Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, Sega was by far the most innovative gaming company and history has validated them at every turn.
In the early 90s, they were the first company to realize they needed to develop a mascot to rival Mario. They proceeded to create Sonic the Hedgehog, a character that has stood the test of time as one of the most popular video game characters of all time.
No company could ever match arcade games like Virtua Racing, Daytona USA, Sega Rally or Virtua Fighter. They were truly ahead of their time and provided Sega with a healthy base of titles to bring to their home consoles. While almost every single company failed to come up with a title to rival Street Fighter II, Sega managed to produce Virtua Fighter, a true competitor to rival SFII in Japan. The Saturn was massively successful in their home market due to this one franchise, while almost every other company failed with their attempts to capture the SFII magic.
Sega was the first company to realize online gaming was the future, and they were the first one to bring it to consoles with the Saturn Netlink service.
The Dreamcast was also a console truly ahead of its time with its built in modem that made it the first system with the capability to download content off the internet. Whatever you think of DLC, you have to admit Sega had the right idea there.
Sega was also ahead of the curve when it came to releasing titles outside of its own consoles: many Saturn and Dreamcast exclusives got PC releases. You might think this was a bad thing considering the feasibility of Sega’s own systems, but in the end this was the right way to go all along, as in 2025 console exclusives outside of a handful of Nintendo titles are essentially dead.
To this day Sega is one of the only publishers making good stuff.
Sega got in front of the industry by releasing rushed unpolished 3d sonic games over and over, thus paving the way for abandoned early access games
They really were ahead of their time
I will stand by any slop sonic team releases. It may be garbage but it will always have more soul than most mainstream slop and the soundtrack will always be bangin
They completely fucked the launch of the Sega Saturn in multiple ways. Priced $100 higher than the PS1, launched too early with barely any games, and focused the hardware on high end 2D rather than 3D from the start. That, and also the Dreamcast had to compete with the PS2, which killed it very quickly after launch.
Unrelated to the launch, but my PS1 still works perfectly and neither of my Saturns do lol.
What part of the Saturns don’t work? If it’s the disc drive, you can replace them with an optical drive emulator that you can put SSDs in.
Also early PS1s were known to have disc drive failures as the laser would heat up due to its proximity to the PSU, but mine still works fine :P
Pretty sure it’s the disk drive, been too lazy to replace it tbh. It’s tempting though, since I’m a sucker for playing stuff on the original hardware and buying Saturn games is insanely expensive.
Didn’t know about the laser failures on PS1s! Mine is a slim so that might explain why it’s still kicking.
I’m getting a MiSTer soon, so I’m probably not going to bother with my Saturn. The PS1 failures were limited to the very first models. Sony moved the laser assembly after that to rectify the issue.
Dreamcast is such an amazing console and I have wonderful memories of it. I remember booting up Sonic Adventure and my face getting blown off by the intro. Downloading the christmas dlc for the game on the holiday season and playing PSO. I still regularly come back to both those games now, just on the PC which were really decent ports that got a lot of fan love.
I remember wanting a Dreamcast so bad. My friend had one and wouod come back and regale us with stories of Sonic Adventure every day, show us pictures in some booklet (don’t remember if it was a manual or strategy guide). Not to mention the advances I saw in video games that blew my mind, like online play in Phantasy Star Online before I knew that was even possible.
Their US marketing did help to create the gaming “dudebro”‘culture
Sega may have done something wrong. They have to share the blame with Sony, though.
The original Sonic platformers are still some of my favourite video games.
I still think the VMU was one of the coolest things. Most of the “games” on it were bad, but carrying around a little chao from sonic to school as a virtual pet was awesome, and I really appreciated being able to turn on my memory card and see what was on it, instead of having to boot up the system and check through each one. Plus! being able to have 2 plugged in per controller?! Awesome.
Trying an idea that would be popular once the technology could actually execute it in a few years is generally a bad idea
I loved my Sega systems. Had them all except the Master system and the Dreamcast.
My dad worked for SEGA (actual true story, developed the arcade chip for Cruisin’ USA too) and we got a Dreamcast a full month before official launch. No VMU though, so we had to beat Sonic Adventure in one sitting. For some reason, nobody at school believed me…
your dad is Eugene Jarvis??? waow
coming back to this, i was wrong. it was Daytona 500. Dad worked on the Model 2 chip
your dad is Jon Lenyo??? waow
no, he was not a game dev. literally designed the hardware, the arcade chip itself
I gotta say, I loved my Dreamcast. I think I might still have it somewhere. Unfortunately I didn’t have the memory card so I had to either leave it on or I had to play games from the beginning. Also the only games I owned were Soulcalibur 1 (my beloved), Spider-man, Sonic Adventure and Dynamite Cop. And iirc Spider-man and Dynamite Cop were rented actually, but I never gave it back lol.
It bought
legitimate joy with good products. That would be enough for me to hate them 
Then I remember that joy amplifies suffering and gamers are suffering with enshittification. For that I am etetnally grateful and will feast heartily on that pain 
I don’t care what anyone says I love my gamegear I put silly hours into columns and both shinobi games
