SEGA Memories: Wacky Worlds

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These days, gamers can be quite adamant about the legitimacy of video games as an art form. I certainly wouldn’t disagree: a case can be made that making great video games requires just as much creativity as any book or movie. But I think what often gets lost in this pursuit to prove that the video game is a form of artistic expression is the fact that video games are also, essentially, toys. Especially games from the 80s and 90s, and Wacky Worlds was one of my favorite toys from the 90s.

SEGA Memories: Evolution 2 – A larger and better adventure

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‘Sup y’all? Welcome to another episode of Monday Memories! Last week I discussed Evolution: The World of Sacred Device, Sting’s RPG for the Dreamcast launch. As a kid who was new to Japanese RPGs, I found it to be a fun and memorable adventure; though to Japanese RPG fans at the time, it was probably more along the lines of, “that lame dungeon crawler those Dreamcast owners are stuck with while we play Final Fantasy VIII.”

The Dreamcast would of course go on to see many far more developed Japanese RPGs by the end of its lifespan, but Evolution 2: Far Off Promise is one that I’d say deserves the “you tried your best” award by stepping up to the plate and offering some big improvements over its predecessor. As a little kid, my mind was blown.

SEGA Memories: How Evolution proved that one man’s trash was another’s treasure

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For those of us who love video games, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the various consoles we’ve come in contact with throughout our lives have left behind their own unique memories. Gaming is an interactive medium, afterall, and it’s an art form that you don’t simply sit there and view, but one which you fully interact with. And it’s this interaction, I feel, that can make the experience so much more personal, by and large, than going to the movies for a couple of hours.

The Dreamcast, for me, was the system where I completed what had been my gradual transition from “childhood gamer” to “hardcore gamer.” It was when I went from simply playing multiplayer games with my friends, or games that I’d seen advertised on TV, to someone who actively looked up and discussed video games on the internet. It was when I began to follow the industry more closely and discover genres that I’d never known existed. And in the case of Evolution: The World of Sacred Device, it was my first real Japanese RPG experience.

SEGA Memories: SEGA debuts Sonic & Knuckles with a MTV special ‘Rock the Rock’

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Welcome to a new entry for our Monday Memories weekly (hopefully from now on) articles. This week we’ll be taking you all the way back to the year 1994, at the height of SEGA’s popularity. They had a great mascot that released three main games in his franchise, sold tons of SEGA Genesis/Mega Drives around the world, and had a new upcoming game: Sonic & Knuckles.

What better way to introduce the game to America than an MTV special entitled “Rock the Rock” on Alcatraz Island?

SEGA Memories: SEGA’s amazing E3 2000 floor show

I’ll come right out and say it: I’m not too excited for this year’s E3. Why? Well, for starters, no SEGA press show. Of course, there has been no SEGA press show for many years so that’s an old complaint. But as the years have passed, it feels like SEGA has done less and less in terms of spectacle at E3. No press shows, as mentioned, no big reveals and most importantly: no awesome floor shows. That’s why this week’s Monday Memories article exists, to take you back to 2000 when SEGA had a floor show worthy of Disneyland.

SEGA Memories: Game Gear promotional events of the 90’s

The Game Gear, SEGA’s little handheld that had a color screen and a very bright back lit screen, is over 20 years old. Sure the device never out sold Nintendo’s juggernaut known as the Game Boy. But if you were a SEGA fan back in the day, the bad battery life didn’t keep you away from owning one. Some people may wonder what sort of promotional events SEGA did before launching a device like the Game Gear. Well, this week on Monday Memories we take a look at “Operation Game Gear” and “Superstar Kids Challenge”.

SEGA Memories: Panzer Dragoon Orta

Everyone has that “one game” that defines their tastes and preferences for the rest of their lives. That one game that helped them discover or rediscover a genre. That one game they fell in love with and, to this day, hold it aloft as the best game ever made. Being a SEGA fan working on a SEGA site, it should come as no surprise to anyone that for me, that game was a SEGA game. What may come as a surprise though, is that it wasn’t a game made for a SEGA console, or some original genre-defining experience. It was instead, simply a master class release for the dying rail shooter genre: Panzer Dragoon Orta.