If you are a professing hardcore gamer, your reputation will take a major hit if you do not remember the ubiquitous gaming company called SEGA. We at MacPCWiz now take time to remember this gaming group who with their contributions pushed console and arcade gaming to where it is right now.
Sega Corporation, more formally known in Japanese as Kabushiki-kaisha Sega, is a multinational video game software and hardware development company — but are more popularly known as a home computer console manufacturer headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is justly famous for its SEGA! chant which appeared on widely-known games like Sonic the Hedgehog.
You may know that the company had legit success with both arcades and home consoles. But did you know that on January 31, 2001, SEGA officially left the consumer console business and began concentrating on software development for multiple third-party platforms? Betcha didn’t know that one, did you?
The SEGA Genesis
The ubiquitous SEGA Mega Drive, also known as the GENESIS
The Mega Drive is a fourth-generation video game console, and it was released by Sega in Japan in 1988 and Europe, Australia and other regions in 1990. It was launched as SEGA Genesis in North America.
The Mega Drive is Sega’s most successful console, and its games continue to be popular among fans, collectors, retro gamers, and emulation enthusiasts — an avid SEGA gaming community. Many of these Sega games have been re-released in compilations for newer consoles and/or offered for download on various online services, such as Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, Virtual Console and Steam.
The SEGA Saturn
The SEGA Saturn
On May 11, 1995, Sega released the SEGA Saturn (with Virtua Fighter) in the American market, which utilized a 32-bit processor and preceded both the PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. However, poor sales in the West (including the traditional stronghold markets in Europe) led to the console being abandoned.
The SEGA Dreamcast
The SEGA Dreamcast -- innovative console technology
In September 1999 (the date 9/9/99 featured heavily in the promotion, did you remember that one?), Sega launched the Dreamcast game console in North America. A lot of you may not put much stock into this console, but people in the know — like MacPCWiz always is — know for a fact that a lot of the innovations you now enjoy on the modern console came from this piece of gaming history.
The Dreamcast was competitively priced, partly due to the use of off-the-shelf components, but it also featured technology that allowed for more technically impressive games than its direct competitors, the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation. An analog 56k modem was also included, allowing gamers to play multi-player games online on a home console for the first time (history lesson for you). The console also introduced the first console MMORPG in Phantasy Star Online, and the innovative Alien Front Online, the first console game with online voice chat.
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Hopefully that gave your memory a bit of a boost in remembering this bit of technological and gaming history. SEGA exists today as a third-party software manufacturer of games — concentrating on console games, online games, and now branching into online casino games such as Virtua Fighter slots.
