272 page PDF of classified Sega of America documents from the mid-90s leaked
#1
Did anyone else see this? I find SEGA's history pretty fascinating, as I only owned Nintendo consoles growing up.

I did have some access to playing SEGA consoles, but I just never owned one until much later when I got into collecting retro games. I now use emulation exclusively as paying lots of money for old, dusty, greasy and scratched up hardware did not make any sense to me.

Did anyone here own a Saturn in the 90s? If so, what was your experience like?

Did anyone own the Dreamcast during its heyday?

Here's a link to the thread where I found the PDF:
https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/642...of-america

Here's the link to the PDF in question:
https://segaretro.org/images/8/8c/SegaFY...iew_US.pdf

SEGA had to quit the console hardware business due to a long series of mistakes, such as launching a bunch of addons for the Genesis when they should've put all their focus on the next generation (the Saturn). Imagine buying the 32X addon, with no games, when the Saturn was about to come out, and then sitting there with your shitty inferior graphics and everyone else is playing fully rendered 32-bit 3D games. SEGA pissed off retailers, because they did an early surprise launch and many stores did not have the Saturn in stock. They pissed off game studios who had invested in the Saturn (by releasing games for it), only to watch SEGA themselves abandon it only a few years later.

There was a lot of friction between the American and Japanese divisions of the company as well. The American division often did not know what the Japanese were up to, and that's the reason for some of the unfortunate hardware projects on the American side. They were basically in competition with each other, not working together. It's another aspect of SEGA's downfall.

When the Dreamcast came around, they had already lost a lot of support and were bleeding money. It was an epic system, more powerful than the PS1 and N64. But the PS2 came out shortly after and did much better on the market cause it had an integrated DVD player, while the Dreamcast used SEGA's proprietary GD-ROM disc format that could only store about 1 gigabyte. But for a short time, the Dreamcast was the most powerful gaming system on Earth.

There's also some other unfortunate things to note about SEGA, such as how they've utterly mismanaged the Sonic series, which did not make a smooth transition to 3D like Nintendo's Mario franchise did.

Some of the popular gaming channels on YouTube have mentioned the leaked PDF, such as SpawnWave. Maybe we will see Modern Vintage Gamer talk about it soon.
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#2
I bought the Dreamcast when its support was terminated - two years after.

The reasons being are the reputation that it gets with playing emulated games and its vulnerability to play burnt games.

The burnt games thing was the one thing that really won me over. Of course, with the right workaround, you can now play PS2 games out of the box, but back then, you needed a mod chip for it. I know subsequent DC consoles eventually require a mod chip, but I bought one that was before the cut-off date; I didn't need a mod chip for mine.

Fant0men, do you know if Sega founded and administered the online multiplayer service Heat.net? If not, I'm going to digress through an entire paragraph. Heat.net allows DirectX and DOS games to be played online by emulating the IPX/SPX protocol. The service is free, but if you pay a premium subscription, you get to win prizes. I remember playing Warcraft II and Duke Nukem 3D, though I suck and always lose, but I had a hell of a good time. Long story short, it's "happening way too fast, it's all too sweet to last." What do I mean? Heat.net closed down, and that was the end of the fun. You can't really duplicate a thing like that.

Like you, I also owned Nintendo games and systems because I was a "loyalist." To quote Steve Austin, " you (well not you exactly... well, you get the idea) are completely pathetic).

I might be enticed to buy a Master System and play their version of Sonic the Hedgehog; I heard that version was different with the other Sonic games. Worth checking out.

Thanks for the leak and see you around.

EDIT: What did you learn from the leaked PDF?
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#3
(Jul 08, 2023, 10:05 am)RobertX Wrote: I bought the Dreamcast when its support was terminated - two years after.

The reasons being are the reputation that it gets with playing emulated games and its vulnerability to play burnt games.

The burnt games thing was the one thing that really won me over. Of course, with the right workaround, you can now play PS2 games out of the box, but back then, you needed a mod chip for it. I know subsequent DC consoles eventually require a mod chip, but I bought one that was before the cut-off date; I didn't need a mod chip for mine.

Fant0men, do you know if Sega founded and administered the online multiplayer service Heat.net? If not, I'm going to digress through an entire paragraph. Heat.net allows DirectX and DOS games to be played online by emulating the IPX/SPX protocol. The service is free, but if you pay a premium subscription, you get to win prizes. I remember playing Warcraft II and Duke Nukem 3D, though I suck and always lose, but I had a hell of a good time. Long story short, it's "happening way too fast, it's all too sweet to last." What do I mean? Heat.net closed down, and that was the end of the fun. You can't really duplicate a thing like that.

Like you, I also owned Nintendo games and systems because I was a "loyalist." To quote Steve Austin, " you (well not you exactly... well, you get the idea) are completely pathetic).

I might be enticed to buy a Master System and play their version of Sonic the Hedgehog; I heard that version was different with the other Sonic games. Worth checking out.

Thanks for the leak and see you around.

EDIT: What did you learn from the leaked PDF?

I didn't have the chance to read through the PDF yet. But they updated it with more pages since I made my post.
Yeah, the Master System and Game Gear Sonic games are different. There's some games for the 8bit consoles that didn't exist on the Genesis / Mega Drive. They remade one of them with better graphics for PC, fan-made.

https://gamejolt.com/games/sonictripletr...bit/322794

I didn't know about Heat.net, but I have many good gaming memories in general from growing up.

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