For my presentation I have selected to highlight what is, without argument, the Japanese people's greatest contribution to global culture and society -- nay, humanity's most benevolent gift to the universe itself. I could of course be speaking of none other than the venerable... the extraordinary... the downright funky...
I shudder to think where we as a species would be without the mighty Sega.
Most of us will immediately associate Sega with Sonic the Hedgehog, a Sega franchise which achieved massive popularity during the 90's, however, while the company is most fondly remembered by the freaks and geeks playing games around that time, Sega actually began life in 1940 as Standard Games, an American-based company which manufactured and distrubuted coin-operated amusements such as jukeboxes and slot-machines to American soldiers stationed in Hawaii.
While that may sound like a bizarre company to select for a presentation on Japanese pop culture, Standard Games morphed into very much a Japanese entity shortly thereafter when they merged with Rosen Enterprises in 1952, a Japan-based company providing similar services to thrill-seeking Japanese in a then-thriving post-war economy. Following the merger, they changed their name to Service Games, which they abbreviated as the portmanteau Sega (Service Games). Although the entrepreneurs which established these now-united companies were American, as a result of basing their operations in Japan, the most important slots in the company, from executive management to conceptual design to plain ol' dirty work, were filled primarily by Japanese employees.
Alongside the more traditional amusements such as the aforementioned jukeboxes and slot-machines, Sega began to develop elaborate motorized games of skill -- the most popular of these, Periscope became a massive hit, resulting in the company going international and exporting their services around the world. It wasn't long, however, before a revolution came to arcade amusements in the form of the electronic video game; inspired by the success of Taito's Space Invaders released in 1978, Sega transformed into a full-fledged gaming company.
Sega quickly gained ground quickly in the arcade industry with several breakaway hits which are probably too old for anyone in this classroom to know or care about such as Zaxxon, Pengo, Tac/Scan, Flicky, Turbo, and the magnificently-named Buck Rodgers: Planet of Zoom. They were all pretty big deals when they came out, I promise -- Milton-Bradley even made a board game out of Zaxxon. Sega's biggest contribution to games by far, however, was an innovation called sprite-scaling which morphed 2D images to simulate 3D perspectives and gameplay, giving gamers a whole new dimension to play in (see what I did there?). Another neat little innovation came from the mind of developer Yu Suzuki, in the form of the motorized cockpit, which attached elaborate accessories such as plastic motorcycle frames in Hang-On which players could lean on to steer their on-screen avatar, or whatever they were trying to do with the ridiculousness that is R-360.
Sega would continue to have a very successful career in the arcades for the remainder of their history, creating some of the most innovative and iconic franchises of all time. Yu Suzuki struck again with Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter, which were the first full, real-time, polygonal 3D games of their kind, once again giving gamers a whole new dimension to play in (see what I did there once again?) Other massive arcade hits from the mid-80's into the 21st Century include Fantasy Zone, Space Harrier, OutRun, Shinobi, After Burner, Altered Beast, Golden Axe, Sega Rally Championship, Virtua Cop, The House of the Dead, Virtual On, Crazy Taxi, and the highest-grossing arcade game of all time, Daytona USA.
Back in the mid-80's, though, Sega decided to bring their services into gamers' homes and embarked on their journey into the video game console business! It began with dismal failure! On July 15th, 1983, Sega released their first video game console, the SG-1000. Unfortunately, this was also the very same date that Nintendo released their Famicom video game console, known in the United States as the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), renowned for its massive international hit Super Mario Bros. The NES absolutely wiped the floor with the SG-1000 because of its vastly superiority technology (or, perhaps more accurately, the SG-1000's severe incompetence). The NES had the ability to incorporate smooth scrolling into gameplay, allowing for longer, more intricate levels -- scrolling was very difficult on the SG-1000, so most games relegated players to a single screen; the NES massively outsold its competitor and secured Nintendo 95% of the gaming market. Sega sought to rectify this by releasing the far more powerful Sega Master System, the first Sega console to be launched worldwide and handled in the west by Sega of America. Unfortunately Nintendo played dirty and legally mandated that all third-party developers which created games for the NES were required to make any and all subsequent games exclusively for the NES. If a third-party developer released a game on another platform, they would be banned from releasing games for the juggernaut NES for two years or more. Sega's Master System wasn't popular enough for third-party companies to make the jump for even if they really wanted to on the grounds that they they couldn't come back to Nintendo's monopoly -- Sega's market wasn't big enough to guarantee a profit.
