. But in the United States they got a guy named Michael Kat's to take over UM and um. Basically, they named Hi president of

Sega of America one month after the Genesis launched. And uh, the company was really trying to push selling a million systems, which again in today's standards, seems tiny. Um. But Nintendo had the licensees locked up as well, um to use uh, to use reference and uh yeah, I mean they had contracts with them, they were binding that said, you know, if you developed for other systems, you can, And because Nintendo had such a huge customer base, everyone wanted to

develop for Nintendo. Now, for some of you this might sound familiar because we're seeing similar things in today's market, not necessarily with the video game consoles, but let's talk about developing apps for various platforms. This might sound very familiar to you. Yes, so that's not an old idea or am I Rather, it is an old idea, it's not a new idea. So this was around the time where Sega finally did come up with a mascot that actually stuck. Yes, is in that we saw a certain

blue rodent that can move really really fast. Actually, I don't even know if that they're rodents, but um, I think they are, but but I can look. Uh. Foss actually pointed out that this was the point at which Sega got into the sports genre pretty heavily. Um, they got people like Tommy Lasorda, Evander Holyfield, Joe Montana, and a non you'll probably WinCE when I mentioned this, and non sports person but was big on the Genesis, Michael Jackson.

I would just like to point out that none of those are the blue I had mentioned, No exactly, but no. I just the reason the reason I remember this is because all my friends who had Genesis is is the geneses liked the sports games they were big on the shore. Um. So yeah, they really had gotten that, and they helped out a then struggling company named you probably never heard this company, Electronic Arts, helped them what were the e something, Yes, well,

they had the Madden franchise. That was one of the Madden franchise was just starting. But they developed the Joe Joe Montana football game for Sega as well. And then on top of it, you're right that that blue Hedgehog Sonic finally showed up and he was. This really went into their marketing thing because Sonic was a sassy little guy, sort of like Mickey Mouse when he made his debut on the scene before he got kind of watered down a little bit. Yeah, so Sonic was, you know, right

there he was. He had in your face. It was the Pucci of video game system Um. But his the gameplay really started to sell these consoles because people were looking at how fast Sonic the Hedgehog played and the the graphic quality, the fact that you could have these fast moving, clean graphics with vibrant colors that really began to catch the attention of the public, and the Genesis

started to actually make better sales. Unfortunately, right around the same time the Jestice was starting to to UH to pick up some steam, the Nintendo company came out with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. So once again Justice Genesis is catching a lucky break. Nintendo comes out and fires a massive cannon across the bowl. Well, it probably didn't help that at that time, the graphics capabilities of the Genesis led them to market their their marketing slogan genis

just does what an intended don't write. Um. We should also point out that Sega had a bright idea to make the Genesis backwards compatible. Yes, now, this was something that becomes very important in consoles later down the line, and some companies, mainly Nintendo, didn't really take it to heart for a really long time. The idea that you would be able to play your old games on your

new system now within the case of the Genesis. In order to do it, you had to have an adapter because the cartridges for the Sega Genesis were a different size than the cartridges for the UH for the Sega master System. So but you could get an adapter for your Sega Genesis and then you could play all your old Sega Mastery games on your Genesis now. Granted, that's not gonna mean that they're gonna look better or play better than they did on the older system, but it

means you'll have access to them. Yep, yep, and um uh. They recruited a guy named Tom Kalinski from Mattel who had overseen or worked with the the in television. Um, your favorite game system, and uh it's not. I had one, but it's not my favorite. They pushed him into the CEO of Sega of America Slide and he made a lot of important decisions. He decided that Sonic should be in the box and not altered Beast, So Genesis started shipping with UH with that and uh. Sega in Japan

didn't like the idea. They thought it was a bad idea to include Sonic in the box. And Kolinsky, not for the last time, proved that he knew what was gonna work and what wasn't and lo and behold it's It sold a lot of units, so welcome to the next level. Yeah, let's talk about let's talk about some

of the other stuff that Sega dead. They also began to introduce expansions from the Genesis, so not just the adapter that would allow you to play old games, but some expansions that unfortunately did not see a lot of success. One was the Mega c D, which was allowing you to play because here's the thing, compact us could hold a lot more information than a cartridge. So the idea was, how about for these games that are going to be really uh pushing the envelope as far as what the

console can do. The consoles capable of doing more than what a cartridge based game can provide. So therefore we need to create a system that will allow a new media to be used, new form of media. In that case, it was the Compact disc. So the Mega cy D was produced and a few games came out, including a Sonic CD, and uh, they did all right, but they never really took off. No one really adapted to it. And then there was the thirty two X, which was

