100 reasons why Sega is/was stupid.

[AndrewTS 0]

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.

[luke-o 0]

This thread is making me weep slightly. Im sega till i die, but you are rasing some really good points....

[AndrewTS 0]

This thread is making me weep slightly. Im sega till i die, but you are rasing some really good points....

 

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.

[luke-o 0]

The Eurpoe market never seemed to bad for mega drive games or saturn games. Dreamcast games on the other hand was a diffrent matter. And the cases for Dreamcast games were fuckin awful. You could look at them and they'd break.

 

I will always love the Saturn and the Dreamcast for these (European) reasons:

 

Saturn: Panzer Dragoon 1,2 and saga, Bug, Duke Nukem (Death Tank), Street Fighter Alpha 1 and 2. etc.

 

DC: Skies of Arcadia, Crazy Taxi, Sonic Adventure 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Marvel vs Capcom, Sega Bass Fishing etc.

[AndrewTS 0]

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.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

Here's one.

 

36: Well, we know Sega CD wasn't that great in the long run...but one mistake was having a CD drive system, and very rarely from what I know of having CD quality music on it.

 

WWF Rage in the Cage, I'm looking at YOU.

[AndrewTS 0]

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!!

[AndrewTS 0]

38. Sega seriously considering "Sister Sonic"

 

Here's the dirt:

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1333256

 

In 1992 when Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog was at the height of his popularity Sega wanted to produce a Sonic RPG to capitalize on the popularity of their hedgehog and that of role playing games. Their plan was to create a new character - Sonic the Hedgehog's previously unseen sister - and make her the main character of their game.

 

The game was to topline the then-new Sega CD machine and feature characters and realms from past Sonic games. However, rather than create a new game from scratch, Sega planned to take the popular action/RPG title Popful Mail and replace all the characters and locations with the new Sister Sonic concept. That's when things began to sour.

 

Popful Mail fans, naturally, hated this idea. Really hated it. Fans flooded Sega offices with begs and threats to not tamper with Popful Mail and leave the game alone. Sega saw how the tide was turning and brought out Popful Mail in its original form. The game then went on to become one of the most popular games on the failing system.

 

The Sister Sonic concept was never revived, although one piece of it lived on. The character art for the pink female hedgehog was eventually revived and converted into Sonic the Hedgehog's girlfriend Amy Rose who later went on to star in Sonic CD, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic Advance, and Sonic Advance 2.

 

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.

[devo 0]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5BNzHSbAQo

 

Holy crap. The sound sync isn't actually that bad, right? Some of it's YouTube's fault, right?

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I dont have a # to add, but I still feel dirty knowing that at one point I owned a freaking Game Gear.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

I dont have a # to add, but I still feel dirty knowing that at one point I owned a freaking Game Gear.

Did you have the TV Tuner too?

[Special K 0]

I still have great memories about Sonic games. Those games were jaw-dropping when they came out. I never did beat Sonic 1. 3, I was king, since I could destroy those 3D chaos emerald worlds. Man, the first time you went super-saijan Sonic was a blast. And the 3D chaos emerald world was the shit at the time.

 

I'll always remember the bosses of Sonic 2. Metal Sonic and giant Robotnik were a bitch.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

I dont have a # to add, but I still feel dirty knowing that at one point I owned a freaking Game Gear.

Did you have the TV Tuner too?

 

I didnt see the point, since after about 2 months of replacing 6 AA batteries often, I gave up, got an AC Adapter and hardly ever used it as a portable. And I think I only ever had maybe like..10 games for it..I had a launch Gameboy (got it that Christmas which was the same year I missed Christmas for being in the hospital for my Open Heart Surgery) and had a ton of games for it and it ceased working in 1997ish when the GB Color came out. I havent had a portable since. I ended up selling the Game Gear and games for $100 to my cousin and I think she proceded to drop the thing and break it a month later or something.

[The Amazing Rando 0]

I played my Game Gear with the adapter as well, but i was the BOMB at Bases Loaded (3, maybe).

[BUTT 0]

41) Ignoring their most popular franchises on Saturn.

 

Obviously we known of the lack of a real Sonic game or any non-port Phantasy Star games, but where was Streets of Rage? Ecco the Dolphin? ETERNAL CHAMPIONS? (Yes I know why the Eternal Champions game for Saturn was canceled.)

 

42) The Virtua Fighter 2 port for Genesis.

 

No this is not Virtua Fighter. No this was not a good idea.

 

43) Here is one you a lot of you will probably disagree with. Pricing Dreamcast at $199 at launch. I actually think it was priced too low. The system had such tremendous buzz that I think people would have been willing to pay $249 for it. The lower price surely endeared them to consumers more, but also cost them millions of dollars. And we know Sega wasn't averse to high prices, as illustrated by.....

 

44)

$100 each. 100 fucking dollars. I know RPGs were expensive at the time, so PS4 wasn't exactly the only one, but I'm pretty sure the more expensive ones for SNES (such as Final Fantasy III (or VI, whatever)) topped out at $80. That said, Virtua Racing? The game had three tracks! Are you willing to pay $33 per track?

