An open letter to SEGA

S E G A.

SErvice GAmes.

You dont know me. But I know you.
I've known you for a long time.
It's been 25 years, baby blue.

I dont think you know what you meant to me.

You don't understand. You have no idea.

It's time you know. You deserve it. We both do.

This is my love letter; my acknowledgement of your role in my life.

You were almost all of my visual entertainment. My escape.

You were King.

Sure I had some shows or movies I liked, but when my TV was on,
so was my SEGA.

You are partially responsible for my personality.
Your games had... a presence.

Your consoles and controllers were sleek and sexy.

Your advertising needs no explanation, it was good. Real good.

SEGA….

SEGA I bought you.

I bought your hardware. I bought your games.

God, I put so much minimum wage money into you. YOU, Sega!

Every dollar I handed over was earned on my own.

I received no birthday or holiday money from family for your
black, curvy systems. 

There I was, an American kid. With a job. And a controller in my hand.

It started with the Master System.

I had CARDS.

I had games that were the same size as a credit card.

I had game cartridges too.

Did I ever have to blow repeatedly into them like a tool,

just to pray it would finally boot up like those NES suckers?

Nope, mine worked. EVERY. TIME.

The games, oh man the games.

Afterburner, like any other jet fighter game mattered.

Hang-on, it made Pole Position look tired.

Fantasy Zone, how could something so cute kick so much ass? 

Oh, and the little gem called Penguin Land.

Penguin Land had its own level editor. In 1987!

How many games way back then let you play around with level design? 

Then, the Genesis. The Genesis! 

I was the only kid in the neighborhood with Mortal Kombat 1
and the blood code. A-B-A-C-A-B-B, and voilà,
fatalities just like the arcade.

That was me.

I was the kid who dragged my 27” TV and chairs out into the yard.

On summer afternoons I challenged passer-bys to a game of
NHL ’94, NBA JAM or Street Fighter Turbo.

Outside! In the yard!

That was me, the SEGA kid.

I was in the middle of the Super Nintendo generation with
Mario World and Donkey Kong Country,

good looking, wholesome, fluffy games.

But, they came to MY house to pull out spines and rip out hearts.

They came to my place to break backboards with 4 players all at the same time,

everybody holding their own controller.

Good times man… good times.

W E L C O

M E T O T

H E N E X

T L E V E L

THE SEGA CD.

THESE SAME KIDS watched me bring home a SEGA CD system.

Ha! System, I mean, “product enhancer.” It plugged into the Genesis.

My entire family was in my room when I first turned on my SEGA CD
and fired up Sewer Shark.

Oh man, SEGA video games on a compact disc, the possibilities were tantalizing.

Sadly, THESE SAME KIDS watched as it never materialized into anything more.

They had no coin in the game though. It was mine, and mine alone. A lot of coin.

I paid more for this CD add-on than the Genesis itself,

and it still had less on-screen colors than that damn Super Nintendo.

The games were….. mostly awful.

They were, lets be honest here.

I remember 3 exceptions to this wasteland.

Sonic CD was epic.

God, Sonic CD was drop dead gorgeous.

Sonic had always been fast, but fast enough to travel through time?

To both the past AND future in the same level? What?!

Silpheed was incredible too, but I’ve never heard that word uttered by
a real life person who wasn’t me.

Silpheed's polygons looked so crisp,
that Nintendo's Star Fox look like it was 8-bits.

AH3 Thunderstrike. When I first played AH3 I thought I was dreaming.

You could destroy everything everywhere! I used to mow down forests
like Dick Cheney with a minigun.

But... these were exceptions.

You sucker-punched me on Joe Montana Football CD, you rat bastards.
You got me good.

Joe Montana Football was a polished legacy on the Genesis.

Over the years it made all the John Madden games look slow and clunky. 

I was so ready for this next generation Montana game
that I bought it before I rented it.

And it was wretched. It was hell. 

I’m not the type for self-hate, but I sat for a long time in silence after playing
that for the first time, questioning life and my choices in it.

SEGA, I began to doubt you. For months I warily eyed your offerings, hesitant to invest.

Your entertainment value to me was shaky.

However, the SEGA Channel’s brilliance began to restore my trust in you. Wow!

I could never afford it at the time, but god, what a development!

I remember thinking “Yeah, this is the SEGA I know! Innovation with testicles!"

I could download a rotating bevy of titles that changed every month,

right through my cable TV connection... in 1994!

I would sit and stew at my parents who didn't even want cable TV, much less downloadable games.

I forgave you for the 32X …..only because I never bought it. Fool me once and all that.

It looked like a bloated cancerous tumor.

Besides, my power strip already had too many cords plugged in.

I saw the writing on the wall on that thing. It wasn’t even a nice try.

1995.

The 32 bit Sega Saturn is released. 

Yes, that's right, the SEGA Saturn. Which I bought. As soon as it was available.

I put down my cash on the counter like a man who knew EXACTLY what he was doing.

What times!

Virtua Fighter, Virtua Cop, SEGA RALLY, Wing Arms, Panzer Dragoon,
World Series Baseball, all the MARVEL fighting games, Die Hard Arcade,
things were really good at first.

But... there were some emerging problems.

I learned quickly that NiGHTS and Bug! were NOT "really" 3D.
That was a slap in the face.

I didn't despair though. Despite the reservations I was having,
we both knew what was coming.

Sonic.

Yeah. Sonic in the 32 bit generation. Sonic in true 3D.

It was supposed to be great. I saw the proposed footage.
The screenshots. It was awesome.

What were you calling it then? Sonic X-Treme?
Oooh, that sounded rad. Radical!

Newsflash SEGA, you know what happens next.

I never got it. It never happened. I was waiting.

