Gaming WI: Sega remains a bigger player (8-bit and 32-bit POD ideas)

RedFreedom

Banned
I've been playing the English fan translation of Phantasy Star 1's remake using a PS2 emulator (a quad core i7 with onboard video is sufficient for this, FYI), and I got to thinking "Holy shit. So in 1987 there was a JRPG with fleshed-out characters, smooth-scrolling 3D dungeons (this was before the dawn of the FPS), and animated monsters that was made for a mass-market consumer electronic device from the mid-1980s. Moreover, this game came out in North America, Europe, and some other non-Japanese markets before either Final Fantasy 1 or Dragon Quest 1" and was like "Whoa, why didn't these guys do better?"

So what kind of POD would allow the Master System and the NES to achieve similar levels success? Marketing? Stronger partnerships with established North American and European toy and electronic firms? Distribution? Including the high-end FM audio chip on versions released outside of Japan? Turning Alis Landale into an iconic, genre-agnostic heroine for the company? An emphasis on the company's origins as one that had been founded by American servicemen?

As for the 16-bit era, I think that the wave of games that came out around 1994ish, while giving the Genesis/Megadrive some magnificent titles, ultimately handed the momentum to Nintendo, as the SNES had an incredible run of critical and commercial successes at the 1st, 2nd, 3rd party levels. One interesting aspect of a successful pre-Sonic Master System is that Sonic the Hedgehog, either as a game or as a character, never comes into existence, which in turn causes a lot of the 16-bit mascot platformer trend to get butterflied away and so it ends up being less commercially important, potentially resulting in strong Mario and Alex Kid franchises and fewer games in the genre as a whole. Maybe Sega ends up being the JRPG and adventure champ of the 16-bit era because of a Landale-driven Master System.

On a similar question about JRPGs and SRPGs in the 32-bit era, what if the incredible critical and commercial success of FF7 and FF Tactics in non-Japanese markets had encouraged Sega to push Shining Force 3 for aggressively, to released a next-generation traditional JRPG in the Phantasy Star universe, and develop and push other new and existing IPs in what were commercial "it" genres in the late-1990s? How does this happen? Do we have to keep Bernie Stolar and his anti-RPG stupidity at Sony for a couple of more years, thus encouraging Square to form a partnership with Sega in the wake of their fallout with Nintendo over the cartridge thing and Nintendo's shit treatment of 3rd party publishers? If this had happened and Sonic Xtreme had not been a monumental cock-up from the moment development started, what kind of position would Sega be in today?
 

Strategos

Banned
That handheld of theirs...not existing would help. And the shenanigans involved with the Dreamcast's release not being so ridiculous.
 
Read this for a while: http://althistory.wikia.com/wiki/Ohga_Shrugs

But remember that SEGA worst enemy was always itself, since the CKS managment who know little about videogames, the SEGA of Japan vs Sega of America rivality(plus the lack of Support to Sega of Europe), the whole not catching well their rivals and a long etc.

Poor SEGA, brillant ideas, poor timing
 
Well that's a coincidence.

I actually have plans for a Sega timeline myself - not sure when I'm going to get around to doing it though.
I'm assuming that you're keeping PlayStation around, which should help differentiate our timelines (as long as you don't end up using the same title), though given your emphasis on JRPGs and RPGs in general, I don't think there'll be too much overlap.

Not sure about the Master System - maybe releasing the SG-1000 outside of Japan and Australia would give Sega more visibility and therefore more sales of the Master System when it comes out. Also bear in mind that the NES was the biggest selling home console in history (approx 62 million) until PlayStation surpassed it, so I'm not sure how you can realistically make the Master System (approx 12 million) match that.

The 16-bit Era doesn't really need to be changed - some have argued that Sega was the de facto winner of that generation (Super Nintendo ultimately sold more, but it was also around longer than Mega Drive/Genesis).
Maybe you could make the Mega-CD more successful, or just get rid of it, but there's really little need to alter Sega's 16-bit era performance.

Now, the 32-bit Era... THAT'S a different story.
If you want Sega to continue its success into the 32-bit Era, you have to do something about the 32X. While I have my own plans for it (a very important change that makes it somewhat more successful, though not overly so), your best bet is to somehow get rid of it completely and have Sega concentrate on their next-gen console (the Saturn, unless you decide to do something different, like the Cartridge-based 'Jupiter').

Avoiding the 'surprise launch' is probably the most important thing you can do to help the Sega Saturn succeed - that way, you have an actual launch lineup (rather than something like half-a-dozen games released over the first six months - don't quote me on that though), the developers don't get pissed off by the unexpected 5-month early launch AND you have more retailers stocking Sega products (a lot of retailers were NOT happy with the surprise launch, so they eventually said "fine, we won't sell your consoles then - suck on that, Sega").
Avoiding the 'surprise launch' would also likely mean Tom Kalinske remaining as Sega of America President, thus avoiding Bernie 'Saturn isn't our future' Stolar as Sega President. In fact, if he stays with Sony, he might end up hurting PlayStation if he refuses to allow Final Fantasy VII to be released in North America - after all, FF7 WAS pretty much PlayStation's first 'killer app', so while it won't kill PlayStation, it certainly won't do it any favours either.

