SEGA in the Media

SEGA in the Media: No Continue Kid shows SEGA lots of virtua love

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The arcades were a big part of Japan’s youth group up in the 80’s and 90’s, so its no surprise that a Japanese drama show based around these time periods would be created. No Continue Kid: Our Game History (ノーコン・キッド　～ぼくらのゲーム史～) is a TV show revolving around Reiji Watanabe, who in 1983 isn’t very interested in arcade games. The only reason he has to put up with them is because his father owns a game center. Reiji sees a girl he likes come in daily named Fumiyoshi Takano, she usually plays Xevious and leaves. Reiji decides to give this Xevious game a try to impress her and gets the best local player, Akinobu Kido (who goes by ‘Kid’, his high score handle) to teach him.

The show focuses on the friendships of these characters along with a new ‘Game Center’ trends throughout the decades (this show spans from 1983 to 2013 in 12 episodes) and even some console gaming love. Today we will be looking at some of the SEGA centric episodes including one for Columns, Fantasy Zone and two whole episodes based around the Virtua Fighter 2 fighting phenomenon. Let’s take a dramatized trip to the arcade scene in Japan from the 80’s through the 90’s, SEGA style!

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SEGA in the Media: The Price is Right for a Sega-Vision in 1977!

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Way back in 2011, we featured an article on the Sega-Vision, a big screen projection TV sold to consumers in 1977. While a post I made at SEGA Memories detailed patent drawings from 1976, and our post in 2011 featured the commercial, today we have another bit from the Sega-Vision’s past! Courtesy of a reader named Matthew, I was linked to a YouTube upload of a full episode of The Price is Right taped on June 29, 1977, and guess what item appears? If you guessed the Sega-Vision, you’d be right – or is that the “Seega-Vision”? Unfortunately for our lucky contestant, she wasn’t so right. In fact, she was wrong and lost the item when it came to guessing the retail price. Thankfully, as SEGA fans we finally get to know the retail price of a Sega-Vision in 1977: $1,895.

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SEGA in the Media: Tony Soprano wants you to turn off the SEGA Dreamcast

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This is a SEGA in the Media I’ve been sitting on for a while, mainly because it was difficult for me to obtain decent screens from HBO shows. Thankfully, starting today Amazon Prime members have access to HBO content, including the excellent The Sopranos! As a Dreamcast enthusiast, I always keep my eyes open when watching TV and movies from the late 90’s and early 2000’s in hopes that I’ll catch a glimpse of SEGA’s final console. While I usually end up disappointed, as I was during The Sopranos first season in which Tony Soprano’s son Anthony Junior owned a Nintendo 64, season 2 delivered!

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SEGA in the Media: Saints Row IV’s homage to Streets of Rage

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This just might be a first for SEGA in the Media, a SEGA inspired video game within another video game! Released last year, Saints Row IV was a tongue-in-cheek action-adventure game from Illinois based developer Volition. Given the self-referential nature of the series, it only makes sense that they’d eventually reference crazy action games of the past, and what game is more fitting to pay tribute to than SEGA’s Streets of Rage? Dubbed “Saints of Rage”, this 2D beat ’em up appears at around 75-80% of the way into Saints Row IV. In-game, “Saints of Rage” is an enemy created nightmare simulation. Kicking off with a “Winners Don’t Use Drugs” message, the player is taken to a title screen which is a direct reference to the original Streets of Rage title screen.

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SEGA in the Media: Parks and Rec peeks inside Andy and April’s toolbox

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SEGA in the Media is back! Did you know that a certain SEGA Genesis classic made an appearance in the 2011 Halloween episode of NBC’s Parks and Recreation? You probably did, given this clip is almost two years old. In the episode, characters Andy and April throw a Halloween party, and Ron Swanson occupies himself by fixing up their house. Upon requesting their toolbox, Ron is handed a plastic bag filled with various items including… well, why don’t you watch it?

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SEGA in the Media: “MANOS – The Hands of Fate” fan game pays homage to Alex Kidd

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Fans of MST3K, bad movies and early 80’s film to game adaptations should really check out the iOS game MANOS – The Hands of Fate. Based on a movie that many consider to be the worst ever made, ranked #4 on the IMDb bottom 100, Manos is an 80’s inspired platformer with numerous homages to both classic games and bad b-movies. SEGA fans should recognize the death animation, in which the player turns into a transparent ghost and flies upwards. This, according to the game’s developer, was an homage to the Master System’s Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Nice to see the Master System getting some homages, the Master is pleased.

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SEGA in the Media: Tosh.0 reveals how Sonic died

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I’m starting to think comedian Daniel Tosh is a Sonic fan. Back in 2010 his Comedy Central show Tosh.0 did a segment on real life speed runs, based off of a Sonic 2 speed run video. On the March 13th episode of this year, Sonic got another mention in a segment on a failed parkour video. After showing a woman smashing her face into a concrete wall, Tosh quipped “of course the greatest parkourer of all time was Sonic the Hedgehog – who died turboing through a triple corkscrew. He got greedy.” You can see the full segment at the Tosh.0 show page, tell them SEGAbits sent you.

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SEGA in the Media: Breaking Bad plays a Broken, Bad Sonic Game

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The AMC series Breaking Bad has depicted some pretty detestable things, including producing and selling meth, but perhaps the show’s biggest offense was the depiction of characters enjoying Sonic ’06. In the eleventh episode of season four, titled “Crawl Space”, the character Jesse plays a two player match of Sonic vs. Shadow in Wave Ocean with his girlfriend’s son. Warning: the following clip features some very bad pretend video game playing.

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