100 reasons why Sega is/was stupid.

[MrRant 0]

Maybe Itagaki's boast about the Ninja Gaiden titles making developers "lose their ambition" wasn't just blowing smoke up people's asses after all.

 

I am unfamiliar with this. Details?

[MrRant 0]

Found it.

 

http://www.gameinformer.com/News/Story/200...9312.htm?Page=1

[AndrewTS 0]

Maybe Itagaki's boast about the Ninja Gaiden titles making developers "lose their ambition" wasn't just blowing smoke up people's asses after all.

 

I am unfamiliar with this. Details?

 

It was from a Game Informer interview.

 

GI: Games like Code Cronos and Ninja Gaiden 2 have been sort of waiting in the wings for quite a while now. Do you think we’ll be hearing some announcements about those titles in 2007?

 

Itagaki: I’d like to show everybody some of the new stuff that we’ve been working on in the near future. The only problem with that is that when the other developers see what we’re doing, they’re going to lose all of their motivation to create any game in the same genre, because there’s no way they can beat it.

 

EDIT: Ah, just beat me.

[BUTT 0]

92. No Saturn football game during the '95 holiday season.

 

Sega had a lot of success with NFL games on the Genesis, first with Joe Montana, then Deion Sanders. So you would assume they would have followed this up with a football game of their own for their new system during its first holiday season in the U.S. But Sega saw no need to do this, ostensibly because there were two NFL games coming for Saturn that year: EA's Madden, the biggest football franchise in video games, and Acclaim's less-regarded NFL Quarterback Club. Surely they would pick up the slack for Sega!

 

Oh shit, wait. EA decided that the Saturn and Playstation versions of Madden '96 weren't good enough and didn't release them. Then, Acclaim pushed NFL QBC into early '96. So Sega had no football game for current and prospective Saturn owners.

 

Well actually, that isn't entirely accurate. There was one football game available for Saturn:

 

 

QUARTERBACK ATTACK! The FMV football game! For those looking to see a little bit of Night Trap/Sewer Shark/Double Switch injected into their gridiron action!

 

Sony had their own football game, NFL Gameday. It sold pretty well.

 

I'm not going to say that the lack of a good football game was THE thing that killed Sega that holiday season. I'd definitely say it hurt them bad.

[AndrewTS 0]

93. OMG 8 PROCESSORS

This promotional video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99iiUtPR-fM

 

I almost want to get rid of *my* Saturn now. Thank goodness nearly everything I own for it is an import.

 

94. And now for something completely different...

Resurrecting one of the few Saturn titles regarded as a classic, then changing the game structure and bloating it up with lousy cutscenes and annoying ground-based filler missions. Yes, NiGHTs Journey of Dreams.

 

There's also this (from IGN's review):

"For starters, there's no way to skip story sequences, so should you want to pass them up and get into some quick action, you're stuck. This compounds greatly when you throw in the odd restart system, having players not only replay the stage they failed, but the entire chapter as well, complete with story sequences. By the end of the game you'll be playing through three full chase stages (a few minutes a piece), watching multiple story cuts, and then fighting a boss. Fail on that boss, and a retry sends you all the way back, complete with all loads, all story sequences, and every stage within that level. Talk about a momentum killer. "

 

95. Speaking of pointless series revivals, I'm going to go out on a (very sturdy) limb and say this game will blow.

 

96. Virtua Fighter 5: The search for retail failure

 

So, you've just released a popular arcade fighter (well, popular where it actually exists) on PS3. Then you realize, "oh wait, maybe we can release this on a system that the rest of the world actually owns." So, eight months later you finally release it on the Xbox 360, although with only play. You don't just release it 8 months later, you release it in the midst of extremely-popular, best-selling AAA software.

 

It bombs. Hard. Nobody buys it. Nobody plays it. Nobody is surprised.

 

Way to treat the one remaining game series that still has critical acclaim, Sega!

[luke-o 0]

As soon as I saw this thread bumped, I had a bad feeling NiGHTS wasn't going to be very good. Which is a damn shame.

[AndrewTS 0]

As soon as I saw this thread bumped, I had a bad feeling NiGHTS wasn't going to be very good. Which is a damn shame.

 

For a game directed by Takashi Iizuka, it's not that bad.

 

However, changing the way the game plays in such an odd fashion, and adding features that are only a detriment to the gameplay doesn't help.

[LJSexay 0]

MAN the new Nights has left a not so good taste in my mouth. Which just really makes me sad. Woulda been worth the purchase as it is if they had added in the original.

[luke-o 0]

What annoys me more is that if I want to play NiGHTS (Saturn style) I have to go to my sisters house and into her loft to get my Saturn then take it back home to set it up to play, only to have to take it back to my sisters once I'm done because I don't have the room in my bedroom to keep my Saturn, Wii, 360 AND my dreamcast in.

 

So I was REALLY hoping NiGHTS JID was going to be great.

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

The original is getting a PS2 port, anyway.

[AndrewTS 0]

The original is getting a PS2 port, anyway.

 

 

In Japan, anyway.