another expansion for the Genesis. Originally it was going to be an update to the whole Genesis console, but there an argument was made that it should be instead an expansion pack rather than a brand new console. And the idea here was that was going to give you a jump on getting to the thirty two bit based game systems. Keep in mind the Genesis is a sixteen bit system, yes, and then Sega was already looking forward to the next system. Yeah,

it was planning on calling the Saturn. This was the big problem with the thirty two X because they come out with the expansion pack of the thirty two X, but they also say that they're working on the next generation console. Well, if you're a developer, a game developer, you might think, well, why should I develop for in a game system that's going to be obsolete in just two years? Why should I develop a game for that? Instead, I should be developing for the next generation of video

game consoles. So not a lot of content was produced that could take advantage of the thirty two X. So that's why that was a failed adaptation. But the Saturn came out a little bit later and then hit the US and it started to have a lot of the things that you saw as expansion packs for the Genesis. Yeah.

It's an interesting story that apparently Sega had met with Silicon Graphics UM back in the day and had a meet a meeting with Jim Clark, who was the chairman of Silicon Graphics, and they were trying to sell Saga this new chip set that would allow them to run new high powered games and UH. Basically Sega in Japan was committed to going with the chip set that they

had already picked out for it. So even though this UH system was going to be really, really cool, they had to say no. And they said, well, there's another company up in Seattle that might be interested in that, and so they took it to that company and it became the chip set for the Nintendo sixty four. Yeah. Painful. Yeah. So the Saturn had three thirty two bit processors, but it came out and it had a CD ROM drive,

it had to video processors. I mean, this was a machine that had some decent firepower for the time, right. But here's another problem. It came out very close to the same time that another major play or in video game consoles came out, which was the debut of the Sony PlayStation. Yes, this is another missed opportunity on Sega's park because Sega had talked to Sony UM and Sony had talked to Nintendo, both of them about the possibility of doing some kind of partnership, and Sony basically and

and Sega couldn't work out their differences. So the thing is uh, you know, Sony went out on their own and you know, delivered delivered a severe beating to both of them. Right. Yeah, So you've got You've got the Sony PlayStation, which was another CD based system. You also had the Nintendo sixty four. This at this point, Nintendo was still holding onto the cartridge based systems. Um. Although some of my favorite video games of all time were

made for the Nintendo sixty four. Yes, Golden Eye Anyone, or WrestleMania two thousand or WWF no mercy, oh man, I love the wrestling games. Um. If you guys are fans of wrestling games, let me know, because I'm always on the lookout for really good wrestling games. So that, honestly, if you know of good ones, let me know. I love them. Anyway, back to the back to the matter at hand, So you've got the Saturn coming out. It is not it does not do well against the PlayStation.

It doesn't even do well against the Nintendo sixty four. It is it's in third place. Sadly that that system, I think is is pretty widely considered a dog, which is it's had some interesting features and actually had had a slot, Yes, it had a slot for additional memory. So some of the games on the Saturn were so advanced that the system didn't have enough RAM to run the game. Well, okay, you know Saga developed, Um, we we skipped over it and I can just throw it

in there real quick since we're running low on time. Uh. Saga developed active three D glasses years before this. Yes, and they didn't take off, and the consoles supported three D playback. So yeah, again easily they were really ahead of their time. And a lot of these these developments. Um, so here's another problem. Again they did not learn the lesson that they should have learned with the release of the thirty two X where they said, oh, by the way,

we're also working on a thirty two bit system. Just two years after the Saturn debut, they talked about how they were working on the next generation of consoles. So again you had all these developers say, well, why should I develop for a console that has a two year

shelf life left? Maybe um and you might be thinking, wow, this is really fast because of course, now right now we're with Xbox three, SIXDPS three and the Nintendo we none of which have been we haven't heard any announcements of any kind of successor to any of those three consoles, and they've been out for much longer than four years. So Kolinski got fed up and and bolted in, said

he wasn't going to do it anymore. And they brought in a guy named Bernie Stoller Um and he was really apparently uh uh, you know, go get him kind of guy. He's just, you know, let's not even talk about it, let's just go do it, you know, really really active person um. But he he was really pushing for the you know, the success of the new system, which went down in game console history. Um. I would I would argue that it's probably Sega's best loved system,

even more so than the Genesis. It didn't sell that well necessarily, yeah, but it's got a reputation. I own one and I still love the system. Originally called the Katana, it came out as the Sega Dreamcast. The Dreamcast was a uh I love this video game system. The controls were really responsive, the graphics were amazing, the sound was phenomenal. It had a great video game library. It hit the market in uh it had a D eight bit graphics. It was it was way ahead of its competitors as

far again. I mean that was the story of Sega the whole time, right, Whenever the consoles came out, they tended to be ahead of whatever their competitors were offering on the market at the time. At sixteen megabytes of memory, which to us today sounds really tiny, but at the time was really significant and uh it was. It actually had a built in modem. It was the first video game console to have a built in modem fifty sits per second modem, but it was the first one to

have one. So it was actually designed to allow you to have online capability and play online games they had, and have a web browser as well. Yeah, I didn't realize they had a web browser. Ye, well it was what wasn't native, It wasn't hardwired into it. You had to have the disc. Oh, they did have developers, uh you know, they had Capcom, Midway, Namco that you know that the usual arcade suspects. They didn't have Electronic Arts, who I think got very frustrated with having to do that.

