AndrewTS

Headache...must lay down...

I'm watching the DOA movie on Google Video (probably will be pulled soon), and oh god is it awful. The only one of the main characters to turn in decent performances are Presley's Tina and Nash's Bass (and Presley OVERacts while Nash is basically just being a pro wrestler...so that's not really acting). Well, I guess Zack makes a good annoying douchebag, not that one should need to be a decent actor to pull that off. They actually use pictures from the games. When the fights are shown on monitors...there are life bars! Ugh.

Leopard was moved to this summer? I must have missed the announcement. Last I heard was spring.

INTERMISSION: Sega VR This one is maybe a tad iffy as an actual entrant, so I'm not inducting it. You can either condemn it as a silly idea that was way ahead of its time (or even *this* time), praise Sega for never actually releasing it (unlike the Virtual Boy), or you can just laugh at it. LOL Quotes and Images from Sega VR: Great idea or Wishful Thinking? from Sega-16.com

Dhalsim: Every once in a while I pull out the old SNES and I beat the shit out of myself. Makes me feel better, somehow.

63. The unbelievable degree of how they botched Sonic Xtreme. I'm going to be incredibly kind and just list this as one entry. However, reading the following articles reveal what could be considered, many, many more: Sonic Xtreme Development Timelime from Lost Levels Online Spotlight: Sonic Xtreme from Lost Levels Online EDIT: numbering corrected

Sega of America's autonomy was simultaneously the key to the Genesis' success and a major reason for their downfall. Sega of America took control of the U.S. market because of their push for sports games and more Western-themed titles. However, once they were sitting pretty, they didn't like to take risks, and the bottom line came at the expense of creativity and diversity. Because of this, we have... 60. The development of 32x vs. Saturn: When the West hand doesn't know what the East is doing. The 32x is often considered to have been a mistaken stopgap and upgrade for Genesis only. However, that isn't the way it was planned. While Japan was concieving a new 32-bit CD-based system, SoA was planning on developing and releasing a 32-bit cartridge based system. SoA's plan was to release both a stand-alone version for expected Sega converts, as well as a cheaper upgrade for the Genesis for their existing user base. Oops. So in case you're wondering why there are almost no Japanese-developed 32X games, there you go. 61. Slavingly listening to focus group data. Also because of SoA's incompetence, they tended to listen to graph sheets, print-outs, and the like rather than going with their gut and taking any risks on odd original titles. I was actually a part of one of the Sega focus groups. I was maybe 11 or 12 at the oldest, I'd never actually played a Sega system at the time, and a lady caught up with my mother and I in a mall, explained the situation, and I was sequestered to an area of the mall where a TV and a bunch of seats were set up. There were several other kids my age there already, and it proceeded as follows: I was asked a bunch of really boring, general questions. I saw a brief video of games either in development or soon to be released. Then I was asked some other questions. I never actually got to *play* anything. I had no input at all on the process other than pretty much "yes" or "no." At the end I think I got a sucker or something, which the only thing that kept me from thinking it was a tremendous waste of time. For another opinion on the matter, I also present this little rant. 62. The "Panic Button" added processor One very fast central processor would be preferable. I don't think that all programmers have the ability to program two CPUs - most can only get about one-and-a-half times the speed you can get from one SH-2. I think only one out of 100 programmers is good enough to get that kind of speed out of the Saturn. ” —Yu Suzuki Regarding the Sega Saturn's complicated architecture. It's rumored after Sony first showed off the Playstation's capabilities, Sega re-examined the design for the Saturn. Instead of perhaps going back to the drawing board and rethinking the entire design (which was great for 2D but extremely weak for 3D), they kind of hastily stapled on a few upgrades, including the added processor, and tossed it out there to die. The Saturn's 3D still usually looked like crap, 3rd parties hated it, and the end result was an overpriced, seemingly-underpowered system with weak 3rd party support. Wkipedia: Sega Saturn Development EDIT: numbering corrected

Welcome back, man. It seems you finally got your account working again. 58. Sega broke up Smilebit and shuffled the members around to different teams. Yeah, damn them for making the Jet Set games, Typing of the Dead, Panzer Dragoon Orta, Gunvalkyrie, and Hundred Swords. A life sentence of churing out mediocre crap shall be their punishment! 59. Giving Uwe Boll his start in video game movies. Before Dungeon Seige, Bloodrayne, and Alone in the Dark, there was House of the Dead. Sega gave Uwe the go-ahead to make the crap film for Lord-only-knows-what reason. Maybe it was the idiotic rave scene with Sega logos plastered everywhere. Or the opening credits with scenes from the game in it. Whatever the reason, thanks a lot, Sega, you bastards! EDIT: numbering corrected

