Former Sega of America boss Tom Kalinske was in charge of the company during its glory years, and it was under his leadership that it was able to challenge the might of Nintendo during the early '90s. Full of interesting stories and anecdotes, Kalinske's story has been told in Blake J. Harris' excellent book Console Wars - soon to turned into both a documentary and a feature film - and he recently has been kind enough to share some more memories via Reddit.
As well as revealing that Sega was in talks with Trip Hawkins about releasing the 3DO console, Kalinske says that Sega dodged another budget by not entering into an agreement with Massachusetts-based Reflection Technologies - the same company which would shortly afterwards supply the tech that powered Nintendo's disastrous Virtual Boy.
Sega was, at the time, seriously considering entering the Virtual Reality sector and even got as far as producing a headset for the Mega Drive / Genesis which was shown off at trade shows of the period, but sadly never saw a commercial release:
It was pretty cool. You could put it on and literally you were in a virtual world, and it moved as you moved your head.
One of the problems was almost everybody got sick. It caused severe motion sickness. Other people got severe headaches.
The potential deal with Reflection Technologies was related to creating a virtual reality device that worked by reflecting light off of a mirror - Nintendo would later license the same tech for the Virtual Boy.
Kalinske's summary of the failed deal gets straight to the point:
I think we were right in turning it down.
You can check out a summary of the podcast here - if you're a keen follower of video game history, it's well worth a look and a listen.
[source revrob.com]
Comments 12
Some good footage of one of the SEGA VR games is over on Unseen64's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQG0tZqaKUg
There's also this promotional stuff from CES: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwY-EaUQ_Yc
I remember reading about SEGA working a VR headset back in the day. They obviously made the right decision not heading in that direction as the technology even to this day is not viable for marketing. In any case it wouldn't have made much difference to SEGAs fortunes in the long run.
Wow. They REALLY dodged the bullet with this one.
I bet the Dreamcast never would have been released if they put their money into the Virtual Boy.
I suppose it could have worked in Nintendo's favour, although the Virtul Boy was a flop it was a learning curve for the 3DS. The knowledge to produce 3D gaming just passed over from one console to the other, which is a positive in the long run.
@Yorumi
I regularly get motion sickness playing FPS games and even some third person action games (e.g.Infamous) so VR is of no interest to me. I don't stand a chance.
I tried the 3DS' 3D effect once and it messed me up in short order. The mention of FPS games causing issues reminded me that games with very fast scrolling can make me feel off as well. I like shmups and some of those can scroll too fast for me. Luckily, there's no shortage of good shmups that I am fine with and fast scrolling sections were limited to brief sections in a lot of cases.
Anyway, I love old Sega and had great times with the Genesis and was a happy early adopter of the Saturn. It's nice to see an article about Sega making a good decision at that point in time — two good decisions if you include the part about 3DO.
Sega was probably so proud of themselves that they finally were able to avoid a disaster
If sega had done this, there would have been no dreamcast.
Even today, vr is going to be used more for people to have virtual family/friend gatherings on Facebook then for gaming. It's s gimmick...just like motion controls, Kinect etc... A few will love it and rave about it, but like with the 3D on 3ds, how many people honestly use it 100% of the time? No me. Maybe 10%. It works fine and everything , but my eyes don't like it after a while.
I like to game, and getting a headache to play 3D isn't worth it. I can't wait to have vr in my house, but I doubt it will be anything that blows the world away at its awesomeness and assesibility.
I'm glad Sega dodged the endless pit of despair known as the Virtual Boy! Who knows what might have happened to their company after that.
Sega, please. You already had three utter disasters in the hardware spectrum. You sure didn't need a fourth.
Come to think of it, it's too bad they didn't have this as their fourth. Maybe they would have went under and Sonic wouldn't have been reduced to the garbage it is nowadays. Maybe all their other franchises would have been sold off and new games other than half-hearted Sonic ones could have been made.
....Can we go back in time and convince Sega to pull the trigger on this?
Great move for Nintendo.
Also I would like another sonic boom for the Wii U please sega!
Just polish it up properly this time and all will be perfect 😄
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