04-28-2013, 07:06 PM
There are a ton of reasons why people don't like Sega and they have been dating back even as far back as over 20 years ago. Even though to me Sega is one of my favourite publishers/developers, I know they did a lot wrong, they were and still are inconsistant in terms of games.
It would be easier just to list them:
- The release of the 32x. People today see it as a useless addon that apart from good ports of Space Harrier, After Burner, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing Deluxe it wasn't worth it. It wasn't the designer of the addon to blame (it was either going to be that or a Mega Drive with a larger palette, the latter wouldn't make much sense in 1994 with the Saturn coming soon) but it was the case of Sega hardly supporting it, the Saturn was on the way and the lack of games for the price sealed the deal with only something like 40 games. It also doesn't help that Sega was supporting so many consoles to breaking point of their developers. They had the Master System in Europe and Brazil to worry out, the Game Gear, the Genesis, the Pico, the Sega CD, the Saturn in Japan and adding on top with the 32x no wonder Sega had problems so a plan had to be made. Pull support for that, the Master System in Europe [Brazil had TecToy], mostly the Sega CD with just a couple left, reduce support for the Genesis that outraged people at the time, Game Gear and the Pico due to this console below...
- The Saturn. That's right, the Saturn caused Sega a lot of problems and annoyed people. It was a surprise release, released months before it should causing problems to some games (Daytona USA, Clockwork Knight and Virtua Fighter were all rushed out of production before they should to the point where Daytona and Virtua Fighter were had to be remade later on [Daytona CCE, Virtua Fighter Remix]). Due to its archtecture of the console, it was hard to develop so that annoyed developers who would rather work on the easier PS1. It was like the console was designed for Yu Suzuki and nobody else since he loved the Saturn very much. Much of the games were left in Japan since the boss at the time hated RPGs that to some Americans who supported the console was so angry that they still curse his name to his day (do not mention Bernie Stolar to them, red eyes light up) plus Sega couldn't afford to release them. Even Saturn lover Yu Suzuki hated Sega more at the end for not releasing Virtua Fighter 3 and moving Shenmue to the Dreamcast.
- The Management at Sega didn't know what they were doing half the time wasting money causing Sega to be in debt for years and were very lucky to survive. They made development studios that bled money like the Multimedia Studio were they only made like two games and was used for music production, they had a studio in Chicago that had inexperience developers and one person conned Sega millions (it was like a Mafia story), they were making so many consoles confusing people, rejecting games and altering games for no reasons (like Monster World IV wasn't released or how they butchered Streets of Rage 3), they had low standards in Sega of America releasing anything providing it took a couple of months to make. Did you know that Jurassic Park on the Mega Drive took about 4 months to complete and Sega planned marketing before it even started? If it wasn't for BlueSky Software making a decent game, it would have been a disaster since Sega didn't care. Of course Sega kept rushing their games even in Japan and only a couple of years ago, they finally got the message.
- Nintendo fanboys, there are a lot of Nintendo fanboys online and many of them dump Sega before even giving a chance. Since Sega and Nintendo were rivals during the 16-bit era (and the 8-bit era in the UK as well), some people had to choose sides between the two and had to prove that their console was better than the other. Some of the younger Nintendo fans even believe that Sega is rubbish just because they pulled out of consoles and think Sonic is all they had. Even then they try to prove that the SNES won the 16-bit era even though to be honest it was more of a tie [3 way if we are talking about the Amiga] and the Genesis along with the Dreamcast were Sega's only big consoles over in America (the Master System was more of a Europe and Brazil thing but it was a niche in the US and more popular in Canada, the Saturn had a cult fan base has in it was Number 3 but they were usually importers). There are some who do like Sega though and I'm not talking about the Sonic fans either.
- Declining quality of the main Sonic games and this is actually a big thing since Sonic is Sega's mascot (well him; Alex Kidd and Opa-Opa used to be). After Sonic Adventure came out; the series started slowly getting worse from Sonic Adventure 2, the bugginess of Sonic Heroes, the "cool" Shadow the Hedgehog game and exploded at the super rushed incomplete mess that is Sonic 06 with its really bad port of Sonic 1 on the GBA. While the handheld games except Sonic 1 GBA weren't too bad, it was the big games that affected them to the point where Sonic Unleashed got a bad reputation. Sonic Unleashed isn't a bad game but not a good one, decent at best. People were fed up of having buggy unenjoyable games, people were fed up of Sonic having lots of friends that many people don't like at all with them getting focused on and new characters every two minutes but also lost its atmosphere (except Heroes and the handhelds) being it more serious/less colourful. It took until Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations before people started liking Sonic again since the games were improved, not as buggy, weren't as serious in terms of story making it more colourful and cut down on the characters with just Sonic to play as.
