Video Games are awesome

[Onslaught Six]

I never played the Sonic games back when Sega was actually producing platform systems. In fact, I never had any of the systems (I was always a hardcore Nintendo/Sony guy), it always seemed like Sega was trying to get their systems out first so that they would be the only ones with a next gen console on the market, but they always seemed to sacrifice quality for it. I did recently download a couple of the Sonic games for the xbox though and they seem pretty fun, but I suck at them.

Well, the only reason Nintendo conquered the US market was, besides having great games, they advertised their system (initially) as something that wasn't a video game system at all. The entire NES's design is based around Not Looking Like A Game System. There's a reason the carts are oblong grey things and they insert strangely in the front like a VCR--no other game system has ever done that. (Barring newer disc-based systems, which obviously aren't taking their design from VCRs but from computers, CD and DVD players.)

Sega already had competition in the PC Engine (known in the west as the Turbografix 16) which was actually a superior machine but had an enormous price tag. They knew that if Nintendo had their way they would still be selling the NES today--the only way to take them down was to put out a superior product, and fast. And 'fast' was definitely Sega's gimmick in the earliest days, because it could actually run faster than the SNES. By beating Nintendo the punch, and having the marketing blitz that rivaled anything I've ever seen (the early 90s were entirely about Sega--that little "Sega scream" gimmick pushed harder than most anything, and I would actually love to see it make a comeback) and with the help of Sonic and a cavalcade of licensed games, they managed to win out.

The thing is, and you can see this even in the Genesis era, Sega got lucky. They beat Nintendo to the punch with a marketing gimmick, a couple solid games, and then once they conquered the big N they didn't know what to do. Company mismanagement, the failure of the Sega CD and 32X--which partially are responsible for the failure of the Saturn--and tons of other factors (read: Sony and the Playstation, a case of Nintendo creating its own worst enemy--ask if you don't know the story) led to Sega going for one last hurrah with the Dreamcast. Which leads me to...

it always seemed like Sega was trying to get their systems out first so that they would be the only ones with a next gen console on the market, but they always seemed to sacrifice quality for it.

This is arguably what happened to the Dreamcast, except I maintain that system was actually pretty awesome. Way ahead of its time, it was basically a Naoki arcade board you could have in your living room, with a ton of different games. Still probably the best choice if you want to play still-relevent fighters like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Third Strike, and Capcom vs. SNK 2 (though this is slowly being brought up as PSN gets great online ports of that stuff). And hey, it's still likely the only console that'll ever have Project Justice on it, so that pretty much makes it my favorite console by default.

The Dreamcast was the fallout from the failure of the Saturn. Sega had done the X-TREEM marketing approach and people weren't buying it anymore, because they didn't have the games to back it up. Sony took the torch and ran with it with the PSX and pummeled America with it, and it's debatable if they won or not. Meanwhile, Sega was quickly losing track of what makes a great game (while occasionally getting out good gems) and some might even say they are still recovering from a failure to understand good 3D gaming today. The nail in DC's coffin, though, was the discovery that the system had zero copy protection. You could literally download games off the Internet, burn them to regular CD-Rs, and play the games for free. (It was a little more complicated--this was the old days so the files were all split in like 28-part zip files, and the Dreamcast actually used a specialized way of burning CDs to put about a gig of data onto a regular 700mb CD-R. So some of the games had to have cutscenes or music ripped out--I know Chu Chu Rocket didn't have any music if you downloaded it.) This is actually true of the Sega CD and, I believe, the Saturn as well. (People have made hacked Sonic games that use the Sega CD's file system so you can burn the .iso to a CD and play it in a legit Sega CD.)

[BWprowl]

(read: Sony and the Playstation, a case of Nintendo creating its own worst enemy--ask if you don't know the story)

I know the story! An absolute tragedy, if only because of the amazing things that could have come out of that partnership, had it worked out.

The nail in DC's coffin, though, was the discovery that the system had zero copy protection. You could literally download games off the Internet, burn them to regular CD-Rs, and play the games for free. (It was a little more complicated--this was the old days so the files were all split in like 28-part zip files, and the Dreamcast actually used a specialized way of burning CDs to put about a gig of data onto a regular 700mb CD-R. So some of the games had to have cutscenes or music ripped out--I know Chu Chu Rocket didn't have any music if you downloaded it.) This is actually true of the Sega CD and, I believe, the Saturn as well. (People have made hacked Sonic games that use the Sega CD's file system so you can burn the .iso to a CD and play it in a legit Sega CD.)

