In 1986, Sega redesigned the Mark III for release in North America. They called it the Sega Master System. They released it in Europe in 1987. Although the Master System sold well in Europe and Brazil, it did not sell well in Japan or North America. By the mid-to-late 1980s, Japan and North America were dominated by Nintendo. With Sega doing poorly in the home console market, Sega's console R&D team, led by Masami Ishikawa and supervised by Hideki Sato, started working on a successor to the Master System. They did this almost immediately after the Master System was released.
The Genesis is often considered one of the best video game consoles. In 2009, IGN said it was the fifth best video game console. They said it was good because of sports games and better home version of "Mortal Kombat". They praised "what some consider to be the greatest controller ever created: the six button". In 2007, GameTrailers said the Genesis was the sixth best console of all time in their list of top ten consoles that "left their mark on the history of gaming". They said it was good because it had great games and a good controller. They also wrote about the "glory days" of "Sonic the Hedgehog". In 2008, GamingExcellence said it was sixth of the 10 best consoles. They said "one can truly see the Genesis for the gaming milestone it was." GameDaily said it was ninth of ten for its memorable games.
Dreamcast
The is the fourth and last home console made by Sega that can play video games. It was sold before the PlayStation 2, GameCube, or Xbox came out. However, not many people bought it after the PlayStation 2 was released, so in the end Sega decided to stop making them.
When it was time to make another video game machine after the Sega Saturn was released, Shoichiro Irimajiri asked Tatsuo Yamamoto from IBM Austin and his group to create it. However Hideki Sato's old group that made video game machines did not like this. Because of this, the two groups were in a competition to make the best machine.
Hideki Sato's group used Hitachi SH4 and PowerVR to make a video game machine called "White Belt". The name was later changed to "Guppy" and then "Katana".
Tatsuo Yamamoto's IBM/Motorola PowerPC 603e and 3dfx Voodoo 2 to make a video game machine called "Blackbelt" and then renamed to "Shark" in United States. In Japan, the machine was first called "Dural" and then renamed to "Katana".
On April 1997, 3dfx told people that Sega was using their 3dfx Voodoo 2 for a video game machine. Sega however wanted this to be a secret and became very angry. Because of this, Sega used Hideki Sato's "Katana" machine instead of Tatsuo Yamamoto's.
Later on, 3dfx sued Sega because they thought Sega broke their promise to them. However, the two companies then settled out of court.
After Sega released their Dreamcast, many other video game companies also released their video game consoles. This includes Sony, who released the PlayStation 2; Nintendo, who released the GameCube; and Microsoft, who released the Xbox.
The Dreamcast was released in Japan in November 27, 1998, and then released September 9, 1999 in North America. Originally, many people liked the Dreamcast and it sold a lot. In the United States, 300,000 machines were sold on the first week and Sega earned $98.4 million.
To help the Dreamcast sell even more, Sega told many stores to show some of their best games to customers, like "Soul Calibur", "Sonic Adventure", "", and "".
Electronic Arts, a video games company, said that they did not want to make games for the Dreamcast until it sold one million machines. This is because Electronic Arts' video games on the Sega Saturn did not make a lot of money. However, in three months when the Dreamcast did sell one million machines, Electronic Arts still did not want to make games for the Dreamcast and made games for the PlayStation 2 instead.
In places like Europe, Sega decided to let other companies make ads for the Dreamcast. However, Sega did not give the companies enough money, so the companies could not make as many ads as the PlayStation 2, another console that was competing with the Dreamcast.
Many of these companies also forced people to pay more for the Dreamcast than in the USA and Japan.
Some games were not even sold in Europe, because Sega was more focused on selling the Dreamcast in the USA. Because of this, a lot of people who used to like Sega now liked Sony.
Sega's prestige among gamers was at the time heavily damaged because of the lack of good management/marketing back from the Sega Saturn, this also affected certain game developers such as Electronic Arts refusing to develop for the system because of the risk of the Dreamcast becoming just like the Sega Saturn, not selling well. This was a factor is why this Incredible ground breaking console did not reach its full potential.
In the end, Sega told people on January 31, 2001 that they would be discontinuing the console production. Sega's last video game sold for Dreamcast was "", which was released on February 24, 2004.
These accessories were sold by Sega to be used on the Dreamcast:
Notes
Platte River
The Platte River (also called the Nebraska River) is a river in the United States that flows into the Missouri River. It is around 310 miles (or 499 km) long.
Counting
Counting is something people do to find out how many things there are of any kind.
The person counting in English usually starts with the number one, and gives this number to the first thing. The next thing is given the number two. Then, the next thing is given the number three. If there is another thing, it gets the number four. If after this there is another thing, it gets the number five. More things get more numbers. Each thing gets its own number in this way. The last number given to the last thing counted shows how many things there are.
Counting is starting at a number and changing it up or down a certain number of times. In the examples above, counting started at one and then it changed by one each time something was counted. So at first the count was one. Then the count was changed by one, and one plus one is two, so the count was two. Then the count of two was changed by one again, and two plus one is three, so the count was three.
Counting can go up or down. Counting can be done on fingers.
It has been shown that some birds are good at counting. Crows
are birds that are good at counting.
Blast off
Blast off may refer to:
Launch pad
The launch pad is where rockets and spacecraft are placed until they is ready to blast off. NASA has its own launch pads for its spacecraft. Launch pads are often made out of steel reinforced concrete. Launch pads for larger spacecraft will often have towers to support it during its launch.
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle was a spacecraft which was used by the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Space Shuttles were used to carry astronauts and cargo into space. Cargo such as satellites, parts of a space station or scientific instruments were taken up into space by the space shuttle. It was a new kind of spacecraft because it could be used again and again.
The Space Shuttle was made up of 3 parts. These were the orbiter, the external fuel tank and solid rocket boosters.
The orbiter was shaped like a large airplane with wings and a tail. This allowed the Space Shuttle to glide and land on a runway. This allowed the reusable part of the Shuttle to be very large. Many spacecraft which came before the Space Shuttle, like the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo used parachutes when landing, and landed on the ocean. People have said that the Shuttle was very much like a pickup truck because of its usefulness.