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

45. I like Shenmue and it's sequel. I think the graphics are great but I am really into the story. Too bad Sega spent $20 million to make and used none of that money to market or advertize it. There is going to be Shenmue Online game coming out in China and Korea. Shenmue 3, according to Sega, isn't going to be made. AAAAAGGGG!

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

Does anyone recall hearing about a game in development called "Virtua Hamster"? Did anyone ever read Sega Visions? I don't want to list Visions as a reason for Sega being stupid since I don't remember much about it, but I don't remember it being good.

[AndrewTS 0]

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.

[DrVenkman PhD 0]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man:_Web_of_Fire

 

Says it's very rare and sells for a lot on eBay.

 

 

"The magazine also had its own comic character in Niles Nemo (created by Bill Kunkel). Niles (a play on Little Nemo) was a teenage boy with sun glasses who loved pizza and everything Sega."

 

That character... where have I seen something similar... where...

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nester

[AndrewTS 0]

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

[ChrisMWaters 0]

49: With the exception, for me, of "Super Sonic Racing", the songs from Sonic R.

 

With the exception of that song, I usually have the game on mute.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

OK, I have another one.

 

50: Sonic Team seemingly just going through the motions, if that.

 

Yeah, we know that Sonic games are tough in 3D, given that classic Sonic's nature was all about 2D gameplay. But you could at least TRY to get things like camera and controls at the VERY least correct, insted of just cranking things out.

[World's Worst Man 0]

51. Phantasy Star Universe - They release a follow-up to the well-liked Phantasy Star Online, and remove the gameplay gimmick that was the main attraction to PSO. Not only that, but the coding of the game is so sub-par that it's possible for any idiot to download a hacking program and ruin the game, which lead to their server economies being fucked beyond all belief and many, many people being griefed. They also locked a lot of the content for the multiplayer, meaning stuff you saw in the single player wasn't available in the online portion until ST unlocked it in an update. This lead to many people hitting the level cap and having nothing to do for two to three weeks at a time. Oh, and all the while they're charging $10 a month for what is essentially a Diablo-style game.

[PLAGIARISM! 0]

$33 per track. That'll stay with me for a while.

[Renegade 0]

52- Sega giving us the piece of shit that is Yakuza insted of Shenmue 3.

 

oh yeah

 

53- Not porting/releasing samba de amigo for the wii. 2 wiimotes + little sand attachments = awesome/easy samba port.

 

54- Sonics ever increasing supporting cast.

 

55- The fact that Sega STILL use the sonic adventure 1 game engine. It wasnt that great when it first came out.

 

I guess most of these points can be made under a big "sonic games for the past 10 years" post.

 

56- No more Jet Set Radio

[razazteca 0]

(No number needed). Combining the PC Engine and 3DO strategies of making expensive hardware as peripherals then promoting it as earth shattering technology that plays movies that were not even VCD quality with gameplay that was push a button to make your favorite actor of yesteryear say some lines. You got this brand new medium in the CD so what do you do cut the production cost of making games to the new technology or continue making expensive cart base games with the selling point "NOW 32 MEGS" when you damn well knows that the CD can hold hundreds of megs. Thats right you do both! and instead of making the gameplay something to marvel at you make a controversial horror movie point-and-click game to get attention! Think of all of the repeat value it has you can watch it 3 times then the shock value disappears a week or two later.

[AndrewTS 0]

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

[Dobbs 3K 0]

Yeah, I forgot how expensive some of those 16 bit cartridges were. I remember buying WWF RAW for SNES right when it came out, and paying about $80 for it at K-Mart.

 

I was in heaven when new PS1 games were coming out for around $30, brand spanking new.

[AndrewTS 0]

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

[AndrewTS 0]

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

 

Late 1995? - The silly mysterious cartridge system is scrapped and Sega determines the Saturn is going to be its next gen system. We again shift Sonic X-treme over to the Saturn.

 

Organizational note: This was the most fucked up org. chart I have ever had the (mis)fortune of working on. It was set up matrix style, which for those of you who understand business organizational management know is a concept that works in theory but is so fubar'd in practice. Especially for game development. In a nutshell what it meant was that all the artists report to an art director, the designers to a design lead, and the programmers to a technical lead. Each of those 3 groups reports to the VP. As producer, I was technically running the project except that in a matrix style I only have dotted line authority over the above mentioned groups. Therefore all of the responsibility, but none of the authority. And as you can see, if any of those groups did not want to do something or wanted to work on something different than what the others were working on, they could go ahead and do it if their director gave them the OK. So we had artists doing art for levels that hadn't even been concepted out. We had programmers waiting and waiting and waiting until every minute detail had been concepted out, and we had designers doing whatever the hell they wanted. It was a mess and because of the internal politics (the art director had trained his art team to hate the designers and programmers), it was even more difficult to get any work done.

 

EDIT: numbering corrected