Year 2000-era Sega Europe / Dreamarena worker AMA

[Sega Alumni]

Hello everybody!

To introduce myself, I worked at Sega Europe during 2000-2001 creating text and other content for the Dreamarena when the Dreamcast was really at its peak.

Please feel free to ask me anything, and I'll try to answer as best as my experience (and ever-weakening memory) will allow!

Full disclosure - in the near future I've got a few bits of rare-ish Dreamcast stuff I'm looking to put on eBay and wanted to come to the kind of people who'd appreciate it (and deserve it) the most - i.e die-hard Sega fans. If this isn't cool then of course I won't shill that stuff here, but I just wanted to be totally honest upfront and not be a dick.

Cheers,

Sega Alumni

[Dirge Of Ram]

Hey there, hopefully your legit!

1. Who's decision was it to crop in the Dreamcast logo on the game case covers? We had the full on artwork to adding in two badly planted boxes at top! Example here.

ottriggercover.jpg (72.02 KiB) Viewed 2852 times

2. Demo Discs. I got to ask this one as Demos should show the strength off the Dreamcast. Each month with the Dream On demo discs we weren't getting what Japan Express Discs & Americans were getting. Why were we getting Football demos, same recycled demos yet again?

3. Cancelled Games. Half Life, Cel Shaded House Of The Dead 3, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3, Jet Set Radio 2, Crazy Taxi 3, Planet Harrier? Can you remember anything behind the scenes with these titles?

4. Games that never made it to Europe. I got to ask this why we didn't get D2, Capcom vs SNK 2, Resident Evil Code Veronica Complete, Max Steel, Mat Hoffman Pro BMX, Sports Jam, Dead or Alive 2 Limited Edition. What the process not bringing them over to us?

5. Shenmue 1 & 2. Anything you remember down to Cut Content.

6. Can you remember any development companies or publishes rebelling against Sega for leaving the Hardware department?

Okay enough I may not be able to see what you got as Ebay can be cruel. Hopefully you can answer at least one.

Thank You sorry for going in hard not all that soft!

[Londinium]

Can you prove you were a legitimate Sega Europe employee?

[Wombat]

First and foremost welcome to DC-Talk, great having an old time SEGA employee on board. Looking forward reading about your experiences during the Dreamcast golden era.

When you say you made content for the DreamArena, I suppose you were making the news and shorts etc? I'm seconding the third questions of @Dirge Of Ram would love to hear if you have seen any of the of those cancelled games.

[dark]

Hello and welcome. It would be interesting to see what dreamcast related items you are thinking of selling. Feel free to describe them here or link to your sale listings if you put them up for sale elsewhere.

Do you have any information about the Pace set top box with a built in dreamcast?
https://www.sonicstadium.org/2001/01/se ... top-boxes/

[Jenkins]

When you say you made content for the DreamArena, I suppose you were making the news and shorts etc?

+1, after this question is answered, I guess it would be easier to ask the right questions

@Dirge Of Ram - 1) I don't exactly know who it was, but the reason behind that was simple: SEGA wanted to push the brand more. It was easier to compete with the Playstation (games) on the shelfs. The Playstation logo and title was on every single game. The Dreamcast only got a blue border with a tiny (sometimes blue on blue) "Dreamcast" on it. As soon as I found the source again I will post it here.

[Sega Alumni]

Can you prove you were a legitimate Sega Europe employee?

I've got my keycard still somewhere, I'll see if I can dig it out...

[Sega Alumni]

Hey there, hopefully your legit!

>>>I'll see if i can find my old Sega Europe keycard!

1. Who's decision was it to crop in the Dreamcast logo on the game case covers? We had the full on artwork to adding in two badly planted boxes at top! Example here.

Wetrix-Dreamcastcover.jpg
ottriggercover.jpg

>>>That does look dreadful - often these kind of illogical decisions stemmed from Japan - alas I never really interacted with the package design side of the company.

