Sega: More Sinister Than Meets The Eye?

One of the things I do here on this blog is take a poke at other game developers, such as Nintendo, Activision, Microsoft, Namco, Capcom, Bethesda/id, whoever.  I'm not shy when it comes to this.  Love it or hate it, that's what I do.

But on the other hand, let's not pretend that Sega's as innocent as a choir boy.  No, they've done some stupid things.  And when I mean "stupid," I don't mean "didn't release a new Daytona game in the last 10 years," I'm talking other stuff.  Just stuff that's plain weird.  Almost weirder than making urinal games, that's for sure.

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This all began reading a Kotaku article about Sega.  Yes, Kotaku seems to be obsessed with bringing up negative pieces about Sega (well, they deserve it).  But this is what I learned.

In 1997, Sega wanted to merge with Bandai (the toy company) and get rich.  Then they would use their money for "world conquest," (AKA, buy Disney).  In other words, the Kotaku article made Sega look like a crooked Illuminati banker.  But five months before Bandai could sign the papers, they bailed on Sega because they were afraid they would impose drastic changes to their company.  In other words, Sega was creepy evil.  A day later, the Bandai President resigned?  Why?  Maybe cause Sega held a gun to his head.

All we know is Namco later merged with Bandai, thus giving them the advantage of Gundam Wing, Power Rangers, and Tamogatchi (a BIG success after the failed Sega merger...Sega missed out on big money).  And who did Sega merge with?  Heh...Sammy, a company I know nothing about.  Except that they made some light gun game...I dunno what's up with that.

EDIT: Well, Sammy made pachinko machines, read on for more...  Oh, and glancing over this Kotaku article again, where the hell's the proof that Sega wanted to buy out Disney (or everything else for that matter)?  No links, references, sources--typical of airhead gaming blogs.  Proof, schmoof, just take their lousy-ass words for it.

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Then there's the Sega of the 16-bit era.  They wouldn't mind seeing their rival Nintendo get taken down Burnout-out style.  So the advertising campaign began--the edgy hip look, "Sega does what Nintendon't," yada yada yada.

But the biggest sham in Sega advertising was "Blast Processing."  It was something that the Genesis had but the SNES didn't.  And what's Blast Processing anyway?  Heh...it's just a made-up term Sega created to inflate their self-ego.  A bold-faced lie.  Of course, in the 90's, graphics were EVERYTHING, the bit wars and so forth.  See the Jaguar, 3DO, and out beloved Sega 32X, all of were marketed purely on graphics and died out fairly quickly.



EDIT: Well, Sega really did what Nintendon't...and that is suck big time and die.  So in the end, Nintendo wins.

And also at the time in the UK, some Sega advertising folks was running some rather crude newspaper ads that would make any gamer blush.  These are on UKResistance, click here to see 'em.

This is the least offensive of the ads, it only gets worse...

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Then there's the Sega CD, that piece of crap with hardly any good games.  The cult classic of the console is Night Trap.  In this game made up entirely of video footage, you watched a couple of rooms in a house (security guard-style) while robbers as they broke in to kidnap a bunch of young girls.  Yikes.

Found this from some sweet Kotaku Photoshop contest.

It was up to you to activate traps in order to catch the bad guys.  Fail to do so and you get a lovely death cutscene.  This game displayed some rather "creepy" (more like cheesy) footage of girls being taken away by masked bandits, some of which would say portrays rape scenes.  Why these guys would break into a house to steal girls...I don't even wanna know.  This game was presented in front of a congressional hearing (along with other culprits like Doom and Mortal Kombat) in order to create an ESRB rating we have today.  So thanks, Sega, for publishing stupid games like this.

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And speaking of the Sega CD, let's talk about Sonic CD.  Now I mentioned this earlier...the secret message you can see by entering certain numbers in the Sound Test menu.  Why do they even had sound tests in games anyway???  If one sfx doesn't work, wouldn't the others not work too???

"Fun is infinite with Sega" - the "Devil."

But that's not the point, just see the video and tell me why Sega decided to include something like this.  Then again, Nintendo would pull ridiculous stunts like this too so what else is new.

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Ok, so let's talk about something a bit more entertaining.  This is Segata Sanshiro, the spokesman for the Sega Saturn.  You should know this guy by now.  Anyway, some of his commercials include beating up people, kids included.

"That's what you get for having social lives."  Really, this wouldn't fly in the rest of the world, would it.

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One more and this is a really funny story.  It's an urban legend about an old 80's arcade game called "Polybius."  Rumor has it that a few of these black, non-descript cabinets were dropped in a few back-alley American arcades.  Kids that played them would suffer from nasty syndromes, such as headaches, nausea, nightmares, epilepsy, and suicidal thoughts.