While Sega's Japanese division scratched their heads at their misfortune, Sega of America devised a plot to make Sega a viable name in the home console market so that they could attract third-party developers and, more importantly, gamers' dollars. As Sega of Japan developed their incredibly powerful new console which boasted "High-Definition 16-Bit Graphics", the Sega Mega Drive, renamed Sega Genesis in the U.S., Sega of America saw their chance. Sega of America knew they couldn't convince popular video game companies to put their big-name video game stars on the Genesis, so they bought the rights to use the likenesses of big-name pop culture stars instead. Sega would have big American hits on their hands with Joe Montana Football, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, and Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse. They also devised a media attack against Nintendo with their line of incendiary advertisements. While these moves generated significant buzz in America, the biggest factor in Sega's success in the U.S. came from the minds of their Japanese division.
Nintendo had an immensely successful, instantly recognizable mascot in Super Mario -- with every new release in the franchise came an avalanche of dollars from all over the globe. Sega wanted their own mascot for gamers to worship like Mario, and they got it, too! After a company-wide competition to invent a mascot and game franchise for the company, Naoto Ohshima's creation Sonic the Hedgehog, inspired by everything from punk rockers to Felix the Cat, was born. While the character was only a moderate success in Japan, he was an absolute sensation in the rest of the world -- at one point in the early 90's in a survey to determine which fictional characters were the most recognizable amongst children, Sonic came out above Super Mario and even Mickey Mouse! Sonic had his own television show, comic book series, and any other paraphernalia one could imagine. Kids were playing Sonic, watching Sonic, reading Sonic, wearing Sonic, even eating Sonic! Although the character was nowhere near as popular in Japan, Sega of America demanded more and more Sonic games from Sega of Japan -- there was Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Sonic & Knuckles, Sonic CD, Sonic Spinball, Sonic 3D Blast, Sonic Chaos, Sonic Triple Trouble, and various other spin-offs set in the Sonic universe.
For a short time, this strategy paid off and Sega held 65% of the global video game market. Unfortunately, things would soon fall apart for Sega in America. In both America and Japan, Sega was experimenting with more mature concepts in games than had come to be expected from most Americans during the runaway success of the kid-friendly NES. Sega began developing games such as Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Ecco, and Phantasy Star II, which dealt themes such as gang-warfare, terrorism, isolation, environmentalism, and the death of loved ones -- oh, and blood. There was lots'a blood. In fact, it was blood that got the company in massive trouble when they allowed Midway to publish their game Mortal Kombat on the Genesis, complete with blood and brutal fatalities. This caused a massive political campaign against Sega, lead by Joe Lieberman, which lead to a massive decrease in sales from parents who did not want their children to be exposed to such violence. The next blow came to Sega of America when Sega of Japan decided that they wanted to appeal to Japanese gamers foremost with their next console, the Sega Saturn, setting Sonic aside and focusing on properties which would resonate more with the Japanese audience.
