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Sega's Game Archive
Jeff Coe tips us to news that a group of Sega employees recently stumbled upon a storage room in the company's product development department that contains just about every piece of hardware and software Sega has ever released. They were also kind enough to snap some photos and share them.
"We asked around about how the room came together and couldn't get a straight answer. Some had said our old legal department had run the archive and given it up to someone else to manage. Others said that the legal archive still exists in another room in the office, and this was pulled together over time from producers and product managers. We don't know the exact how or why, but we love that it exists and immediately accessible."
They should setup a little museum and have tours!
-Josh
So it seems the article's been slashdotted before anyone on slashdot read it. or at least posted comments telling us how awesome it is...
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The blog is slashdotted, but the pictures are all on Flickr and can be seen here: http://flickr.com/photos/segaamerica/
If Sega sold the contents of this room, it'd make more profit than it ever had in the history of the entire company... and they just found it lying around?!
Now they'll remember even more franchises to milk.
So let me get this right, there was an unmarked door in Sega's office that everyone had forgotten about but really contained every game ever made by Sega?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
On the shelf below the Sega CD games, anyone notice an N64 along with a *blue* PS1? Isn't that console used for development?
Life is not for the lazy.
I see stackes of games, cd's joysticks, develpoments consoles, drawers full of cables and and controllers... seems like a great place to end up locked in for the night....but wait.... what's this not a single monitor or TV? DOH!!!!
I Need someone to rebuild a Digitech Digital Delay pedal for me....for me...for me...for me.
Who wanted to put my face between all those Dreamcast builds and motorboat? I bet there are a few unreleased gems in there... perchance to dream!
I run Hidden Palace, a website devoted to preserving unfinished versions of games (prototypes) and unreleased games (for various reasons, mostly that the media isn't forever, it decays after 10-15 years)
I spend tens of thousands of dollars on this stuff, when companies like this just ignore it. Most companies throw stuff like this out (SEGA got rid of most of its stuff in ~2001, a lot of unreleased games got destroyed this way).
It's sad...
My question is why there are SNES games in there.
Sega merged with a company called Sammy that made NES games such as Vice: Project Doom.
The Pinball games where made by sega pinball that used to data east pinball now stern pinball in Chicago.
Also there is no way to fit them in that small room.
Yeah, I know. I've written rants before on the asshattery of Stern pinball, and I may again at some point. It's a shame that Stern ended up with the rights to the Data East platform. And I guess I have a big imagination when it comes to envisioning rooms full of wonderfulness. :)
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
I can't believe they're talking about renting out all of that stuff (internally). I'm betting some of that stuff is quite valuable.
I can see the rental agreement now.
Return a game late: $5/day
Scratch/Damage/Lose a game: A beating with a big stick
At least that would be my rental agreement if that were my stuff. But if that were my stuff I wouldn't be renting it out.
I would think that every company would have some sort of archive for their products, even ones that were finished to some point but never made it to market. Especially game companies that, for the most part, just store the CDs/carts.
Here's hoping that some of these gents take some spare time to fix up this room and make a proper archive.
Personally, I think a small "museum" type setup to show off consoles, accessories, etc. with the gaming library nearby would be a really cool thing. There was this Video Game tour about six or seven years back--I forget the actual name--that went around the country with a whole bunch of arcade games, both old and new, and also had a display for home consoles and hand helds. It was damn cool to just walk along the glass cases and see video game history, much of which brought up personal memories. Also, a quarter for every arcade was awesome.
Better than Gottlieb - they actually requested sites like the IPDB remove all the ROMs (that were once downloadable from Gottlieb's website). Said ROMs were also removed from the website. The reason? All the Gottlieb retailers complained, so the only way to get ROM updates is to pay (through the nose) for them via one of these resellers.
They've actually sent C+D orders taking down any website that had 'em up. It should be noted that other manufacturers still make the ROMs available.
Sega CDx it was too cool of a system to let go. There were even a few cartridge games (not all) where I could start a music CD in them then push the cart in and play the game to my fav CDs.... good times.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
Agreed, Gottlieb pinballs are utter crap anyway. Any advances they made on their technical platform were completely nullified by terrible gameplay, awful visuals, and the same jerkoff doing the voices for EVERY FREAKING GAME. Waterworld? *shudder* Shaq Attaq? *vomit*
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.