To be honest, even Sonic was inconsistant with some games in the classic era weren't good either (e.g. the okayish Spinball and the worse Game Gear version, the isometric duo of Sonic Labyrinth and Sonic 3D, the disappointing Sonic Blast).
- Some of the games that Sega released past and present that caused a bad reputation as well. Let's see: Fantasia would have put Disney off if they didn't make World of Illusion, X-Perts a game so bad even the developers wanted to pull the plug, the licensed games that they made during late Generation 6 and mid Generation 7 usually made by Secret Level (e.g. Iron Man, Captain America, Planet 51), the poor received or disappointing reboots/sequels to Golden Axe (Golden Axe: Beast Rider, a few people like it though and its Sega Classic Collection remake), Altered Beast (Project Altered Beast on the PS2) even NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams to a degree.
In fact I give a few tips regarding Sega in case people want to know how to get the best out of this lovely company:
1) Their best games either came from Japan in house or Europe. Anything made by AM2 (Space Harrier, Hang-On, After Burner, OutRun, their fighting games, Virtua Cop, Daytona USA) are some of the best games that you can get. Hitmaker (Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis) are another good one along with Sega Rosso (Sega Rally, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade and also technically a few made the original Ridge Racer as well). Sega Wow and Overworks are also pretty good (Shinobi series, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, House of the Dead, early Phantasy Star games, Skies of Arcadia) but Sega Wow is weaker of the bunch. Well Sonic Team is worse but I get on to that on a bit. If it is in-house, most of the time it will be really good. However for 3rd parties, I mention two good ones. M2, they usually handle emulation but they handle it really good to the point of hard to tell from an actual console to its emulated counterpart. They also made Fantasy Zone II DX that is impressive of something using System 16 [old arcade board] stuff and reverse enginnered to make it and they also released the English versions of Wonder Boy in Monster Land (arcade) and the translated Monster World IV. Westone is another providing you stick to the Wonder Boy series, Riot City isn't bad but when compared to other beat em ups at the time... Oh and I forgot Platinum Games (Bayonetta, MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns) and Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy) as well but I feel them two can hold on their own since they are both good in their own rights.
Europe you have Sumo Digital who to me have the spirit of Sega and are really good (OutRun 2006 that is almost perfection, Sega Superstars Tennis, Sonic & Sega Racing series and two Virtua Tennis games), Novotrade is a bit more iffy due to that they are Hungarian and they had to do what Sega of America told them to do but they had Ecco the Dolphin on their side, Sports Interactive are really popular with Football Manager on the PC and so are the Creative Assembly. I don't know anymore European studios since they typically only made a few games or in the case of Sega Racing Studio only the one.
As for the other countries; Sega of China are decent [the PSN/XBLA ports of NiGHTS, Sonic Adventure 2, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 4] but they are still learning since there aren't many Chinese developers to note. Sega Austrailia made a few sports games and the upcoming Castle of Illusion remake but they shut down so I can't comment. America has always been a mixed bag but BlueSky Software are quite good for the most part and the Taxman has been porting Sonic CD and later on 1 & 2 are the best you can get.
2) Be careful of Sonic Team (and Sonic games in general). Sonic Team is used as a brand even games not handled by Sonic Team such as Sonic Riders (that was done by Now Production, usually they do Namco stuff) had that name. The people who made Sonic 1 are completely different to who made Sonic Generations. Many of the so-called Sonic Team games were made mostly by Dimps. Even the Dimps Sonic games are a mixed bag with the best being Sonic Advance 1 and Sonic Pocket Adventure in terms of matching the classic style, the Sonic Rush series are quite good even if they are different compared to the classics while they improved in the level design by Rush Adventure and the worst being Sonic 4 Episode 1 and arguably Sonic Advance 2 due to the difficulty.
As of recently, the only things I can really think of are Aliens: Colonial Marines and even then not entirely to blame since most of it were Gearbox and TimeGate Studios fault, the Shining Force backlash due to an irate developer plus not releasing a couple of games outside Japan really. Sega has improved for the past few years in terms of both customer relations and consistancy.