A Saturn that isn't discontinued in 1998 (in the west at least) would also mean the release of a number of important games originally planned for the Saturn ports, then cancelled due to the system's collapse. These include games like 'Grand Theft Auto', 'Tomb Raider II' (and potentially 'III') and 'Oddworld: Abe's Exodus'. We could also see 'Shenmue' released for the Saturn, as was originally intended.

Another side-effect of no Stolar would be Dreamcast (assuming you go with Dreamcast as Saturn's successor, and have it launch around the same time) retailing at $250 at launch instead of the Stolar-mandated £199 (Sega of Japan wanted it at $250 in order to get some profit rolling in after the losses made over the previous 5 years).

Hope this helps.
 

RedFreedom

Banned
I've not forgotten. I planned out some ideas for a rough timeline of the first few years, but I'm not sure what I want as a POD. It needs to be after the Yuji Naka hire and I need to make sure that Alex Kidd and Phantasy Star aren't butterflied away.
 
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RedFreedom

Banned
It starts with a periscope...

1969 -- Due to the financial success of Periscope, an early arcade shooting game hit (that is even more successful than OTL), Sega Enterprises Ltd. rebuffs advances from Gulf+Western (today, Viacom) and successfully absorbs Taito after having failed to incorporate the company into the merger of Service Games and Rosen Enterprises 5 years earlier.

Throughout the1970s -- With Taito in the fold, Sega is better positioned to transition from mechanical to electronic games. Sega enjoys a string of Arcade hits throughout the world, with the U.S. and Japan as its strongholds.

1974 -- After a protracted bidding war with Sega, NAMCO owner Masaya Nakamura is able to acquire Atari Japan from Nolan Bushnell. He opens a chain of arcades features Atari games, but his venture is not profitable enough to adequately service Atari's debts.

1979 -- Emboldened, financially and otherwise, by the success of Aliens Attack! (essentially today's Space Invaders) and Head On (an early maze game), Sega is able to to buy out NAMCO from Masaya Nakamura. The company maintains the Namco brand owing to the modest success of both the arcade chain and Gee Bee, along with an impressive prototype of "Galactic Wars" (Galaxian, OTL), the first RGB game. Later that year, Galactic Wars becomes a massive hit, first in Japan, Canada, and the United States, and then later in Europe and elsewhere in East Asia.

Early 1980s -- Under its strong Namco mark, Sega releases Pac-Man, a game whose popularity both among gamers and as a pop culture phenomenon would cause quarter shortages throughout the developed world. It would be the first in a string of massive commercial successes for Sega under both its own name as well as the Taito and NAMCO brands, including Digger (renamed Dig Dug in North America to avoid comparisons to the N-Word), Jungle Hunt, X-Devious (Xevious), SubRoc 3D, Pole Position, and Elevator Reaction (Elevator Action, OTL). Meanwhile, the Atari 2600 still becomes a world wide success on the home console front, and Sega is able to surge to record profits by 1983, in large part by licensing ports of its arcade mega-hits to Atari outside of Japan and through its ownership of the company. Sega is able to weather a less severe video game crash than in OTL by virtue of its impressive run of financial success in the 70s and early-80s.

Early 1983 -- As in OTL, Yuki Naka is hired on as a programmer with the intention of working on prototype games for Sega's nascent console development division.

April 13 1983 -- Sega's Co-CEOs Dave Rosen and Hayao Nakayama catches wind of the fact that competitor Nintendo, a rival toy and arcade game maker famous for Donkey Kong, have managed to design a mass-market console whose specifications far eclipse any of Sega's prototypes. Knowing that shoddy consoles and bad ports were badly harming the industry in North America, Sega quietly shelves its underpowered prototype console (OTL's SG-1000 Mark I), deciding instead to port its hits to Nintendo's upcoming FamComp (Famicom). The console division, now headed by Yu Suzuki, remains for R&D purposes. Yuji Naka continues to program both arcade games and console prototypes for Sega.

And that's a good stopping point. I need a smoke and some shut eye. :)
 
So the POD is that thanks to Periscope, now SEGA have more capital to join with Taito, that is good, but that thing with Namco was overkill, that would make the war with Nintendo more interesting in the chinese sense. And shelving the MK1 was a good Idea, with a direct MarkIII/Master System, that will allow compete with famicom better even if entering late to the party.

And how thing will unfold, Nintendo still will goes with Sony or butterflies will make his work? Phantasy Star still will be made(with Yuji Naka at board, he will ask to his that time Girlfriend to enter SEGA, a lady named Rieko Kodama)? what will be for the future?

And a little advice, the games Tales of Phantasia was a collaboration between Wolfteam-Telenet, Nintendo and Namco after a fight with Namco make Nintendo abandon the project, here with Namco being part of SEGA, maybe Nintendo will publish the game of them under their seal and original idea... as Tale Phantasia( more info here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Phantasia#Development_controversy_and_the_birth_of_tri-Ace )

Keep there and join the timeline with mi Acquitance for more work.
 
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