Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 182: SEGA Genesis 30th - Expert Mode

Episode Date: November 16, 2018

Ken Horowitz from Sega-16.com joins Jeremy to offer some perspective on SEGA's 30-year-old console from someone who's been on the front lines with it nearly from the beginning, in this side story to our recent Genesis anniversary tribute.

This week in Retronauts, we're still processing blasts. Hi, everyone. It's Jeremy Parrish again for Retronauts. And we're talking about Mega Drive. Sega Genesis again. We've already, you've already heard the episode where a bunch of people who didn't own a Genesis got together and said, this was a good and important system with some okay games that we like. But I thought, you know, wouldn't it be great if we had an expert opinion? And so as an expert opinion, someone who knows a lot about Genesis, who goes under the alias Sega 16 on the internet, you don't get much more Sega Genesis than that.

We have. Ken Horowitz. All right, Ken, thank you for taking time out of your long trip to Portland to come and talk about the Sega Genesis. Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. So tell me a little bit about your history with the system. I mean, everyone knows the retronauts shame that we didn't know Sega systems as kids. I got into Sega much later.

But I'm assuming that you're someone who has been much more enthusiastic about Sega throughout his life. Well, yeah, actually, I've been a Sega fan since the arcade days, and you could always tell a Sega arcade game from the rest of the games in the arcade. Because they kicked ass? Yeah, they always seemed to be, I don't know, maybe it could be biased, it could be just, you know, rose-colored glasses, whatever. but but it always seemed to me like they were especially in the in from 1984 on there always seemed to be like just like a step ahead of everybody else and um but the thing was is that i actually was going to buy in nes i had when it was when it came out i pestered my father for my birthday in august he didn't get me one so i said you're going to get me one for

christmas and i pestered and pestered and he took me this is the the the christmas that the nes was launched nationally he took me on christmas yeah he took me Christmas Eve to look for an NES. I bet you didn't find one. We went to nine stores. I bet they were totally sold out. Gone. There were people offering double the retail price for the display model.

Wow. And so he was like, oh, I guess we don't get one. But, you know, I guess he felt bad because he had really, you know, messed up. So he was like, okay, you can get an Atari 2,600 Jr. With 10 games. Or you can get a Sega Master System, which they still had, and one game. And so I was like, 10 games. I liked Atari, a lot.

But then I looked at the master system. I looked at the graphics, and I was going back and forth. My brother leaned over. My older brother, and he said, if you get the master system, I'll buy F-16 Fighting Falcon. So I was like, oh, sweet, another game. So I got the master's system. And that just... And what was the game that you picked with the master system?

The ninja. Okay. Still one of my favorite games to this day. And so I enjoyed my master's system greatly. And then when Genesis came out, I once again asked for Christmas, for that Christmas. but by then I was in high school so my dad had more of a you know year 16 why don't you work and pay for it yourself attitude but when you know I guess he kind of got reminded of how he messed up with the NES before so when I went to visit him that summer he took me to seven more stores because he could not believe that they all cost $18999 he believed it was price fixing it was like dad that's the retail price and so he took me to all these stores and And I got a Sega Genesis console with Altered Beast. I had already bought World Championship Soccer because all my friends and I made, they all bought the console.

And so we all made a pact like everyone would buy a different game. And then we would just lend them to each other. And that way nobody would have the same game twice. We could play them all. That's an amazing pact. That's totally awesome. And so, but the thing was is that since I didn't have a console by the time I actually got around to buying a game, the only game that was left was World Championship soccer. So I was like, screw it.

I'm buying this game. And I took it with me to Texas to see my dad. And without the console, he bought the console. A friend of mine had given me money to buy Super Hang-on for him. And I did that under the condition that I could open it and play it. And he said, okay. So I had Altered Beast. I had World Championship Soccer and Super Hang-on.

And my dad went to work and I stayed home all day, played through the entire World Tournament and World Championship Soccer, played through Super Hang-on, played through Altered Beast multiple times. And it was just amazing. So this was, was this 89? No, this was August 90. Okay. So the Genesis had been around for about a year and developed a pretty decent library by that point, but it wasn't quite to Sonic the Hedgehog yet. No, no, no, no. But since they had like Golden Axe and they had Alex Kidd, which I had

really liked on the Master System, and they had Revenge of Shinobi, and I was a fan of the arcade and Master System Shinobi. So, and then Fantasy Star 2, you know, those games were either there or about to be released. So there was a lot in the library as a Sega arcade and Master System fan that I was really looking forward to. So can you sell me on Alex Kidd for Sega Genesis? Because I've tried playing that game and I'm just like every time I bounce off of it, is there something to it that I'm missing? It tries to go back to Alex Kinn and Miracle World, which is probably the best one.

