SEGA

[Gaijin Punch]

To go w/ the Data East thread.

After I've started purging most of my flyers, I've held on to my old school Sega stuff (as well as Data East and Taito).

The old Sega was an easy company to love, but it since they were so vast it was easy to love some things they did and hate others. Instead of jacking off to what a great company they were, I'll just talk about some of the games.

I know Gain Ground & Crack Down are like red-headed step children but I've always liked them. However, I think my favorite "era" would be the late 80's. System16 in the arcades. Master System at home. Oh to be young again.

[Macaw]

Overall I don't think their 'standard' video games were as good as the offerings from the other big companies like Capcom, Konami and Data East, but their main focus was on the dedicated cab stuff anyway like Afterburner and Galaxy Force. A lot of the good games on Sega hardware were also developed by other companies like the Wonderboy stuff, Aurail, Cotton etc.

As far as Sega made stuff goes though Eswat, DD crew and Shadow Dancer are some favorites of mine. It also took me a while to finally properly play Crack Down and realise how good it is. Fuck it I'm gonna go play it now.

[Gaijin Punch]

What are you playing it in? Mame. I have a Crack Down/Gain Ground super play. It's crazy. GG is even way more brutally hard. I love both though. I don't have much time in my life for more than one game these days but I'm going to put a little bit of time in each day in hopes of getting there.

Back to the topic at hand, I think it's easy to say that of my three favorites from the old days (Sega, Deco, and Taito) they all had a very similar flavor -- very similar pallets if you will. With Sega even down to their fonts, I liked the uniformity, and they just seemed to put out kick ass game after kick ass game. Of those three, they carried the torch longer. They were still putting out a lot of quality titles into the last days of the DC. When the fuck will I ever get another Jet Set Radio?

Basically having a kid has, for now, put games on the back burner. Maybe my kid will get a system one day and I can go back and enjoy that with him, but the trend for games to take up so much time has made a lot of them unaccessible... and of course, the newer ones just don't appeal to me as much.

[Macaw]

but the trend for games to take up so much time has made a lot of them unaccessible... and of course, the newer ones just don't appeal to me as much.

Yeah, getting into new games is tough because everything is designed around being a massive experience that requires huge amounts of time. I do keep up with city building games though and love a lot of FPS stuff.

[Shou]

It's interesting to look back at the hardware producing Sega and see what they were good and bad at. Maybe we could start a thread on this for other devs.


Good
simple but complex gameplay design
graphical prowess up to 2000
sound composition from the 80's to 90's
Segata Sanshiro (best ad campaign ever)


Genres:
Pushing the envelope in existing and new genres (too many to name)
3D fighters (VF series in particular)
arcade racing (too many to name)
gun shooting (Virtua Cop series, House of the Dead series, etc)
strategy (console-fying Daisenryaku series, Bahamut Senki, Dragon Force, Valkyria)



Bad
character design (look at VF and Fighting Vipers, Alex Kidd)
CG
console hardware design
understanding the market in any region


Genres:
2D fighters (Burning Rival, Dark Edge, DBZ VRVS, Golden Axe The Duel)
2D belt scroll (D.D. Crew, Spider-man, Arabian Fight, Golden Axe III)
traditional shooters

[citcelaid]

Yeah, we should start threads like this for all the great developers.

Here's what immediately comes to my mind when I think of Sega:

Arcade
Impressive graphics: More than anything the "Super Scaler" Games (Space Harrier, OutRun, etc), but also Model 1&2 stuff (VR, VF, Daytona)
System-16 games (especially Shinobi, Wonderboy III, Altered Beast)
However, for me a lot of Sega games in the Arcade never quite had the same quality of "pulling you into another world" as Capcom, Konami and Taito had. I think it's because the art direction was often less coherent and Sega didn't create many cool characters.

Home
Setting the standard for many genres (e.g. Phantasy Star, Shining Force, Shenmue)
Letting franchises rest to continuously make something new
More "arcade at home" than any other console maker (with the exception of SNK)
Giving strong support to 3rd part devs, esp. during the Mega Drive era (i.e. Treasure)
Many bad marketing decisions

Overall I prefer Sega's console games over their arcade output. IMO, the Mega Drive was their high point when you think in terms of excellent exclusive titles.

[Macaw]

What exactly was Sega thinking when they made Burning Rival and Arabian Fight? I mean seriously...

I do give them credit for trying to do such different and spectacular visuals in Arabian Fight at least, but how hard could it have been just to tighten the code up a bit so that collision detection made at least some kind of sense!?

The arcade Spiderman game has a cool visual style, but the game suffers from the action being a bit too dry.

[sven666]

i just bought a scud race PCB.

