>https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/25/gaming-legend-bernie-stolar-passes-away/ >"“When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding,” Stolar said."
God damn lol
Isn't he the guy who tried to save Sega but Sega was too shit to understand he was doing them good?
[...]
AHAHAHAHAHA THAT FRICKING WAKLING ANIMATION FOR THE LITTLE DEMON GUY ON THE ARCADE VERSION FRICK I LAUGHED WAY TOO HARD AND STILL AM AS I FINISH THIS POST. THIS IS A JOKE GIF?
no it was the opposite. he constantly engaged in censorship and denied game release after game release only for ps1 to release them instead and then wondered why sega saturn is not selling when he literally wouldnt let it to have games. he was real piece of shit
yeah that's kind of the impression a lot of people got... he was like Yamauchi in that he hated RPGs right? Or he saw them as impossible to sell. I still see him as a SONY plant but I don't think anyone can blame him for Saturn's early launch?
> Successfully removed all third party support from the Sega Saturn, then all 2D games. > Sabotaged the Sonic Xtreme.
Bernie Stolar was at Sony when all of that happened. The Sega Saturn was a blunder at launch. It was expensive for Sega to manufacture, they lost money on each system sold. Third party publishers were bailing from the machine for the PS1 before Bernie showed up. Sonic Xtreme wasn't his project. Bernie may have helped popularise 3D gaming with the success of the Playstation. He also did prioritise 3D games over 2D ones. But... that's where the game industry was heading anyway. The mass population was getting board of 2D games, so the PS1 became a big hit regardless. The popularity of the PS1 did cause Sega of America to not publish a lot of 2D games in the west. They were trying to focus more on the Saturn's 3D capabilities. Which only ended up making the Saturn look weaker than the PS1. Tom Kalinske was Sega USA President until 1996. The Saturn was already a sinking ship in 1997.
What Saturn game should I play in his honor?
Bonus points if it's 2D and Japanese.
The Sega Saturn was a blunder when Bernie showed in 1996, but he was the one going to Atlus (Devil Summoner), Konami (Policenauts), Game Arts (Grandia, as a collab with Sega of America cancelled in 1998 then picked by fricking Sony) and Working Designs (Lunar remakes, Silhouette Mirage) to "convince them" to cancel almost ready localizations, all the while cancelling a ton of already finished localizations of expensive 3D games made by Sega internally (Deep Fear, Griffon 2) >Panzer Dragoon Saga
Oh, the one the loc team said was constantly at threat of being localized and was shipped with an extremely low print run that would never turn a profit even if it sold out, which it actually did?
One of Bernie Stolar's achievements besides stating as early as 1997 (with ZERO backup plan between 1997 and september 1999, keeping in mind the Dreamcast was supposed to be ready by 1998) that "the saturn was not our future", basically forcing companies like Capcom to scrap almost complete ports of PS1 games (Resident Evil 2, the other Mega Man games, their myriads of 2d arcade ports whose approval by SCEA was a coin toss) which they were eager to develop as a failsafe to Sony SCEA policies easily rejecting complete games at submission for "quality" reasons.
Then as he realized some companies were still supporting the Saturn, he removed stuff like RAM packs from stores, and as game publishers were finding loopholes and directly commanding those RAM packs from Sega of Japan, he complained to SoJ directly to plug those holes.
Not to mention that it was between 1996 and 1999 that Microsoft was introduced to Sega to work on their Dreamcast OS.
[...]
Bernie killed most of Sega of America's inhouse productions (published on PC, even proposed a fricking N64 port for a Virtua Fighter 3 port that got vetoed) and didn't allow JP games to be imported by SoA or otherwise. Also SoA didn't do its job at translating the documentation. No shit a console with no games wouldn't sell.
>muh 2D >muh jrpgs
This is nothing but butthurt revisionist shit. No one gave a frick about 2D outside of a few rare outliers and by the time JRPGs began to boom outside of Japan the Saturn was already on death's door. Bernie is nothing but a scapegoat for n words who can't deal with the fact the Saturn was a crap console with a few decent ports of arcade games which aged like stinky cheese.
I'm sorry man i couldn't see the genius of SoJ whose expertise led to a crowning distant second place barely ahead of the N64, that's the true achievement of the japanese saturn library, if it only was brought to the US the console would've sold millions.
I can only KNEEL to the genius of the yamato race.
Well, on one hand you have the unironic but still midwit take of supporting SoA and hating SoJ because of all the Kalinske interviews that were shilled during the 2010s,where he blamed everything to the Japanese and make it seem as if he was the savior of Sega (when in reality, he only had 1 good idea and then hundreds of shitty ones that made SoA a complete joke).
The Japanese never said anything bad about SoA, by the way, I doubt there's any actual rivalry between the two, and if anything, SoJ was probably happy that Genesis was doing well in USA.
But yeah, all the shilling got people to suck Kalinske off and hate SoJ as if they were the devil, when, as you say, all the hardware and games that made Sega good were Japanese.
But Bernie is a total different story. He's obviously an incompetent businessman who is even suspected of being a plant to sabotage other companies, but people ironically glorify him now because it's the "troll" thing to do, hur dur
Love that SoA is the joke despite selling 8 times the number of genesis models than japan, Dreamcast twice the units, and for the saturn only half which you blame on the Idiocy of Kalinske and not the hardware that wasn't up to task, the soft that wasn't either, or the 100 dollaridos above the playstation required to buy one
Can't argue with the high iq move of spending 70.000.000 on Shenmue, the cost being comparable to 3/4 of the TOTAL marketing budget for the dreamcast.
Face it sport without the israelite sega is kaput.
>Love that SoA is the joke despite selling 8 times the number of genesis models than japan, Dreamcast twice the units
Because they were cheap and had Sonic in it, Japan just didn't care about sega beyond their arcade games. >and for the saturn only half which you blame on the Idiocy of Kalinske
He didn't even mention the Saturn in that post.
SoA was a joke in terms of content. Kalinske burned a lot of money developing mediocre to really bad shovelware with very few exceptions, but no SoA game is really up to the AAA standard that Sega of Japan did, and you know it full well.
As I said, in terms of sheer numbers, SoJ was probably happy about SoA. In the end, money that served Sega HQ at Japan, anyway.
The whole SoA vs SoJ rivalry never existed, you just bought into a western journo narrative.
>Kalinske burned a lot of money developing mediocre to really bad shovelware with very few exceptions, but
Other than The Ooze I can't think of a noteworthy SOA game.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I'd say Comix Zone is their best offering. I never liked the gameplay, I think it doesn't fit the style of game they were trying to do, but I appreciate the creativity in its presentation.
Vectorman is probably my favorite american Sega game. Only played the first game though, I know the 2nd is supposed to be really bad. Vectorman 1 seemed good enough for me.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Garfield Caught In The Act, but the PC port was better.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I had never bothered to check who developed that originally but yes it was an American studio. The look and feel of the game wasn't very Japanese tbqh.
SoJ supplied a badly designed console with no sequels to the SoJ games that sold the genesis, they neglected the non-japanese market that put them in their position, i don't believe they had a rivalry with SoA, they just took bad decision all around, SoA was the junior partner so i don't think they are to blame for anything, they had one job which was to sell the hardware and games and they did damn fine, you fault them for making shitty games but they still sold in the genesis period so that's not the question, the question is why SoJ with their games couldn't sell in the saturn era.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>SoJ supplied a badly designed console with no sequels to the SoJ games that sold the genesis
tbqh Sonic Team were getting burned out and wanted to make different stuff so it's understandable why they did NID instead of Yet Another Sonic Game (TM).
>The Japanese never said anything bad about SoA, by the way, I doubt there's any actual rivalry between the two, and if anything, SoJ was probably happy that Genesis was doing well in USA.
Kalinske didn't want to bring over Phantasy Star IV until Working Designs wanted to, of course he's an unreliable narrator.
There are numerous times when the Japanese side said "something bad" about SoA. Like admitting that the decision to release the X32 with that timing was a monumentally stupid idea (SoA's idea), or that the music replacements for Japanese music done in Sonic CD, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 weren't accepted by the Japanese side (for Sonic CD they didn't even know about it, for Sonic 2 SoA gave them a replacement track for everything and they thought it sounded like dogshit and that the Japanese bands were better, for Sonic 3 they said multiple times that the MJ situation was troublesome and that the older games didn't have the same issue)
Wow. Same death day as my fathers birth/death day.
Master System was the first console my father bought us.
Dreamcast was the first system I saved up and preordered and got at launch my self.
Would never have been able to do that without my dad, and without Stolar bringing out something that I wanted bad enough to work hard and save up for.
Sega and it’s people have a special place for me. RIP buddy, say hi to my dad. Gonna play some Dreamcast today
>Because they were cheap and had Sonic in it
So naturally Sega of Japan's next move was to have an expensive console without Sonic on it.
Japan didn't care about Sonic at the time and didn't want to force Sonic team to make another Sonic.
Just because we acknowledge SoA's mistakes doesn't mean we think SoJ is perfect.
He was implicitly referring to the saturn.
The abortion thing is an offbrand topical joke, feel safe to ignore it
I'm not saying Kalinske is a genius mastermind but at very least SoJ fricked up at rates consistent or possible a bit more than SoA
That's the thing, SoJ and SoA are idiots, it's just that SoA was able to get actual profit out of Japan's IPs which leads to people arguing which one is better.
If Sega were actually competent they would either have made their brand way bigger before the Saturn's launch or would've taken advantage of their brand loyality when it mattered the most.
Sega of America's success came at a cost that eventually caught up with them. They were over producing and high on their own success. And when the 16-bit systems started to dry up around 1994-1996, they were completely unprepared.
While Sega of Japan's mistakes were dumb and caused some problems, Sega of Americas mistakes did far more damage to the company in the long term.
They were. While it had a lukewarm reception in Japan in 1988, the Genesis was selling like mad in the USA after experiencing a rebirth after Kalinske became president of SoA, slashed the price of the console, and bundled Sonic the Hedgehog with it. It was kicking Nintendo's ass HARD until they got the SNES out into the American market...at which point they were neck-and-neck. Kalinske's extremely aggressive "frick Nintendo" marketing campaign was unironically working out extremely well. Then in early 1994, Sega CEO Nakayama proposed and pushed a "bridge" in the form of a 32-bit cartridge based console to SoA, which they collectively stated was a terrible idea, but agreed to make it an add-on instead. The problem was, Sega of Japan was ready to move on. Nobody told SoA that SoJ was developing the Saturn. So when the announcement of the Saturn came a short few months after the 32X was announced, all of the momentum for the 32X ground to screeching halt, and many of the big third-parties withdrew support. The biggest kick in the teeth was that SoA promised long-term support and a diverse library of games utilizing the 32X on release...which it didn't have due to the announcement of the Saturn. This damaged the frick out of Sega's credibility, caused multiple rushed titles for the 32X in order to attempt salvaging the disastrously-weak launch (same day as Donkey Kong Country for the SNES which pushed that console to its limits, and looked better, played better, and was more fun than most 32X releases), and it put SoA and SoJ at odds with each other. They never really recovered, so it's led me to believe that it's the single most pivotal flop in the industry next to E.T.
