Wii looks like a winner

[drzachary]

Before you buy that DC to play Phantasy Star Online, realize that (as far as I can tell) the servers are no longer up. So you'd be playing a fairly short offline game

[Wretch]

Long ago, on some of the biggest videogame forums around...I was known as Golvellius, the Wretched Black Dragon. The handle "Golvellius", being an obscure Master System game that only the true Sega fans would recognize, would distinguish my "alligiance"

You guys are digging up memories...lol, and you all remind me of different guys I used to chat with. Especially Chillz and Hots...lol, man...you guys remeind of two specific people with everything you post (games or basketball).

Anywho...Sega...

Man...Sega...

They got so little credit for everything they did for the industry. They pioneered so many different aspects of gaming...from the first domestically released console RPG to the first 3D fighting game...all kinds of technical innovations...from the size of the games to the size of the hardware that ran them.

I was such a Sega-fanboy...but Sega was ultimately done in by their own innovation and well... stupidity. Sega would always release a system first...and someone would always "out do" them on the specifications. They did well marketing the Genesis, but the SNES had it's way with the market in the end.

The Sega CD was supposed to be their answer to the tehcnology race, but it offered little in the way of upgrading the Genesis platform. With only a sound and storage upgrade and minor technical advances, it just didn't make sense to pay $400 for a system with few games that didn't look nearly as good as those on the SNES...for less than $150. And then they p!ssed all the retailers off by cutting them out of the initial distribution and only sending 3 or 4 units to the stores that did get them.

They followed that up with TWO new systems - the 32X and the Saturn. The 32X was supposed to be the Genesis' "economical" upgrade thought up by Tom Kalinski president of Sega of America. Sega of Japan didn't agree with this, but Tom ran it anyway...and found out the hard way that what the public really wanted was a true leap in technology and would actually pay money for it. The 32X flopped.

Meanwhile, Sega of Japan had their own internal issues...

Being the innovators that they are, they had their plans for the Saturn laid out WELL befor the next generation got underway...and though they were pioneering 3D games in the arcade, they failed to recognize the viability of this technology in the home. They designed the Saturn as a 2D gaming system and realized much later that the gaming world was going 3D.

Meanwhile, Sony and Nintendo were working on monster 3D systems. Sony had always wanted to get into gaming, but was afraid of getting beat down by such strong competition - afterall Sega and Nintendo had such a stranglehold on the industry.

Nintendo, the overconfident giant they've always been, took their sweet time and tried to deliver the ultimate gaming machine (code named Ultra64). Sony found themselves in the right place at the right time. Sega dropped the ball on 3D and Nintendo was taking far too long. Sony found some slick 3D technology, wrapped it around an easy to program OS, and opted, of course, for CD technology...which would give them a technological beast, with seemingly endless storage capacity, that was easy to make games for.

Developers LOVED it and all the big names jumped at the opportunity to push gaming to new heights. It was a revolution in the making.

This was BAD news for Sega. First, they couldn't do the technology and secondly...developers they had fought HARD to wrestle from Nintendo would be making better games, faster, for a rival system. In particular, Namco (Sega's cheif arcade rival) was eager strike at them in any way possible. This was the perfect opportunity to do so.

So Sega of Japan had an internal meltdown. Sega president Shoichiro Irimajiri (I think...been a while since I spelled that) insisted that the Saturn project not be scrapped...but instead upgraded with additional an 3D processor to keep up with Sony's project. But cheif game programmers argued that a full revamp was in order - and Yu Suzuki (Virtua Fighter/Shinmue/Hang ON) had found just the hardware to do it. Too bad business won out in the end.

Whereas Yu's technology would have put the Sega Saturn on par with what would be called the Sony Playstation, the VPU they decided to use in the Saturn was sadly overmatched. Worse yet, the dual CPU configuration made the system difficult to program for. Some argued that if a programmer could effectively master the Saturn, that games would look almost as good as their PS1 counterparts...but after Sony had built such a strong machine...that was gaining so much publicity and support, who would bother?