Tell ya what, that lack of copy-protection makes the DC *awesome* to have these days though, since instead of having to track down expensive remaining copies of games on eBay or whatever if I want to play them, I can just download and burn the damn things. Which I have (seriously, got a big ol' stack of CD-Rs next to my Dreamcast with whateve crap I felt like trying out at the time. It's awesome.).

[Onslaught Six]

Oh, yeah, no reason at all for it to not be an advantage now. Unfortunately my DC apparently broke; won't read discs at all now, even legit ones.

[Shockwave]

(read: Sony and the Playstation, a case of Nintendo creating its own worst enemy--ask if you don't know the story)

I know the story! An absolute tragedy, if only because of the amazing things that could have come out of that partnership, had it worked out.

The nail in DC's coffin, though, was the discovery that the system had zero copy protection. You could literally download games off the Internet, burn them to regular CD-Rs, and play the games for free. (It was a little more complicated--this was the old days so the files were all split in like 28-part zip files, and the Dreamcast actually used a specialized way of burning CDs to put about a gig of data onto a regular 700mb CD-R. So some of the games had to have cutscenes or music ripped out--I know Chu Chu Rocket didn't have any music if you downloaded it.) This is actually true of the Sega CD and, I believe, the Saturn as well. (People have made hacked Sonic games that use the Sega CD's file system so you can burn the .iso to a CD and play it in a legit Sega CD.)

Tell ya what, that lack of copy-protection makes the DC *awesome* to have these days though, since instead of having to track down expensive remaining copies of games on eBay or whatever if I want to play them, I can just download and burn the damn things. Which I have (seriously, got a big ol' stack of CD-Rs next to my Dreamcast with whateve crap I felt like trying out at the time. It's awesome.).

I don't know the story.

And wasn't DC released back in the early 2000's? Were that many people really downloading stuff back then? I thought back then it required having expensive equipment and what not? I mean, yeah now all that stuff is cheap and we have torrents and what have you, but back then... Or maybe I'm just really that late to the party. My family didn't even have access to the internet until very late in 1999 and even then it was to check email and buy and sell shit on ebay and that was it.

[BWprowl]

And wasn't DC released back in the early 2000's? Were that many people really downloading stuff back then? I thought back then it required having expensive equipment and what not? I mean, yeah now all that stuff is cheap and we have torrents and what have you, but back then... Or maybe I'm just really that late to the party. My family didn't even have access to the internet until very late in 1999 and even then it was to check email and buy and sell shit on ebay and that was it.

Nah, piracy has been an issue as long as the internet has been around, you remeber Napster and the first big music piracy debate, right? (Hilarious that they put forth so much effort into shutting down *one* site where you could download music back then, and these days a quick google search'll net you any song you can think of). Doesn't matter how big the files were, if you had a connection and were resourceful enough to get ahold of them, you could take the time to download them (unless your mom answered the phone and interrupted your transfer before it was done THANKS FOR NOTHING MOM!), and burn them using a regular CD burner, since these things were on plain old CDs at the time. The PS1 had similar issues with piracy when it came out, which ironically is one reason its hardware sales were so strong compared to the N64- of course people are going to be more interested in the console that potentially makes it easier for you to download and burn off the games yourself, basically for free. Of course, the PS1 did better since it actually had some semblance of copy protection, which you would have to mod around or find some other backdoor to get games to work. The Dreamcast, for the year's so run of consoles I think, had NO copy protection at all- any dope with an internet connection and some blank CDs could run off their own games and they would play just fine on the stock console. And even when the later ones DID implement copy protection, it was hilariously weak: A 'boot disc', acquired with, you guessed it, an internet connection and a blank CD, was all that was needed to circumvent it.

I don't know the story.

I'll get some popcorn and let O6 tell it, since he seems to want to. It really is a great story, in an amazingly tragic, 'what could have been' sort of way.

[Shockwave]

Sweet, I'll bring the butter and soda.

Back then weren't CD burners ridiculously expensive though? I mean, yeah you could do all of that, but I recall that you'd have to be like super rich to do it. I mean, now days the tech is cheap and easy but back then, not so much. I'd have to wonder how many people were actually doing that and if it was really cutting into profits that much. I mean, I guess if one was a hardcore gamer or something sure, but I remember that back then a regular friggin' desktop computer with internet capabilities was fairly expensive and to do all the things you described would have costed well into the several thousands of dollars range, and that's just for the equipment. To say nothing of the games themselves. And the download speed must have taken, like, a week to download one game (it's taking about a week to download DS9 and I have broadband).