Instead of focusing on the American action movie-inspired characters and scenarios prevalent on the Genesis, the Saturn's library highlighted anime-inspired spaceship shoot-'em-ups, complex strategy games filled with intricate options and menus, manga-inspired role-playing games with extensive and convoluted narratives taking the center-stage, and Gundam-inspired fighting games which required incredibly-expensive, confusing-looking controllers to play. Sega of Japan all but forgot about Sonic and instead focused on milking their Sakura Taisen series to the Japanese market, a game about -- okay, how's this for Japanese -- a deeply-complex and structurally counter-intuitive strategy role-playing game about high-school girls wearing kimonos blasting eachother to bits in giant ballistic missile-equipped mech robots, with interludes in which the player is given the opportunity to have conversations with the girls in an attempt to go out on dates with them. Of course, it all tied into a very popular anime series. Sega of America looked at Sega of Japan's output, presumably cried, and refused to release the games to the western audience. While the Saturn was a breakaway success in Japan due to the Japanese-centric games (and the greatest ad-campaign ever, featuring Segata Sanshiro, the karate master who would beat men, women, and children to a bloody pulp if they were doing things like playing baseball or celebrating Christmas instead of playing Sega Saturn), it was a failure so monumental everywhere else in the world that Sega built up an enormous debt so steep that any hope at recovery proved to be an insurmountable task.
From here, at the financial rock-bottom of Hell's basement, when any company in their right mind would have folded up and cut their losses, Sega did basically the coolest thing ever and kept on going anyway. It's not completely clear whether they decided to do this out of deliriously blind hope, a sense of honor, or pure defiance, but instead of making even a halfway attempt at catering to market interests in America, Japan, or elsewhere, Sega pretty much did whatever they felt like doing for the last two years of their existence. They released their final console, the Sega Dreamcast, and proceeded to make the oddest games ever to exist. There was The Typing of the Dead, a reimagined version of The House of the Dead in which players would plug a keyboard into their Dreamcasts and type zombies to death instead of shooting them -- players would be chased down by zombies, having to type such bizarre phrases as "Safety Tip #1: If you see a stranger, follow him!", "jkljjjkjklklljkjljkliiijkljijkjlkji -- ha ha, type THAT!", and various cooking recipes before being mauled by the flesh-thirsty brain-eaters. They even invented features which have become staples of video games in modern times, such as online gameplay and motion-controls a la Nintendo's Wii. Said motion-controlled games were the quirky Get Bass fishing simulator with a fishing-rod controller and Samba de Amigo which had players shaking maraca-controllers to the beat of Latin-flavored music from the likes of Ricky Martin while an onscreen cartoon monkey in a sombrero danced along. Things got even more bizarre with Caution: Seaman, a game in which players inserted their microphones into their controllers and engaged in often deeply-philosophical conversations with a sarcastic fish with the face of a Japanese man.
Sega's ideas sometimes flew right over the heads of most gamers with avant games like Rez which stemmed from abstract painter Wassily Kandinsky's theories of synaesthesia and all matter being composed of vibration -- it tackled themes of evolution, cosmic emigration, the human condition, and communicated that the creation of music and the creation of civilization are essentially one and the same. Shenmue, while probably the most popular Dreamcast game thus far, was also confusing to many gamers, with its slow and deliberate Hamlet-inspired plot which tells the story of a Japanese youth who in seeking his revenge on the man who murdered his father, essentially becomes his nemesis in a way so subtle that most gamers actually finished the game without realizing anything was amiss, and still wanted to exact their fictional revenge.
Although these games are all rather culturally-ambiguous in their appeal, it's unclear if Sega ever would have been able to achieve an effective international balancing act and find global commercial success -- the Dreamcast did moderately well in sales, and was absolutely adored by critics. Unfortunately, two and half years after the Dreamcast was released, Sega was forced out of the console hardware industry by the bottomless pockets of Sony and Microsoft and their line of PlayStation and Xbox consoles, after a short time of making video games for other company's hardware, Sega was bought out by a pachinko company called Sammy in 2004 who, in short, fired nearly all of their staff then proceeded to run the company so poorly that the majority of the remaining original staff quit from the company in disgust. There is still a company which calls itself Sega, but they are nothing more than a bunch of lame, imagination-deprived businessmen trying to cash-in on Sega's good (if commercially unsuccessful) name. Although Sega ultimately failed, they were enormously influential to the video games industry and are still missed dearly by those who gave their bizarre games a chance.