They kind of went in different directions with the other. Oh, it might not be the best ones, but I think it's the best one, my favorite. They kind of went in different directions with the other ones, high-tech world, Shinobi World. But they tried to come back to the original formula with Enchanted Castle. And the thing about Alice Kid is that they tried to be Super Mario and it doesn't work as a Super Mario clone. But if they had just decided to take that dynamic and do something a little bit different, it could have stood alone as its own game. because when I play it, I don't get a Mario feel. I mean,

No, it doesn't feel like Mario. No. So when I read that, you know, they were trying to emulate Mario, it's just, I don't feel it. Well, I think, you know, on Master System, the very first one, Miracle World, I think that is very Mario-like. But, yeah, by the time you get to the Genesis game, it's kind of like, hmm. But the thing is, even in the Master System one, I mean, you have like the motorcycle and the pedicopter and all these things. And then the bosses are, you know, rocks is or paper battles. So it just, it didn't have that, it had like that platform feel like that Mario had, but it just didn't, I didn't feel like, oh, they're just trying to do Mario.

It seemed like to have a little bit of its own identity. They tried to come back to that with the Chinat Castle, but the thing was is that the biggest problem with, that I found with Miracle Wall is that the jumping was a little bit too floaty. And so like the jump, like you have to, you jump and when he comes down, he has like a drop kick. And you have to really, really time that right. and it's like the reach distance with his punch could be better. So if they had tweak that a bit, the gameplay would have been a lot. And also he slips, he slides around a lot. So if they had like tweak the gameplay a little bit more,

it would have been, it would have fixed the biggest flaw with the master system version, I think. But they kind of left it that way. And so it improves graphically and sound and everything. But because of the way the gameplay is set up, the game can be unnecessarily hard. And so it comes off as cheap in many places. Okay. So you haven't quite sold me on it, but Well, it's one of those, I think it's, it's an acquired taste. It's not, it's definitely not a pickup and, oh, man, I have to have this game. I mean, it's like either like Alex Kidd or you don't. And, and the gameplay doesn't really help sell the game. But if once you can, you know,

once you understand it and you can accept, okay, this is the way it plays and I just have to deal with it, right? The game actually is enjoyable, but it's, if I were to recommend Genesis platformers to you, I would probably recommend a couple of dozen ahead of it. Right. So what would you recommend in terms of Genesis

platformers? Well, Genesis platforms absolutely this. I try to, I'm not, honestly, I like Sonic, but I'm not as big as Sonic fan as a lot of people other people are. I would have to put the top two platformers on my list. Well, top three would be

Ristar, Rocket Night Adventures, and Pulseman. Okay. And Ristar is by Sega, but the other two are third-party titles. Yeah. So that really speaks to, I think, what Genesis did better than Master System by far, which is bring in third-party developers and really enrich the diversity of the library. Well, Ed, there were a lot of factors involved in that that kind of played into Sega's hands. I think Nintendo kind of got into a position where it couldn't

keep third party companies from dealing you know you couldn't tell them to ignore the competition because the competition was was growing and so they had to kind of just say okay you know ease the restrictions they had in licensing and let the other companies uh make games for the consoles and once they did that that's when you had kanami and capcon and all these other tito data east and all these other companies uh come on board and that's when the Genesis, I think, really took off. I mean, Sonic kind of got that ball rolling. A lot of people think that Sonic is what set the Genesis off in success.

It got the ball rolling, but it wasn't the thing that made the success. It was because Sonic would have been an immensely successful game, and then you would have just gone right back to what you had before Sonic because there was nothing to continue that momentum. It was the fact that that showed third-party console, third-party companies that the console was actually viable and, you know, hey, we should be making games for that. And so once they came aboard,

that just snowballed. And allowed the console to become the successful as it was. You can go again. Don't fall behind. Say, don't be late. Seven seven. This is an age in heaven.

Stay alive. That's you and me. Who's going to have fun? Say, nice off. Hi, Galamon. It's about that bar. What do you make? So what do you think were the strengths of the Sega genesis, you know, besides what we just talked about?

Like, as a piece of hardware, why do you think it succeeded so effectively where the master system hadn't? I think because it was much easier to develop for. I also think that the processor, at the time it came out, was extremely fast. and so it allowed It was a blazing 7 megahertz Yeah, yeah Don't sneeze at that kind of speed But for games like for platformers

Action titles Running Guns, Shooters I mean it's tailor made for that So I think that that was very very attractive And it was just It was the kind of console that If it didn't have tools The developers could make their own tools

And it was a lot easier It was actually a lot easier For example, I've spoken to people who worked on the Super NES and, is that, is that correct? Is it Super NES or is it? Sure. Super NES on the show, yes. We're not British, so we don't say Snez. Since I was, I was living in Puerto Rico when the console was released.

