47 Fun Facts About Sega

Sega's name is an abbreviation of which earlier company name?

Service Games was named for its customers: it sold slot machines to US servicemen on military bases. The first two letters of each word gave the brand name Sega.

Which 1960s Sega submarine shooter was such a hit that it helped make 25 cents the standard US arcade price?

Periscope's cabinet was so large and costly to ship that Sega urged arcade owners to charge a premium. Players paid it, and the profits turned Sega from an importer into a maker of its own games.

Which American conglomerate, already the owner of Paramount Pictures, bought Sega in 1969?

Gulf and Western kept co-founder David Rosen in charge, then lost its nerve after the 1983 video game crash and sold Sega's Japanese arm back to him and his partners.

Which early-1980s Sega space shooter was one of the first games drawn in an angled isometric view?

Zaxxon tilted the playfield so that height mattered: players watched their ship's shadow and an altitude meter to judge whether they would clear each fortress wall.

Sega's 1979 maze game Head On was a forerunner of which Namco classic from 1980?

Pac-Man's dot-eating had a forerunner: in Head On, a car circles a maze of lanes clearing every dot while a rival car tries to ram it head-on.

What was Sega's first home video game console, released in 1983?

SG-1000 went on sale in Japan on the very day Nintendo launched the Famicom, and the rival's more capable hardware soon left it far behind.

Which Japanese software company backed the 1984 management buyout of Sega?

CSK Corporation's money let David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama buy Sega's Japanese arm back from its American owner for $38 million, which made Sega a Japanese-owned company.

Which toy company did Sega partner with to sell the Master System in North America?

Tonka, best known for steel toy trucks, had never handled a games console. Sega handed it US distribution hoping a toy company could match Nintendo's pull with toy retailers.

In which country has the Master System had lasting success through Sega's partner Tectoy?

Brazil taxed imported consoles so heavily that Tectoy's locally built Master System stayed the cheap option for decades, long after Sega stopped making it elsewhere.

Which 1986 Sega arcade game was inspired by designer Yu Suzuki's road trip across Europe in a rented BMW?

Out Run gave players a Ferrari Testarossa because Suzuki spotted one in Monaco on the trip. He had wanted to drive across America instead, inspired by The Cannonball Run.

Which Sega claw machine, launched in 1985, became so common that its name is everyday Japanese for any crane game?

UFO Catcher began life as Eagle Catcher, with claws meant to look like a bird of prey. That proved too hard to build, and the finished grabber looked more like a flying saucer.

What was the Genesis called outside North America?

Mega Drive reached Japanese shops in October 1988, a week after Super Mario Bros. 3, which overshadowed the launch. Sega shipped only about 400,000 in the first year.

Which company declined to market the Genesis in North America before Sega did it itself?

Atari's boss Jack Tramiel wanted no part of it, so Sega launched the Genesis itself in 1989, then hired Michael Katz, a former Atari executive, to run Sega of America.

Which slogan fronted Sega of America's early advertising for its 16-bit console under president Michael Katz?

Genesis does what Nintendon't named the rival outright, because Katz liked competitive advertising and had a 16-bit machine to set against an ageing 8-bit one.

Which game did Tom Kalinske replace as the Genesis pack-in with Sonic the Hedgehog?

Altered Beast made way because Kalinske wanted Sega's strongest new game in every box. Japan's board objected to giving Sonic away, but president Hayao Nakayama told him to go ahead.

Whose boots inspired Sonic the Hedgehog's shoes?

Michael Jackson's buckled boots on the Bad album cover gave designer Naoto Ohshima the shape. The red and white came from Santa Claus, whom he thought the most famous character in the world.

Which programmer, fresh from porting Ghouls 'n Ghosts to Sega's 16-bit console, coded the original Sonic the Hedgehog?

Yuji Naka got the job because that port proved he could handle a platform game. Naoto Ohshima drew the hedgehog and Hirokazu Yasuhara planned the levels.

Sega's colour handheld rival to Nintendo's monochrome portable was called what?

Game Gear was close to a scaled-down Master System with a backlit colour screen, and that screen drained six AA batteries in three to five hours.

Which Sega arcade game of 1993 is credited as the first 3D fighting game?

Virtua Fighter built its brawlers from flat polygons while rivals still drew 2D sprites, and its home port was the game that sold the Saturn at its Japanese launch.

Which ratings body did Sega set up in 1993, ahead of its home release of Mortal Kombat?

Videogame Rating Council gave Mortal Kombat an MA-13 label so Sega could sell it as a mature game. The labels lasted about a year, until the whole industry adopted one shared system.

Which Genesis add-on did Sega rush out in late 1994 because Nakayama feared the new Jaguar console?

32X turned a Genesis into a 32-bit machine but could not play Saturn games. With the Saturn only months away, buyers lost interest after one holiday season.

Which rival console's price was announced at E3 1995 in a speech of just "$299", undercutting the Saturn by $100?

PlayStation's price was all Sony's Steve Race said before leaving the stage. Sega had just stunned the show by putting its $399 console on sale that same day, four months early.

How did KB Toys react to being shut out of the Saturn's surprise launch?

KB Toys refused to stock it because Sega had sent the first 30,000 consoles to just four rival chains, to go on sale the very day of the announcement.

What unusual design choice made the Saturn hard to program?

Two main processors sat beside two graphics chips and several more. The result was costly to build and few studios ever got full speed from it.

