The Saga of Sega Trivia Quiz

Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg and James Humpert were three Americans who founded Standard Games in Hawaii. The company was formed to manufacture coin slot machine games, specifically for soldiers during World War II.

In 1946, after the resolution of World War II, they renamed Standard Games as Service Games, denoting the games' use by the military services. The company received a hit that changed its history forever, however, when the United States made coin slot games illegal in 1952. This prompted the company to source itself in Tokyo, Japan, to form Service Games of Japan. They still catered to United States military that was based in Japan.

Sega was an abbreviation of Service Games. Service Games of Japan had dissolved in 1960 to avoid trouble with the United States government, but had reformed in two different businesses: Nihon Goraku Bussan and Nihon Kikai Seizō.

Also in 1954, David Rosen began the company of Rosen Enterprises, which specialized in importing photo booths and coin-operated games. In 1965, his company merged with Nihon Goraku Bussan to form Sega Enterprises, Ltd.

Electro-mechanical games are those that function through a combination of electronics and user motion. This particular game was "Periscope", which was made to simulate a submarine, including with sound effects and lights. The player operated the "submarine", attempting to shoot ships it came into contact with.

The game was a hit worldwide, and Sega manufactured several per year. The games were placed in locations that hadn't seen arcade games before, such as malls. One play cost 25 cents.

"Pong-Tron" was similar to the earlier game, "Pong", which was manufactured by the company Atari. First released in 1972, the game involved moving two "paddles" to imitate a game of ping-pong with an electronic "ball". The game was successful, and Sega released its version the next year.

"Pong-Tron", however, was released specifically for Japan; Sega had stopped importing its games in 1970 due to problems with piracy.

"Frogger" was Sega's most popular game to be released after "Periscope". Its aim was a little bit different, though: players "battled" against busy traffic and other pitfalls to see that frogs made it across streets and other hazards!

"Frogger" has had many sequel and spin-off games, notably "Frogger II: ThreeeDeep!" in 1984.

Sega's first home video game console was developed after getting the idea from Nintendo, which was developing its own at the time. Developed alongside Sega's first computer console, the SC-3000, the video game console was called the SG-1000 (the SG stood for Sega Game, of course!). It was redesigned and rereleased several times until 1986.

To use the console, gamers would insert either a cassette program, a My Card game, or a ROM cartridge, depending on the game and the console set. The SG-1000 series sold over 1 million copies!

The Sega Genesis was Sega's first 16-bit color video game home entertainment system, and was meant to be a successor to Sega's previous system, the Master System. It was released in Japan in October of 1988, and then in North America in August of 1989.

Thanks in part to the creation of the character Sonic the Hedgehog, who was developed shortly after Genesis, Sega's system outsold the Nintendo equivalent for four successive Christmases, prompting a steep drop in Nintendo's stock worth. Although Sega discontinued Genesis in 1999, Tectoy sold a variant for years until it was finally discontinued in Brazil in 2023!

Sonic the Hedgehog was a character created for video games by Sega to compete with Nintendo's popular Mario character. He was created following the release of Sega's new system Genesis in 1988.

Sonic first appeared in the "Rad Mobile" arcade game released in October 1990, but his real entrance came in the 1991 game "Sonic the Hedgehog" in 1991. Since then, he has been Sega's mascot. Interestingly, his shoes were modeled after those often worn by Michael Jackson!

The Sega Dreamcast home video game console was to be Sega's last. This came at a time when Sega was suffering financially; the Nintendo PlayStation had outstripped the Sega Saturn, the successor to Genesis, and Sega's worth had dropped. The Dreamcast was launched in Japan in 1998, but due to a manufacturing problem not enough consoles had been made and shipped for the launch, resulting in a major potential profit loss.

The Dreamcast was launched in North America on September 9, 1999 (also known as 9.9.1999!). Its lifespan was pitifully short, however; it was discontinued in 2001.

What with the losses sustained from the relative failure of the Dreamcast, and other financial problems, Sega announced that it was both discontinuing Dreamcast, and becoming a software developer for other companies, in 2001. This ended Sega's hardware development. This formed a major shifting point in Sega's history, and seems an apt place to end a quiz on the same subject!

Discontinuing Dreamcast didn't become a money-saver for Sega, however; simply doing so resulted in $689 million in losses! Sega's losses didn't stick around forever--but that's a different quiz!