So there was the Nintendo and then the Super Nintendo and that's what they called. I mean, that's really what everyone I knew called it. It was Super Nintendo games, yeah. So I've spoken to developers who developed for both consoles. And many of them tell me that it was a lot easier for them to develop their own tools for the Genesis. And that's why, like for sports games and things, a lot of times the Genesis was the lead console. Because Sega of Japan wasn't very forthcoming with the tools. And that's, they kind of, and some developers told me that they would either give you the tools with all the documentation in Japanese, or they would give you the tools and leave out certain features.

Okay. I literally just had this conversation last night with Rebecca Heinemann about programming for Super NES, where they gave her the documentation in Japanese, and she had to learn Katakana to figure out, like, what is it actually saying? And yeah, like, at the same time, she loves programming for Super NES. She said it was, like, it was basically the same as an Apple 2GS. So it was like a lot of fun for her to program for it because she had a lot of experience with the other system. But, you know, I think, The Genesis was more like a lot of the other systems that were currently on the market, like arcades. You know, they used the Motorola's 68,000 family. So it was a really comfortable, well-documented platform. Yeah. And that's like, for example, that's why the gems, the sound driver, that's why that came about because a lot of developers were locked out. And so Sega of America actually hired, contracted. Burt Sloan, John Miller, and a couple of other people to create audio tools because they need,

and the thing is the, the GEMS sound driver in many aspects, emulates sounds that the Genesis can produce natively because since they don't have access, they didn't have access to that. So they, instead of being able to access, they know they had to go and find a way to basically emulate sounds. Interesting. So, and that's why, that's why if you look at the list of GEM software, the titles that use the GEM software, GEM Software, a lot of them, virtually all of them, are Western, American and European, because they had to do that because they either got the documentation. I've had developers tell me that they actually got documentation from Japan on an appkin in Japanese.

You know, so it's like here. Napkin, napkin notes are supposed to be like where you have the first idea and you're like, oh, let's go build this. Not something down the line to the end user. You write that on a napkin when you say, I'm going to write this down so I don't forget it. as I get to my hotel room to put it on paper. Right. And so it was the attitude in many cases was, well, see what you can do with this, you know. And a lot of them had to actually create tools or make do with what they had.

So that's why you hear a lot of people say that, oh, how come the Japanese games sound better than the American games? And a lot of it has to do with that. And you see you listen to games like Fantasy Star 2. There's always the example that comes to mind of me. That game has sound effects and music effects that I have not heard in virtually any other games. like they just milked the sound chip and just brought out every day like every sound they could get out of it they incorporated into the game and you don't hear those sounds in western games but a lot of it had to do with that but um even still with that with that obstacle with that

limitation um a lot of people were able to make the genesis do things that people thought that chip especially by 92 93 that that that uh processor was already starting to get long in the tooth they were able and keep it doing things that nobody thought it could do. Yeah, I mean, Gunstar Heroes, you think of that as being like the pinnacle of Sega Genesis, and that didn't come around until 94. Like, the Saturn was already pretty much well on its way at that point. It's, yeah, so there was a lot of great stuff happening late in the system's life. But the America versus Japan thing, whether deliberate or just as a sort of incidental factor

that arose out of the nature of the business, that seems to be kind of the story of the Sega Genesis. It really feels like there were two kingdoms involved and the things that they did in America were all kind of scrappy like we're figuring this out, we're breaking the rules, we're doing things a different way and that really helped the system in a way that it might not have happened

if the whole thing had just been controlled top down from Japan the way Nintendo did with Super NES. Well, I like when people, when we get into this discussion, and this discussion seems to never stop, you know, about the whole Japan versus U.S. And people say, well, Sega of America with the, you know, but the thing is there are a lot of contradicting arguments because people say that, like, when Sega contracted Tonka to distribute the master system, that the reason it failed is because they hired a toy company that knew nothing of video games. And then they go on and they praise the work of Tom Kalinsky, who was a former toy executive who knew nothing about video games when he joined Sega, you know. Well, there's the difference between someone, like one person kind of managing a business versus another company figuring out distribution and marketing for something.

I mean, there are different disciplines. Well, but he had to deal with distribution and marketing, but he also had to deal with game, you know, localizing game software and getting stores into retail, games in the retail and things like that, where Tonka only had to deal with distribution and marketing. They didn't have to really deal. They chose some games that came over, but they didn't really have to deal with any of the. development side at all. And so they didn't have to worry about creating software and targeting software for specific audience. All they had to do was just market and release. But the thing was is that, like, you have that argument. And then when people talk about how Sega of America failed with the 32X and the Saturn, and that was all because Sega of America was doing whenever it won,

it should have just listened to Japan and done what Japan told it to do. But that's exactly what it did with the master system and it got 2% market share. You know, it wasn't until that Sega actually able, was able to do what needed to be done for the specific region of North America, you know, that it was able to actually be successful. People complain that they released too many sports games. But at one point, sports games counted for 42% of Sega of America's revenue. And there are about 90% of what you find at flea markets now for Sega Genesis. Yeah, that's the reason why I will never have a complete Sega Genesis set because I simply

just couldn't stand to look at 10 versions of Madden, an NHL hockey, and soccer. and all that on my shell, I'm not going to play those games. And I would rather save that shelf space for new releases that are coming out, like Xenocrisis and Kung Fu UFO with Kickstarter works. I'd rather save the shell space for that than just be able to say, I have every madden never released, you know? You're making John Madden sad. How's he going to afford his Turduckins?