All because nobody told SoA about the Saturn's development. Both sides fricked up, SoA for going forward with such a boneheaded idea to begin with in a world where the 3DO, Jaguar, and soon Sony were making waves, and SoJ for being too secretive of the Saturn.
Unsure. There's not enough information on the meeting without speaking directly to the SoA executive team from that time. The only thing anyone can safely say is that Sega would've been in a stronger market position in all regions without releasing the 32X.
So many people shit on Bernie for the Sega Saturn. But Bernie didn't do anything, the Saturn was already dead by 1997 in America, anyway. All Bernie did was put the last nail into the coffin. When the Dreamcast bombed, didn't David Rosen convince Sega to get out of the hardware business, anyway?
>There are MANY reasons to shit on Bernie, the Saturn just happens to be the one most people talk about.
All Stolar did for the Saturn was take it out to the tool shed and put a bullet into it. The Sega Saturn was already far gone by mid 1997. Nobody could save that console in the west. Not with the PS1 and N64 on the market. Stolar was there for the creation and discontinuation of the Sega Dreamcast.
>There are MANY reasons to shit on Bernie, the Saturn just happens to be the one most people talk about.
All Stolar did for the Saturn was take it out to the tool shed and put a bullet into it. The Sega Saturn was already far gone by mid 1997. Nobody could save that console in the west. Not with the PS1 and N64 on the market. Stolar was there for the creation and discontinuation of the Sega Dreamcast. (You) >I don't remember stating that he was the one who ruined the Saturn.
I guess I wasn't referring to you directly. I just mean in general people accuse Bernie Stolar of 'killing' the Saturn. Bernie came on board as Sega CEO in early- mid 1997. Saturn already previously lost big during Christmas 1996, when Sega had NiGHTS into dreams up against the N64 launch library, and the cheaper PS1 with Crash. Bernie Stolar did the most obvious thing any business man would have done, and just discontinued the console. Sega was losing money on it.
>I just mean in general people accuse Bernie Stolar of 'killing' the Saturn.
By people, do you mean Bernie? See:
>https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/25/gaming-legend-bernie-stolar-passes-away/ >"“When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding,” Stolar said."
God damn lol
>Bernie Stolar did the most obvious thing any business man would have done, and just discontinued the console.
Correction: Didn't formally discontinue the console, but pretended to support it while sabotaging every single ongoing development project targeting it so that it's no longer profitable on release, not even TurboGrafx-16 levels of profit.
In the meanwhile, as no money profits are going into Sega, he's constantly laying off people (from his experience with managing the twilight years of the Atari Lynx - horror stories of refusing to pay developers and still expecting them to finish on time, echoes of which can be seen with the management of the Sonic Xtreme project) and spending secondary R&D on plans to make the Saturn successor dependent on a Microsoft-made OS.
The DreamCast was ready at some point, and so was its killer app (and even its TGS demos had full English data inside) yet he delayed it one whole year in America for no real reason and in his own words "one of the most expensive marketing campaigns ever made". Then, sold the console for loss, and blamed his ousting for SoJ's leadership change.
>"“When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding,” Stolar said."
God damn lol
OK, maybe he did say that then. But he wasn't wrong. The writing was on the wall for the Saturn since Christmas 1996. The PS1 was getting all the third party support, the hardware was getting cheaper, they had a version of tomb Raider that looked and ran faster than the Saturn version. They had a mascot platformer called Crash Bandicoot that competed directly with Mario 64. Sonic Xtreme was a failure. because Sega made it clear that it was going to be out by Christmas 1996. They had NiGHTS with the Saturn 3D Pad instead. Bernie Stolar became CEO in march 1997, after the Sega Saturn's big 1996 holiday failure. Stolar was only pointing out the obvious.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This. Nothing short of a miracle was going to save Sega, and Dreamcast was close.
I wonder if they had focused more on PC ports from the beginning, since they were relatively easy to do, if they could've pulled it out in the end.
Ah well.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>This. Nothing short of a miracle was going to save Sega, and Dreamcast was close. >I wonder if they had focused more on PC ports from the beginning, since they were relatively easy to do, if they could've pulled it out in the end. >Ah well.
The Saturn carved out it's own market in japan, and it had a lot of appeal for JRPG's, Arcade fighters, shooters, etc. But in the NA market, it was a bad launch with limited supply, the machine generally can't quite compete with the PS1 when it comes to polygons. Sony and Nintendo were pushing 3D hard. Sega was trying to compete with games that would generally not look or run as good as their PS1 counterparts. The Saturn is an interesting piece of hardware, and can do impressive things too. But the PS1 was praised by third parties for being easy to use, and it could render lots of triangles fast. SOA was already refusing a lot of 2D games before Bernie came aboard. Bernie Stolar joined Sega in 1997. At that point, the Saturn was losing so hard in the North American market that nothing could really turn it around. In 1997, the Saturn lost a lot of retailer space to the PS1 and N64.
>won't accept that the Mega Drive's time is over >still keeps ordering giant piles of them from the factory despite it being 1995 >SOJ were horrified to discover warehouses full of unsold Mega Drives >neglects to translate Saturn technical dox
He probably was just a terrible businessman that refused to get with the times. Maybe to some extent it would’ve worked with portable Genesis like the Nomad as tech got better, but that’s just wishful thinking.
they were second-tier budget systems. and again the technological gap between NES and Mega Drive was not nearly as big as gap between Mega Drive and PS1.
yeah a 7Mhz console with 2D graphics was going to still hang with PS1 and N64. what was that guy on?
There was some precedence, Genesis would’ve been a dirt cheap budget console with a huge library. It’s treating it less like a flagship or alternative to modern consoles and more like a toy.
>man dies >weebs seethe about anime games and how Sega dying was actually Americans fault despite Sega never turning a profit a single time in the home consumer division in Japan for almost 20 years
Dreamcast launch was the best launch in video game history and remains so to this day
That's just you having schizoid internal arguments with yourself.
Bernie is made fun of because his whole history is sketchy as hell, not just his brief time at Sega.
The reason Sega stopped making hardware was not the Saturn or the Dreamcast, it's a thing called PlayStation.
The Mega Drive came out when the NES was dominant but the technological gap between the two consoles was much smaller than the gap between the Mega Drive and 5th gen consoles. Technology made some really rapid advances during the 90s.
sometimes i wonder if he never left sony. would the timeline be different where saturn would have release of SMT devil summoner and ps1 wouldnt get any persona at all instead
How many more times are you going to try to convince people that Saturn fans claim the system would have triumphed with Visual novels?
Nobody says that, you're making it up.
People just say Bernie was the reason many 2D games remained in japan, both on Saturn and PS1, and this is hard fact. It has nothing to do with saving the Saturn or not. The Saturn was hard to save when the PS1 existed.
Bernie stopped releases on the Saturn because the Saturn was an entirely dead console by the end of the same year it released in. Packaging, manufacturing, translating, and finding retail space for any Saturn game by 1997 was a waste of time and resources, the consoles highest selling game of all time barely sold 70k copies, it's was a complete financial nightmare on every level, and the only business move to make was shutter everything and try to build up hype for the next console. Literally all Bernie did was save Sega from wasting a few more millions on games that would have sold at most 2-3k copies, and either have a print run so low they couldn't make profit from it anyway, or have backstock they'd have to take losses on. Bernie did the only move available to him which was shutter everything to ensure no more losses were possible and wait for the Dreamcast.
RIP my homie. He may not have been perfext, but he was a man with a good vision for the future of gaming.
You should know this by now. For some reason, people here get so attached to consoles that they keep up dead console wars from the 90s in order to prove their fair maiden's superiority over those harlots, when pretty much all four main consoles (Saturn, N64, PSX and DC) of the late 90s had many flaws but many strenths as well. They all have a pretty good library that plays to their strength and while certain ones may be preferable if you like certain genres, you can't go wrong with any of them. So basically, autists being autistic.
Too strong a word, but it is more of a tech demo than a game.
Aren't tech demos non-playable videos? Sort of like the stuff the demoscene does for different old computers. Nights had very tight and fun gameplay, I had fun playing it.
It's a platformer you can fly around in, like Kirby but worse. Gets boring after an hour of play, if that. Should've just been Sonic 4 instead.
it's only a platformer when you lose Nights and have to walk as one of the kids, but I still wouldn't say it's a "platformer", you don't really need to do precise jumps and there's no pits you can fall to your death, it's mostly a way to get back to the place where you can turn into nights again.
It's hard describing what Nights is as a game genre, you can fly freely anywhere, sort of like Fantasy Zone, but instead of shooting it's about collecting spheres and beating enemies by doing acrobatic moves around them.
The basic issue is Sega tried to copy the formula that had worked so well on the Mega Drive of consolizing an arcade board, but the arcade board the Saturn was derived from wasn't as easy or cheap to consolize.
>The basic issue is Sega tried to copy the formula that had worked so well on the Mega Drive of consolizing an arcade board, but the arcade board the Saturn was derived from wasn't as easy or cheap to consolize.
SOJ sent engineers over to SOA to look at a piece of hardware that Silicon Graphics / MIPS showed in private, only to have SOJ turn it down. Not only that, Tom Kalinske said that MIPS/ SGI went and revised their prototype based on some of SOJ's criticisms. They showed it to the same SOJ engineers twice, and it was rejected both times.
>Is there any Japan-side narrative about the whole SGI situation?
Not that I can tell. It seems like only a few people from Japan saw the N64 prototype hardware. From what it sounds like, the revised prototype was the hardware that SGI sold to Nintendo.
[...]
How many more times are you going to try to convince people that Saturn fans claim the system would have triumphed with Visual novels?
Nobody says that, you're making it up.
People just say Bernie was the reason many 2D games remained in japan, both on Saturn and PS1, and this is hard fact. It has nothing to do with saving the Saturn or not. The Saturn was hard to save when the PS1 existed.
>People just say Bernie was the reason many 2D games remained in japan, both on Saturn and PS1, and this is hard fact. It has nothing to do with saving the Saturn or not. The Saturn was hard to save when the PS1 existed.