2. Demo Discs. I got to ask this one as Demos should show the strength off the Dreamcast. Each month with the Dream On demo discs we weren't getting what Japan Express Discs & Americans were getting. Why were we getting Football demos, same recycled demos yet again?

>>>Usually this kind of thing is down to licencing in the different territories - as above, this sort of negotiation happened 'over the road' and I wasn't privy to the ins and outs

3. Cancelled Games. Half Life, Cel Shaded House Of The Dead 3, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3, Jet Set Radio 2, Crazy Taxi 3, Planet Harrier? Can you remember anything behind the scenes with these titles?

>>>All of the above (especially the third party games) would have been cancelled because the installed base of the DC didn't hit the heights it needed to to make it cost-effective by the time these titles were on the shelf, especially as at the time (iirc?) doing multi-format versions wasn't viable as the DC preceded the following generation of consoles by too long a period.

4. Games that never made it to Europe. I got to ask this why we didn't get D2, Capcom vs SNK 2, Resident Evil Code Veronica Complete, Max Steel, Mat Hoffman Pro BMX, Sports Jam, Dead or Alive 2 Limited Edition. What the process not bringing them over to us?

>>>You'd need to hear from someone within those publishers, but I expect they made similar cost versus install base versus risk calculations and decided it wasn't worth it, even with already completed titles.

5. Shenmue 1 & 2. Anything you remember down to Cut Content.

>>>Sorry, no alas

6. Can you remember any development companies or publishes rebelling against Sega for leaving the Hardware department?

>>>This sort of happened with Electronic Arts stopping development of Dreamcast games while the DC was still available, and kind of sealed its fate. At that time EA were already very powerful, and obviously some back room negotiation between the companies had not gone well.

Okay enough I may not be able to see what you got as Ebay can be cruel. Hopefully you can answer at least one.

>>>I've actually got a tester item up on Ebay at the moment - an official Dreamcast t-shirt I received as a gift from the company: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/115603723024

Thank You sorry for going in hard not all that soft!

>>>No worries! Sorry I couldn't be more informative on the broader questions. The company was quite siloed in nature when I worked there (Dreamarena was actually in a separate building to the rest of Sega Europe in Chiswick), so we tended not to hear the gossip as to what the heck was going on in the company at large).

[Sega Alumni]

First and foremost welcome to DC-Talk, great having an old time SEGA employee on board. Looking forward reading about your experiences during the Dreamcast golden era.

When you say you made content for the DreamArena, I suppose you were making the news and shorts etc? I'm seconding the third questions of @Dirge Of Ram would love to hear if you have seen any of the of those cancelled games.

>>>Yes that's correct - it was a slightly odd gig as I came from game journalism before where you could obviously review games critically and express yourself negatively, whereas on Dreamarena we were hamstrung by needing to be almost 100% uncritical. I tried to slip in a few apt but mild criticisms where I could, 'cos otherwise it would just sound like fuckin' press releases, but yes mainly it was 'game descriptions' and news.

I'd actually love to be able to go back read the output I wrote from twenty years ago, but I fear it was lost to the ether (unless someone archived it somewhere...?).

After a year of that I jumped ship to a rival hardware company (apologies)

[Sega Alumni]

Hello and welcome. It would be interesting to see what dreamcast related items you are thinking of selling. Feel free to describe them here or link to your sale listings if you put them up for sale elsewhere.

Do you have any information about the Pace set top box with a built in dreamcast?
https://www.sonicstadium.org/2001/01/se ... top-boxes/

>>>Hey there! Apologies, that project was something that was being conceived and executed somewhere far away from my vicinity.

I'll try and compensate with this anecdote though - around the Sega office an alarming number of Dreamcast development kits were being used as door stops and footstools because apparently if the power was interrupted in any way (say by jogging the power lead) the hardware would instantly, irreversibly brick itself. Fine engineering!