CORBIE'S GAME BLOG

After the video game crash of 1984, you'd have been more likely to find Jimmy Hoffa than any company willing to take a chance on the video game market again. Then two arcade game giants, Nintendo and Sega, decided that maybe video games weren't done just yet. Both companies released their home game consoles onto the US market in 1985, but it quickly turned into a one-sided race with Nintendo snatching up an enormous amount of third-party game support leaving Sega with only a few tiny leftovers. Nintendo's NES system went on to become one of the most successful video game systems in history and single-handedly jumpstarted the video game market back into action. Sega may have been down, but they were far from out. Four years later Sega got a jump on Nintendo and launched their 16-bit Sega Genesis system in the US and it quickly jumped out in front giving Sega a much-needed head start in the next gen video game wars. Sega's Genesis would sell quite well, but eventually Nintendo got their Super Nintendo system out and with several exclusive hit titles on their hands, the biggest one being a near arcade-perfect port of the hit arcade game Street Fighter II, it didn't take Nintendo long to catch up to Sega in console sales, and before it was all said and done, Nintendo had once again taken the lead in the console race. At this point, whether out of desperation or just purely bad judgement, Sega began making a series of mistakes that would ultimately lead to their undoing in the console hardware market.

We'll begin with mistake number one. After NEC had some minimal success with their CD-ROM gaming add-on, Sega obviously saw the potential in using the CD medium with it's much larger storage capacity and CD-quality audio capabilities when they decided to develop a CD-ROM attachment of their own. Sega released the Sega CD attachment for the Genesis in 1992 but forgot one tiny detail. The games for it. Unless you wanted to grab Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch, there wasn't much early on that would make anyone actually want a Sega CD system, especially one that cost a whopping $300. In fact, Sonic CD was one of the few marquee titles that actually saw a release on the Sega CD system, unless you were an RPG fan and managed to get your hands on the four Working Designs RPGs released later on in the Sega CD's lifespan. In truth, the Sega CD was a half-assed attempt by Sega to add a little life to their Genesis system, but the sad part is, Sega wasn't finished.

As if a failed attempt at adding a CD attachment to the Genesis wasn't enough, Sega decided to add yet another attachment, this time a processor upgrade, with their 32X in 1994. The promise with this new attachment was more memory, better graphics, and faster gameplay. In keeping with true Sega form, however, there was once again little game support to take advantage of this new device and it failed almost as badly as the Sega CD system did, especially with developers. In fact, many of the games were so rushed in order to be ready for the Christmas release of the unit, that some games were missing levels from their counterparts, and many would just crash for no apparent reason. Needless to say, Sega's mistakes were not only beginning to mount, but they were getting more devastating financially as well.

I've always found it funny that Sega was one of the main leaders in bringing 3-D gaming to life in the arcades. So I find it especially troubling and ironic that they created a new console and didn't put nearly enough emphasis on 3-D architecture, even knowing that newcomer Sony was planning on centering their upcoming console around 3-D graphics. Instead Sega rushed out a new 32-bit console, even going so far as to launch it a month and a half earlier than it's street date, and then priced it $100 more than the already more powerful Sony Playstation system. It didn't take gamers long to take a look at their current gaming magazine and see side-by-side comparison screenshots of Toshinden for the Playstation up against a pitiful looking Virtua Fighter game for the Saturn to send consumers running to the Playstation. If ever there was a nail in the coffin for Sega it was the Saturn system. Although the system did see some outstanding games released for it, it just was too little too late for a company that had pretty much made their last mistake in the console market.

Sega had one last gasp, and that was the release of their Dreamcast system in 1999. This was an extremely well-designed and powerful system, and it was basically everything Sega needed to get back on track in the console race. Unfortunately, not many third-party companies were developing games for the system with Sega's recent track record, and even those that did weren't seeing very much in the way of sales, especially with much of the gaming market anxiously awaiting Sony's Playstation 2 system that promised to be much more powerful than even the Dreamcast. It didn't take long for Sega to realize that their time had passed and that changes had to be made. Soon after that they announced that they were throwing the towel in on the Dreamcast and starting to develop titles for other competing systems. Although it was quite sad to see Sega get out of the hardware market, it's worth noting that they've had quite a lot of success in bringing their amazing franchises, both old and new, to various other game systems. And who knows, maybe we haven't seen the last Sega game console just yet after all. Stranger things have happened.