The Decline of Sega
-David, webmaster DVGI

I'll be honest, I never was a huge Sega fan when I was younger.  As most 20-somethings I grew up as part of the Nintendo generation, yeah the Sega Master System was out there, but all of my friends as well as myself had the NES.  (I also had an Atari 2600 but I seemed to be the only person my age really interested in it)  Although the Genesis surpassed the SNES in terms of sales, I was quite happy with the NES up until the first Super Nintendo price break when I obtained one of those as well.  People that know me know that I'm a huge NES archivist - I mean, that was my childhood right there.  It seemed natural to choose the Super Nintendo over the Genesis and if it wasn't for games like Illusion of Gaia, Stunt Race FX, Lagoon, Legend of the Mystical Ninja, Pocky & Rocky, Super Mario RPG, and Chrono Trigger then I probably would have regretted my decision.

Don't get me wrong, Sonic the Hedgehog and the Streets of Rage games were a blast to play but aside from them there didn't seem to be a very high quality factor for games on the Genesis unless you were into sports titles.  Aside from hockey and auto racing, I wasn't, and baseball video games continue to be bad to this day.  I never got into the Phantasy Star games either, personally I've always thought nearly every RPG we got in the states up until the SNES was pretty much unplayable.  Not to say that we didn't get a lot of stinkers on the 16 bit platforms either because we did.  If you take a cross section of the games on each of the 16 bit platforms you'll see that there was a ton of crap released for the Super Nintendo as well, but their great games were excellent and their decent games were still pretty good.  Over on the Genesis there were some real gems, unfortunately most of the other stuff was total garbage.

However through all this I realized something - the best games in the arcade were made by Sega.  HangOn, Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner, Virtua Racing, MANX TT SuperBike, Daytona USA, VirtualOn and more.  Sega may not have earned my console dollars but they munched my arcade tokens faster than any other publisher.  Their games had a look and feel unlike any other and while the basic gameplay mechanic was simple, the experience was a total blast.  However looking at their console division, with the myriad of attachments trying to beef up the Genesis, just made me shake my head and enjoy playing through Illusion of Gaia again on the SNES.  Yet when it was time to hit the arcade, it was time to play Sega games.

Then... the arcades started to fade away, even in Silicon Valley.  The big Sega games such as the larger cabinet fighting, shooting, and driving titles were still around but they became harder to find.  Instead of finding six player Daytona USA network machines you would only come upon the single unit two player versions.  VirtualOn and MANX TT SuperBike machines all but disappeared as did Virtua Racing as arcades became smaller and smaller.

Sega did have an ace up their sleeve however, the Saturn.  Built for the specific function of bringing the great Sega arcade games home, especially the 2D fighting and simple 3D titles, it seemed like I would finally purchase a Sega home console.  Of course the Saturn would find itself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong price tag.  The Saturn was never designed as a hard-core 3D machine, it was built to be a 2D sprite pusher and bring the arcade sprite-driven games home.  Once Sony announced the 3D capabilities of the PlayStation, which was basically designed to be an all 3D system all the time, at a lower price point Sega just couldn't compete.  It did well in Japan for the simple reason of Japanese arcades still being popular but quickly became the system one would find in the bottom of the bargain bin in the states.

I ended up purchasing a PlayStation when the price dropped for the second time ($159.99) but it had nothing to do with Sega nor Nintendo - it had everything to do with the release of Gran Turismo.  Once I saw the previews and heard the industry buzz concerning what would go on to be the greatest driving game franchise of all time, I quickly picked up a PlayStation rather than a costly N64 or cheap Sega Saturn.

Time continued on and Sega prepared to fight one more console war to the death, with the Dreamcast.  Initially I wasn't too impressed, I hated the cheap feeling analog stick on the controller and while the games were good - just as with the Genesis I didn't see one title that was worth grabbing the system for.  This became more apparent when most video game publications of the day were crying out that the must have title for the Dreamcast was Crazy Taxi - a game that's only fun in occasional 20 minute pick up and play bursts.  To be honest Sega of America had a great campaign and some great ideas concerning promotion and development of the Dreamcast.  Too bad the Japanese office (which had final call on everything having to do with the Dreamcast as well as the Saturn previously) screwed it all up.  No, I waited until the PS2 crushed the possibility of Sega continuing with hardware and when the price of the Dreamcast dropped I finally picked one up at a discount price.

It was then I realized that Sega finally had made a system that could bring the arcade home.  Quite frankly the reason I bought a Dreamcast was to play the new Daytona USA game (sometimes referred to as Daytona USA 2001) and to this day I play that game more than any other on the Dreamcast.  Then there were the great sports games, Jet Grind Radio (now there's a franchise they screwed up on the XBox), the amazing Shenmue (which led to me buying and later selling an XBox, to play the dub version of Shenmue II), Seaman, Bangai-O, and those few other great arcade ports.  The SegaNet was nice however terribly unstable most of the time unless you played during the very early hours of the morning, which myself and a group of Daytona USA players did weekly.  (my handle was Evolver.us)

Then as many of you probably know, console emulation on the Dreamcast got really good.  I began to port over my years of romset testing and archival into the Dreamcast emulators and now days I play more emulated NES games on my Dreamcast than actual Dreamcast games.  The more people that learned about the emulation tools for the platform, the more used Dreamcasts were sold.  So now it seems that the Dreamcast is gaining more momentum as people learn how to further exploit the power of this nearly forgotten console.  Sadly though Sega makes no money off these used consoles, although if they picked up production again I'm sure they could see a profit, albeit a very small one.

Sega promised ports of classic Saturn games on the PlayStation, which never happened.  Then they went cross-platform and went into developing a string of lackluster games across all three next-gen platforms.  Yet there are some excellent games to come out of Sega in the past couple years on the GameCube, most notably the Super Monkey Ball series and F-Zero GX.  Arcades caught a mini revival as social gathering places and you would be hard pressed not to find a Daytona USA or Sega Super GT (S.C.U.D. Race everywhere else) machine in most small arcades or movie theaters.  (Yes, DDR brought people back into the arcades as well)

Without a doubt the best thing from Sega currently are the compilation packages.  Sonic Mega Collection released a couple years back gives next-gen console owners the chance to play many of the best Sonic the Hedgehog games all on one disc.  A company in Japan called 3DAges made graphically updated Sega arcade classics for the PlayStation 2 and many of them will be arriving in the states soon as Sega Classics Collection.  I can't wait for this release because it features an arcade perfect port of Virtua Racing although the frames per second have been bumped up to 60 from the original 30.

Has Sega become what Atari once was, nothing but a story of an incredible past?  Naa, they'll continue to make unique games but their greatest appeal for me are their great arcade franchises that refuse to die.  It seems no matter what people may think or the industry might say, these great games of the past will continue to be popular.  While some franchises have dissolved into nothing but a mess (VirtualOn) and others continue to sell incredibly well (Virtua Fighter) one thing is clear, Sega is going to be a part of the video game industry in one way or another.

I purposely left out details concerning the Sega CD since you could write an entire book about that subject alone.  Sega took risks, plain and simple.  They dug the trenches and blew up the mountains so that other companies could come in behind them and pave the roads.  Has Sega declined?  Of course they have but only because they have such an amazing past, that just can't be replicated.
 

Written on 02-04-05 by David, insanedavid@classicplastic.net

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