Well, I have, like, I'll keep like the first Madden because of the story behind that. And I'll keep like Lakers versus Celtics because that game was like the first. 16-bit sports title I played and I loved it. And I'll keep like USA Basketball because, you know, the dream team. That was cool. And Joe Montana football because of the story behind that. But that's like the only sports games that are on NHL 94, which I really, really love. So I still have that one.

And World Series Baseball. So actually. It's actually quite a few sports games. But yeah, you know, you mentioned the story behind the first Madden. And that's actually kind of what I was referring to when I said that, you know, the U.S. developers and publishers had to kind of be plucky and sort of work against the rules. I wasn't necessarily speaking so much Sega internally, which to a certain degree, yes, but there was definitely, they were still part of a corporate unit.

I mean, STI existed, and that wouldn't have existed of Sega, of Japan was like, America, whatever. Like, clearly, the American business was extremely valuable to Sega and the American arm, but then you had, you know, third-party developers, or what do you consider EA doing its own thing. Is that like fourth party? Like they're not even necessarily allowed to be on the system, but they force their way on anyway. Like that's, you know, that's kind of what I was talking about is I think because the Genesis hardware was not off the shelf components, but well documented components, you know, a very popular and powerful processor. It opened the door for people to come in in a way that they couldn't necessarily do with the NES or master system. and, you know, sort of figure things out. But it's worth talking about the story behind the original Madden because we didn't address that on our kind of software-focused episode.

But that was a huge part of why the Genesis became big in America because EA basically like shoved their way in the door and we're like, hey, guys, we're publishing on Genesis, whether you like it or not. Yeah, they did Madden, other games like Zany Golf, sort of so down. although I think if Sega had looked at Sorda Sedna and said, that's what you're going to release and no thanks. That wouldn't have been a good argument for EA. But yeah, and then it got to the point,

you look at that, that EA was a company that basically kind of strong-armed its way into development on the Genesis. Going from that to not only becoming like the biggest third-party publisher, but also responsible for Joe Montana football, which was basically the game that not only, I mean, people talk about the rivalry

between NFL and Madden but Joe Montana football was basically the game that started the end you know got the ball rolling with Sega Sports which became huge in all different types of sports so and EA was basically

responsible for that I mean the people who made the Genesis version of Madden are the ones who made the Genesis version of Joe Montana football Park Place productions and their final product was actually superior to Madden and Trip Hawkins told them you know you're not going to release a game that's going to kick our own game's ass.

So they had to go and take out elements and make it more actually made their game worse? Yeah, no, yeah, they actually had to remove features so that it wouldn't overshadow I'm at it. And even though that game was, the game was supposed to come out in October, and it came out in January of 91, it actually sold quite well. And it showed that, that was a, that game was vital because it showed, the sake of America was trying to show, Sega of Japan, the need for internal development in America and games like sports were important because Americans want to play football. They want to play baseball, basketball. And that game, even though it released so late, I mean, practically when the Super Bowl was on, that it was successful was key in convincing Sega of Japan to allow Sega of America to start its own

studios and begin its own development. STI had the benefit of Mark Serney's relationship with Hayao Nakayama because Mark Serney had worked on Master System games. He had to start. It worked on Sega arcade games. So we already had a pretty good relationship with Sega of Japan to be able to get that ball rolling. But the whole purpose of STI was to train American developers to make games with the system. Yeah, I think we're kind of making the assumption here that people listening necessarily know what STI is and how EA got onto the platform in the first place. That might be good to clarify. Like, as someone who's done a lot of research into this, what can you tell me about STI, Sega, or Sonic?

Is it Sega Techno? Sega Technical Institute. Yeah, Sega Techno Institute was a studio started in 1990 by Mark Surny, the architect's behind the PlayStation 4, creator of Marble Madness. And he and a couple of other Japanese developers, including Yutaka Sugano, who made Shinobi, and a couple of others, veterans were sent over to, the United States to help recruit

and train American programmers, designers to create games for America. And the very first game they did was Dick Tracy. The movie tie-in to the Warren Beatty movie? Yeah. And they tried to do... I was reading recently, Mark Scherney talking about

that, where they had... Since the game was so... You know, it was a license title, had to tie in with the movie, had to be released by a certain date. So there were a lot of things that they wanted to do that they basically couldn't do because they had to get the game out. And then they did Camelion and they did other games like The Oos. They did Comic Zone. We talked about Comic Zone a lot on our other episode and it was a very unfair game, but such a fascinating concept.