48. The vocal themes of Spencer Nilsen: They'll rock you like a hurricane. Or at least suck like one. Ah, the Sega CD. So ahead of its time. Way before most games would even take up a fraction of the storage space of a CD, Sega was trying to find something, anything to justify the platform's existence. Most commonly it was FMV and cd-quality music. And sometimes, it was original compositions that were complete and utter crap. Spencer Nilsen was a Sega music composer who brought us, most famously, the music in the Ecco games. Now, that we've established that he's an utter wuss, would you also believe he brought us a number of rockin' tunes you can only find on Sega CD? Well, you know, as rockin' as you'd expect out of someone like that. Here, have a few samples: "Feel the Heat" from Fahrenheit "Swingtime" from Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin Nilsen is also known as "that guy who RUINED the Sonic CD soundtrack." Well, mostly by creepy, fur-suited frothing Sonic fanboys. You know the type...still buy the games no matter how awful they are, write oodles of Sonic fanfiction, and have h-doujins bookmarked featuring Amy Rose/Cream/any of the other fifty bajillion lousy characters Sonic added to the games in the past few years. I like to think Spencer was an innocent bystander. He wasn't in charge of localization, after all. Probably one of his co-workers came in one morning to deliver the news... "Spencer, DUUUUUUDE, did you hear the news?" "No way, bro, what's the news? You got tix for Poison?" "Noooo way...it's a new project...a Sega CD game from Japan they want you to put new tracks together for." "Whoa, cool...what is it?" "SONIC!" "NO WAY?!?!" "WAY!!" *they jam on air guitar for an hour or so* Honestly, though, the Sonic CD soundtrack is pretty much the best thing he's ever done. And when there are no lyrics involved, he can do some stuff that's pretty darn good. Oh, and while US Sonic CD in-game music is, in my opinion decent and just as good as the Japanese tracks--compare the main themes from Japanese version and U.S. version. Cornball wuss rock or Engrishy J-pop? Credit for the downloads/image: Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin write-up from Sardius Team Fahrenheit write-up from Sardius Team

46. Sega Visions. I'll sure as hell list it. It was no Nintendo Power, I'll tell you that much. Since the bulk of its existence was when Sega was making gigantic f'ups left and right, it was like the Iraqi Information Minister--everything was hunky-dory, Sega was RAWKSOME, actual game information was light and non-existent. The reviews sucked horribly. It had decent screen shots, that's about it. Imagine Nintendo Power during its VERY EARLY years. Now imagine the same tone and degree of propaganda WITHOUT the context of a time where they ruled the gaming world and there was nothing else. It was like taking a Gamepro, chopping out all the non-Sega stuff, and filling the empty space with more Sega ads. I had many of the magazines. However, I kept them--instead of in plastic or a plastic box--in an old suitcase no one was using. It ended up rotting away to a big pile of crumpled brown paper. Go figure. I guess molds or something that got through it made short work of it. Venk, you aren't imagining Virtua Hamster. It was announced for 32X, but never finished. It's hard to tell, since some 32X games I thought never came out did, but they were so hard to find you wouldn't know. Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game I've seen a few cartridges of. Spider-Man: Web of Fire allegedly came out but I've never seen an actual cartridge for it, screenshots, or box art. 47. The Master System pause button being on the system itself, instead of the controller. EDIT: Since the last time I've looked for Web of Fire info, it appears people have uploaded more dirt on it. Yet it seems nothing exists of Virtua Hamster outside of concept art.

38. Sega seriously considering "Sister Sonic" Here's the dirt: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1333256 39. The fact that, for the concept of entry 38...they ALREADY HAD THE DEVELOPERS OF PHANTASY STAR ON STAFF, and rather than have them do something they already were doing very well, they were going to sprite-hack and re-write a perfectly fine existing game. 40. The Seduction of Lara Croft Once upon a time Core Design made good games. Seriously! Core also had a healthy relationship with Sega. The gifted team were virtually the only 3rd party developer making use of the Sega CD's scaling and rotation effects, and produced many solid titles on the risky Sega CD platform. So, when Core was working on a very promising 3D platforming/exploration title, you'd think Sega would do anything they can to lock that down for their system. Well, they didn't. Tomb Raider would end up coming out for both Saturn and Playstation, and the more impressive PS1 version was all that people seemed to notice/care about. After that, Sony locked Core in to an exclusivity contract for Tomb Raider 2. No more Tomb Raider for Sega. The series would go on to sell a heck of a lot of Playstations until it petered out and Core became the laughingstock they are today. However, back when it was hot it could have done Sega a heck of a lot of good.

