Sega!

What's in a Name?

Just as the Master System is accused of being unrepresented by a suitable mascot, it's commonly held that, until Sonic shot into view, the Genesis was equally voiceless. Yet for almost a decade, the arcades had rung to the splash of overfull coin boxes in games such as Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Hang-On, After Burner, Out Run and an army of other groundbreaking titles. Almost inadvertently, Sega had built itself a Herculean empire from a wealth of franchises ready to come home. Unlike the Master System, the Genesis, through raw processing power alone, was able to deliver that promise to the home gamer, bringing everything but the stale odor of unwashed males and the mysteriously sticky floor of the arcade into the living room.

By the time the Genesis was tearing up the charts, Sega was comfortably under the umbrella of venture capitalist firm CSK with its founder, Isao Okawa, in the game developer's plush CEO chair. Okawa allowed the creative teams virtual autonomy when it came to developing their games. As a result, the individual logos of Sonic Team and AM2 were nothing short of a seal of quality for loyal players, but they didn't get much support from the marketing arm of the business.

While the 3-D virus spread throughout the gaming world, the 16-bit Genesis faired surprisingly well with a stable of 2-D games, some original, some franchise updates, but most clearly exhibiting the power of the Genesis. Likewise, the arcades reached a peak not seen since the early '80s, in no small part due to pioneering visions like Sega's Virtua series.

And yet, a slew of confusing hardware add-ons designed to prolong the lifespan of Genesis and perhaps bar the gate, kept the gaming giant from carving out a permanent niche on the console hardware scene. The 32x upgrade would supposedly enable the Genesis to harness the power of 32-bit architecture, but at over $150, was overpriced as an add-on, and since it required the Genesis console, failed in every respect as a standalone upgrade. Sega experienced similar problems with the CD-ROM player accessory. It was as if, for one brief moment, reveling in the success of a triumphant console, Sega was unable to let go, live up to their founding philosophy and charge ahead. Naturally gamers and developers alike appeared perplexed by Sega's apparent lack of focus, and neither, accordingly, were willing to invest in the future of these half-baked hardware solutions.

It may seem like a long leap forward to 2001, but the events of Sega's turbulent history are remarkably interchangeable. From the Master System to the Dreamcast, each of Sega's forays into home-based game hardware has failed, or fallen prey to one fatal misstep or another. And yet throughout its storied, often turbulent history, Sega has held true to the promise of making playable, boundary-pushing games. The short lives of its home consoles were shored up by the developer's one saving grace: incredibly playable franchises, delicately woven throughout its home and arcade catalogues - though even magnificent conversions of Virtua Fighter 2 and House of the Dead 2 only had so much mileage in them.

The new millennium marked a harsh return to the cutthroat marketing paradigm established all those years ago by the founding fathers. Sega's hardware was taken out into a field and shot, so the company could move toward a platform-agnostic software future. A brutal, yet lifesaving amputation that opened Sega's real strength up to new markets. This was the chance for two decades of some of the industry's most revered gaming franchises to live again on a new generation of game systems.

Naturally, it was in Sega's best interests to play this hand as though it were a considered and beneficial decision (rather than a necessity), but the company was in serious debt, and even slicing itself in half wasn't enough to retain buoyancy. Step in Isao Okawa , the mega-wealthy entrepreneur and chairman of the software developer's parent company, CSK. Okawa gallantly gave up his stock shares in Sega (and other companies with an interest in Sega) to offset the company's debts. This $700 million gesture came only weeks before the unexpected death of the Japanese businessman: a parting gift with the potential to re-launch the new "software-only" Sega as the world gaming power it once was.