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[GFord]

From the beginning on up to Saturn.

No Dreamcast, but for all intent's and purpose's Saturn was really the end (financially) as far as hardware was concerned.

Great read

http://vgrebirth.org/articles/segabase.asp

 

[Shard]

I think I have read this before.

 

[midnightguy]

I have read all of these, several times each.

 

[Community Forum]

I needed a good article to help put me to sleep tonight... thanks!

 

[goodcow]

Or, you can get the COMPLETE archive here, because I rock:
http://www.goodcowfilms.com/farm/games/segabase_archives/index.htm

 

[Porridge]

I read Taito was also started by a Westerner. True?

 

[midnightguy]

from part 1 of the Dreamcast article

On 12 March 1997, stories appeared on several Internet sites that Sega was working on a 64-bit upgrade module, code-named Eclipse, for its ailing Saturn. At the end of the month, on 31 March 1997, the story changed. Instead of a mere upgrade, Sega was in fact designing a whole new console. While details were extremely sketchy, it became known on 28 June 1997 that Sega had two different design specs ready for final consideration for its newest console. These were code-named Black Belt and Dural. The two specs were practically identical save in the processor departments, and just happened to match well with the specs for Sega's newest arcade board, code-named NAOMI. It seemed that Sega had found its way around the cost part of the console by once again basing it on its arcade technology.

this is almost all wrong. other than the fact that there were two different sets of design specs, they really screwed up.

On March 12th or 13th, 1997, the BLACK BELT was reported by Next Generation Online. not the Eclipse for Saturn, which was an older rumor going back to 1996 and earlier in 1997. you can prove this simply by searching google groups from say, Jan 1996 through Feb 1997 for Sega Eclipse and you will find posts on it. thus, it was not Eclipse that was reported on March 12-13 '97.

And, the part about NAOMI is totally wrong. the new Sega console specs were not based on NAOMI. the console specs came first. NAOMI came later. NAOMI was announced in mid to late 1998, well after BlackBelt was dumped in favor of Dural/Katana which became Dreamcast. The Dreamcast console came first. well, at least publicly anyway. NAOMI was based totally on Dreamcast but with more RAM. as far as I know, Sega did not build NAOMI first as an arcade board and then base Dreamcast off NAOMI. it was the other way around. (but who knows, I've been wrong on things that I was totally certain of before).
the SegaBase articles are generally pretty good, but they messed up bigtime.

here's a better and more accurate history of the development of Dreamcast
http://217.158.191.134/pma/10112

 

[TheJesusFactor]

So from the article that I read at the link above it mentioned this:

"Nintendo's illegal monopoly: When you own 90% of the world's largest videogame market, then you don't have to play fair. That leaves only 10% for your competition, which in theory means they never should be able to catch up with you no matter what they put out. Nintendo's initial success with the NES was such that it was able to force its software developers into exclusive licensing arrangements - in other words, their products had to be exclusive to the NES and not ported to other vendor's systems. This resulted in a number of lawsuits brought by both the public and private sector, with the end result that in 1992 Nintendo was found to established an illegal monopoly on the U.S. videogame market in the New York state court system. Nintendo's first response was a slight relaxing of its licensing restrictions, in which a developer had to wait at least four years before porting an NES title to another system. This did not satisfy the American and Japanese governments, who eventually forced Nintendo into abandoning such tightly exclusive contracts. Unfortunately for Sega, the government intervention came too late to save the SMS, and it never acquired the library of games that it could have had thanks to Nintendo's ruthless "inventory management" tactics."



Does this mean that EA has the same type of exclusive agreements with their sports license? Hmm..., do companies have a legal battle on their hands?

 

[KyotoMecca]

On a related note, I heard that the entire range of Sega Saturn Magazine is up for grabs on eBay...

 

[MetalAlien]

I experinced a good portion of that first hand, but seeing it all on one page and spending the past 2 hours looking over it... Man poor Sega never had it right... They had a brief moment of Sanity with the Sega Genny in an otherwise insane history. Although I believe the dreamcast was their greatest hardware, it just couldn't save them.

 

[TheJesusFactor]

I keep wondering if they never fired Bernie Stolar, would things had been different. I thought Sega was doing really well with DC until they fired Bernie Stolar. After that, things started to fall apart.

 

[imastalker co.]

i smacked my forehead like 12 times reading that.

jesus, in what manner though?