In 1996, Sega held media events like these to convince us that games like Sonic Xtreme would be on track for a Christmas 1996 release:
Crash Bandicoot (Stolar had a hand in this game too) came out September 9th 1996 (The 1 year anniversary of the NA launch of the PS1) , and was advertised to compete directly with the N64 launch and Mario 64, which were released on September 29th 1996. The original Crash commercials showed Crash drive right up to Nintendo's HQ in Washington State to yell at Mario with a bullhorn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTi5EaocGaY
Crash was a real hit for Holiday season 1996. Also Mario 64 was an obvious big hit as well. :
Crash took Sonic's place as a competitor to Mario. All SOA had was Nights, which was released in August 1996. NiGHTS didn't have any of the appeal of Sonic, and SOA had some pretty desperate commercials like this:
Holiday seasons are big for game companies. True make or break period for console sole manufacturers.
They did. They actually had two different pieces of hardware in development as the successor to the Saturn. Sega of japan had project Katana, which became the Dreamcast. Sega of America was developing project BlackBelt, which used a 3DFX chipset.
Silicon Graphics pitched Sega of America the prototype N64 hardware before Nintendo signed contracts with SGI/ MIPS. Maybe 1993-ish? My guess. They never specified the date when it happened. It was probably similar to what was shown off in this video:
The issue here is that people romanticize corporate stuff and see it as if companies were characters that either win or lose.
The home video game market usually has a dominant brand and then competitors, sometimes it can get even (like SNES vs Genesis in the west in the early 90s), but having a competitive 3rd party is not the norm.
It doesn't really matter if the Sega Saturn was easier to develop for, if Sega did everything right, if a good 3D Sonic came out for it.
Sony was still forcing the PS1 into the market at full force and there was very little video game-only companies like nintendo or sega could do.
Neither nintendo nor sega could have convinced Squaresoft to make FF VII exclusive for them in exchange of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, just as an example.
Neither Sega nor Nintendo owned CD pressing factories.
Neither Sega nor Nintendo were mega corporations with branches in all sort of media, they were just vidya companies.
Microsoft and Sony came to replace Nintendo and Sega in the hardware market.
Nintendo were able to keep making them due to Luck form the Heavens, basically. And Pokemon.
You mean because they had different business in the past?
The Nintendo we know is not the card-manufactured, it's the video game era. >but they did toys! they still make cards every now and then!
Yeah they make merchandising, Sega does too. But without their video games they couldn't sell merchandise.
Sony was never a video game company, they were an electronics corporation that went into the music industry, the film industry, the TV industry.
You don't have music CDs on a Nintendo label, or movies produced by Sega for hollywood, you only get licenses from either Sega or Nintendo if they ever get music CDs released or movies about their properties.
My Saturn is still working perfectly in 2022.
These things are built like rock, I went through several PS1s and PS2s, but my Saturn is still my original one from the 90s.
Where did that quality control go when the Dreamcast launched? Mine still works (from Christmas '99), but it ruined my Sonic Adventure and Power Stone discs somehow.
Bernie passed on JRPGs because no one was interested in that. He also passed on the best ports of KOF97, Samurai Shodow 2, Xmen vs SF, Street Fighter Alpha 3 because no one was interested in that. Also passed on Radiant Silvergun, Dodonpachi, Gunbird, Strikers 1945, Battle Garegga, Metal Black, the rest of ultra rare shmup library because no one was interest in that. Also passed on cinematic adventures D no Shokutaku, (only released in Europe) Enemy Zero, (only released in Europe) Deep Fear, (only released in Europe) because no one was interested in that. Also passed on the superior version of Exhumed (only released in Europe) because no one was interested on that.
I know you're being a passive agressive weeb but unironic yes to all of that.
jrpgs were never popular in america, and they're a genre whose importance is vastly overstated due to most retro "historians" being fat shut in nerds, both now and at the time. even ff7, which had a massive advertising campaign, and was sold in advertisements using only cutscene footage under the premise it looked like a Pixar movie only sold around 3-4m copies in the US and had 70% of it's sales outside of America. It was far less popular and talked about than series like Medal of Honor, Tony Hawk, Syphon Filter, Resident Evil, Twisted Metal, Driver, Tekken, or Crash. No jrpg without final fantasy in the title sold even 1m copies, with most being lucky to break 200k. Keep in mind this is on a console that had literally 10x the market penetration of the Saturn, and had all the big name companies producing for it as opposed to C and D tier Saturn devs.
Fighting games are more popular, but the heavy hitters at the time like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had PlayStation releases and the entire idea of superior versions is revisionist history on the back of simple emulation now, that no one cared about at the time. No one was going to buy a console to play a slightly better version of a game they could already play on the console they already owned. The alpha 3 port also came out in 2000 and is a complete non-factor. The Saturn was beyond dead and buried in 97 let alone when the Dreamcast itself was on its last legs.
Shmups are a niche genre for shut INS even in Japan, and the other games are D tier trash that would be totally forgotten on any other console, and are notable only because the Saturns game library is so poor. Equivalent of calling games like Tonic Trouble or Nightmare Creatures killer apps.
>No jrpg without final fantasy in the title sold even 1m copies, with most being lucky to break 200k.
Well, Legend of Dragoon is an exception, but JRPG fans really need to drill this into their heads.
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had nearly no presence on the 32bit home console market, unless you imported Saturn titles. Alpha was something most kids did not give a shit about and MK had the goofiest entries of the entire series come out this time (however MK3 and UMK3 were exclusives for a short time).
The only SF people played on the Playstation were the SF Ex games. Everyone else played Tekken, Soul Blade, and maybe Bloody Roar and DOA1. I don't remember a single person giving a shit about any of the other SF2 games back in the 90s.
>even ff7, which had a massive advertising campaign, and was sold in advertisements using only cutscene footage under the premise it looked like a Pixar movie only sold around 3-4m copies in the US
That's as much as TMNT on the NES sold and that was like the biggest selling third party game it had.
I know that. The major NES RPGs in North America were FF1, the four Dragon Quest games, and Crystalis and none of those scratched the sales numbers for Bases Loaded, Skate or Die, or T&C Surf Designs.
yes but if you believed e-celebs Dragon Quest III sold 10 million copies in the US and every American 12 year old was playing it instead of RBI Baseball or Bad Street Brawler.
Doesn't help some segasat exclusives ended up getting brought over with extra content on the PS like soukyugurentai, thunder force v, silhouette mirage, grandia, gekioh.
>grandia
Grandia and Lunar should have been Saturn exclusive. Instead they gave all the sales to Sony PSX because of the huge FF7 anime JRPG popularity boom. But Bernie was an anime hater.
Was that really his fault, though? Sega thrived off dudebro appeal in the 16-bit era. They used it as a foil to Nintendo of America's family friendliness. The Genesis was where EA sports games took off in popularity.
>dudebro appeal
Nobody liked that stupid shit except urban youths and Fred Durst. SOA was moronic for rejecting Japan. Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
>Nobody liked that stupid shit except urban youths and Fred Durst.
So the average consumer of video games in North America? This was a few years before Columbine made being an edgy white kid slightly less cool.
>Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
Sony went out of their way to attract the dudebro crowd just as much, anon. Where do you think those EA sports games went? Hell, where did the vast majority of M-rated console games end up?
>Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
You don't remember Sony's marketing if you think they were aiming mainly at actual gamers. sony ads were marked by having an attitude and a coolness that was similar, but more adult than sega. sega was trying to be cool to kids and preteens, Sony was trying to be cool for the older highschooler/college crowd.
>killed the Sega Saturn
He wasn't that powerful lol. The Saturn was already dead in the west because of Sony, not because of Bernie (well, bernie was a Sony plant, but besides that).
he was just a passing businessman, not a creator or even an important figure.
not to disrespect him as a person or anything, but professionally speaking he wasn't an example and the only reason we even have a thread about it is because he's sort of a meme due to how bizarre his business life was.
>Never do you hear about how you and friends stayed up all night playing saturn games.
Can and have; Contrary evidence is easily ignored when you're set on an idea so I don't blame you for overlooking it
RIP to a great guy. Thanks for the Dreamcast. Pretty cool last ditch effort for a ship that had been sinking fast since the Genesis expansions. It's so obvious as to why the Saturn failed to me. Sega during the Genesis succeeded in appealing to an the contemporary trends in the adolescent and young adult markets, succeeding in catching a huge contemporary wave and thus appealing to an entire generation of kids who had grown up the NES and were primed to react to this super contemporary, western campaign because they were now teenagers and young adults. they followed it up with software that appealed along the same themes, and also largely succeeded with taking games that were more Japanese in nature and conveying them along the same lines because they had created that consumer buy-in.
By comparison the Saturn had next to nothing about it that seemed western and it had no marketing or software to catch that same demographic. People distrust Kalinske because he's very shiny and smooth and CEO-LIKE but his basic point about the Saturn is right: the Saturn is I Japanese. It did not appeal to the youth demographic that the Genesis captured so well. And not only was Sony a huge corporation, but, their marketing succeeded in stealing that audience. The PS1 marketing was huge and well-received, normal people were hype as hell about something there was no precedent for....and just like the Genesis did, they had the software to back it up. Sega started declining before the Saturn was even out, hemorrhaged money through the whole ordeal, and then NEARLY made it with the Dreamcast---and then they dropped out of the market. It's amazing they were able to regain anything and ended up producing a console (in record time) that time has proven is really cool and unique. The Dreamcast is bigger than it ever was. Long live Bernie I guess!
>People distrust Kalinske because he's very shiny and smooth and CEO-LIKE but his basic point about the Saturn is right:
Keep in mind that Tom Kalinske left Sega at the 1996, and the 1996 Holiday season was not good for the Sega Saturn. I think Tom was betting on a Sonic game to pull them out of a slump, and it would give Sega something to compete against Nintendo and Sony. Sony adopted Crash as their mascot for the PS1 years, and they used the same tactics that Sega used with Sonic in the 16bit days, but to compete with Mario 64. Crash and Tomb Raider on the PS1 were big hits, along with the PS1 third party line up. The N64 also had Mario 64, Shadows of the Empire and 5 other games. Sega also had Tomb Raider, but it generally looked worse than the PS1 version, and NiGHTS didn't catch on with the masses. Sega did release Sonic 3D Blast for the Genesis and Saturn. That was your 1996 Sonic game for the Saturn, a Genesis port.
Sure, for a consumer perspective holding the Dreamcast for a year gave it more launch titles and gave it a better first impression, but from a business perspective? not so much.
[...]
The Saturn was dead long before Bernie set a foot on Sega.
Those scenarios aren't alike at all, the DC already had a bunch of its launch titles (including their brand mascot, Sonic) ready by the time Sega wanted to launch it and by then the DC was cheaper than the Saturn at launch, on top of the fact that sega was bleeding money for over 2 years.
>Bernie Stolar killed Sega! Bernie Stolar killed the Saturn!