It would be easier just to list them:
- The release of the 32x. People today see it as a useless addon that apart from good ports of Space Harrier, After Burner, Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing Deluxe it wasn't worth it. It wasn't the designer of the addon to blame (it was either going to be that or a Mega Drive with a larger palette, the latter wouldn't make much sense in 1994 with the Saturn coming soon) but it was the case of Sega hardly supporting it, the Saturn was on the way and the lack of games for the price sealed the deal with only something like 40 games. It also doesn't help that Sega was supporting so many consoles to breaking point of their developers. They had the Master System in Europe and Brazil to worry out, the Game Gear, the Genesis, the Pico, the Sega CD, the Saturn in Japan and adding on top with the 32x no wonder Sega had problems so a plan had to be made. Pull support for that, the Master System in Europe [Brazil had TecToy], mostly the Sega CD with just a couple left, reduce support for the Genesis that outraged people at the time, Game Gear and the Pico due to this console below...
- The Saturn. That's right, the Saturn caused Sega a lot of problems and annoyed people. It was a surprise release, released months before it should causing problems to some games (Daytona USA, Clockwork Knight and Virtua Fighter were all rushed out of production before they should to the point where Daytona and Virtua Fighter were had to be remade later on [Daytona CCE, Virtua Fighter Remix]). Due to its archtecture of the console, it was hard to develop so that annoyed developers who would rather work on the easier PS1. It was like the console was designed for Yu Suzuki and nobody else since he loved the Saturn very much. Much of the games were left in Japan since the boss at the time hated RPGs that to some Americans who supported the console was so angry that they still curse his name to his day (do not mention Bernie Stolar to them, red eyes light up) plus Sega couldn't afford to release them. Even Saturn lover Yu Suzuki hated Sega more at the end for not releasing Virtua Fighter 3 and moving Shenmue to the Dreamcast.
- The Management at Sega didn't know what they were doing half the time wasting money causing Sega to be in debt for years and were very lucky to survive. They made development studios that bled money like the Multimedia Studio were they only made like two games and was used for music production, they had a studio in Chicago that had inexperience developers and one person conned Sega millions (it was like a Mafia story), they were making so many consoles confusing people, rejecting games and altering games for no reasons (like Monster World IV wasn't released or how they butchered Streets of Rage 3), they had low standards in Sega of America releasing anything providing it took a couple of months to make. Did you know that Jurassic Park on the Mega Drive took about 4 months to complete and Sega planned marketing before it even started? If it wasn't for BlueSky Software making a decent game, it would have been a disaster since Sega didn't care. Of course Sega kept rushing their games even in Japan and only a couple of years ago, they finally got the message.
- Nintendo fanboys, there are a lot of Nintendo fanboys online and many of them dump Sega before even giving a chance. Since Sega and Nintendo were rivals during the 16-bit era (and the 8-bit era in the UK as well), some people had to choose sides between the two and had to prove that their console was better than the other. Some of the younger Nintendo fans even believe that Sega is rubbish just because they pulled out of consoles and think Sonic is all they had. Even then they try to prove that the SNES won the 16-bit era even though to be honest it was more of a tie [3 way if we are talking about the Amiga] and the Genesis along with the Dreamcast were Sega's only big consoles over in America (the Master System was more of a Europe and Brazil thing but it was a niche in the US and more popular in Canada, the Saturn had a cult fan base has in it was Number 3 but they were usually importers). There are some who do like Sega though and I'm not talking about the Sonic fans either.
- Declining quality of the main Sonic games and this is actually a big thing since Sonic is Sega's mascot (well him; Alex Kidd and Opa-Opa used to be). After Sonic Adventure came out; the series started slowly getting worse from Sonic Adventure 2, the bugginess of Sonic Heroes, the "cool" Shadow the Hedgehog game and exploded at the super rushed incomplete mess that is Sonic 06 with its really bad port of Sonic 1 on the GBA. While the handheld games except Sonic 1 GBA weren't too bad, it was the big games that affected them to the point where Sonic Unleashed got a bad reputation. Sonic Unleashed isn't a bad game but not a good one, decent at best. People were fed up of having buggy unenjoyable games, people were fed up of Sonic having lots of friends that many people don't like at all with them getting focused on and new characters every two minutes but also lost its atmosphere (except Heroes and the handhelds) being it more serious/less colourful. It took until Sonic Colours and Sonic Generations before people started liking Sonic again since the games were improved, not as buggy, weren't as serious in terms of story making it more colourful and cut down on the characters with just Sonic to play as.