I believe it totally. I never even realized Sega made a game system prior to the Genesis for a long, long time.

37. The Genesis to GBA ports / remakes. I guess the GBA just doesn't have BLAST PROCESSING. Sega dropping out of the console market to be a 3rd party, and of all things, making games on NINTENDO systems was shocking. Even though, no duh, Sega earned it. However, when the Game Boy Advance hit, with its ability to replicate SNES games with ease, lots of people wondered how much power it had under its hood (it was actually touted as a "32-bit system', for whatever that is worth). Well, maybe it could do SNES games, but could it do Genesis games? Well, yes. Perhaps even very well depending on the game style and the skill of the developers. However, Sega sure as hell didn't find them when it came to porting/remaking several Genesis classics on the GBA. -Phantasy Star Collection: Phantasy Star! Phantasy Star II! Er, Phantasy Star 3? YES! All in one cartridge! This one should have been awesome, really. There's just some minor problems there. First off, the games themselves were virtually unaltered from their original versions. The old Phantasy Stars' translations suffered from the Japanese games' needing less characters to express the same thing. So, whenever you shop for items, you'll have little idea what the hell you're buying. Plus, since the items' effects on status aren't explained in game, you have no idea what the hell the items do until you buy and try them on. Thankfully, the game box came with a piece of paper with shop listings, detailing what the items were and what the effects were. But for a portable game that's really cumbersome. And if you're getting the game used, forget about having it to refer to. Square's old RPGs suffered from pretty much identical propblems. However, when they remade Final Fantasy 1 and 2 for GBA, they took care of those. Okay, so maybe with some patience, those problems by themselves would be tolerable...if the games weren't buggy as hell. You could spend dozens of hours on a game only to have it glitch up and lose all your data. Unacceptable. -Sega Smash Pack: Sega Smash Pack? On GBA?! YEEEEEEEEAaaahhh--oh wait, these are 3 games only. And they're Golden Ax, Sonic SPINBALL(?!) and Ecco the Dolphin?!? And they're really, really badly made emulations to boot? Why?! -Revenge of Shinobi: Okay, this is a little more promising...rather than trying to just emulate the game, we've got a remake! And...it sucks, really, really bad. *sigh* -Altered Beast: Another remake...but...it's Altered Beast. Meeeeh. -Sonic The Hedgehog Genesis: Not an emulation, but not quite a remake: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5BNzHSbAQo Ahhh. I get it. It's a ream-u-lation. Sega, if Nintendo's systems can't duplicate your AWESOME classics effectively, don't sell them!!

Well, from what I've heard, during the 16-bit era every European had it rough. I've heard horror stories of border-ridden games running slow as hell on the PAL systems. Games that took forever to release there if ever. RPGs barely ever saw release (although you guys did get Terrnigma and we never did). And I briefly owned the European Shenmue 2, so I know what you mean about those casings.

A heavy portion of this is Sega of America's fault, while Sega of Japan either had little or no part of it. There's nothing wrong with loving the good Sega games, but it's a shame the folks which brought them to us were such tremendous f'ups.

35. Sonic 3D Blast: The last Genesis Sonic game, and the only "new" Sonic platformer featured on the Saturn happened to be an ill-conceived isometric platformer by Traveller's Tales. Here's a clip where someone else opines on the game's suckiness, in case you require further explanation.

34. Michael Jackson's Moonwalker -- the home game Back before Michael Jackson was a punchline, he was a hugely-successful pop superstar and cultural icon. So much so, that he had gotten his own movie--an odd music video/film called Moonwalker. The film was really, really bizaare, and featured Michael Jackson as a superhero of sorts rescuing kids from the machinations of a drug dealer. It also spawned an arcade game by Sega. The game was, really, really bizaare, featuring Michael Jackson using the power of song, dances, and sometimes good ol' fashioned violence for great justice! MJ was the original Elite Beat Agent! The game was a huge fixture at my local roller rink for a long time. The best part, though, was that the game was made by Sega--so friends and I just KNEW it was going to get a home version. I didn't actually own a Genesis at the time, but a few friends did. I was looking forward to playing it. Well, we were wrong. The game never had a home version. Sure, there was a game released CALLED Michael Jackson's Moonwalker on Genesis, but it wasn't the same thing. No, the bizaare, creative, and flat-out awesome arcade game was reduced to a lame platformer with virtually nothing else in common with the arcade original. Here's a look at the arcade game. Here's what we actually got on the home game Strangely, Sega produced like a billion different console versions, and none of them were anything like the arcade game. Even more strangely, this game was one of the major titles featured during the "Genesis does!" campaign. You know what else Nintendon't, Sega? They don't make a really fun arcade game and then give you a lame, boring home version that's nothing like the original.