[BWprowl]

Back then weren't CD burners ridiculously expensive though? I mean, yeah you could do all of that, but I recall that you'd have to be like super rich to do it. I mean, now days the tech is cheap and easy but back then, not so much. I'd have to wonder how many people were actually doing that and if it was really cutting into profits that much. I mean, I guess if one was a hardcore gamer or something sure, but I remember that back then a regular friggin' desktop computer with internet capabilities was fairly expensive and to do all the things you described would have costed well into the several thousands of dollars range, and that's just for the equipment. To say nothing of the games themselves. And the download speed must have taken, like, a week to download one game (it's taking about a week to download DS9 and I have broadband).

Around '01, my family had a desktop with internet connection (56k, wooooo!) and a CD burner. And our computer was a *shitty* one. This was newish tech, yeah, but it was hardly unobtainable. And like I said, it would take a while to download the games, but you could still do it. Patience. Given the choice between waiting a few days to download a game, or dropping 50-60 bucks on one, what do you think most people would choose? (hint: It's the same choice tons of people make now, even when a torrent of Skyrim takes like a week to finish)

[Shockwave]

Ok. Apparently my family was just reaaaaaally late to the internet party.

[Onslaught Six]

And wasn't DC released back in the early 2000's? Were that many people really downloading stuff back then? I thought back then it required having expensive equipment and what not? I mean, yeah now all that stuff is cheap and we have torrents and what have you, but back then... Or maybe I'm just really that late to the party. My family didn't even have access to the internet until very late in 1999 and even then it was to check email and buy and sell shit on ebay and that was it.

Nah, piracy has been an issue as long as the internet has been around, you remeber Napster and the first big music piracy debate, right? (Hilarious that they put forth so much effort into shutting down *one* site where you could download music back then, and these days a quick google search'll net you any song you can think of). Doesn't matter how big the files were, if you had a connection and were resourceful enough to get ahold of them, you could take the time to download them (unless your mom answered the phone and interrupted your transfer before it was done THANKS FOR NOTHING MOM!), and burn them using a regular CD burner, since these things were on plain old CDs at the time. The PS1 had similar issues with piracy when it came out, which ironically is one reason its hardware sales were so strong compared to the N64- of course people are going to be more interested in the console that potentially makes it easier for you to download and burn off the games yourself, basically for free. Of course, the PS1 did better since it actually had some semblance of copy protection, which you would have to mod around or find some other backdoor to get games to work. The Dreamcast, for the year's so run of consoles I think, had NO copy protection at all- any dope with an internet connection and some blank CDs could run off their own games and they would play just fine on the stock console. And even when the later ones DID implement copy protection, it was hilariously weak: A 'boot disc', acquired with, you guessed it, an internet connection and a blank CD, was all that was needed to circumvent it.

Yup. As far back as 1997, 1998, I was actually routinely pirating emulated NES games. (My father was an early adopter of the Internet and particularly eBay. He realized that computers were about to become Huge and figured he better figure them out quick, before I got the jump on him.)

Like I said, the 700mb-1gb Dreamcast games were actually split up into multiple files--sometimes up to 30. It was crazy. But it also didn't really matter--all you needed was to know one guy who had a CD burner (or one yourself) and effectively you could then pirate the game just from copying the CD.

Back then weren't CD burners ridiculously expensive though? I mean, yeah you could do all of that, but I recall that you'd have to be like super rich to do it. I mean, now days the tech is cheap and easy but back then, not so much. I'd have to wonder how many people were actually doing that and if it was really cutting into profits that much. I mean, I guess if one was a hardcore gamer or something sure, but I remember that back then a regular friggin' desktop computer with internet capabilities was fairly expensive and to do all the things you described would have costed well into the several thousands of dollars range, and that's just for the equipment. To say nothing of the games themselves. And the download speed must have taken, like, a week to download one game (it's taking about a week to download DS9 and I have broadband).

The Dreamcast came out in 1998, I believe, but the piracy wasn't the only contributing factor to its demise--the PS2 was the death knell and was ultimately what caused Sega to cease production and quit consoles forever. But within that 1998-2002 space, CD burners became rapidly cheap and easy to get; a side effect of the whole "downloading music for free" thing. (Back in the day, most music-playing devices still specialized in CDs, making it hard to make your illegal free music portable unless you could burn it to CD. The iPod and MP3 players killed that quick though. Besiding that, using CDs to back up data was becoming rapidly popular as well. I don't have many CDs I burned from that era, but the ones I do have dates around 2001 scrawled on them.)


