Sam Pettus - Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA: Enhanced Edition

Service Games

The Rise and Fall of SEGA

Enhanced Edition

Sam Pettus

With contributions by

David Munoz, Kevin Williams & Ivan Barroso

Copyright 2013 Sam Pettus.

Edited by David Chen

Formatted for electronic distribution by Diana Brown

Sega, Sega Master System, Game Gear, Genesis, Mega Drive, Sega CD, Mega CD, 32X, Saturn, and Dreamcast are all registered trademarks of Sega Corporation. All other trademarks appearing within this work are the property of their respective owners. All other protected intellectual materials referenced in this literary work are the properties of their respective owners, and said references are made in accordance with current intellectual property law as defined under the terms of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, 828 UNTS 221.

Service Games: The Rise and Fall of Sega is an independent operation and is no way endorsed or sponsored neither by Sega Corporation nor any of its affiliates or licensees. All attitudes and opinions expressed in this book are those of the author and his colleagues, and are not necessarily endorsed either by Sega or its affiliates and licensees.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all of the many people over the years who supported this work, and whose efforts helped to bring it about in printed reality. I would like to give special thanks to Chris Foulter, Eric Quakenbush, Joe Miller, and Steve Palmer for your special insights into the days of Sega's classic video game consoles. I would also like thank Steve, Mike Dunstun (aka "Atani"), and Christian (aka "Eidolon) for being both my peers and critics as the original version of this work took shape.

Christian deserves special mention not only for hosting it on his website, but making it available to so many by that means. I've always regretted I couldn't finish it back then due to the turmoil going on in my personal life at that time. Here you go, old friend. It was good to hear from you again.

Finally, everyone should thank David, Kevin, and Ivan for not only updating this work, but adding to it avenues that I had not thought to explore - as well as being the driving force behind this all-new print version. Were it not for them, I would not have been drawn back to this book, and that final chapter would have gone unfinished. I'm honored that you invited me to come back. I hope I've done you and the readers justice.

- Sam Pettus

Special thanks to Mohammed Mahmoud Al-Adsani, Aaron A. Munoz, ahans76, Chris Van Graas, KaneIT3000, Matthias Frank, Paul Cook of Gasman Studios, Ryan Darnell, Diana Brown, and Warp Zone Video Games & Beyond.

Foreword

Martin Luther King Jr. once said that We are not makers of history. We are made by history. What we have and make today is not destined to be in books, but what we do shapes everything that is to come. The ones who came before us shaped who and what we are and it is with those people that this story lays; the people who started shaping our current world when it was still beyond comprehension. Like it or not, video games have affected and changed every single one of us. From pioneers in the technology that first attempted digital entertainment came the revolutionary developments that we now take for granted. It didnt happen overnight and it didnt happen by accident, but the struggle to bring technology and entertainment to where it is today has closed thousands of companies and cost the sweat and blood of millions of people worldwide. One of the most prominent examples of this was Sega, but it is just one of several hardware development casualties of that era. It was a time of turmoil, but it was also a time of dramatic changes. Every day seemed like a giant leap forward, and every leap came at a great cost. It was often the company that innovated the most that fell first, with more moderate companies thriving later on their innovations. But then there was Sega. Often the underdog, Sega seemed to defy odds again and again until it tore itself apart under the pressures of competition. But its not the end result that changed the world and shaped future gaming generations. It was the many contributions it made to the industry that made it what we fondly remember today. Sega was Sega. While that may mean different things to different people, much like this book, its the idea of what it was and what it could have been that makes it eternally immortal today.

- David Munoz

The Early Days:

The Sega SG-1000

General Douglas MacArthur

Foundations

As the late Carl Sagan might have said, let us board the starship of our imagination and take a trip through space and time to a place and era that is now no more. That place is the island nation of Japan, under military occupation by American forces since the end of World War II, and the year is 1950. We are here in search of beginnings. "The beginnings of what," you ask? Of a company which will go on to become a formative figure in the video game industry. A company whose name is legend, whose creators are revered, and whose software is adored by millions of gamers of all ages and backgrounds, worldwide. A company that has surfed the cutting edge of technology and seen its fortunes rise and fall, running the gamut from excessive profitability to the brink of bankruptcy. A company that has seen its share of successes and failures, internal rivalries and corporate confusion, and yet always managed to pull itself back up by the bootstraps, even when it seemed lost to its own blindness. This company is Sega, one of the true pioneers in video game history.

Marty Bromley

The birth of the legend

On June 24, 1950, Communist forces from North Korea, with aid from Communist China, invaded South Korea, attacking United Nations forces along a broad front. Looking forward to an honorable retirement, U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur, military governor of Japan, was instead thrust into the role of supreme commander of U.S. military forces in what would become known as the Korean War. Despite his war record, it was a part he did not relish; viewing the conflict as another Manchuria or Anschluss, he was determined to stem the spread of Communism on the Korean peninsula by any means necessary. Ordering the immediate evacuation of American civilian personnel from Korea, he brought the U.S. Seventh Fleet to the area, preparing for a counterattack even as North Korean forces drove the U.N. defenders southward towards Pusan.

One inevitable result of the ensuing conflict was the amassing of American personnel at U.S. military bases across Japan. By now, the Japanese were acclimated to the loud, brash American culture, and many Japanese companies quickly moved to profit from this turn of events. One of these was Nihon Goraku Bussan, a vending company originally founded in April of 1951. In May the following year, the company secured contracts with American entrepreneur Marty Bromley to provide American bases and staging areas with an assortment of coin-op vending machines. This partnership eventually grew so large that the operation was officially organized in 1960 as its own subsidiary of Bussan: the Japan Entertainment Trading Company. Bromley would become a major player in Nihon Goraku Bussan, which would in time become the second biggest player in the Japanese amusement industry.

Bromley's involvement was purely profit-driven, and not for some love of the burgeoning business. The U.S. Senate had imposed severe restrictions on the vending machine industry in the early 1950s, driving his coin-op business out of Hawaii's many military installations in 1952. Seeing Japan as an ideal place to run his game rooms without nosy politicians looking over his shoulder, Bromley set up shop and never looked back. Many a soft drink dispenser, slot machine, and jukebox at American military installations across Japan was a result of the Bussan/Bromley partnership. And there was a new type of coin-op machine, too: pinball. By now a mainstay of American pop culture, this table game was not unlike the pachinko machines with which the Japanese were so familiar. Seizing upon this opportunity, Bromley began dutifully importing pinball to Nihon Goraku Bussan through their lucrative American military contracts. The machines were welcomed by American servicemen, and made quite an impression on one in particular.