Yeah, the fact that they were actually trying, they were ready to do, ready and willing to do a sequel and they didn't get the green light. It really, that's a franchise that I really would have liked to see brought back. But, but it would be like 2.5D if they did it now. It can't, that's not, that's that game that, it's a comic book, can't be 3D. I agree. So, but it's a shame that that game never got another chance. Kid Chameleon, you know, which was a really good game that, they wanted to do a sequel, were planning to do a sequel, and it got canceled as well.

And there were a couple of other games, Jester, Spinney and Spike, that were in the planning stages or in development and got canceled. But that was all purpose of STI to spearhead that North American development movement. And from there, you got the Sega Multimedia Studio followed, Sega Studios LA, which did Full Motion, Sega Midwest. And by then they had a full catalog of internal studios. So how come so many of those games got canceled? They seemed promising. Because Sonic had a lot to do with it Because a lot of the

There were multiple factors The fact that Sonic was priority The fact that there are a lot of back and forth In stories about whether or not The Japanese and American side of those teams Actually Worked well together People always like to hinge on their argument

On the fact that the Americans were in one office And across the hall with the Japanese teams But no one that I have ever spoken to on the American side, no one I've ever spoken to or read about, talked about it on the Japanese side, has ever said anything other than the only heated moments would have been perhaps because of the language barrier and the frustrations of not being able to communicate ideas, but that there was no rivalry, there was no internal strife or animosity among the teams. You know, Japanese have a very different way of doing things in American

corporate culture there, and the workflow is very different. It is, like I said, top down, whereas American workflow tends to be a lot more democratic. There's a lot more, less like one person who calls the shots, and there's a lot more opportunity for other people to give feedback and a democratic process to take place. Yeah, so you had that clash of cultures to some degree, but there was no rivalry between the members. They got along well enough. And so I think that there was also the fact that some of the members went back. to Japan, right, Yuji Naka had come to America because he was unsatisfied with the compensation for Sonic and he came to America to work on Sega Technical Institute, did Sonic 2, and then

with some success he went back to Japan. A couple of members went back to Japan as well. So you had, Japan had one certain priorities. America had other priorities. Sonic was a company-wide priority. And so there were a lot of factors involved there that there were certain projects that just had to be prioritized over others. And so also the fact that, for example, I think it was Spinney and Spike was Steve Boyd's game. If I get it wrong, Steve's going to kill me. But I'm pretty sure it was that game that he and Adrian, I forget his last name. He had another programmer. I know his first name's Adrian, but his last name escapes me. They had left to work on another project and they were going to work on Spinney and Spike.

They left to work another project when they came back. Development had already been like assigned to somebody else. That kind of annoyed them. So you did have that like, but locally with the sake of America, the corporate thing, that elements that kind of works, has traditionally worked against, I mean, programmers read about how Atari programmers were compensated. And then now this week we're taught reading about Red Dead Redemption and Rockstar. And so that's a never-ending problem in game development.

Right. And EA. Right, right. Yeah, going back to the EA thing, the shenanigans they achieved. Yeah, they basically reversed engineer the Genesis. And we're going to make games regardless of whether or not Sega gave them a license. And Sega kind of acquiesced in many regards to their demands and gave in. And it turned out to be mutually beneficial in the long run.

but I think probably Michael Katz, who was president of Sega of America at the time that EA was doing its reverse engineering, probably had his reservations about it because, you know, this is a company. No one wants to negotiate with terrorists. Exactly. But also a terrorist that, you know, you're going and you're signing all these big sports licenses, you know, you're getting Pat Riley and Tommy LaSorda and Joe Montana. and here's a company that's building its way onto your console that makes sports games. You know, that kind of casts a shadow. You don't want another company to steal your thunder. So I think that had a lot to do with it.

But in the end, you know, Sega really at that time couldn't be turning third-party companies away. Right. They had to. I mean, if you look at the list of companies that made games for the console, I remember the first poster that had just like role Sega games. And then another poster that came with the games had like, companies, all these companies are making games. You had like, you had a Kineko and you had Razor Soft and you had all these companies and my friends were like, who the hell are these people?

You know, where's Capcom? Where's Konami? Where's a claim? It's like, well, okay, but we've got, you know, we've got a, say, just creation. We've got renovations. Yeah, like, okay, you know. But then we were like, okay, well, at least there's somebody, you know, there. And, of course, nobody knew that Renovations was like the American Armatel in Japan, which was this major developer there, you know, and Sage's creation, a lot of their releases were basically like Crackdown were just, they took Sega games that Sega just, they weren't on Sega schedule, and they just licensed and released them under their own name, you know, and so, but you didn't know any of these things.

Nobody knew anything about licensing when they're in high school, you know. Right. Nobody's like, oh, Crackdown, that's a Sega title. It was a licensed day, you know. We were just like, okay, Sage's creation is releasing Insectar X, all right? You know? So we didn't have any other option. And then like, okay, electronic arts, Sega's not going on. And a company that was growing the way electronic arts was, they weren't going, they weren't in a position to say no. Right.