And now, the tale of the SNES CD That Never Was and Nintendo Creating Its Own Worst Enemy:

In the early 90s, CD add-ons for consoles were The Shit, and everybody had one. Everybody wanted to quickly take advantage of this new CD data technology but nobody wanted to put up the money to make a real dedicated console to it. So instead, we got stuff like the Sega CD, PC-Engine CD add-on (I don't think it was ever released for the US Turbografix), and Jaguar CD. Planning might've started on the SNES CD add-on in the late 80s but it was when everyone and their brother had a CD add-on that Ninty shoved it into gear.

They planned to make it with electronics manufacturer Sony, who had a pretty good handle on how CDs worked, and had a feeling this whole "video games" thing was making a big comeback for the 90s. They wanted in, and Nintendo saw an opportunity. And so the Nintendo Playstation was born.

Yeah. They actually called it that.

Except somewhere along the line, things got tied up over who owned what part of the name. (There had been plans to produce an add-on for the SNES, and then also a Sony-branded console that included both SNES and CD capabilities without the need for an add-on.) Things got heated and Nintendo took their ball over the electronics company Phillips and said, "We're working with these guys now, the end." The SNES CD never came to be, but Phillips did finish their end of it, calling it the Phillips CD-I. Because of some obscure clause in the agreement with Nintendo, they were still allowed to create games with Nintendo's Mario and Zelda licenses--this is the origin of the "CD-I Zelda" games, which have been a source of YouTube Poop material over a decade later. (I can't wait to bomb some Dodongos!)

Sony, understandably pissed off, decided to give the ultimate "Fuck you!" to Nintendo, ripped out the slot for the SNES cartridges, and finished the system, calling it the Playstation X. (That's where the initialism PSX comes from; the X was later dropped in all but the initialism. When the PS2 came out, "PS1" somehow became the accepted version, even though nobody actually called it that during its initial lifespan.)

A side effect of this was that Sony suddenly had entered the console market and declared all-out war on Nintendo, and subsequently, Sega as well. At E3 before the PSX's launch, Sony announced that the original price point of the system would be $300. That same weekend, Sega countered with, "Oh yeah? Well the Sega Saturn is releasing RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Seriously, go out to a store, it's there. How do you like them apples, Sony?"

Unfortunately, pushing up the launch meant that many titles intended for launch weren't finished, and those that did launch with the system were rushed. The Saturn was also a mess of different technologies that didn't make any sense together; it was hard to develop for and it didn't have a lot of games. Gamers had already been jaded by the Sega CD and the 32X, and subsequently, not a lot of people were buying into the Saturn. That's why the Dreamcast was the start of an entire rebranding for Sega; one that didn't really pan out. But the Dreamcast's audience was way different than the Genesis or the Saturn's intended audience. The Saturn's audience ended up being people who liked imports and weird "quirky" games, not the mainstream megadeath 90s teen audience Sega was shooting for. You can 'feel' the permutations of Sega's marketing in the Dreamcast, responding to that directly by having lots more strange import games and weird stuff on the system. Sega's audience instead flocked to the Playstation, showing that, forever more, gamers will be fickle. (Many of these same types would abandon Sony's ship after the PS2 and latch onto the 360.)

In short, this failed deal with Sony changed the course of the console wars in ways that could've never been predicted. The PSX and PS2 were clearly the winners of their respective generations, with the N64 being a relative failure and the GameCube being an underdog favourite. (The Xbox proper wasn't quite the competition for the PS2 that Microsoft hoped, but they fixed all those problems with the 360 to create, in my opinion, one of the best consoles of all time.)

[Shockwave]

Fascinating. I did not know any of the behind the scenes stuff like this. However, from a consumer stand point, I had actually predicted the demise of Sega as a producer of platforms, theorizing that they would only survive as a maker of games. This was back when the PS2 and N64 were getting released. I was still working at Blockbuster at the time as an assistant manager and I remember having this debate with one of my employees, essentially telling him that since Sega was more concerned with being first rather than being best, the later more polished (and therefore better) systems would be Sega's death knell. Especially given that Sega had publicly said that they put all their eggs in the DC basket. I also remember that is wasn't long after that there were no new games coming out for the DC (I think it was officially dead within around a year). And now we have games like Sonic and Mario at the Olympics. Yeah. I called it back in '99. But, this is primarily why I never really bothered with the Sega systems is because I was always willing to wait for the superior and more polished Nintendo systems.

So what happened with the N64 DD? Or was that the Sony thing?