Damn, all this is jogging my memory so much...I've literally sketched down over a dozen more additions to the list I'll have to post within the next few days. And I don't mean quickies, either. They're going to be each a few paragraphs long.

29. The Menacer -- both the Master System Phaser and NES Zapper were really good light guns. Simple, effective design, lightweight, very accurate, and had many playable games that supported them. Great examples of K.I.S.S., really. Now, the Sega/Nintendo wars could be quite easily and effectively summed up as a ****-waving contest back when they were ripping each other apart in their commercials. However, the phallic phun was elevated to a whole new level when they introduced their "next-gen" light guns. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp...0px-Menacer.jpg Why, it's the Sega Menacer, of course! Who needs a gun that you can easily aim and shoot with with one hand? This one requires you to hold it with both hands, and to look through a little scope to use it. This one we can't entirely blame Sega for, as Nintendo did it first, and just as bad: http://www.vidgame.net/NINTENDO/Nintendo/s..._superscobe.jpg However, this makes the Menacer even worse--when the Super Scope came out, everyone realized it sucked, but by then it was too late. What prompted Sega to COPY its awful design?! Unsurprisingly, not many games supported the Menacer at all, and Konami balked at both guns when Lethal Enforcers hit the home systems, instead producing the Justifier accessory: http://www.memm.de/gameselect/pics/lg-justifier.jpg

By the time Segata came around, Saturn was already in a steady decline.

Pretty much 80% of what we've covered/will cover is all SoA's fault, but yeah, Saturn was quite successful in Japan at first. However, that didn't translate to the U.S. because of: 26. The "stealth launch" -- There are accusations of PS3 being DOA just by the launch numbers. This is silly. Saturn in the U.S. was totally DOA. Sega "stealth launched" the Saturn in the US, during E3 2005, with like no games at all save for the shoddy Daytona and VF ports. Right after it was announced that the Saturn was available NOW, Sony then announced Playstation would retail for "$299". Saturn was $400. Saturn in US was dead before it even really had a chance.

25. Sega CD longboxes. The same company that bucked the trend of cardboard boxes during the Master System/Genesis days for those super-sturdy plastic cases introduced the awful long-box. I'm pretty sure 98% of every damn one of these that were manufactured (including the US Saturn and Playstation 1 cases) either have a big crack of them, have broken tabs, or are heavily damaged in some way. PS1 did have 2 other types of long boxes though: the plastic longboxes, which kicked ass save for the paper coverings stuck on them (the original Darkstalkers PS1 casing is a thing of beauty), and the rather-lame but rather sturdy all-cardboard boxes, which Primal Rage and Street Fighter Alpha came packaged in. Either one beat the fragile Saturn/SCD ones.

I had mentioned Sega pretty much handing over the 16-bit era to Nintendo. Making Genesis games for a while=not bad, but you forget that 1st party support was pretty much canned and they STOPPED MAKING the system. However, that is something you do a console that was a major disappointment (see: Gamecube, which Nintendo stopped manufacturing a while back), NOT a huge success like Genesis. However, the very existence of Sega CD 32X games was beyond retarded. I honestly don't recall any notable Genesis titles coming out after Saturn hit, let alone Sega made ones. Everyone I knew with a Game Gear had a battery pack, which usually provided more battery life than just batteries alone. I liked the Game Gear to some extent, but the system had its flaws. The cardboard cases actually began with Sonic & Knuckles, a Genesis game.

20. The Activator -- Okay, the Power Glove sucked. U-Force REALLY sucked. Wii-Mote is still to really prove itself. However, at least they had buttons and solid traditional design backing them to some extent. I can't really make the Activator seem any more retarded than Sega themselves can: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMW9HSrljhA

19. Streets of Rage 3 localization: Okay, I can accept Ash being cut, because at least they left in the character hidden in the game coding so that a Game Genie could bring him out of the closet SoA locked him in. However, completely screwing up the plot beyond any sort of logical comprehension? Terrible. But even stupider? Changing the characters' outfit colors. They did it to give them more, I'm not kidding you, "gender-neutral" colored clothing. Censoring character sprites that appeared un-censored in earlier games. Oh noes, put a jacket on that whip-wielding dom hooker! Cover up the legs of that punk mohawk chick! EDIT: Fixed the number