They having to deal with Sony's up and now Sega's up and downs us mostly downs. Um, So they actually went out and purchased another company to develop sports games. Um. And from what I understand, Virtual Concepts, which was the name of the company, did pretty well with sports and Church with Tennis was amazing. That was one of the games I owned, and it is still own. I still have this console. It was also kind of neat because

you could want. One of the ways you could hook up the console to your system was through co x cable cable, so you would actually use you know, co x cable into the the Dreamcast and co x cable out from the Dreamcast to your television. So it wasn't using like the the composite cables that a lot of other systems were using. Uh. And it also meant that I could hook up more video game systems to my television because it was one less port that would be

taken up by the machine. Now I understand too that this was a very, um a very productive time in the company's history for coming up with new franchises. UM. I believe sol Caliber is about the time another great game. Oh I've got that one too, crazy taxi game exactly. And And the thing is though that you know, even after the nine debut and the you know, the big launch in the Great Games, um, it just it just didn't it just didn't go. Um, and I'm not sure why.

Maybe it's the marketing strategy of the company. They Sega, see I keep doing that game. Companies that start with US for two, Sega of Japan and Sega of America did not necessarily agree on marketing strategy or how to bundle things, or the kinds of chips should be in the machines. They had to compete against PlayStation coming out with the PS two and Microsoft making the debut with

the Xbox. And Microsoft did approached Sega as well with the idea of including Windows see E on the Dreamcast, and they said no. But why were they so interested in the game? Mark ye kind of shots off in the foot on that one. The and and let me let me close off. Let me talk a little bit about something else that you could tell where other companies took some inspiration from Sega. If you look at the old Dreamcast controller there's it bears a resemblance to the

modern Xbox controllers and had the triggers. Um, it had a pretty wide uh controller form factor. Um, there was an analog joystick on there. Um. It also had a slot for memory cards. In fact, the memory cards had little screens on them, and you could actually have many games that would have pop up on the screen on your card that would be part of the bigger video game you're playing on the screen. And each game would have its own little individual special graphics that would pop

up on your memory card. I love that. It was just such a neat thing, was added value for your games. Um. But yeah, it uh it. Ultimately, this system also did not last the test of time, and in two thousand one January two thousand one, Sega made the decision to get out of the console market entirely and just concentrate on game development. Ye have stopped stopped actually producing Dreamcast in March of that year, and um, you know they've

they've done pretty well releasing some games since then. U super Monkey Ball Anyone. Um, yeah, it's a great game. Um, and it's you know, it's made its way to mobile gaming devices. Uh. You know, we didn't even talk about Sega's mobile gaming devices at all, but um, you know they it's available for mobile phones and other uh other things and uh platforms, I should say. And yeah, I

mean they're known now as as a software developer. There they re emerged all their developing strategies into one unit. So it's it's a much leaner company than it was before. Um, a lot of the Sonic games, you know, even uh Sega's biggest star. I've heard mixed reviews on the Sega Sonic games that have come out in the last few years. So it's just um sort of it sort of reminds us of Sega's glory days without giving us the great uh speed and action that we've all come to know

and love. So if you guys have any Sega stories you want to share, or perhaps there's another game company you would like us to cover. You know, we've talked about Atari, we talked about Sega. We have a couple of others on the list already. But yeah, we plan we'll probably have we'll have to do an episode about Sony. We'll have to do an episode. We have to do one on Nintendo. We might have to do one on

the Dreamcast itself, because we kind of got that short. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's this podcast has gone really long, but um, the Dreamcast was a pretty phenomenal system. If you ever do have a chance to maybe pick one up at a used game store and you know what's gonna work. Go ahead and give it a try. It's a I was really impressed with it that The graphics, of course don't hold up to PS three or or Xbox three six quality, but they're they're pretty impressive even when you

consider what their big competitors were. So anyway, you can let us know on Facebook or Twitter are handled. There is tech Stuff hs W, or you can shoot us email. That address is tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will talk to you again really soon. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner of our homepage. The house Stuff Works iPhone

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