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Sega was founded by Americans.. am I alone in not having known this?
- Thread starter hwarang
- Start date
OP
OP
uhhh I said it was founded by Americans. I'm sorry but your post makes no sense at all. You're the one making that statement lol. Reread my post. I said it was founded by Americans. I'm not implying anywhere at all of the creative output such as SEGA IPs being made by Americans.
this is by far the most odd OP jab I've read
Today I also learned that CAPCOM is another clipped compound, and not some kind of acronym. I always thought the last three letters stood for "coin operated machines". It stands for Capsule Computers. Also didn't realize just how young the company was comparatively too, but I suppose it helps being started by the president of IREM.
I remember finding this out almost two decades ago during post-war Japan study in Uni. Was a grand time to read about it and researching it prior to Wikipedia taking the world by storm.
You go where the market is to adapt and survive if you're not within an essential & enduring market such as manufacturing which can change month-by-month. Any long-term business that has survived over the years generally adopts the same philosophy.
It's a bit of a cop-out due to their age but consider Nintendo's beginnings and offerings. They were producing handmade hanafuda cards and went into numerous ventures in the '50s & '60s before finding their home in electronics entertainment. The most important thing for any director in any commercial business is the willingness to adapt. Times change. Markets change.
Look at the Sega frontier guys in this very topic; they created coin-op systems to cash-in on the influx of World War II in Hawaii and struck gold with the post-war occupation of Japan. But they adapted with the changing times as well and it lead to Sega to what it is today. For those of us born in the 70's & 80's they'll fondly recall that arcade powerhouse that was Sega, but they survived. Look where it is now.
Sega was an American company in the 1940's. It was founded by a Jewish-American family in the 1940's. Sega themselves consider this to be a different company history, however, as they consider the offiical start of their current company 1960 with the formation of what became Sega Enterprises. The Sega of the 1940's is known as "Service Games of Japan" which changed their name to SEGA in 1954. Sega has actually changed hands many, many times. When most people know sega from the 90's, they were owned by CSK corporation, which bought them in 1984.
Obviously, today Sega is owned by Sega-Sammy Holdings, a holdings group formed from the merger of Sega and Sammy. Their logo:
Lets also not forget their failed merger with Bandai as well! As they were in super finical trouble in the late 90s, early 2000s. Luckily when Isao Okawa passed on he forgave the debt sega had and returned all of his shares to the company saving them from finical death so to speak.
OP
OP
It was founded as an American company but majority of the stake in ownership was bought by a Japanese company. So as of present, it's practically a Japanese company. Just like how Firestone tires are now owned by a Japanese company.
also, it may not be as high up on the shock meter for most people, but i was surprised to learn most of big EAD developed nintendo games were programmed by people who were not actually part of the company. it was done by a company called SPD (i forget what it stands for), which has enough of a super tight relationship with nintendo that they may as well be part of the company in all but name. still, i found that quite surprising.
I personally know about this but the Sega of old has no relation to the Sega of today outside of seeding the foundations of the company.
Now this... this I did not know.
I think a lot of people are unaware of Taito being owned by Square Enix as a subsidiary. Taito is only really used for its arcade assets in Japan which is embarassing. Square Enix is sitting on a goldmine of Taito IP's but they got cold feet ever since the Lufia DS remake flopped.
I think people's nostalgia for Sega as a hardware manufacturer is blinding them to how badly managed Sega corporate strategy really was under CSK. CSK and Sega Japan were in cultural conflict with their regional division in terms of marketing and promoting their consoles and they were too stubborn to consider partnerships or acquisitions.
Sega was bleeding money under CSK and Sammy Corporation had to do what was necessary to get the company back into profitability. Sure, Sega's quality output of games dipped during the 2000's, but unlike CSK, Sammy was smart enough to acquire other game developers into Sega to diversify their output with their Index Corporation asset acquisition being the most mutually beneficial.
Here's another thing people probably don't realize: Sega is a prolific publisher in Japan, much more so than they are in the West. In japan, when western companies release their games, they rely on Japanese companies to publish to break into that market. As such, many, many western companies use Sega to publish their games in Japan, like EA and Activision.
Best recent examples:
Now this... this I did not know.
Yep, pretty crazy story. Jewish Ukrainian guy who fled to China before WW2, then ended up in Tokyo. His company started importing and eventually manufacturing jukeboxes, which eventually lead to them making Space Invaders.
Michael Kogan - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I think a lot of people are unaware of Taito being owned by Square Enix as a subsidiary. Taito is only really used for its arcade assets in Japan which is embarassing. Square Enix is sitting on a goldmine of Taito IP's but they got cold feet ever since the Lufia DS remake flopped.