Yeah. I think that if, well, and electronic arts had pretty much said, like, if you don't license us, we're going to share this information with other people. So I think it would have destroyed the. platform if they had said no to EA because it would have turned into one of those wastelands of free for all crap software like the Atari 2600 and that sank the 2600 it was a huge problem for Nintendo with the Famicom in Japan because they didn't have the licensing system there for a long time and yeah I think they were smart to say like

it's better to kind of suck up our pride and eat a little bit of shit as opposed to eating a lot of shit and just, you know, keeping that, that 2% of the market share. Yeah. And the thing is, like, they started the Sega seal of quality, like Nintendo and the seal of quality. And it took, as a kid, it took you a long time to realize that seal of quality did not necessarily mean gameplay. Well, I think if you had played a lot of seal of quality NES games from some of the

sketchier third parties, you were like, hmm, quality, yeah, okay, sure, okay. And there was only afterward that you realized basically seal of quality was they have a license from us. You know, we're letting them make games. But yeah, they had no choice, really. So it did work out in the end, at least, on the Genesis. And Tengen was actually a licensed Genesis publisher, right? Whereas they were, they were not licensed. Well, initially they were, but very quickly went and became sort of the key, like the lead unlicensed publisher on NES. Yeah, well, Sega would do a lot of those things kind of like to piss Nintendo off, just like Sega took Golub,

Nintendo took Galube to court, Sega gave them a seal of quality and said, go ahead, release the Game Genie. You know, they kind of did those things to show, like it was all part of the attitude and the whole where the cool company thing they had going at the time. Get the Game Genie.

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And caller number nine for $1 million. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chocolate. Oh, sorry. That's not what we were looking for.

On to caller number 10. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to boost mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free free. phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save. Inputting the master code, 20 lines of code, we're able to get the level two. That game was even with, because there are some games that even with, even with, you know, invincibility or whatever, they were still just,

because they would give you like invincibility, but if you fall down a pit, invincibility doesn't work. And so then there's a level that's like just all pits. So like your code is useless. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. It's a Genesis, Sega did not scrimp on the challenge, the difficulty.

That was kind of their thing. I mean, they were very much an arcade developer. And I feel like they brought that attitude home. That's something we talked about in the, the previous segment of this episode or this conversation is that, you know, Sega started in the arcades and arcades are about like, keep pumping in those quarters kids and you're not pumping in quarters at home,

but they never quite, for a lot of their games, never quite step back from that mindset of like, our gamers want to be challenged. We must make it difficult for them. And maybe that's true. I don't know. Yeah, they had to, for example, like a Shinobi is it. In some cases, though, they actually had to,

they even like realize like holy shit you know we we kind of uh we set the bar a little bit too higher in difficulty so you have like shinobi and anyone who's played the arcade game shinobi knows that the last level is very brutal and uh the last boss very brutal you know no continues and then the mass system version which was done by the team that ended up doing revenge of shinobi they were like yeah let's we should put a life bar you know when it kills and so they made some tweaks to it and a lot of those elements ended up being incorporated in Revenge of Shinobi. But it's like, that's one example where they realized, yeah, we made it just a little,

we went a little bit too far with the difficulty there. But, yeah, I mean, my first example that, you know, with like Revenge of Shinobi, you know, and Golden Axe had difficulty levels and you could up the lives and make your life bar five instead of three. And so they kind of make adjustments there. But then I saw like Fantasy Star 2 that came with a 110 page hint book. I was like, the game actually brings a hint book, you know, that's not screwing around. Yeah, I mean, that was kind of a standard thing with console RPGs back in the early days.

Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy and a few other games came. I mean, Earthbound came with like the entire strategy guy that they would normally sell for 15 bucks. So I think there was a kind of an assumption like American kids need some help with these games that have words in them. Yeah, but even like the Fantasy Star 2, even with the hint book, you get to, like to the dams on Palma. Even with the hintbook, that's difficult. You know, that's just, it was a lot of it is, you know, it's a walls, you know, step in fight, step in fight, step in fight.

And so then you have like just these transporters all over the place. So when they saw that they actually packaged it with the hint book, you know. And then like EA with their RPGs, I was talking to one of the vendors, like if you took the King's bounty manual, I put it on one side and the might and magic manual on the other and put the Star Flight manual on top, you have a hurricane-proof shelter because those manuals are like 300 pages each. You know, that's just, that was just beyond intimidating that the instruction manual was an encyclopedia, practically. Yeah, so I'm kind of curious to get your take on two of the big factors of the Nintendo Sega console war. I'm always looking at things from sort of like the side of someone who owned a Nintendo system.