Sega killed Sega. The market killed the Saturn. Consumers killed the Saturn. Bernie just laid it to rest.
This thread shows why jumping on bandwagons always sucks ass.
Always better to wait and become a fan later once everyone else moves on to next product.
Bernie did good and bad. Typical game development person. They're never great people, and sometimes they're bad people.
Stolar, Kojima, Miyamoto, Jaffe, Carmack and Romero, Sakaguchi and Matsuda, Horii, etc all have their shit-and-ass moments.
As long as they weren't complete gays I give em a pass, considering the state of modern gaming. If we only knew in the 90s and 00s it could get this bad.
Here's a list of Based Bernie's favourite games if you were wondering what to play in his honour:
>San Francisco Rush 2049 >Crash Bandicoot >Crazy Taxi >Gex >Soul Calibur >the Sonic Adventure franchise >the Oddworld series >Ridge Racer >Battle Arena Toshinden >Spider-Man (the Dreamcast version) >the 2K Sports series in general
Daily reminder the Saturn killed Sega. >inb4 Saturn apologists scapegoat the 32X
No, having the worst designed hardware full of bloated and strange engineering that was much worse at 3D than PSX and the N64 as well as being more costly to manufacture and more tedious to develop on did Sega in harder than some add-on that only Genesis owners would have cared about buying to extend the life of that system.
Frick the Sega Saturn, frick Segata Sanshiro, and frick weebs who like that piece of shit.
>b-b-but it sold almost 7 million units in Japan!
At the cost of ruining their far more lucrative and successful western markets. Nice going SoJ, you fricking morons.
Playstation only won because Sega didn't offer a better 5th gen system. If Saturn hadn't sucked so much balls, Sega would've crushed Sony and nobody would even remember the Playstation, it'd be just another 3DO.
>Playstation only won because Sega didn't offer a better 5th gen system.
playstation won because it wasn't sega or nintendo - the corporations, not the systems. sony offered favourable licensing terms to developers, gave them greater control over their final product, you could use any PC to program the playstation dev machine etc. sega and nintendo couldn't compete like that. they've always insisted they retain control over nearly every aspect of their food chains.
>the net yaroze is what made sony win
someone post that funny santa claus webm.
anyway, sony won because they burned money on advertising (even offering multi-million dollar campaigns to third parties), owning the CD pressing factories and understanding the market.
Previous companies like Panasonic didn't fully understand how the video game market worked, Sony did, and used their corporation powers to penetrate it.
Nintendo and Sega should have both died once microsoft stepped in, but Nintendo managed to survive somehow, but never at the same level as Sony and MS.
>the net yaroze
that's not net yaroze, but similar colour. are you moronic?
> advertising
also another area where sega and nintendo couldn't compete. not the reason why they failed. anything but the console itself! even with its flawed gpu, it was still shitting on sega and nintendollers. oh wait, that's right.. it was the games that made people buy playstation in the millions. people were tired of bing bing wahoo!, blue spinning ball etc. and now had access to software that wasn't written for moronic children (you had an option to buy such trash!). playstation changed everything. cope.
2 years ago
Anonymous
based mature playstation gamer. mature games didn't exist before playstation. kids suck, adults rock.
playstation is for adults.
>topic of debate is the American branch, a products impact on the public perception of Americans, and the downfall of a company who had the majority of their success in America >better use worldwide sales figures!
Disingenuous idiots.
There were times when some devs could get interesting results with Saturn ports of PS1 games. But generally speaking, 3RD parties were getting a lot more out of the PS1 hardware with a lot less effort. Saturn ports would require devs to have to remake all of their 3D assets with quads. Some devs couldn't be bothered trying to get both CPU's to function. The Saturn could do some interesting things, when devs know how to take advantage of the hardware.
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/S7212902
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/S7240649 >auster spent his xmas and new year shitposting alone
frick, that's actually sad.
He was a shady guy who didn't last much in each company he headed back in the 90s and made some decisions like not bringing japanese 2D games to PS1 or Saturn, ending the Saturn's support earlier than japan (this is probably understandable considering Saturn wasn't popular at all outside of Asia), and waiting like a year to release the Dreamcast in the west.
But mostly people remember it for his anti-2D policy, rather than the saturn is not our future quote (that's more like a recent meme some shitposter is trying to force here).
He also was a blatant businessman who never cared about video games, but he wasn't the only one, kalinske was the same.
As someone who owned a Saturn and a Dreamcast. I loved the Saturn for what it was. But if you were not spending big $$$ Japanese imports, there was little to chose from in NA. Not many retailers would not stock Saturn games anywhere in Canada around my area. Dreamcast on the other hand... I payed $200.00 Canadian, which was a steal. And Sega kept pumping games out fr that system until they cancelled it too. It sadly did not last long. but I have like 25+ Dreamcast games. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed with the VF3 port, and would still like the Saturn for VF2. For anything else, the Dreamcast was a trip. I would find games at Futureshop (RIP) for $20.00 a pop. I think bernie Stolar actually gave it a shot with the Dreamcast. But ... PS2 hype was a funny thing.
he is the same motherfricker who said >what is streets of rage
when streets of rage 4 got presented to that homosexual, he is a fricking butthole, good thing he died, thanks for cancelling streets of rage 4 butthole.
sticky when?
BASED BURNIE RESTING IN PARADISE
FRICK THE SATURN
DREAMCAST FOR ETERNITY
posting in an auster thread
S for Shiturn is not our future
>it's real
Well shit
Yeah, I just came across the story myself after just passing this thread. Sorry for the family and sorry for Sega fans.
POSTING IN A STICKY
They won't. I haven't seen a sticky here for any big retro name's death.
They better make one for John Romero when the time comes
Why? Romero's a certified leftist poofter who can't develop a good game on his own or even design good levels.
>Muuh rombeero!
You can hold a memorial service in the containment general.
RIP sir
Sticky NOW
Did Sir Clive get a sticky? I'm pretty sure he did but it was a while ago.
Deadcast
Never cared about him, but RIP.
Good riddance
Saturn bros, it's our time!
RIP
I’d imagine he’s “feelin the bern” right about now. RIP in piss, Saturn slayer.
press S to spit on the Shiturn
For anyone looking for a source:
https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/25/gaming-legend-bernie-stolar-passes-away/
I like the part where he talks about being scared of getting shit canned at sony, then moves on to sega only to shit can 200 of their employees.
The shining force team was fricking pissed, left sega, and became camelot due his actions
They were called Camelot by SF3
>Dean Takahashi
>https://venturebeat.com/2022/06/25/gaming-legend-bernie-stolar-passes-away/
>"“When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding,” Stolar said."
God damn lol
I wonder if Bernie didn't show up, if the Dreamcast would have had a DVD player. They were like 1 year too quick
oh hell no, this bastard brought Moore into the games industry and he pushed for the MTX hell we live in
I PRESS S ON YOUR GRAVE
>Cuphead Tutorial Man wrote this
maybe today will be a good day after all
Isn't he the guy who tried to save Sega but Sega was too shit to understand he was doing them good?
AHAHAHAHAHA THAT FRICKING WAKLING ANIMATION FOR THE LITTLE DEMON GUY ON THE ARCADE VERSION FRICK I LAUGHED WAY TOO HARD AND STILL AM AS I FINISH THIS POST. THIS IS A JOKE GIF?
no it was the opposite. he constantly engaged in censorship and denied game release after game release only for ps1 to release them instead and then wondered why sega saturn is not selling when he literally wouldnt let it to have games. he was real piece of shit
yeah that's kind of the impression a lot of people got... he was like Yamauchi in that he hated RPGs right? Or he saw them as impossible to sell. I still see him as a SONY plant but I don't think anyone can blame him for Saturn's early launch?
Well who was responsible for dropping the Saturn in the laps of everyone by surprise? What was that person's rationale for doing so?
Shining Force III blueball edition
> Successfully removed all third party support from the Sega Saturn, then all 2D games.
> Sabotaged the Sonic Xtreme.
Bernie Stolar was at Sony when all of that happened. The Sega Saturn was a blunder at launch. It was expensive for Sega to manufacture, they lost money on each system sold. Third party publishers were bailing from the machine for the PS1 before Bernie showed up. Sonic Xtreme wasn't his project. Bernie may have helped popularise 3D gaming with the success of the Playstation. He also did prioritise 3D games over 2D ones. But... that's where the game industry was heading anyway. The mass population was getting board of 2D games, so the PS1 became a big hit regardless. The popularity of the PS1 did cause Sega of America to not publish a lot of 2D games in the west. They were trying to focus more on the Saturn's 3D capabilities. Which only ended up making the Saturn look weaker than the PS1. Tom Kalinske was Sega USA President until 1996. The Saturn was already a sinking ship in 1997.
>What Saturn game should I play in his honor?
Panzer Dragoon Saga
The Sega Saturn was a blunder when Bernie showed in 1996, but he was the one going to Atlus (Devil Summoner), Konami (Policenauts), Game Arts (Grandia, as a collab with Sega of America cancelled in 1998 then picked by fricking Sony) and Working Designs (Lunar remakes, Silhouette Mirage) to "convince them" to cancel almost ready localizations, all the while cancelling a ton of already finished localizations of expensive 3D games made by Sega internally (Deep Fear, Griffon 2)
>Panzer Dragoon Saga
Oh, the one the loc team said was constantly at threat of being localized and was shipped with an extremely low print run that would never turn a profit even if it sold out, which it actually did?
One of Bernie Stolar's achievements besides stating as early as 1997 (with ZERO backup plan between 1997 and september 1999, keeping in mind the Dreamcast was supposed to be ready by 1998) that "the saturn was not our future", basically forcing companies like Capcom to scrap almost complete ports of PS1 games (Resident Evil 2, the other Mega Man games, their myriads of 2d arcade ports whose approval by SCEA was a coin toss) which they were eager to develop as a failsafe to Sony SCEA policies easily rejecting complete games at submission for "quality" reasons.
Then as he realized some companies were still supporting the Saturn, he removed stuff like RAM packs from stores, and as game publishers were finding loopholes and directly commanding those RAM packs from Sega of Japan, he complained to SoJ directly to plug those holes.
Not to mention that it was between 1996 and 1999 that Microsoft was introduced to Sega to work on their Dreamcast OS.
Bernie killed most of Sega of America's inhouse productions (published on PC, even proposed a fricking N64 port for a Virtua Fighter 3 port that got vetoed) and didn't allow JP games to be imported by SoA or otherwise. Also SoA didn't do its job at translating the documentation. No shit a console with no games wouldn't sell.