I have nothing to play it in but thinking of getting a SEGA racing cab for my summer house and figured my alltime favourite racing game is a good start.. paid a ridiculously low price for it too (about 1/10th of market value).. doesnt hurt.

as soon as a nice cheap cab pops up (touring car im looking at you!) ill snag it..

[Gaijin Punch]

What the cock is a summer house? I don't even have a winter house.

[citcelaid]

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

Pretty common in Scandinavia and Russia, where there's enough space for people to have them.

[Ganelon]

I feel that the mid to late 80s was when Sega was most dominant. Up until Final Fight, Sega ruled over arcades with its Super Scaler games, such as OutRun and Space Harrier, which looked heads and shoulders better than anything else around. In an era when people wanted to play those games, Sega provided a transition from the simple early 80s to the colorful and vibrant 90s.

Once consoles began to take over, Sega never regained its frontrunner status. The SMS never established position in the primary markets. The MD couldn't maintain itself against the FC or SFC. The MD add-ons were weak attempts to copy NEC, and they ruined Sega's reputation. The SS was victim to the "let's wait and see what everyone else will come up with" mentality. Sega's credibility was already lost when the DC hit the shelves. It was a tale of continually catching up rather than maintaining position.

Therefore, it's ironic that Sega is remembered foremost for its systems and secondly for its arcade hits. I think most folks nowadays have the impression that Sega was just another of the dime-a-dozen arcade companies along with Konami, Namco, Capcom, etc., unaware that Sega made arguably the most impressive games during the mid to late 80s. Sega had very competitive games in the 90s with Model 1 and Sega Sports console games, but they at best have to settle in a tie with other franchises.

I'm personally not a fan at all of the scaling games and neither are most folks nowadays. Faux 3D games haven't been in style for nearly 20 years so that makes sense. But since Sega never had foothold on popular modern games (outside of Sonic games, Phantasy Star online, and Virtua Fighter), its reputation is stuck as "not-quite-Nintendo level." There's a reason games such as OutRun got ported almost as many places as Street Fighter II years later but that's just a history lesson now.

I am a huge fan of the original Sonic series, which is just about the only thing modern gamers can connect with from old Sega. I enjoy most of Sega's 16-bit sidescrollers in fact. I'm also a fan of Sega's 16 and 32-bit RPGs (Phantasy Star, Thor, Shining, Dragon Force, Dark Wizard, etc.) but nobody really cares for them anymore. I doubt I'd enjoy any RPG revival attempts either. Biggest omissions that could have worked? More Eternal Champions games for the US and a sequel to Bare Knuckle III.

[Gaijin Punch]

What are the side scrollers you like the most? I really enjoyed playing the first Zillion game on the SMS.

[Shou]

While the MD failed in Japan, it arguably won the West and was only hampered by SOJ's decision to kill it off for the SS. I'm sure that they could have got more life out of the machine much like Nintendo's end of life business model.

[sven666]

wait, the MD failed in japan?

theres practically used MD games littering the streets? i always expected it must have sold like crazy in its heyday!
ok not sfc quantities maybe but coming 2nd in that race doesnt necessarily mean failiure?

i sthe MD really regarded as a failiure in japan?

[Ganelon]

In total sales, sure. But as we know, that's not an entirely fair comparison with Nintendo's continuing support of the NES at the beginning, the SNES's late start, and the SNES's late momentum. Sega was still playing catchup to Nintendo the whole time. Only the brief in-between period between the end of the NES and the start of SNES dominance was when the SG actually succeeded. Once Donkey Kong Country came out, it was clear that the SG would have an impossible time catching up.

I agree that it was a shame Sega basically gave up and went right to the SS. The SG's final wave of shovelware left a sour taste. SOJ certainly did stuff that hurt SOA—forcing the end of Eternal Champions was one. But SOA clearly contributed to the damage by wasting money on the obviously doomed CDX, having the grand notion that the 32X could co-exist with the SS, and planning a ridiculously ill-conceived "secret" launch for the SS. What a shame the SS couldn't have won the 32-bit era and given us one more age where 2D sprites were emphasized.

As for sidescrollers, I get a huge kick out of SOA's dedicated sidescroller engine for some reason (the one used in Chakan, X-Men, and even Time Warner's Generations Lost). Also, everything Shinobi (I prefer The Super Shinobi II) and Sega's Disney titles (Castle of Illusion is my favorite although I understand most folks disagree).

Zillion I & II were my first SMS games but I'm not a fan of either style. I also never understood the hype for Vectorman. For some reason, I'm a huge fan of the 3 Game Gear X-Men games though.

[Magic Knight]

Sega is....