Which Japanese toy maker did Sega plan to merge with in 1997, in a deal called off that May?

Bandai's own middle managers sank it, worried about what joining Sega would do to their company's culture and working conditions. The plan was dropped within months of being announced.

Which ex-Sony executive at Sega of America declared the Saturn was not our future at E3 1997?

Bernie Stolar had signed up game makers for the PlayStation before Sega hired him away. He wanted a clean break so the company could regroup around its next console.

Which photo sticker machine did Sega and a partner launch in 1995?

Print Club, shortened Japanese-style to purikura, was the idea of a young employee, Miho Sasaki, whose bosses first turned it down. It became the top-earning arcade machine of 1996.

What kind of attraction were Sega World London and Sega World Sydney, opened in 1996 and 1997?

Indoor theme parks were Sega's 1990s bet on life beyond consoles. London's filled seven floors of the Trocadero, was billed as the largest in the world, and shut after only three years.

Which arcade system board shared technology with the Dreamcast, allowing near-identical ports?

NAOMI was sold as a cheap successor to the Model 3. Because it was close to a Dreamcast inside, Japanese arcade ports kept reaching the console for years after Sega stopped making it.

Which Dreamcast launch title was the first major 3D outing for Sega's mascot?

Sonic Adventure reached Japan a month after the console and was ready for the American launch. It gave the Dreamcast the full 3D Sonic game that the Saturn never had.

Sega boasted the Dreamcast's US launch out-earned the record opening day of which 1999 film?

The Phantom Menace held the record for a film's biggest opening day. The Dreamcast and its games took about $98 million in 24 hours, and Sega made sure the comparison reached the press.

Which Dreamcast game was reported to be the most expensive ever made at the time?

Shenmue was reported to have cost $70 million. Its creator Yu Suzuki later put the figure nearer $47 million, marketing included, with some of it spent on the sequel.

Which Sega of America marketing chief at the Dreamcast's US launch later became chief executive of Liverpool FC?

Peter Moore, born in Liverpool, went from Sega to senior jobs at Microsoft and Electronic Arts. He came home to run the football club in 2017.

What did Sega say it would do after ending the Dreamcast in 2001?

Make games for rival consoles: within a year Super Monkey Ball was a hit on Nintendo's GameCube. Eighteen years of building its own machines ended when Dreamcast production stopped in March 2001.

Which Sega president gave the struggling company his entire shareholding, worth about $695 million, weeks before his death in 2001?

Isao Okawa made the gift to cover the cost of ending the Dreamcast. He had argued for years that Sega should stop building consoles and stick to games.

Why did Bill Gates reportedly decide against buying Sega, according to Joachim Kempin?

Sega could not stop Sony, in Gates's view: Kempin recalled him saying it lacked the muscle, so Microsoft built the Xbox itself. A version of Windows already ran on the Dreamcast.

Which pachinko and pachislot manufacturer took over Sega in 2004?

Sammy wanted to grow beyond pachinko, while Sega had lost money for years. Namco made a rival approach, but Sammy bought out Sega's biggest shareholder and Sega Sammy Holdings was formed in 2004.

Which Finnish studio, maker of Angry Birds, did Sega buy in 2023?

Rovio cost Sega about $776 million. Sega wanted the Finnish firm's mobile know-how as much as its famous birds, to help bring its own series to phones.

Which British studio, known for Total War, did Sega acquire in 2005?

Creative Assembly had been expected to go to Activision, which published its Total War games and liked to buy its hit studios. Sega wanted a strong brand for Europe and North America.

Which Persona and Megami Tensei developer became a Sega subsidiary after Index went bankrupt?

Atlus was the prize when its owner Index went bankrupt in 2013. Sega won the bidding for a reported 14 billion yen, yet its first response to the news was that it had announced no such deal.

To which city did Sega of America move its headquarters in 2015?

Irvine was already home to a sister company Sega had bought two years earlier, so the two could share offices. The move south from San Francisco came with job cuts.

Which site's annual rankings, based on average review scores, put Sega first among game publishers for 2020?

Metacritic ranked Sega first even though runner-up Annapurna had a slightly higher average. Two releases scoring above 90, Persona 5 Royal and Yakuza 0, tipped it, and both were ports of older games.

Which Sega brand makes the Yakuza and Like a Dragon games?

Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, RGG for short, is named after the series' Japanese title, which means Like a Dragon. Yakuza was only ever the Western name, and since 2022 Sega has moved new games abroad to the Japanese one.

Which tiny system, with a screen barely an inch across, did Sega announce for its 60th anniversary in 2020?

Game Gear Micro also marked thirty years of the original handheld. It came in four colours with four different games each, so owning the full set meant buying all four.

Why did Paramount delay its 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog film by three months?

To redesign the main character: the first trailer gave Sonic unsettlingly human teeth and fans recoiled. The reworked film opened to $58 million, then a record for a video game adaptation.

What did Sega manufacture in the 1990s after buying a division of the arcade firm Data East?

Pinball machines carried the Sega name for five years. In 1999 it sold the business to its boss, Gary Stern, and his Stern Pinball was soon the only pinball maker left in the world.

Which management sim series became fully Sega's when it bought the developer Sports Interactive in 2006?

Football Manager had been Sports Interactive's title for barely two years. The studio had made Championship Manager until an acrimonious split in 2003, when publisher Eidos kept that name and the studio started afresh with Sega.