[AndrewTS 0]

97-ish. Attack of the Fem-bots!

 

What the hell, Sega?

 

Granted, I don't think anyone went broke underestimating how pathetic the romantic lives of Japanese otakus are, but it's like an "original character" somebody on Deviant Art created for their Mega Man hentai comic/lemon.

 

But it's not even remotely original, which is kind of scary. Imagine if somehow Sega got sued over it...

[AndrewTS 0]

98. "Sonic, rise from your grave!"

 

Well, after years upon years of awful 3D Sonics, when Sega showed early footage of Sonic Unleashed, fans of Sonic--both current and estranged, asked...."how will Sega/Sonic Team fuck this up?"

 

I submit to you, Sonic the Werehog:

 

http://gonintendo.com/?p=49561

http://www.gamespot.com/video/945571/61942...group=e32008_st

 

Half of the new Sonic game is a shitty God of War clone (listen to the Gamespot vid--the Sega rep confirms it's "50%" of the gameplay.

 

The hilarious part is the Gamespot guy pretending to be excited, topped off with him actually controlling the Werehog.

 

Sega rep: "how do you like the control and feel of the werehog?"

GS: "....oh, ah yeah, it's good business, dude...."

Sega rep: "....cool..."

[luke-o 0]

Granted I didn't watch the whole video, but most of the gameplay footage in it looked alright. I'm not wholly sold on the whole Werehog thing, but at least the Sonic bits looked good.

[AndrewTS 0]

99. Sonic gets medieval on our asses

 

 

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=327896

 

Oh good I was worried we were only getting one shitty Sonic on console. Thankfully we're getting two.

[BorneAgain 0]

I am at a complete loss to understand how hard it is to screw up the Sonic forumla. Granted I'm not a game designer, but what exactly is stopping the company from simply using the style of gameplay from the 2D games in a 3D world with a decent camera and without unnecessary gimmicks?

 

Its quite sad that 10+ year old footage of Sonic X-treme still looks more appealing than what they're putting out now.

[ChrisMWaters 0]

...well, at least there's still Sonic Chronicles...

[MFer 0]

I actually liked most of the 3D Sonic games but this...not looking so hot.

 

(EDIT: I like how the Picard pic makes it's appearance in the Black Knight thread/link.)

[luke-o 0]

The funniest thing on that forum are the ridiculous overreactions.

 

OMG sonic is ded to m e!!11

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

We should start a Nintendo one soon

[Prophet of Mike Zagurski 0]

Come on people, we need one more reason.

[Obi Chris Kenobi 0]

Surely the Game Gear has been mentioned?

[Guest Smues]

#100 - The Sega Channel

 

Oh believe me this was great in theory, and hell it might have been great in practice if you were able to get it/afford it. The concept is that you pay your cable company $14.95 a month (good luck convincing your parents kids, this was back in the day before everyone and their mom paid a monthly fee to play WoW and the like) and you get access to 50 or so Genesis games through your cable. They added new games every couple of weeks and even had some games not released in the U.S. (like the Megaman game) and occasionally had demos of upcoming games. Back in the day before demos on X-box live or on demo CDs, the concept of getting demos of upcoming console games was amazing.

 

In theory this is a great idea, and as the only company offering such a service should have given them an advantage. You can pay $50-$90 per game for an SNES game, or you can pay $15 a month to always have access to a large library of games. I would have loved to get the service. WOULD HAVE, because it wasn't that widely available, probably because the service required cable companies to upgrade their hardware to be able to support it. The device that you plugged into your Sega to use the service also cost around $100, meaning the cable companies either had to eat the cost on that or convince the consumer to front it. Because of all this the service was never offered in my area, nor have I ever met anyone who had it back in the day. (I'm sure someone on here had it, please tell me how cool it was, or how much it sucked, I'm curious.)

 

Then there's the issue of the Genesis not having a harddrive. I need someone who had the service to answer this question: Could you save your games? I'm highly doubtful you could, but I haven't been able to find an answer to that yet.

 

Also, many games were too big to be sent over the cable, or maybe it was that they were too big to be stored in the systems memory. Either way the end result was you had games like Street Fighter 2 cut to 6 fighters, or other games like Sonic 3D blast were split into 2 parts, and after you got halfway through the game you had to write down a password, then load up part 2 and enter that. And here's a fun note from wikipedia:

 

Special accessories for certain games, such as the Lethal Enforcers Justifier, posed a problem: users were warned not to leave them plugged in when they reset the console -- otherwise, the Sega Channel adapter could be permanently damaged.

 

Great, so not only could I not get the service, if I ever had I might have broken it. Delovely. Oh and there's the other issue. I mentioned that I have never met anyone that had the service, I also have never met anyone that has HEARD of the service. Sega did an awful job marketing it, and I only knew about it myself because of Gamepro.

 

101 - MAKE MY VIDEO

Yeah Sega didn't make the games, but they allowed this dreck to be produced for their Sega CD, and these games exemplify why the Sega CD sucked. There's a really great review with lots of footage at The Spoony Experiment that just about covers everything, but I felt the need to bitch about them myself.