To be honest, even Sonic was inconsistant with some games in the classic era weren't good either (e.g. the okayish Spinball and the worse Game Gear version, the isometric duo of Sonic Labyrinth and Sonic 3D, the disappointing Sonic Blast).
- Some of the games that Sega released past and present that caused a bad reputation as well. Let's see: Fantasia would have put Disney off if they didn't make World of Illusion, X-Perts a game so bad even the developers wanted to pull the plug, the licensed games that they made during late Generation 6 and mid Generation 7 usually made by Secret Level (e.g. Iron Man, Captain America, Planet 51), the poor received or disappointing reboots/sequels to Golden Axe (Golden Axe: Beast Rider, a few people like it though and its Sega Classic Collection remake), Altered Beast (Project Altered Beast on the PS2) even NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams to a degree.
In fact I give a few tips regarding Sega in case people want to know how to get the best out of this lovely company:
1) Their best games either came from Japan in house or Europe. Anything made by AM2 (Space Harrier, Hang-On, After Burner, OutRun, their fighting games, Virtua Cop, Daytona USA) are some of the best games that you can get. Hitmaker (Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis) are another good one along with Sega Rosso (Sega Rally, Star Wars Trilogy Arcade and also technically a few made the original Ridge Racer as well). Sega Wow and Overworks are also pretty good (Shinobi series, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, House of the Dead, early Phantasy Star games, Skies of Arcadia) but Sega Wow is weaker of the bunch. Well Sonic Team is worse but I get on to that on a bit. If it is in-house, most of the time it will be really good. However for 3rd parties, I mention two good ones. M2, they usually handle emulation but they handle it really good to the point of hard to tell from an actual console to its emulated counterpart. They also made Fantasy Zone II DX that is impressive of something using System 16 [old arcade board] stuff and reverse enginnered to make it and they also released the English versions of Wonder Boy in Monster Land (arcade) and the translated Monster World IV. Westone is another providing you stick to the Wonder Boy series, Riot City isn't bad but when compared to other beat em ups at the time... Oh and I forgot Platinum Games (Bayonetta, MadWorld, Anarchy Reigns) and Treasure (Gunstar Heroes, Dynamite Headdy) as well but I feel them two can hold on their own since they are both good in their own rights.
Europe you have Sumo Digital who to me have the spirit of Sega and are really good (OutRun 2006 that is almost perfection, Sega Superstars Tennis, Sonic & Sega Racing series and two Virtua Tennis games), Novotrade is a bit more iffy due to that they are Hungarian and they had to do what Sega of America told them to do but they had Ecco the Dolphin on their side, Sports Interactive are really popular with Football Manager on the PC and so are the Creative Assembly. I don't know anymore European studios since they typically only made a few games or in the case of Sega Racing Studio only the one.
As for the other countries; Sega of China are decent [the PSN/XBLA ports of NiGHTS, Sonic Adventure 2, Crazy Taxi, House of the Dead 4] but they are still learning since there aren't many Chinese developers to note. Sega Austrailia made a few sports games and the upcoming Castle of Illusion remake but they shut down so I can't comment. America has always been a mixed bag but BlueSky Software are quite good for the most part and the Taxman has been porting Sonic CD and later on 1 & 2 are the best you can get.
2) Be careful of Sonic Team (and Sonic games in general). Sonic Team is used as a brand even games not handled by Sonic Team such as Sonic Riders (that was done by Now Production, usually they do Namco stuff) had that name. The people who made Sonic 1 are completely different to who made Sonic Generations. Many of the so-called Sonic Team games were made mostly by Dimps. Even the Dimps Sonic games are a mixed bag with the best being Sonic Advance 1 and Sonic Pocket Adventure in terms of matching the classic style, the Sonic Rush series are quite good even if they are different compared to the classics while they improved in the level design by Rush Adventure and the worst being Sonic 4 Episode 1 and arguably Sonic Advance 2 due to the difficulty.
As of recently, the only things I can really think of are Aliens: Colonial Marines and even then not entirely to blame since most of it were Gearbox and TimeGate Studios fault, the Shining Force backlash due to an irate developer plus not releasing a couple of games outside Japan really. Sega has improved for the past few years in terms of both customer relations and consistancy.