Everyone waited to see what Nintendo was doing...and to Sony's favor, the Big N made a catastrophic error as well. The f#ck were they thinking by releasing a gaming system with cartridge format?!?!? Afraid of piracy issues, Nintendo stubbornly refused to adopt the cheaper and more viable storage format - and p!ssed a lot of developers off. Particularly Squaresoft...makers of Godly japanese RPGs.

Square effectively dropped the hammer on the industry by announcing their separation from their exclusive relationship with Nintendo. The gaming world, along with geeks like myself, awaited the announcement of where the next Final Fantasy would be headed. They evaluated the Saturn...and the Playstation...

In America, the Genesis had died, the SegaCD was a flash in the pants, the 32X flopped, and the Saturn was belly-up before it hit the market. Sony released the Playstation and their developers followed through with EXCLUSIVE games like Mortal Kombat 3, Ridge Racer, Tekken, Resident Evil...and the RPG that opened the floodgate for domestic RPG releases...Final Fantasy 7.

Nintendo survived on the powerful 3D technology of the N64 (prettier than PS1 graphics) and even more powerful in-house development...Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong, Pokemon... Luckily for them, they had a stranglehold on the portable market too.

Conversely, Sega was hemmoraging. They had failed systems and their arcade business was suffering. Gaming in the home was becoming more viable than the arcades. Many in the industry, and despairing fanboys like myself, pleaded with them to simply cater to the Saturn's strengths...and give the fans exciting, beautiful 2D versions of Sega games...like Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Shinobi, Phantasy Star, Alexx Kidd, Wonderboy, or Space Harrier.

Sega just seemed to close it's doors. The Saturn survived for a while in Japan...thanks to the popularity of Viruta Fighter. Though, when Final Fantasy hit...the Saturn died in Japan as well.

As a last ditch effort, Sega sold their souls to the devil! They partnered with other companies to create an ultimate system and took a generous helping hand from Microsoft. It's so funny, because this cat I used to work with totally called this sh!t and I was like...man, get out of here. But he said that was a mistake... He said all MS was doing was getting their foot in the door...and like a plague they would consume the host and eventually create their own system. And I'll be damned...lol

Anyway...

Codenamed "Katana" and "Dural" and all sorts of things...there were multiple projects underway for Sega. They abondoned the Saturn. Though while they slept, Sony's Playstation was gradually changing the culture of gaming.

Anyone remember when it was just us geeks who played games? It was just us in the stores, talking about D&D and pixels/sprites/colors... Now, it's everybody and the industry is catering to the cats who made fun of us for playing games lol.

Anyway, Sega was working with 3DFX to create the Katana...but breached their agreement with them to snap up better technology from someone else. Which led to a lawsuit which they lost (and thus lost more money).

The end result was the Dreamcast...which was an AWESOME machine...but didn't have nearly enough support. Capcom threw their weight behind it in a noble gesture to balance the gaming landscape totally worked over by Sony; and Namco offered up a decent title (Soul Calibur), but people were too excited about....the Playstation 2...

And for the last time, Sega's own ambtion and innovation would do them in. They should have waited. They should allowed Sony to show their cards. But they dropped the Dreamcast and Sony, already with a powerful following and stong developer base, delivered the killing strike. They announced specicifications for the PS2...which seemed to make the DC look like a Gameboy.

The DC lost steam, Sega could not afford to produce hardware, and they had to take a dive. They turned loose the operations of their development houses and allowed them to function independently and make games wherever they wanted. Relying upon the strength of their brand name and development teams, they put Sega games all over the industry...

That basketball game on the DC that was so good? Visual Concepts... Not sure who they report to now, but they used to be a Sega of America in house team.

[drzachary]

That's some serious scholarship. Well done, Wretch!

[capstone21]

I always wondered what happened to Sega.

What about Atari, Intelivision and Collecovision back in the 80s. How did they fall off the map?

[Diesel]

Good job...

I hate to hear that it went down that way.. makes me think they may not ever make it back...

To me.. DC>PS2.