 

The concept is simple: You 'make' your own music video to some of your 'favorite' musicians of the time. Musicians included Marky Mark (AND the funky bunch!) Kriss Kross (they'll make you jump jump you know) INXS, and C&C Music Factory. Even when these groups were popular this was pretty much scraping the bottom of the barrel. And how did you 'make' a video? The song would play, three videos would play at the bottom, and you would select which of the three to be the active one in your video. That's it, that's the fucking game. The first of the three videos is the original music video for the song, and the other two include random stock footage of anything they could find that was in the public domain and didn't cost them money to license. Cartoons, sports, old black and white movies, Make My Video has it all!

 

Each of the three videos is keyed to the A,B, and C buttons, so you just hit the button for the one you want and BAM that's now in your video! Oh but wait THERE'S MORE! You can add effects to the video like making it blue, or cutting it in half, or shaking it, or any of 8 or so other effects. Oh but you can't go back and edit your video after the song is over, sorry. The game is called MAKE my video, not EDIT my video, suckers. You have to do everything live while the song is playing. Once it's over you watch your made video, then usually get yelled at for sucking.

 

The point? You're supposed to include certain items in your video, as told to you by usually annoying characters before the video. But it's fucking hard to actually appease these assholes, and I personally never succeeded. The stock footage videos change so frequently you'll never get the footage you need in time.

 

And of course don't forget the fact that the video is like a quarter size of the screen and grainy as fuck. And before and after you make/watch your video you get to watch some truly god awful acting and dialogue, in all four of the games. Watch that Spoony review to see some examples, but it's god awful in all four videos. When I was a kid my friend owned the C&C Music Factory one and I think we both suffered massive mental trauma as a result. PHIL LAMAR WHY?????

 

And yes I did say the C&C Music Factory one, this isn't one game, it's one game per band. Three songs per game. So you get to pay $50 for a game that includes three songs, and probably 10 minutes of bad acting, with no actual gameplay, just selecting videos. WOW FEEL THE EXCITEMENT. EVERYBODY DANCE NOW!

 

In addition to getting the C&C one after that friend gave me his Sega CD and all games, I hunted down Marky Mark and Kriss Kross on Ebay. I knew exactly what I was getting. I can not imagine being a kid and receiving this shit for Christmas, even more so if you were on actual fan of the artist.

[Guest Smues]

Surely the Game Gear has been mentioned?

Yes it has, but I'd like to take this moment to re-iterate my hatred for the advertising of the Game Gear, as well as how much of a battery suck it was. The gameboy could go 10 hours on 4 AA's, and later the pocket could do it on 2 AA's, and hell I think the non backlit GBA only took 2 AA's as well. Yeah backlights burn batteries, but there had to be a better way to solve the problem then make a system that takes 6 AA's that last 2-3 hours. And even the battery packs you could buy for the system only have 2 hours. So whereas the Gameboy was awesome for long car rides, unless you had the cigerette lighter plug in the Gamegear wouldn't get you to the first rest stop.

[AndrewTS 0]

I'd mentioned the huge-ass subsidies to Digital Pictures and Sega's championing of FMV in general, but yeah, those definitely deserve a mention. I even am a fan of Spoony's stuff but it didn't occur to me to add it.

 

I love how Sega could only manage to get those flash in the pan artists to license out for it.

[Golgo 13 0]

#100 - The Sega Channel

 

I had it. Denver's old Mile High Cable offered it. It was an adapter with its own plug and cable input, so we got that and the splitter to divide the signal between the TV and the Genesis. I think, maybe, we paid a one time deposit for the adapter, which we received when the service ended and had to give the adapter back, and the fifteen for monthly service.

 

I never noticed any problems with size or quality and stuff like that. When you ordered the game, you got the whole thing for that play. It was pretty quick, as I recall, so once you ordered a game, within a couple minutes you'd be able to play. No saves, so you basically had to play the whole way through or use level cheats for those games that had them. Yeah, it was awesome, though I didn't have the appreciation that I do now, so I mostly just played stuff like Street Fighter or Streets of Rage, and didn't go exploring much. It was about fifty games per month, upon which a bunch of them would rotate out for new ones.

[luke-o 0]

The Sega Channel is another example of Sega having a great idea 10 years to early.

[AlaskanHero 0]

Yeah, Sega Channel was awesome. They used to offer it on Cincinnati's Warner Cable. I honestly didn't know you couldn't save on it, mostly because I never played any games that would require saving. Though I remember our signal being pretty shitty because it would often take a lot of fiddling with the adapter to make it connect and sometimes it would just freeze up on me. But yeah, Sega Channel was definitely an idea that was WAY ahead of the curve and would probably work out a lot better today if it were even possible.

[BUTT 0]

We should start a Nintendo one soon

I'll be ready, willing and able to debate at least half of all the reasons listed. Like the N64 cartridge thing. If I can defend that, I can defend anything!

[Golgo 13 0]

It sometimes froze up on me, too, now that I recall. Notably on Comix Zone.