You failed me, us, everyone by keeping Sonic from the Saturn.

Now, when I say you kept Sonic from the Saturn, we all know exactly what I mean.

Do not bring up Sonic R, Sonic Jam or Sonic 3D blast. Do not do it.

Spare us both the embarrassment. Let us move on.

Suddenly, support for the Saturn ended. It ended real fast.

You dropped my pride and joy like it embarrassed you.

I never recovered.

In tribute to the good times, I still own the Saturn to this very day.
I had 3 of them at one point.

In fact, my Saturn is hooked up to a spare TV right now. Today.

My kids play it with me from time to time.
Our current favorite is X-Men: Children Of The Atom.

When you released the Dreamcast I was already gone. I was tapped out.
Depleted.

I got my hands on a used PSONE. And Gran Turismo 2. That was all I needed to see. 

I moved on.

I stopped playing new video games totally.

I didn't care about Microsoft... or Sony, I was a SEGA man dammit!

But I was going to be damned if I spent one more dollar on a SEGA
platform that would sooner rather than later disappear like a deadbeat father
who was just "heading out for some cigarettes" one evening never to return.

I started a family, and had life to deal with.

Video games became a sometimes-late-night hobby,
instead of a primary source of relaxation.

I cannot identify with these guys who play video games into their 30's and 40's.

They transitioned and learned to expect more, more with each new game, each new console and generation.

But not me, I had been shown not to bother.

Where did you go? How did you mess things up so bad?

You had superior products!

You gave me Virtua Racing!

You gave me Streets Of Rage!

You gave me the “real” Aladdin game, from Disney!

You created NHL 1996. That one is legendary!

You let me control the velociraptor in Jurassic Park!

You let me sit on a dragon with a name like a WW2 tank
and shoot lasers at enemies in 360 degrees.

You made one Sonic game that plugged into other Sonic games
creating new experiences!

But these things started becoming farther and farther between. 

Sometimes I wonder if I would have been a calmer individual overall if
I would have been a rational Nintendo fan.

I know things now about you that I didn't before thanks to the Internet.

SEGA, I forgive you.

But not for everything. 

I forgive you for Nintendo’s iron grasp on game developers that crippled the
Sega Master System and turned the NES into a powerhouse.

But, thats business right? You wiped away the tears and developed the Genesis.

I do not forgive you for endless games on the SEGA CD that were just
Genesis titles that had some full motion video cut-scenes slapped between levels.

Jerks.

I forgive you for being singled out publicly over Night Trap.
Who knew some senator would choose that oddball game to convince
soccer moms that their kids were being told to murder middle class suburbanites?

Was he on Nintendo's payroll?

I do not forgive you for how your full-FMV library played.

Imagine renting Tomcat Alley thinking this was Afterburner for the new generation,

only to find out it was a grainy movie you had occasional director input on.

Same goes for Prize Fighter, or Slam City.

You… assholes.

I forgive you for Eternal Champions. My god, that game was so freaking incredible.

It featured everything Street Fighter never thought to offer at the time.

Oh... yeah, except for the small fact that I NEVER passed the second round. EVER!

And I was no fighting game slouch.

The AI you put in Eternal Champions was SKYNET brutal. It was cold and calculatedly efficient at deconstructing my soul.

I do not forgive you for Saturn’s pseudo 3D games.

This includes but not limited to:

Daytona USA, NiGHTS, BUG! or Clockwork Knight.

You made these games sound like free ranging explorable 3D worlds, when in reality, they were NOT.

They were nothing of the sort. I will never understand the love NiGHTS gets. Never.

It was during this time that my jaw dropped for the first time with a Nintendo product you might have heard of called Mario 64.

Remember that one SEGA? Yeah, you do. I see it in your furtive eyes.

Mario 64 was an education. “You can literally go anywhere you see? Is this real life?"

I forgive you for the public's response to Sonic Spinball. I picked up the groove you were laying down on that one.

I do not forgive you for dropping the Saturn price right after you released it. 

I mean come on, I buy a brand new system the day it is available for BIG bucks

and then SURPRISE! a couple days later, it’s discounted… by a lot. 

Whoops, sucked to be me. You don’t do that to a kid SEGA.

I forgive you for not recognizing all your incredible RPG games over the years.

For any of your systems. I know there are some legendary titles in your history.

I was just NOT a turn-based combat kind of guy. To this day even.

I do not forgive you for basically zero 3rd party games for the Saturn.

The Saturn’s dual processing chips sound great in retrospect,

but I learned there were problems with letting game designers know
how to program for the damn thing.

I had to pick up a Playstation to play anything other people were playing.

I forgive you for the Dreamcast.

I know now that the Dreamcast was an incredible system.
I never bought one, but I would love to sometime.

I was just burnt out, SEGA.
You had smacked me around just a few too many times.

I missed out on Jet Set Radio, Skys Of Arcadia, Shenmue, Sonic Adventure & other apparently incredible titles.

I really wish I would have experienced Soul Calibur or REZ on that thing.

I laughed when the Dreamcast died an early death anyway!
Now, where had I seen this before? Hmm.

I had hadn’t I? Like, 2 or 3 times! Interesting.
Who was the sucker now? Not me!

But.

But.

You know what SEGA?

You want me to share something with you, baby blue?

Sometimes in the dead of night, all alone with the summer breeze gently blowing across my face...

I look up at the stars and wonder if I should pick up a lottery ticket and heavily invest my winnings in you.

That's right SEGA Holdings International or whatever you call yourself now,

I would invest in you.

Trigger a comeback and BLOW OUT the industry.

Its what I would do.

After all this time SEGA. After all this time.

SEGA.

I love you.

I've hated you, I’ve hated you hard.

But I always loved you more.

You were King.