I used to like GunDam...

[joannes3000]

Quote:

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Before you buy that DC to play Phantasy Star Online, realize that (as far as I can tell) the servers are no longer up. So you'd be playing a fairly short offline game

---

Yeah, I'd play it offline just like all the other oldschool Phantasy Stars that I have rommed on my computer.

Big kudos to wretch for making me feel like a kid again (16 whopping years younger) with all the recollections of the epic Nintendo vs Sega vs Sony wars. I was such a diehard Nintendo fan that I was able to completely shun the PS1 for years on brand loyalty alone. In fact I still dust off my original NES and SNES every now and then for some old school RPG/strategy goodness (Destiny of an Emperor!, FF3, Uncharted Waters, etc).

But you hit the nail on the head about FF7. When Square jumped ship to Sony it was all over for me. I still waited until 2000!!! to buy my PS1 but I had long since fallen in love with FF7 and GT1.

[drzachary]

Have you seen much about the Wii's Virtual Console?

You can download and play emulated games on it. The library will include many games for the NES, SNES, N64, Genesis and TG16. Not sure about the other Sega iterations.

[RAHMOR]

Excellent post.

[joannes3000]

Oh yes. Believe that I was pumped when Nintendo even mentioned the thought of having that as an option. It'll be nice not romming games and having to play on a keyboard/gamepad. Although you can get a USB adaptor and plug in a NES/SNES controller, it'll be nice to have it on a true console system and get back to the oldschool way of playing those games.

[Nicholasp27]

after reading most of this thread

a) nintendo kicks ass; it's all about gameplay, baby...when i want ultra-real graphics, i play an FPS on the computer

b) wii looks awesome; they will have a shell that goes over the controller to make it more like a traditional controller as well, so games can take advantage of the motion sensor or not

c) fps on computer >>>>>>>>>>on console due to keyboard/mouse combo; u can't get that accuracy/precision with a console controller

d) pentium 4 is more than enough; it's more about your graphics card; worse case u have to spend a lil over $100 to get a great graphics card; most games can be done with a $60 one tho and run with a 1ghz cpu

e) zelda, mario, megaman, castlevania, mario kart, ... the list goes on and on of nes game series that are amongst the best of all time (tho they have made castlevania for psx, which was amazing)

i'd prolly buy every new nes console forever just for the latest zelda/mario kart/mario games alone

[Plainview1981]

Quote:

---

after reading most of this thread

a) nintendo kicks ass; it's all about gameplay, baby...when i want ultra-real graphics, i play an FPS on the computer

b) wii looks awesome; they will have a shell that goes over the controller to make it more like a traditional controller as well, so games can take advantage of the motion sensor or not

c) fps on computer >>>>>>>>>>on console due to keyboard/mouse combo; u can't get that accuracy/precision with a console controller

d) pentium 4 is more than enough; it's more about your graphics card; worse case u have to spend a lil over $100 to get a great graphics card; most games can be done with a $60 one tho and run with a 1ghz cpu

e) zelda, mario, megaman, castlevania, mario kart, ... the list goes on and on of nes game series that are amongst the best of all time (tho they have made castlevania for psx, which was amazing)

i'd prolly buy every new nes console forever just for the latest zelda/mario kart/mario games alone

---

I just never liked playing games on the computer... USING the mouse. It just doesn't feel "right" to me.

I jsut feel Mario and Zelda are dated games. They're about like the remakes of all the movies nowdays. Done seen it and done played it over and over again.

I admit, I don't know everything about computers, but this pentium 4 Dell is a piece of junk. I don't have hunderds of bucks to make the upgrades anyways. And like I said, the mouse is annoying enough using the internet mustless playing games with it.

I remember when they built a mouse for the Super Nintendo and it sucked.

I don't see what Nintendo has left to offer. Them recycling the power glove doesn't fool me into thinking it's something new.

[joannes3000]

Quick bump and update to this thread:

Estimated pricing for the Wii was announced on gamespot.com to be no more than $250.

Clicky