But as a Sega kid, what was your perception of, street fighter 2 and of donkey con country like were those even factors for you did you care or did you look at those and say ah damn you Nintendo you took the good stuff well it kind of went back and forth because like um we love final fight and then we got streets of rage right you know plus you got the good final fight on Sega CD yeah yeah and so then like you get like you get thunder force uh three we got it first you know and things like that so there's a lot of that every release was like new ammunition for that argument but like street fighter two and that came out i remember my friend bought it we started playing like 10 o'clock and i left

this house at like 11 a.m the next day you know it's just it was insane they just all night the two of us just because you had the code where you could actually use the same character you know and we just spent all night playing that game and i remember leaving thinking like damn it you know that's and then the ad i think the initial ad said like uh basically was like yeah you won't see it on Genesis. Yeah, you want it on Genesis. And then when Special Champion Edition was announced, that was like, you know, that was it. You know, with that, you're like, that puts it on the same level. Nobody, because people used to

say, well, you know, you've got Konami and Capcom making their games, but they're like, they got their B teams, you know, and all the companies are just like give their leftovers to Genesis. Castlevania Bloodlines is not a B-team game. No, it is not. No, well, Konami's first game on the Genesis is Rocket Night Adventure. That is not a B-team game. That is it. That's just triple A quality.

Yeah, that was by, directed by Nacosato, who did Contra games. That's just AAA across the board. And yeah, I agree with you about bloodlines and Contra's great. But that, so you have those games. But then Street Fighter was like, that was the Holy Grail right there. And then like, oh, we're not getting Street Fighter. We're getting a special champion edition. You know, so that one was really big.

The other one you mentioned, was a donkey con country which you guys did not get period no i think like people say like a vector man i don't know i don't know when people say that vector man was like sega's answer there was a big gap in in release between the two i really and i'm in in all the conversations i've had with people the people who worked on vector man i never once got the impression they never once saw like yeah we were directly competing with with a donkey con country yeah there were you know the the the graphics, you know, that was, but the, but that seemed to be more of like, to me, that seems to be more like just the way, that was like the first signs of the industry moving

away from traditional sprite based artwork and moving towards trying to make things more 3D. Because then you got, you know, when you got to the Saturn, there was like, in the PlayStation, it was like everything had to be 3D. So I think it was just like the first signs of them moving in that direction. But the one thing that I thought about the, first of all, like the graphics in Donkey Kong country at the time were, you know, they were awesome. They were just phenomenal for the time. But the fact that I was like, man, you know, like Nintendo took Donkey Kong and put him in this really kick-ass platformer. And so, like, that they, that was like when I first started to think about like, wow, you could take a character that, you wouldn't think Donkey Kong and a platformer.

and they brought back one of their classic characters, and they put them in this new type of game, and they just did a really, really excellent job with it, you know? And so that, I didn't think that, that Sega had to come up with its, the Sega didn't get Donkey Kong country, a game like Donkey Kong country. But it made it made me think, like, you know, like, it made me want them to bring, like, other classic franchises back.

I was like, man, I think it could take Zillion, you know, how come we had, we didn't get Fantasy Zone. America, things like that, because they just showed, like, Nintendo was showing that you could take one of a classic character and put him in his own title and just build this world around him. And it's become a franchise that endures to this day, you know, and that was the kind of thing that I wanted Sega to do more. And to this day, I still, you know, asking, why don't we have, you know, a new Alex kid, why don't we have, you know, I want another Shinobi, 2D Shinobi. So, I'm always asking for another 2D Shinobi. Even when they just released one, I'm always asking for another.

Because you can't have no, Chinobi. So to kind of wrap up, I need to check out at the hotel room, what do you think is the Sega Genesis' legacy, like from your perspective? I think when people say console wars, I really think that there's a bigger picture between like the 16-bit generation. To me, the role the Genesis has in arcade history, in gaming history, is that it actually showed that for, The first thing it did was it didn't, may not have over, you know, in general terms, won the 16-bit war. And there are many reasons between factors for that of them pulling out before Nintendo did and things like that. But it did break the monopoly that Nintendo had. And you wouldn't have had a Sony PlayStation and it at Microsoft Xbox.

If Sega hadn't broken that iron grip that Nintendo had on the home console market. So even though it lost the Nintendo. Nintendo won that generation. In a sense, it kind of lost the war because it lost the dominance that it had. And, you know, it's a, what, a $40 billion company. It's still a premier hardware maker and poor baby. It suffered so much. Right. Right. So, you know, there were a lot of other competitors at the time, Atari, NEC, and so forth, S&K. What was it about Sega that made them the ones that were able to break Nintendo's hegemony? I think there were, it was a combination of factors, the, just the risk-taking and the constantly in your face, you know, nipping at your ankles attitude that the Americans had, and just the absolute stellar stable of developers, the AM studios and just Sega had, to me, that's like, well, that's the book that I did on Sega's American, on Sega's arcade history, I ended it at 2003 with the Sega Sammy merger because that's when the Sega, the Sega. that I knew and grew up with, you know, kind of disappeared. That's because by then all those developers, Yuchinaka, Suzuki, Nakayama, all those guys had left, and Sugano had all left. So, but all those guys were around in the 80s and the 90s, and it's just the talent that

Sega had was just, and the thing is that these guys wouldn't make an arcade game, and then they would turn around and make a console game, and they were both just like, they could do it all, you know? And they could, they were up to the task on all fronts and just that constant output of quality that Sega was able to do in terms of software. Because I've always seen Sega as a software company that just happened to make its own hardware. You know, but Sega's really a hardware company. They'd been making some slot machines in the 60s and 50s and 60s all the way to arcade games. That's basically what they were.