I wonder if he's the reason the Dreamcast port of SRW Alpha got canned and not Harmony Gold
>muh 2D
>muh jrpgs
This is nothing but butthurt revisionist shit. No one gave a frick about 2D outside of a few rare outliers and by the time JRPGs began to boom outside of Japan the Saturn was already on death's door. Bernie is nothing but a scapegoat for n words who can't deal with the fact the Saturn was a crap console with a few decent ports of arcade games which aged like stinky cheese.
>Taking shitposting seriously
Nice job ignoring everything else btw.
Bernie versus Segata
Oh man. Better dig out my Dreamcast in his honour. RIP.
Yep. But he's just reporting on Bernie's death so there's not much margin for error.
He did what had to be done
F
>this person deserves to die because of 30 year old toys
You really are a schizoid if you think anybody other than yourself is overjoyed
>equating being happy someone died of old age with actively wishing death upon them
Why are you gay, anon
??????????????
How do you come up with that shit
homie you would better spend your time by reading Anabasis
I'm sorry man i couldn't see the genius of SoJ whose expertise led to a crowning distant second place barely ahead of the N64, that's the true achievement of the japanese saturn library, if it only was brought to the US the console would've sold millions.
I can only KNEEL to the genius of the yamato race.
Rest in peace Sega king and leader. We will honor you.
Top kek
>Post 2D game made by nips
Poser
t. Saturn lover
>Stating facts makes you a saturn lover
Thanks for the info i guess.
I guess it was a compliment, since Saturn is known for good 2D games made in Japan?
>it's popular to hate [x], so I will support [x] ironically to piss people off online
This kind of midwit contrarianism is so boring.
I don't get it either, people wouldn't even care about Sega if not for their japanese IPs.
Well, on one hand you have the unironic but still midwit take of supporting SoA and hating SoJ because of all the Kalinske interviews that were shilled during the 2010s,where he blamed everything to the Japanese and make it seem as if he was the savior of Sega (when in reality, he only had 1 good idea and then hundreds of shitty ones that made SoA a complete joke).
The Japanese never said anything bad about SoA, by the way, I doubt there's any actual rivalry between the two, and if anything, SoJ was probably happy that Genesis was doing well in USA.
But yeah, all the shilling got people to suck Kalinske off and hate SoJ as if they were the devil, when, as you say, all the hardware and games that made Sega good were Japanese.
But Bernie is a total different story. He's obviously an incompetent businessman who is even suspected of being a plant to sabotage other companies, but people ironically glorify him now because it's the "troll" thing to do, hur dur
Love that SoA is the joke despite selling 8 times the number of genesis models than japan, Dreamcast twice the units, and for the saturn only half which you blame on the Idiocy of Kalinske and not the hardware that wasn't up to task, the soft that wasn't either, or the 100 dollaridos above the playstation required to buy one
Can't argue with the high iq move of spending 70.000.000 on Shenmue, the cost being comparable to 3/4 of the TOTAL marketing budget for the dreamcast.
Face it sport without the israelite sega is kaput.
>Love that SoA is the joke despite selling 8 times the number of genesis models than japan, Dreamcast twice the units
Because they were cheap and had Sonic in it, Japan just didn't care about sega beyond their arcade games.
>and for the saturn only half which you blame on the Idiocy of Kalinske
He didn't even mention the Saturn in that post.
>Because they were cheap and had Sonic in it
So naturally Sega of Japan's next move was to have an expensive console without Sonic on it.
SoA was a joke in terms of content. Kalinske burned a lot of money developing mediocre to really bad shovelware with very few exceptions, but no SoA game is really up to the AAA standard that Sega of Japan did, and you know it full well.
As I said, in terms of sheer numbers, SoJ was probably happy about SoA. In the end, money that served Sega HQ at Japan, anyway.
The whole SoA vs SoJ rivalry never existed, you just bought into a western journo narrative.
>Kalinske burned a lot of money developing mediocre to really bad shovelware with very few exceptions, but
Other than The Ooze I can't think of a noteworthy SOA game.
I'd say Comix Zone is their best offering. I never liked the gameplay, I think it doesn't fit the style of game they were trying to do, but I appreciate the creativity in its presentation.
Vectorman is probably my favorite american Sega game. Only played the first game though, I know the 2nd is supposed to be really bad. Vectorman 1 seemed good enough for me.
Garfield Caught In The Act, but the PC port was better.
I had never bothered to check who developed that originally but yes it was an American studio. The look and feel of the game wasn't very Japanese tbqh.
SoJ supplied a badly designed console with no sequels to the SoJ games that sold the genesis, they neglected the non-japanese market that put them in their position, i don't believe they had a rivalry with SoA, they just took bad decision all around, SoA was the junior partner so i don't think they are to blame for anything, they had one job which was to sell the hardware and games and they did damn fine, you fault them for making shitty games but they still sold in the genesis period so that's not the question, the question is why SoJ with their games couldn't sell in the saturn era.
>SoJ supplied a badly designed console with no sequels to the SoJ games that sold the genesis
tbqh Sonic Team were getting burned out and wanted to make different stuff so it's understandable why they did NID instead of Yet Another Sonic Game (TM).
Kalinske always comes across like a narcissistic douchebag in interviews. I wouldnt take his bragging too serious.
>The Japanese never said anything bad about SoA, by the way, I doubt there's any actual rivalry between the two, and if anything, SoJ was probably happy that Genesis was doing well in USA.
Kalinske didn't want to bring over Phantasy Star IV until Working Designs wanted to, of course he's an unreliable narrator.
There are numerous times when the Japanese side said "something bad" about SoA. Like admitting that the decision to release the X32 with that timing was a monumentally stupid idea (SoA's idea), or that the music replacements for Japanese music done in Sonic CD, Sonic 2, and Sonic 3 weren't accepted by the Japanese side (for Sonic CD they didn't even know about it, for Sonic 2 SoA gave them a replacement track for everything and they thought it sounded like dogshit and that the Japanese bands were better, for Sonic 3 they said multiple times that the MJ situation was troublesome and that the older games didn't have the same issue)
owned for sinking the wonderswan lol get cremated
This calls for Dreamcast posting.
Post Dreamcast kino tracks:
Wow. Same death day as my fathers birth/death day.
Master System was the first console my father bought us.
Dreamcast was the first system I saved up and preordered and got at launch my self.
Would never have been able to do that without my dad, and without Stolar bringing out something that I wanted bad enough to work hard and save up for.
Sega and it’s people have a special place for me. RIP buddy, say hi to my dad. Gonna play some Dreamcast today
Hope you're doing well wherever you are anon.
Your dad died on his birthday? I'm sorry to hear that anon. Hope you're doing OK.
One if the biggest idiot in the industry.
The irony. My launch Saturn is still alive and well and Rabbi Bernie has gone to hell. Hey that rhymes! Anyway good riddance.
I guess Bernie Stolar wasnt our future
What your babbling about?
Japan didn't care about Sonic at the time and didn't want to force Sonic team to make another Sonic.
Just because we acknowledge SoA's mistakes doesn't mean we think SoJ is perfect.
>and didn't want to force Sonic team to make another Sonic.
Probably the most mind-blowingly stupid decision from Sega.
*what are you
Frick
He was implicitly referring to the saturn.
The abortion thing is an offbrand topical joke, feel safe to ignore it
I'm not saying Kalinske is a genius mastermind but at very least SoJ fricked up at rates consistent or possible a bit more than SoA
That's the thing, SoJ and SoA are idiots, it's just that SoA was able to get actual profit out of Japan's IPs which leads to people arguing which one is better.
If Sega were actually competent they would either have made their brand way bigger before the Saturn's launch or would've taken advantage of their brand loyality when it mattered the most.
>taken advantage of their brand loyality
If they would only do that now.
Still some life left in that dead horse.
Sega of America's success came at a cost that eventually caught up with them. They were over producing and high on their own success. And when the 16-bit systems started to dry up around 1994-1996, they were completely unprepared.
While Sega of Japan's mistakes were dumb and caused some problems, Sega of Americas mistakes did far more damage to the company in the long term.
They were. While it had a lukewarm reception in Japan in 1988, the Genesis was selling like mad in the USA after experiencing a rebirth after Kalinske became president of SoA, slashed the price of the console, and bundled Sonic the Hedgehog with it. It was kicking Nintendo's ass HARD until they got the SNES out into the American market...at which point they were neck-and-neck. Kalinske's extremely aggressive "frick Nintendo" marketing campaign was unironically working out extremely well. Then in early 1994, Sega CEO Nakayama proposed and pushed a "bridge" in the form of a 32-bit cartridge based console to SoA, which they collectively stated was a terrible idea, but agreed to make it an add-on instead. The problem was, Sega of Japan was ready to move on. Nobody told SoA that SoJ was developing the Saturn. So when the announcement of the Saturn came a short few months after the 32X was announced, all of the momentum for the 32X ground to screeching halt, and many of the big third-parties withdrew support. The biggest kick in the teeth was that SoA promised long-term support and a diverse library of games utilizing the 32X on release...which it didn't have due to the announcement of the Saturn. This damaged the frick out of Sega's credibility, caused multiple rushed titles for the 32X in order to attempt salvaging the disastrously-weak launch (same day as Donkey Kong Country for the SNES which pushed that console to its limits, and looked better, played better, and was more fun than most 32X releases), and it put SoA and SoJ at odds with each other. They never really recovered, so it's led me to believe that it's the single most pivotal flop in the industry next to E.T.
All because nobody told SoA about the Saturn's development. Both sides fricked up, SoA for going forward with such a boneheaded idea to begin with in a world where the 3DO, Jaguar, and soon Sony were making waves, and SoJ for being too secretive of the Saturn.
Could SoA have realistically refused to launch the 32x?
Unsure. There's not enough information on the meeting without speaking directly to the SoA executive team from that time. The only thing anyone can safely say is that Sega would've been in a stronger market position in all regions without releasing the 32X.
F
Reminder: The "genesis does" shit was there before Kalinke showed up.
It was?
Yes, it was there since the console lauched in the USA, unlike Kalinske.
What Saturn game should I play in his honor?
Bonus points if it's 2D and Japanese.
Desire of course.
Sakura Wars
So many people shit on Bernie for the Sega Saturn. But Bernie didn't do anything, the Saturn was already dead by 1997 in America, anyway. All Bernie did was put the last nail into the coffin. When the Dreamcast bombed, didn't David Rosen convince Sega to get out of the hardware business, anyway?
There are MANY reasons to shit on Bernie, the Saturn just happens to be the one most people talk about.
>There are MANY reasons to shit on Bernie, the Saturn just happens to be the one most people talk about.
All Stolar did for the Saturn was take it out to the tool shed and put a bullet into it. The Sega Saturn was already far gone by mid 1997. Nobody could save that console in the west. Not with the PS1 and N64 on the market. Stolar was there for the creation and discontinuation of the Sega Dreamcast.
