Sega

Sega is a game developer and producer, famous for the successful video games and arcades it made mainly in the 80s and 90s.

Origins

Standard Games, the predecessor company of Sega, was founded in the 40s in Honolulu, Hawaii by Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg, and James Humpert, supplying slot machines to military bases. With the end of World War II, the founders decided to sell Standard Games and found a new distribution company: Service Games.

In 1951, slot machines were banned in the United States, causing Bromley to send employees Richard Stewart and Ray LeMaire to Japan to establish a new distributor to supply machines to American military bases in that country. In 1953 the company's name changed to Service Games of Japan.

Foundation

In 1960, Service Games of Japan was closed, and two companies were created to take over its activities: Nihon Goraku Bussan and Nihon Kikai Seizo. Their creation date was June 3, 1960, which is the official date of Sega's creation.

In 1965, the company Rosen Enterprises, founded by David Rosen, merged with Nihon Goraku Bussan, and he became the new CEO of the new organization, now called Sega Enterprises.

In 1969, Rosen sold Sega to the conglomerate Gulf and Western Industries, but remained as CEO of the company and kept the company growing and prospering, managing to put Sega on the stock market in 1974, opening the company's capital.

Success in Arcades

Sega was initially a developer that prioritized arcade games. From 1978 onwards, the first major games began to appear, such as Monaco GP, Carnival, Turbo, Space Fury and the classic Zaxxon.

SEGA AM1

In 1984, Sega created Sega-AM1, one of the company's first divisions to make arcade games. Its first developers were Hisao Oguchi, Junichi Tsuchiya, Shuichi Katagi, Yoshiki Ooka and Yutaka Sugano.

Among its most successful games are:

Enduro Racer
Thunder Blade
Super Monaco GP
Shinobi
Alien Syndrome
Fantasy Zone
Altered Beast
E-Swat
Golden Axe
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker

SEGA AM2

In 1985, Sega created Sega-AM2, an internal division headed by Yu Suzuki who always brought new technologies and techniques to his games to impress players. The first developers to be part of this division were: Daisuke Sato, Junichi Yamada, Keiji Okayasu, Mika Kojima, Satoshi Mifune, Seiichi Ishii, Takashi Fujimura, Takeshi Isone, Tetsuya Kaku, Toru Ikebuchi, Toshihiro Nagoshi, Yu Suzuki and Yukinobu Arikawa.

Among its successes were:

After Burner
OutRun
Space Harrier
Hang-On
Virtua Racing
Virtua Fighter
Daytona USA
Virtua Cop
Virtua Striker

SEGA AM3

Created in 1990, Sega AM3 was not as successful as the other Sega divisions. Its first developers were: Atsushi Saito, Junichi Tsuchiya, Kenji Arai, Kenji Sasaki, Tetsuya Mizuguchi.

Its best-known games were:

Star Wars Arcade
Cyber Troopers Virtual-On
Manx TT Superbike
Sega Rally Championship
Last Bronx
Decathlete
Crazy Taxi

History in Consoles

In 1983, Sega decided to enter the console market, launching its first video game in Japan: the SG-1000, which did not have much of a chance since it was launched at the same time as Nintendo's Famicom. In 1985, Sega decided to launch a new console with better hardware than its competitor. This led to the birth of the Sega Mark III, known in the West as the Master System. Unfortunately, it was also unsuccessful in Japan. The strong competition from the Famicom, along with the exclusivity contract between several developers and Nintendo, prevented the Master System from growing there. Fortunately, outside of Japan, the Master System was a huge success in Europe and Brazil, with releases continuing until 1998!

On October 29, 1988, Sega attempted a new foray into the console market, this time with the Mega Drive, featuring graphics similar to the arcade games of the time, in an attempt to dethrone the Famicom. The Mega Drive was very successful in the West, taking over 50% of the North American market share, which until then had been dominated by Nintendo.

In Japan, the Mega Drive was not as successful as it was in the United States, having difficulty competing with the Nintendo and later with the Super Nintendo, as well as the PC Engine, which was a very famous console there.

On November 22, 1994, it was time for Sega's 32-bit console, the Sega Saturn! This console had two 32-bit processors and ran games on CD. It initially achieved excellent sales in Japan, being one of SEGA's most successful consoles in Japan.

In the United States, the console did not have the same success. Some flaws in SEGA's marketing department resulted in a launch with a much higher price than its competitor, the Playstation, and the difficulty in finding the console in stores initially resulted in weaker initial sales than in Japan.

As a result, the Saturn ended up having an excellent game library in Japan, with over 1,000 games, many of which were not localized for the West, much to the dismay of the device's owners, who ended up seeing it abandoned in 1998 for the launch of its successor: the Dreamcast.

On November 27, 1998, the Dreamcast was released in Japan. It was a 128-bit console that was launched to compete with the Playstation and Nintendo 64. It had polygonal graphics that were far superior to what was seen on its competitors at the time, and it was able to port games that were superior to those from the arcades, such as the fantastic Soul Calibur 2.

The Dreamcast was very well received, selling well and having excellent games in its library, such as Sonic Adventure, Virtua Tennis, Daytona USA, Resident Evil: Code Veronica, Marvel vs Capcom 2, among others.

Unfortunately, SEGA was not doing well financially, with a lot of debt incurred during the Sega Saturn period due to several bad decisions made during that period. Even with the good sales of the Dreamcast, the company no longer had the financial capital to remain in the console market and on January 31, 2001, it announced its exit, becoming a third-party developer.

Founded in: 1960

Also known as: 株式会社セガ, SEGA Corporation