But the thing was is I personally, I view the hardware. It's just like the vehicle for the software that they if they didn't put it on their own software hardware, they would have put it on somebody else's, you know, but the, the, we drove the company was that creative design. And in the 80s, that was just on fire, 80s and early 90s. And Atari and 3DO just didn't have that. I mean, they had dedicated people. They had very, they had talented people, but they just didn't have that top tier. Right.

Cadre of developers. I mean, just multiple teams of them. them is just insane. Well, I don't think they had the right leadership either. I don't think their leaders were as focused as Sega's. All right. Well, I'm going to wrap up here, but thank you for giving us a more inside, informed perspective on Sega Genesis for its 30th anniversary. Just tell us a little bit about you. Where can people find you online? Pimp, pitch yourself, pimp yourself. Where can we find you on Twitter? What's this book you published? Go on and tell us all about this. Okay, well, you can always find me on Sega16.com,

www. www.sega-16.com. It's the website I've been running since 2004. We do comprehensive reviews, features, and interviews. This week we'll be doing, I'll be putting up a retrospective on Sega's UFO catcher series, the history of that line, which is a very important and vital part of Sega's arcade business. And we do interviews and features there. I've written two books on Sega's history, playing at the next level, which is a history of Sega of America, all the way from its founding in 1985, 86, all the way through the end of Dreamcast development, covers 40 games in detail.

And the other book I did was Sega Arcade Revolution, which is the complete arcade history of Sega from its founding in the 1960s to the Sega Sammy Merge in 2003. and that one covers 62 games in detail. And playing at the next level, I interviewed 100 people, multiple documents. This one, Sega Arcade Revolution, I interviewed two dozen people, but there are dozens of documents translated for Japanese, many of which were never translated into English before. And a lot of the interviews are exclusive, like the information on Shinobi came straight from Utakasuga to himself, thanks to John Serpani.

Maniac for that. And Jay Gierston, the guy who created columns, gave me the complete rundown on that. And so there's a lot of good Sega history there. And those are great reference books. I got in-text citations, full bibliographies and indexes. Where can people find those? Those can be found online on Amazon, Barnes &Nobles.com,

straight from McFarland and Company, the publisher. And if you were here at the convention, I was selling some copies myself that you would have gotten cheaper and signed. But hopefully I'll be at more convention in the future and I always bring copies to sell there. But you can get them off Amazon. Both copies are available there. All right. Thanks, Ken.

And, of course, I'm Jeremy Parrish. You can find me on the internet at retronauts.com on Twitter as GameSpite. And Retronauts you'll find at Retronauts.com on iTunes, on podcatchers at the Podcast One Network and so on and so forth. So again, thanks, Ken, for coming on and fleshing out our Sega Anniversary Coverage. Thank you very much for having. And have a safe trip back home. And I'm sure I'll bump into you again at a future convention. Hopefully so.

All right. Thanks. Take care. And call her number nine for one million dollars. Rita, complete this quote. Life is like a box of... Uh, Rita, you're cutting out. We need your answer. Life is like a box of chalk. Oh, sorry.

That's not what we were looking for. On to caller number 10. Bad network got you glitched out of luck. Switch to Boost Mobile, super reliable, super fast nationwide network, and get four lines, each with unlimited gigs for just $100 a month. Plus get four free phones. Boost makes it easy to switch. Switching makes it easy to save.

The Mueller report. I'm Ed Donahue with an AP News Minute. President Trump was asked at the White House, if Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation report should be released next week when he will be out of town. I guess from what I understand, that will be totally up to the Attorney General. Maine Susan Collins says she would vote for a congressional resolution disapproving of President Trump's emergency declaration to build a border wall,

becoming the first Republican senator to publicly back it. In New York, the wounded supervisor of a police detective killed by friendly fire was among the mourners attending his funeral. Detective Brian Simonson was killed as officers started shooting at a robbery suspect last week. Commissioner James O'Neill was among the speakers today. at Simonson's funeral. It's a tremendous way to bear, knowing that your choices will directly affect the lives of others. The cops like Brian don't shy away from it.

It's the very foundation of who they are and what they do. The robbery suspect in a man, police say acted as his lookout, have been charged with murder. I'm Ed Donahue.