I don't remember stating that he was the one who ruined the Saturn.
>
All Stolar did for the Saturn was take it out to the tool shed and put a bullet into it. The Sega Saturn was already far gone by mid 1997. Nobody could save that console in the west. Not with the PS1 and N64 on the market. Stolar was there for the creation and discontinuation of the Sega Dreamcast. (You)
>I don't remember stating that he was the one who ruined the Saturn.
I guess I wasn't referring to you directly. I just mean in general people accuse Bernie Stolar of 'killing' the Saturn. Bernie came on board as Sega CEO in early- mid 1997. Saturn already previously lost big during Christmas 1996, when Sega had NiGHTS into dreams up against the N64 launch library, and the cheaper PS1 with Crash. Bernie Stolar did the most obvious thing any business man would have done, and just discontinued the console. Sega was losing money on it.
>I just mean in general people accuse Bernie Stolar of 'killing' the Saturn.
By people, do you mean Bernie? See:
>Bernie Stolar did the most obvious thing any business man would have done, and just discontinued the console.
Correction: Didn't formally discontinue the console, but pretended to support it while sabotaging every single ongoing development project targeting it so that it's no longer profitable on release, not even TurboGrafx-16 levels of profit.
In the meanwhile, as no money profits are going into Sega, he's constantly laying off people (from his experience with managing the twilight years of the Atari Lynx - horror stories of refusing to pay developers and still expecting them to finish on time, echoes of which can be seen with the management of the Sonic Xtreme project) and spending secondary R&D on plans to make the Saturn successor dependent on a Microsoft-made OS.
The DreamCast was ready at some point, and so was its killer app (and even its TGS demos had full English data inside) yet he delayed it one whole year in America for no real reason and in his own words "one of the most expensive marketing campaigns ever made". Then, sold the console for loss, and blamed his ousting for SoJ's leadership change.
>By people, do you mean Bernie? See:
>"“When I got to Sega I immediately said, ‘We have to kill Saturn. We have to stop Saturn and start building the new technology.’ That’s what I did. I brought in a new team of people and cleaned house. There were 300-some-odd employees and I took the company down to 90 employees to start rebuilding,” Stolar said."
God damn lol
OK, maybe he did say that then. But he wasn't wrong. The writing was on the wall for the Saturn since Christmas 1996. The PS1 was getting all the third party support, the hardware was getting cheaper, they had a version of tomb Raider that looked and ran faster than the Saturn version. They had a mascot platformer called Crash Bandicoot that competed directly with Mario 64. Sonic Xtreme was a failure. because Sega made it clear that it was going to be out by Christmas 1996. They had NiGHTS with the Saturn 3D Pad instead. Bernie Stolar became CEO in march 1997, after the Sega Saturn's big 1996 holiday failure. Stolar was only pointing out the obvious.
This. Nothing short of a miracle was going to save Sega, and Dreamcast was close.
I wonder if they had focused more on PC ports from the beginning, since they were relatively easy to do, if they could've pulled it out in the end.
Ah well.
>This. Nothing short of a miracle was going to save Sega, and Dreamcast was close.
>I wonder if they had focused more on PC ports from the beginning, since they were relatively easy to do, if they could've pulled it out in the end.
>Ah well.
The Saturn carved out it's own market in japan, and it had a lot of appeal for JRPG's, Arcade fighters, shooters, etc. But in the NA market, it was a bad launch with limited supply, the machine generally can't quite compete with the PS1 when it comes to polygons. Sony and Nintendo were pushing 3D hard. Sega was trying to compete with games that would generally not look or run as good as their PS1 counterparts. The Saturn is an interesting piece of hardware, and can do impressive things too. But the PS1 was praised by third parties for being easy to use, and it could render lots of triangles fast. SOA was already refusing a lot of 2D games before Bernie came aboard. Bernie Stolar joined Sega in 1997. At that point, the Saturn was losing so hard in the North American market that nothing could really turn it around. In 1997, the Saturn lost a lot of retailer space to the PS1 and N64.
Tom Kalinski was the guy who fricked shit up.
>won't accept that the Mega Drive's time is over
>still keeps ordering giant piles of them from the factory despite it being 1995
>SOJ were horrified to discover warehouses full of unsold Mega Drives
>neglects to translate Saturn technical dox
He thought they could drag the Mega Drive out until 1998.
yeah a 7Mhz console with 2D graphics was going to still hang with PS1 and N64. what was that guy on?
He probably was just a terrible businessman that refused to get with the times. Maybe to some extent it would’ve worked with portable Genesis like the Nomad as tech got better, but that’s just wishful thinking.
It would have been 10 years old. Still the NES lasted 10 years, the Atari 2600 fourteen (!), the PS1 ten years, etc.
they were second-tier budget systems. and again the technological gap between NES and Mega Drive was not nearly as big as gap between Mega Drive and PS1.
There was some precedence, Genesis would’ve been a dirt cheap budget console with a huge library. It’s treating it less like a flagship or alternative to modern consoles and more like a toy.
>man dies
>weebs seethe about anime games and how Sega dying was actually Americans fault despite Sega never turning a profit a single time in the home consumer division in Japan for almost 20 years
Dreamcast launch was the best launch in video game history and remains so to this day
You gays are mentally ill.
>Best launch to this day
Beaten by PS2's launch, KEK
PS2 American launch lineup was not better than Dreamcast's.
Name a single good game in the dreamcast launch
Sonic Adventure, Power Stone, Soulcalibur, NFL 2k.
>Power Stone, Soulcalibur
K, you got me
>Rest
Lmao
Soul Calibur
NFL2K
Ready 2 Rumble
Sonic Adventure
Power Stone
House of the Dead 2
Blue Stinger
Hydro Thunder
Mahvel
Sega Bass Fishing
Expendable
So much this
Soul Calibur
NFL2K
Sonic Adventure
Power stone
Marvel vs Capcom
Outside of the shitposting about the screencap i don't think anyone here actually believes 2D games would've saved the Saturn.
That's just you having schizoid internal arguments with yourself.
Bernie is made fun of because his whole history is sketchy as hell, not just his brief time at Sega.
The reason Sega stopped making hardware was not the Saturn or the Dreamcast, it's a thing called PlayStation.
The Mega Drive came out when the NES was dominant but the technological gap between the two consoles was much smaller than the gap between the Mega Drive and 5th gen consoles. Technology made some really rapid advances during the 90s.
Wouldn't it be funny if Sega had a surprise announcement for a Saturn mini today?
sometimes i wonder if he never left sony. would the timeline be different where saturn would have release of SMT devil summoner and ps1 wouldnt get any persona at all instead
Nec didn't beat anyone, it just cultivated it's audience, the Saturn could have done the same.
How many more times are you going to try to convince people that Saturn fans claim the system would have triumphed with Visual novels?
Nobody says that, you're making it up.
People just say Bernie was the reason many 2D games remained in japan, both on Saturn and PS1, and this is hard fact. It has nothing to do with saving the Saturn or not. The Saturn was hard to save when the PS1 existed.
Even in Japan those games are laughed at as shovelware garbage for friendless shut-ins.
The Saturn was finished after 1995.
SATURN BAD
Bernie stopped releases on the Saturn because the Saturn was an entirely dead console by the end of the same year it released in. Packaging, manufacturing, translating, and finding retail space for any Saturn game by 1997 was a waste of time and resources, the consoles highest selling game of all time barely sold 70k copies, it's was a complete financial nightmare on every level, and the only business move to make was shutter everything and try to build up hype for the next console. Literally all Bernie did was save Sega from wasting a few more millions on games that would have sold at most 2-3k copies, and either have a print run so low they couldn't make profit from it anyway, or have backstock they'd have to take losses on. Bernie did the only move available to him which was shutter everything to ensure no more losses were possible and wait for the Dreamcast.
The only Saturn I've ever seen in my life was at a Goodwill once in like 2006 or so.
What makes you think it's garbage?
Too strong a word, but it is more of a tech demo than a game.
It's a platformer you can fly around in, like Kirby but worse. Gets boring after an hour of play, if that. Should've just been Sonic 4 instead.
>It's physically impossible to have a good Saturn thread
What's with this console and making people from both sides ape out?
RIP my homie. He may not have been perfext, but he was a man with a good vision for the future of gaming.
You should know this by now. For some reason, people here get so attached to consoles that they keep up dead console wars from the 90s in order to prove their fair maiden's superiority over those harlots, when pretty much all four main consoles (Saturn, N64, PSX and DC) of the late 90s had many flaws but many strenths as well. They all have a pretty good library that plays to their strength and while certain ones may be preferable if you like certain genres, you can't go wrong with any of them. So basically, autists being autistic.
>it was australia-kun again lol
Aren't tech demos non-playable videos? Sort of like the stuff the demoscene does for different old computers. Nights had very tight and fun gameplay, I had fun playing it.
it's only a platformer when you lose Nights and have to walk as one of the kids, but I still wouldn't say it's a "platformer", you don't really need to do precise jumps and there's no pits you can fall to your death, it's mostly a way to get back to the place where you can turn into nights again.
It's hard describing what Nights is as a game genre, you can fly freely anywhere, sort of like Fantasy Zone, but instead of shooting it's about collecting spheres and beating enemies by doing acrobatic moves around them.
But yeah, SOA didn't translate Saturn tech docs and they struggled to develop properly for it as they lacked the resources Japanese developers had.
The basic issue is Sega tried to copy the formula that had worked so well on the Mega Drive of consolizing an arcade board, but the arcade board the Saturn was derived from wasn't as easy or cheap to consolize.
History has generally shown that the hardware that is the simplest and cheapest to build tends to win (PS2 being the major exception).
>The basic issue is Sega tried to copy the formula that had worked so well on the Mega Drive of consolizing an arcade board, but the arcade board the Saturn was derived from wasn't as easy or cheap to consolize.
SOJ sent engineers over to SOA to look at a piece of hardware that Silicon Graphics / MIPS showed in private, only to have SOJ turn it down. Not only that, Tom Kalinske said that MIPS/ SGI went and revised their prototype based on some of SOJ's criticisms. They showed it to the same SOJ engineers twice, and it was rejected both times.
>soj are... BAD! ok?
I don't say he's lying but I wouldn't take his word 100%. Is there any Japan-side narrative about the whole SGI situation?
>Is there any Japan-side narrative about the whole SGI situation?
Not that I can tell. It seems like only a few people from Japan saw the N64 prototype hardware. From what it sounds like, the revised prototype was the hardware that SGI sold to Nintendo.
>People just say Bernie was the reason many 2D games remained in japan, both on Saturn and PS1, and this is hard fact. It has nothing to do with saving the Saturn or not. The Saturn was hard to save when the PS1 existed.