These cabinets disappeared just as quickly as they appeared, presumably because they were some government/paranormal experiment on mind control or some crap like that.  Apparently, the Men in Black came to take the cabinets away and only a few vague accounts of the game remain.  No roms, no game footage, nothing.

"You know nothing about what just happened here."

This is a fan-made game that's supposedly based on what Polybius was supposed to be like.  It's like a really crappy Asteroids clone with seizure-inducing background.  I only played it for a minute not because I developed suicidal tendencies, but because it sucked ass.  You can download the game in the video description.

So...what does this have to do with Sega?  Well, rumor has it (on top of an existing rumor, this is some Inception s*** here) that some of the legacy source code from Polybius was used in the Sega CD BIOS.  In other words, because traces of Polybius are in the Sega CD, that means that Sega was involved in the creation of Polybius.  Spoooooky.  As a matter of fact, a Sega employee posted this cryptic secret on the web and it's very credible and must be believed.  This is it in its entirety (when that site self-destructs and all traces are lost) and I don't expect you to read all of it but whatevs...

I was a programmer in Sega's arcade division. Suddenly, we recieved a request to create a game, which was very odd. This would have been ignored, but the source was supposedly a secret organization called "SINNESLOSCHEN", opearting with some sort of governmental power. I am still not sure to this day what country they were working for. We were given a project sheet, and a map of thehuman brain, and how to stimulate those areas, and were told to integrate them into a video game. Sega had quite a bit of money riding on this deal, and were not doing so well. The game took quite a bit of time, and we created technologies that were far beyond our time. A member of the group suggested the name "Polybius", which I remember veing the name of a scholar of some sort. The game's genre could be puzzler, but it also had some odd elements. THIS GAME IS REAL. The game testers who worked for us had odd mind prolems, like losing memory and other such things, like loss of arcadegame fandom. I cannot remember what we designed the arcade case to look like, because it was done by another group. After the project, we signed papers promising secrecy, and if I am discovered, I may get in serious trouble. However, I believe that this needs to be known.

At the beginning of this page, I mentioned the "Sega Genesis CD". I was involved in several projects after "Polybius", and eventually, I ended up on the "Sega Genesis CD" team. While we were designing this, an issue came up. I cannot remember the details, but it involved the two processors synching up. It turns out that Polybius was discovered to use two processors, working in a way similair to what we wanted for the "Sega Genesis CD". We were afraid of getting in trouble for using that game;s code, but we altered the game's BIOS anyway. However, MOST OF THE CODE THAT ACTIVATED THE MIND ALTERING SYSTEM (Details Classified) WERE IN THAT BIOS. The actual game ROM needs the BIOS to run. It was very much like a modern console in that manner. The point is, that I believe we left quite a bit of the "Legacy Code" of "Polybius" in the "Sega Genesis CD", at least in the earliest revisions. However, I was laid off shortly after, and though it was for "Misconduct", I practiced no such thing, and I beleive it was because I accesed Polybius's files. They were likely deleted from Sega's system afterwards. 

Really?  I don't think that the Sega CD was into mind control cause no one was playing that piece of crap.  Although I admit that the console intro (the vacant music) and the Sonic secret message above are pretty creepy.

Rated PG-13 for Language


Good old AVGN...back when he spoke with that snarky tone that is partial inspiration for my angry rants...he also reviews the Sega 32X.  It's even less flattering than the Sega CD review.

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EDIT: Finally one more, I must add this.  Thanks Shenmue Fan for pointing this out.  Hajime Satomi, founder of Sammy Entertainment (known for Pachinko machines), bought out Sega in 2004.  Satomi is supposedly head of the Yakuza (the Japanese Mafia for you idiots) and Sammy is just his money laundering operation.  He hustled down Sega with intimidation, blackmail, etc. (aka "sokaiya") then proceeded to kill Sega like a parasite.  If you don't get it by now, let me rehash: SEGA IS OWNED BY THE YAKUZA.  Which explains why they've made numerous Yakuza games but not one Shenmue sequel...

You toolbag, they got you making Yakuza games when you should be making Daytona USA 3!!!

Of course, this rumor may have been created to create an alibi for Sega's downfall, but still, you never know.........

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Anyway, Sega CD sucks, Sega is creepy, end of story.  Oh BTW, Nintendo was once associated with love hotels and the Mafia.  And you deliberately had Gunpei Yokoi killed in a car crash after the disaster that was the Virtual Boy.  So Nintendo, you're not off the hook either.