Kentucky Friend Chicken
For relaxing times, make it Suntory Tapper time...
Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol. 1
Getting the Shinobi bonus for not using any weapons in Crack Down
Out Run 20th Anniversary Box
Different pinouts for every driving/bike game
Game Concept and Design by Michael Jackson
Getting a bigger bonus on the bonus stage of Sanrin San Chan/Spatter by not picking up the items
Sega Arcade History - From 1973 to 2001
Banana joystick
Arcade games on floppy disk
Killing zombies with a keyboard
Regulation 7
Suicide batteries
A good reason to have 24kHz monitors
Sega Consumer History - From 1983 to 2001
Western cover art for Master System games
Fantasy Zone II DX on System 16 hardware
Taking on the mighty Dogma Corp.

[Gaijin Punch]

Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol. 1: Cool book (I actually read a lot of it) but they cocked up the ports.

[Magic Knight]

Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol. 1: Cool book (I actually read a lot of it) but they cocked up the ports.

I haven't played them too much myself, as I have Out Run, Power Drift and After Burner II PCBs and I mostly play Space Harrier and Super Hang-On (instead of Hang On) on X68000. I'm looking to get Space Harrier and Hang On/Super Hang-On PCBs while I still have work. I have trouble getting into home ports of driving games on the Saturn and Dreamcast since there's no pedals. The book is very nice though, nice photos. I must try to getting around to reading it someday. I'm working very hard at learning Japanese these days, so it might be a good one to try.

[Gaijin Punch]

You probably know a lot of the content, so yes, it's not too bad. I actually read about 2 of the 5 chapters when I lived in Hawaii. Space Harrier Collection 2 on the PS2 is dope. Good luck w/ the PCB. I'm sure it's brutal. I remember the poster coming up on YJ *once* back when the economy was better. It was unfolded and pretty much unused. I think it cleared 80,000 yen. I wanted it, badly, but couldn't justify it.

About what level are you on? At some point you gotta start reading w/o the dictionary and just "absorb" the words you don't know. It's hard but I basically don't look a word up until I see it like 3 times or not knowing it REALLY fucks up the meaning.

[Magic Knight]

You probably know a lot of the content, so yes, it's not too bad. I actually read about 2 of the 5 chapters when I lived in Hawaii. Space Harrier Collection 2 on the PS2 is dope. Good luck w/ the PCB. I'm sure it's brutal. I remember the poster coming up on YJ *once* back when the economy was better. It was unfolded and pretty much unused. I think it cleared 80,000 yen. I wanted it, badly, but couldn't justify it.

80,000 just for the poster? Holy jamoley.

About what level are you on? At some point you gotta start reading w/o the dictionary and just "absorb" the words you don't know. It's hard but I basically don't look a word up until I see it like 3 times or not knowing it REALLY fucks up the meaning.

I always read without the dictionary, I don't have the time to figure it all out, just enough to get the gist. I'm mostly working on vocabulary at the moment, and pronunciation. So I'm going through this book and putting the text into Anki, so I have it ask me "unprofitable business organisation" and I write in my notebook 経営不振 and so on... you know how you sometimes know the kanji but can't quite figure out the meaning, like the word for majority is 過半数, when you first see the kanji you think "eh... don't know" but when you see the meaning, you see how it makes sense. With the grammar I have to ask my wife a lot to clarify it, just in case I misunderstand. Oh and just the other day I got this 大人の漢字練習 program for the DS, some of the readings I just don't know... and then I ask my wife or other Japanese people, and they don't know them either...

Now that I think of it, I think having the furigana really messes up reading, I end up just glancing at them rather than trying to work out how to say it myself. Learning and memorizing things really helps out though. I really want to be able to write proficiently, though it will take a long time. Good thing I'm not busy.

[Gaijin Punch]

Agreed -- furigana can suck my balls.

[Imhotep]

Ninja Princess is a great little game

Galaxy Force II has very impressive visuals and is quite fun to play. Just make sure to be flying on full speed most of the time

I've read good things about Teddy Boy, but haven't really tried it so far

[Magic Knight]

Got another Power Drift (since I don't know if the one I sent to MAK will get fixed) and Hang-On this weekend. The Power Drift is from a moving cabinet, no pinouts or manuals on the Internet, so I had to work them all out... oof! Got it done, just can't get the start lamp running, no big deal.

Hang-On was fairly straightforward, I'm using the Power Drift wheel and pedals. It's a little peculiar, but it works well. I need to get Super Hang-On next, I can use the start button for Turbo.

I'll write up how I made the harnesses when I get a chance. Need to take several pictures too.

Also got Marble Madness, Road Blasters, Toobin and another Escape from the Planet of the Robot Monsters. Busy busy.

[Gaijin Punch]

You are taking the hands on approach to the hobby, no question. <tips hat>

[Magic Knight]

You are taking the hands on approach to the hobby, no question. <tips hat>

I finally got around to posting up the details of how I did it. As I said, the pinouts for the Deluxe version of Power Drift aren't available anywhere online, so I had to guess. If anybody knows anything about them please let me know so I can update the page.

http://pcbiroiro.blogspot.jp/