In 1996, Sega held media events like these to convince us that games like Sonic Xtreme would be on track for a Christmas 1996 release:
Crash Bandicoot (Stolar had a hand in this game too) came out September 9th 1996 (The 1 year anniversary of the NA launch of the PS1) , and was advertised to compete directly with the N64 launch and Mario 64, which were released on September 29th 1996. The original Crash commercials showed Crash drive right up to Nintendo's HQ in Washington State to yell at Mario with a bullhorn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTi5EaocGaY
Crash was a real hit for Holiday season 1996. Also Mario 64 was an obvious big hit as well. :
Crash took Sonic's place as a competitor to Mario. All SOA had was Nights, which was released in August 1996. NiGHTS didn't have any of the appeal of Sonic, and SOA had some pretty desperate commercials like this:
Holiday seasons are big for game companies. True make or break period for console sole manufacturers.
Was going to be similar to this San Francisco Rush board
https://www.system16.com/hardware.php?id=781
No, he said Silicon Graphics, 3DFX is a different company. Very well known for their PC video cards. To my understanding Sega never worked with 3dfx.
>To my understanding Sega never worked with 3dfx.
They did. They actually had two different pieces of hardware in development as the successor to the Saturn. Sega of japan had project Katana, which became the Dreamcast. Sega of America was developing project BlackBelt, which used a 3DFX chipset.
PowerVR, under an NEC license. Power VR is the company that acquired 3dfx when they were in their death throes...
>No, he said Silicon Graphics,
Silicon Graphics pitched Sega of America the prototype N64 hardware before Nintendo signed contracts with SGI/ MIPS. Maybe 1993-ish? My guess. They never specified the date when it happened. It was probably similar to what was shown off in this video:
The issue here is that people romanticize corporate stuff and see it as if companies were characters that either win or lose.
The home video game market usually has a dominant brand and then competitors, sometimes it can get even (like SNES vs Genesis in the west in the early 90s), but having a competitive 3rd party is not the norm.
It doesn't really matter if the Sega Saturn was easier to develop for, if Sega did everything right, if a good 3D Sonic came out for it.
Sony was still forcing the PS1 into the market at full force and there was very little video game-only companies like nintendo or sega could do.
Neither nintendo nor sega could have convinced Squaresoft to make FF VII exclusive for them in exchange of a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, just as an example.
Neither Sega nor Nintendo owned CD pressing factories.
Neither Sega nor Nintendo were mega corporations with branches in all sort of media, they were just vidya companies.
Microsoft and Sony came to replace Nintendo and Sega in the hardware market.
Nintendo were able to keep making them due to Luck form the Heavens, basically. And Pokemon.
Nintendo wasn't only a video game company. You caution about romanticism yet fall to it.
You mean because they had different business in the past?
The Nintendo we know is not the card-manufactured, it's the video game era.
>but they did toys! they still make cards every now and then!
Yeah they make merchandising, Sega does too. But without their video games they couldn't sell merchandise.
Sony was never a video game company, they were an electronics corporation that went into the music industry, the film industry, the TV industry.
You don't have music CDs on a Nintendo label, or movies produced by Sega for hollywood, you only get licenses from either Sega or Nintendo if they ever get music CDs released or movies about their properties.
Sony's biggest profits are actually from games, while nintendo reaps most of it's dosh from toys.
Source?
Looks like I'll be joining the saturn in the grave. Good thing it kept it warm for 28 years
My Saturn is still working perfectly.
My Saturn is still working perfectly in 2022.
These things are built like rock, I went through several PS1s and PS2s, but my Saturn is still my original one from the 90s.
Where did that quality control go when the Dreamcast launched? Mine still works (from Christmas '99), but it ruined my Sonic Adventure and Power Stone discs somehow.
9 hours later, still no sticky
why make a sticky for a clown
Bernie passed on JRPGs because no one was interested in that. He also passed on the best ports of KOF97, Samurai Shodow 2, Xmen vs SF, Street Fighter Alpha 3 because no one was interested in that. Also passed on Radiant Silvergun, Dodonpachi, Gunbird, Strikers 1945, Battle Garegga, Metal Black, the rest of ultra rare shmup library because no one was interest in that. Also passed on cinematic adventures D no Shokutaku, (only released in Europe) Enemy Zero, (only released in Europe) Deep Fear, (only released in Europe) because no one was interested in that. Also passed on the superior version of Exhumed (only released in Europe) because no one was interested on that.
I know you're being a passive agressive weeb but unironic yes to all of that.
jrpgs were never popular in america, and they're a genre whose importance is vastly overstated due to most retro "historians" being fat shut in nerds, both now and at the time. even ff7, which had a massive advertising campaign, and was sold in advertisements using only cutscene footage under the premise it looked like a Pixar movie only sold around 3-4m copies in the US and had 70% of it's sales outside of America. It was far less popular and talked about than series like Medal of Honor, Tony Hawk, Syphon Filter, Resident Evil, Twisted Metal, Driver, Tekken, or Crash. No jrpg without final fantasy in the title sold even 1m copies, with most being lucky to break 200k. Keep in mind this is on a console that had literally 10x the market penetration of the Saturn, and had all the big name companies producing for it as opposed to C and D tier Saturn devs.
Fighting games are more popular, but the heavy hitters at the time like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had PlayStation releases and the entire idea of superior versions is revisionist history on the back of simple emulation now, that no one cared about at the time. No one was going to buy a console to play a slightly better version of a game they could already play on the console they already owned. The alpha 3 port also came out in 2000 and is a complete non-factor. The Saturn was beyond dead and buried in 97 let alone when the Dreamcast itself was on its last legs.
Shmups are a niche genre for shut INS even in Japan, and the other games are D tier trash that would be totally forgotten on any other console, and are notable only because the Saturns game library is so poor. Equivalent of calling games like Tonic Trouble or Nightmare Creatures killer apps.
>No jrpg without final fantasy in the title sold even 1m copies, with most being lucky to break 200k.
Well, Legend of Dragoon is an exception, but JRPG fans really need to drill this into their heads.
I wear that as a badge of honor.
Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat had nearly no presence on the 32bit home console market, unless you imported Saturn titles. Alpha was something most kids did not give a shit about and MK had the goofiest entries of the entire series come out this time (however MK3 and UMK3 were exclusives for a short time).
The only SF people played on the Playstation were the SF Ex games. Everyone else played Tekken, Soul Blade, and maybe Bloody Roar and DOA1. I don't remember a single person giving a shit about any of the other SF2 games back in the 90s.
Because people expected the Saturn to be a dudebro college fraternity party but it was actually the successor to the PC Engine.
>even ff7, which had a massive advertising campaign, and was sold in advertisements using only cutscene footage under the premise it looked like a Pixar movie only sold around 3-4m copies in the US
That's as much as TMNT on the NES sold and that was like the biggest selling third party game it had.
I know that. The major NES RPGs in North America were FF1, the four Dragon Quest games, and Crystalis and none of those scratched the sales numbers for Bases Loaded, Skate or Die, or T&C Surf Designs.
yes but if you believed e-celebs Dragon Quest III sold 10 million copies in the US and every American 12 year old was playing it instead of RBI Baseball or Bad Street Brawler.
>glorious Dreamcast.
So glorious. Everybody grabbed one. But they forgot to purchase more than one game for it.
Doesn't help some segasat exclusives ended up getting brought over with extra content on the PS like soukyugurentai, thunder force v, silhouette mirage, grandia, gekioh.
>grandia
Grandia and Lunar should have been Saturn exclusive. Instead they gave all the sales to Sony PSX because of the huge FF7 anime JRPG popularity boom. But Bernie was an anime hater.
Was that really his fault, though? Sega thrived off dudebro appeal in the 16-bit era. They used it as a foil to Nintendo of America's family friendliness. The Genesis was where EA sports games took off in popularity.
>dudebro appeal
Nobody liked that stupid shit except urban youths and Fred Durst. SOA was moronic for rejecting Japan. Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
>Nobody liked that stupid shit except urban youths and Fred Durst.
So the average consumer of video games in North America? This was a few years before Columbine made being an edgy white kid slightly less cool.
>Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
Sony went out of their way to attract the dudebro crowd just as much, anon. Where do you think those EA sports games went? Hell, where did the vast majority of M-rated console games end up?
>Sony was smarter and appealed to actual gamers.
You don't remember Sony's marketing if you think they were aiming mainly at actual gamers. sony ads were marked by having an attitude and a coolness that was similar, but more adult than sega. sega was trying to be cool to kids and preteens, Sony was trying to be cool for the older highschooler/college crowd.
Liar!
WHO'S THE DEAD ONE NOW BERNIE!?
>Bernie Stolar
>a founding member of Sony Computer Entertainment America
A trojan horse created by Sony to destroy Sega for sure
Will not be missed.
Nothing of value was lost when he killed the Sega Saturn. Everything else he did, was shit.
>killed the Sega Saturn
He wasn't that powerful lol. The Saturn was already dead in the west because of Sony, not because of Bernie (well, bernie was a Sony plant, but besides that).
How is there no sticky anywhere?
he was just a passing businessman, not a creator or even an important figure.
not to disrespect him as a person or anything, but professionally speaking he wasn't an example and the only reason we even have a thread about it is because he's sort of a meme due to how bizarre his business life was.
SEGA was not our future.
Apologize.
F
>Never do you hear about how you and friends stayed up all night playing saturn games.
Can and have; Contrary evidence is easily ignored when you're set on an idea so I don't blame you for overlooking it
RIP to a great guy. Thanks for the Dreamcast. Pretty cool last ditch effort for a ship that had been sinking fast since the Genesis expansions. It's so obvious as to why the Saturn failed to me. Sega during the Genesis succeeded in appealing to an the contemporary trends in the adolescent and young adult markets, succeeding in catching a huge contemporary wave and thus appealing to an entire generation of kids who had grown up the NES and were primed to react to this super contemporary, western campaign because they were now teenagers and young adults. they followed it up with software that appealed along the same themes, and also largely succeeded with taking games that were more Japanese in nature and conveying them along the same lines because they had created that consumer buy-in.
By comparison the Saturn had next to nothing about it that seemed western and it had no marketing or software to catch that same demographic. People distrust Kalinske because he's very shiny and smooth and CEO-LIKE but his basic point about the Saturn is right: the Saturn is I Japanese. It did not appeal to the youth demographic that the Genesis captured so well. And not only was Sony a huge corporation, but, their marketing succeeded in stealing that audience. The PS1 marketing was huge and well-received, normal people were hype as hell about something there was no precedent for....and just like the Genesis did, they had the software to back it up. Sega started declining before the Saturn was even out, hemorrhaged money through the whole ordeal, and then NEARLY made it with the Dreamcast---and then they dropped out of the market. It's amazing they were able to regain anything and ended up producing a console (in record time) that time has proven is really cool and unique. The Dreamcast is bigger than it ever was. Long live Bernie I guess!