I think people's nostalgia for Sega as a hardware manufacturer is blinding them to how badly managed Sega corporate strategy really was under CSK. CSK and Sega Japan were in cultural conflict with their regional division in terms of marketing and promoting their consoles and they were too stubborn to consider partnerships or acquisitions.
Sega was bleeding money under CSK and Sammy Corporation had to do what was necessary to get the company back into profitability. Sure, Sega's quality output of games dipped during the 2000's, but unlike CSK, Sammy was smart enough to acquire other game developers into Sega to diversify their output with their Index Corporation asset acquisition being the most mutually beneficial.
It. Was. A. Joke.
OP had pretty much nothing. That was the joke. He updated the thread after I already posted.
I have known about Sega's founding for a long time. I had, and still have, this issue of Sega Power in 1991 (a UK mag sold at Chapters in Canada) where it talks a bit about it.
I don't think it mentioned Americans directly so I probably learned of that in 1994 while reading Sheff's Game Over or Herman's Phoenix. It was really exciting learning about gaming history back then.
I don't think it mentioned Americans directly so I probably learned of that in 1994 while reading Sheff's Game Over or Herman's Phoenix. It was really exciting learning about gaming history back then.
Yeah, it was weird seeing the Tonka name on the boxes back then. The 1986 SMS stuff was released by Sega itself before the Tonka deal as were some pre-SMS games on 2600 and 8-bit computers.
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As a big Sega fan, yes, I did know this.
Is that why so many cash registers make the sonic ring collection noise?
Is that why so many cash registers make the sonic ring collection noise?
I'm surprised not many people knew about this. I've known since I was young, I read about it in one of those Sega Power magazines. There was an article on Sega's history on there. The issue I think was from 1991 or 92. I thought this was like common knowledge.
It's a point of intense debate. There is a widely repeated claim that the sound comes from Sammy producing those machines or licesning them to a manufacturer, but it's unsourced. The ring sound is three chords, so it definitely is the same sound, but there is always a chance it's just concurrent invention. You can't own chord progression.
Nobody really knows the exact answer.
I remember some wild story from the early days of the Famicom with some American developer and a Nintendo executive suddenly having to flee Japan in the middle of the night. No prior suspicion that anything was awry, just an urgent phone call warning them that people were on the way and they had to go.
The DK64 edition was the NES remake, but the Switch version is indeed the original arcade code. Nintendo has said nothing further than that, so whether they settled with Ikegami, and the terms of that potential settlement, remains a mystery.
Speaking of toys...Sega has been a japanese company for over 60 years now.
That said, depending on when you knew Sega as a child, and where you were in the world, the early Sega you know, wasn't actually Sega. In the USA, until just before the Sega Genesis released, Sega actually didn't publish their stuff in the US. The Sega Master System days, they actually were published by Tonka, the toy truck people, who licensed Sega's brand.
I had to do a double take when I spotted this in a store here in Amsterdam.
It was made by Ikegami:
Who, after this stuff with Nintendo, turned around and made Congo Bongo for Sega:
Which is, in many ways, a spiritual sequel to Donkey Kong.
Wow, I haven't seen that game in a LONG time!
You can play it on Vita if you buy the PSP Genesis compilation (it's an unlockable) digitally and transfer it by PS3. It was one of my favourite arcade games as a kid.
Sammy had nothing to do with acquiring developers. They provided the money and Sega did want they wanted to do with it.
Under CSK, Sega also had a diverse game output, including various western developers (Visual Concepts and 2K sports for one)
this post makes me yearn for all the bainets I have played in my life. I have not played on one in... a decade or longer.Here's another one people might not realize: Sega published Frogger
In fact, the famous scene in seinfeld, where george pushes the cabinet?
That was sega's iconic cabinet of the 1980's, they used it for multiple games. that was THE sega cabinet. Off the top of my head, Wonder Boy and Carnival games both use it. I have one of these very cabinets.
My 19-year long restoration of the cabinet: https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-story-of-my-restored-arcade-cabinet.19044/
Cabinet in carnival games configuration:
Sega has always been ahead of the curve. A lot of people tend to forget that the Saturn was the first system with netplay.
The Real Mt Rushmore:
Sonic, Garfield, Abe Lincoln, MJ, and Charles Barkley.
There was netplay on the Sega Genesis and SNES. The netplay on the Saturn, was the same company behind the netplay on the Genesis and SNES.
OP
OP
you shoulda just let your original post stand as is without explaining. would have been funnier to mess with people's heads
Jokes are much funnier when you painstakingly explain the punchline to everyone individually.