Hideki Sato passed away over the weekend and I didn’t wanna follow the crowd and write about a guy who’s name I likely never heard before while turning my appreciation for the work he was invovled in into some reflection of my own life. I also don’g wanna just do a why the Sega Genesis was so special to me because let’s face it It’s not something I haven’t talked about at length. So really what can I say that others haven’t already done so?
My first instinct is to do a year by year of the various Sega hardware I have interacted with and go into what each one meant to me. Except I am not entirely sure exactly which specific projects this person was invloved in. It is sad that a person who was so integral to the decade where Sega was at their peak, but then I think well am I just making it about me?
I didn’t wanna do that either. I certainly don’t wanna just do a fly by repeat of my thoughts on the different Sega machines as that’s something I have done plenty and isn’t reflective of what I am feeling, which is unrelated but since I am emotional right now for different reasons and since I made a note to discuss this I figured I would start putting my thgouhts down and see where it leads. I figure that is the best I can do.
So in the interest of being fair to the legacy of the company he worked for and the lives his work surely impacted one way or another what I will do is say one positive memory I have of each major console and one memory that I have that isn’t as positive. In other words a one good thing, one bad thing about the various machines. Without looking into his wikipedia page to learn which exact projects he may have been directly involved in I do know enough about Sega’s history to know it really doesn’t matter because all of their arcade boards are built on top of one another and all of their home consoles are likewise built on top of each other based on a scaled down version of their respective arcade board. In other words, whatever he did was carried through to the end simply by the nature of how Sega developed their hardware.
I will not do what others do and skip over their arcade side of things. It wouldn’t take long for me to mention every arcade game I have played that was produced in some part by Sega simply because while the company produced more arcade games than I could ever realistically mention, I personally have only played a few so I will start with those.
To keep this from becoming too unweidly I will just list the Sega arcade games I know I played at one point.
Altered Beast
Afterburner
Golden Axe
Virtua Racing
Virtua Cop
Virtua Fighter 2
House of the Dead
Jurassic Park
Star Wars
Like I said it was a short list. While Sega were the undisputed kings of arcades for more of their history than not, they weren’t the only company making arcade games and as a kid growing up in the 80s and 90s when arcades dominated gaming culture, I played more arcade machines than I can count but they weren’t all from any single company.
What I will say is their arcade games were well designed, fun and often not as hard as many of their contemporaries.
Sega Master System
My personal memories of this console are extremely limited. I bought one from a thrift store used way back in the early 2000’s but I am not gonna lie, despite owning it for several months with a decent selection of carts, I never once bothered to hook it up and try it out. It was just a piece of Sega history I bought with the intention of looking into someday but I never did. That is it. I don’t have any other experiences with it so moving on.
Sega Genesis.
Since I yap about this thing excessively I will keep this short. One personal mempory I hold near and dear to me is this was the first console I owned that was just mine. I got mine for my 12th birthday in September of 1994. The pack in game I got with my model 2 was Sonic 2.
I don’t have any negative memories of the Genesis other than desperately wanting a Sega CD and 32X as a kid and never getting either until I was an adult with my own money.
Sega CD
A positive memory is finding a copy of Lunar Silver Star complete in box at a pawn shop for $15 bucks that one time. My negative memory is playing the games.
32X
I bought mine for $8 used from a game store that didn’t even know what it was and just wanted it off their shelf. My positive memory is buying every game from the North American library. My negative memory is how short lived it was and how sad I was I didn’t get one when it was new.
Saturn
Positive memory is playing some great games I never would have otherwise. Negative memory is how EXPENSIVE every single game was.
Dreamcast
My positive memory is playing Mortal Kombat Gold at my friends house when he got his Dreamcast for Christmas. My negative memories are literally everything else associated with it, I didn’t enjoy it moving on.
I won’t bother with their handhelds because the Game Gear was, more or less but not literally just a portable SMS and the Nomad was just and very literally a portable Genesis so nothing to discuss there. I owned each at one point but I didn’t keep either for very long and rarely played them.
There, I got my feelings off my chest while being as respectful as I could without repeating everything I have already said before, over and over again. RIP and thanks for the memories.