>People distrust Kalinske because he's very shiny and smooth and CEO-LIKE but his basic point about the Saturn is right:
Keep in mind that Tom Kalinske left Sega at the 1996, and the 1996 Holiday season was not good for the Sega Saturn. I think Tom was betting on a Sonic game to pull them out of a slump, and it would give Sega something to compete against Nintendo and Sony. Sony adopted Crash as their mascot for the PS1 years, and they used the same tactics that Sega used with Sonic in the 16bit days, but to compete with Mario 64. Crash and Tomb Raider on the PS1 were big hits, along with the PS1 third party line up. The N64 also had Mario 64, Shadows of the Empire and 5 other games. Sega also had Tomb Raider, but it generally looked worse than the PS1 version, and NiGHTS didn't catch on with the masses. Sega did release Sonic 3D Blast for the Genesis and Saturn. That was your 1996 Sonic game for the Saturn, a Genesis port.
The reality is Sega was a sinking ship and he bucketed out enough water to give us the fricking Dreamcast before it was submerged.
RIP
He fought harder for SEGA than any business leader has fought for their brand before or since. Rest in peace you beautiful bastard.
>Living is not my future
RIP
>trademark game is gay superman 64
Damn, RIP
Rest in Peace, Stolar
Sure, for a consumer perspective holding the Dreamcast for a year gave it more launch titles and gave it a better first impression, but from a business perspective? not so much.
The Saturn was dead long before Bernie set a foot on Sega.
The thing is that Sega wanted the DC to get in the US way earlier.
Because of this israelite we didn't get 2D games on the Saturn. He basically contributed to Sega's downfall. Why do people seem to like him?
Those scenarios aren't alike at all, the DC already had a bunch of its launch titles (including their brand mascot, Sonic) ready by the time Sega wanted to launch it and by then the DC was cheaper than the Saturn at launch, on top of the fact that sega was bleeding money for over 2 years.
>2D games weren't popular at that point anyway
There were plenty of good ones. The Oddworld games, Mega Man X4, SOTN, Tomba, fighting games, Rayman, Heart of Darkness. Plenty of great 2D games.
Exactly, and we could have had much more, if not the frickups of Stolar.
It’s not about great, it’s about selling consoles.,almost no one was buying the console for those ganes
The DC would've been created without him anyway
Yeah, guess why the DC never got a chance, despite being a great console? Because Sega lost all their money before it even came out, thanks to OP pic.
Sega was over 15m in the red, and hadn't turned a profit in 3 years when Bernie got there.
>Bernie killed Sega
Nice meme, bro. He tried to save them, but they didn't want any of it. Sucks, but life's a b***h sometimes.
Sega Saturn sends its regards
rip
>Bernie Stolar killed Sega! Bernie Stolar killed the Saturn!
Sega killed Sega. The market killed the Saturn. Consumers killed the Saturn. Bernie just laid it to rest.
This thread shows why jumping on bandwagons always sucks ass.
Always better to wait and become a fan later once everyone else moves on to next product.
Bernie did good and bad. Typical game development person. They're never great people, and sometimes they're bad people.
Stolar, Kojima, Miyamoto, Jaffe, Carmack and Romero, Sakaguchi and Matsuda, Horii, etc all have their shit-and-ass moments.
As long as they weren't complete gays I give em a pass, considering the state of modern gaming. If we only knew in the 90s and 00s it could get this bad.
RIP crazy israelite game dude.
Watch your Saturn closely...Bernie will haunt your hardware and try to finish his dream in the afterlife.
Here's a list of Based Bernie's favourite games if you were wondering what to play in his honour:
>San Francisco Rush 2049
>Crash Bandicoot
>Crazy Taxi
>Gex
>Soul Calibur
>the Sonic Adventure franchise
>the Oddworld series
>Ridge Racer
>Battle Arena Toshinden
>Spider-Man (the Dreamcast version)
>the 2K Sports series in general
>>the Sonic Adventure franchise
lmao, please be true.
imagine him playing that shit, too funny.
Don't have to imagine, bruh.
hahahahaha, comedy gold, thanks for posting anon
>SA1
>both of them acting like they're playing at the same time.
you can actually play as tails with controller 2
The "player 2 can control the partner character" feature lasted all the way to Shadow the Hedghog IIRC
.
Beat me to it.
Except I'm moronic because thats Emerald Coast and you don't have Tails with you yet,
Tails follows Sonic around after you rescue him and re-visit Emerald Coast.
Except for the sports homosexualry, acceptable.
>>Gex
Uhh, Berniebros? I thought we hated 2D games?
Daily reminder the Saturn killed Sega.
>inb4 Saturn apologists scapegoat the 32X
No, having the worst designed hardware full of bloated and strange engineering that was much worse at 3D than PSX and the N64 as well as being more costly to manufacture and more tedious to develop on did Sega in harder than some add-on that only Genesis owners would have cared about buying to extend the life of that system.
Frick the Sega Saturn, frick Segata Sanshiro, and frick weebs who like that piece of shit.
>b-b-but it sold almost 7 million units in Japan!
At the cost of ruining their far more lucrative and successful western markets. Nice going SoJ, you fricking morons.
Playstation killed Sega.
Playstation only won because Sega didn't offer a better 5th gen system. If Saturn hadn't sucked so much balls, Sega would've crushed Sony and nobody would even remember the Playstation, it'd be just another 3DO.
>Sega would've crushed Sony and nobody would even remember the Playstation, it'd be just another 3DO.
HOLY FRICKING DELUSION
>Playstation only won because Sega didn't offer a better 5th gen system.
playstation won because it wasn't sega or nintendo - the corporations, not the systems. sony offered favourable licensing terms to developers, gave them greater control over their final product, you could use any PC to program the playstation dev machine etc. sega and nintendo couldn't compete like that. they've always insisted they retain control over nearly every aspect of their food chains.
>the net yaroze is what made sony win
someone post that funny santa claus webm.
anyway, sony won because they burned money on advertising (even offering multi-million dollar campaigns to third parties), owning the CD pressing factories and understanding the market.
Previous companies like Panasonic didn't fully understand how the video game market worked, Sony did, and used their corporation powers to penetrate it.
Nintendo and Sega should have both died once microsoft stepped in, but Nintendo managed to survive somehow, but never at the same level as Sony and MS.
>the net yaroze
that's not net yaroze, but similar colour. are you moronic?
> advertising
also another area where sega and nintendo couldn't compete. not the reason why they failed. anything but the console itself! even with its flawed gpu, it was still shitting on sega and nintendollers. oh wait, that's right.. it was the games that made people buy playstation in the millions. people were tired of bing bing wahoo!, blue spinning ball etc. and now had access to software that wasn't written for moronic children (you had an option to buy such trash!). playstation changed everything. cope.
based mature playstation gamer. mature games didn't exist before playstation. kids suck, adults rock.
playstation is for adults.
>mature games didn't exist before playstation
PC
The scapegoating of the CD and 32x has never made sense considering they outsold the Saturn.
Imagine lying like this one the internet
>topic of debate is the American branch, a products impact on the public perception of Americans, and the downfall of a company who had the majority of their success in America
>better use worldwide sales figures!
Disingenuous idiots.
>Saturn: 9M
>CD+32x: 2,5M
???
Stay mad amiga homosexual.
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https://youtu.be/O5WxdL8Odk0?t=48
https://youtu.be/eCGD7s_NZiU?t=67
There were times when some devs could get interesting results with Saturn ports of PS1 games. But generally speaking, 3RD parties were getting a lot more out of the PS1 hardware with a lot less effort. Saturn ports would require devs to have to remake all of their 3D assets with quads. Some devs couldn't be bothered trying to get both CPU's to function. The Saturn could do some interesting things, when devs know how to take advantage of the hardware.
*ahem*
FRICK THE SATURN
DREAMCAST ALIVE IN SERBIA
DREAMCAST MAKING NEW SONIC IN SERBIA
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/S7212902
https://warosu.org/vr/thread/S7240649
>auster spent his xmas and new year shitposting alone
frick, that's actually sad.
Since this is the unofficial Dreamcast/SEGA thread...
Happy 22nd birthday, Jet Set Radio!
newbie here, why is Stolar so hated? I only know of him through that "Saturn is not our future quote"
He was a shady guy who didn't last much in each company he headed back in the 90s and made some decisions like not bringing japanese 2D games to PS1 or Saturn, ending the Saturn's support earlier than japan (this is probably understandable considering Saturn wasn't popular at all outside of Asia), and waiting like a year to release the Dreamcast in the west.
But mostly people remember it for his anti-2D policy, rather than the saturn is not our future quote (that's more like a recent meme some shitposter is trying to force here).
He also was a blatant businessman who never cared about video games, but he wasn't the only one, kalinske was the same.
yeah lets just block rpgs during the ff7 craze, what a fricking moron
there was no craze.
Didn't the Japanese mascot for the Dreamcast die not too long ago too?
Not a good year for the ol' Dreamcast...
As someone who owned a Saturn and a Dreamcast. I loved the Saturn for what it was. But if you were not spending big $$$ Japanese imports, there was little to chose from in NA. Not many retailers would not stock Saturn games anywhere in Canada around my area. Dreamcast on the other hand... I payed $200.00 Canadian, which was a steal. And Sega kept pumping games out fr that system until they cancelled it too. It sadly did not last long. but I have like 25+ Dreamcast games. To be honest, I was a bit underwhelmed with the VF3 port, and would still like the Saturn for VF2. For anything else, the Dreamcast was a trip. I would find games at Futureshop (RIP) for $20.00 a pop. I think bernie Stolar actually gave it a shot with the Dreamcast. But ... PS2 hype was a funny thing.
he is the same motherfricker who said
>what is streets of rage
when streets of rage 4 got presented to that homosexual, he is a fricking butthole, good thing he died, thanks for cancelling streets of rage 4 butthole.
Belt scrollers were not our future. That shitty genre died out for a reason, most repetitive and cookie-cutter out there, even worse than shmups.
RIP
Is this true?
>
>Is this true?
Jason Rubin is one of the founding members of Naughty Dog and developer on the original Crash series. I would imagine it is true.
damn no wonder he hated saturn so much. He helped make the ps1 successful with crash.
he hated the saturn because it sucked dick at 3D and had too much weebshit polluting its library.
>all that seething
luv me bernie
'ate the sega saturn
simple as
RIP based Sega Dreamcast man.
The Saturn was indeed not our future.