Why did Sega games appear on non-Sega systems?

alpha5099 · Post by **alpha5099** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 6:56 am

Was there not the concept of first party exclusives in the late 80s/early 90s? Why are there ports of Fantasy Zone and After Burner and Space Harrier and what-have-you, big name Sega franchises, on the NES and PC Engine? Why didn't Sega keep their franchises on Sega systems? Not only are they allowing their games to appear on their competitors' systems, but they were actually doing the port on some of them.

I can't be the only one confused by this.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 7:09 am

Maybe because they realized the SMS was and would be a complete failure with Nintendo monopolizing the 8-bit market.

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 8:02 am

Because at their heart, Sega has always been Sega.

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:16 pm

All the Sega games that were released on the NES were done by Tengen, and they were unlicensed games. It was a big deal at that time and Nintendo even produced all their new NES systems after that point so they wouldn't be compatible w/ the Tengen games. Thankfully, I have an earlier NES that plays them.

Being that they were unlicensed games, Nintendo went after them. However, I never heard anything about Sega getting upset about it (or Atari, for that matter, since many of the conversions were Atari games), so one can only assume that Tengen had earned the right to publish those games on a different system. I imagine that it's probably Sega's way of getting into the market any way they could. As Ganelon said, they new the SMS was a niche market machine and not a widespread phenomenon like the NES - this was just one more way they could eek a few dollars out of the gamer public w/o having to risk a large marketing campaign to push the SMS, knowing that w/ the foothold the NES had already that it would be an uphill battle.

Stormwatch · Post by **Stormwatch** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:23 pm

FRO wrote:However, I never heard anything about Sega getting upset about it (or Atari, for that matter, since many of the conversions were Atari games)

Why would they mind? Tengen was an Atari spin-off.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:33 pm

You are talking about other consoles, but lots of Sega games were ported to computers.

Maybe the 8-bits games aren't all that important, as I am not sure if they were released before or after the SMS existing...

But Shadow Dancer, Golden Axe, Alien Storm, World Championship Soccer, Super Monaco GP, E-Swat, Crackdown, Shinobi, Outrun, Afterburner, Alien Syndrome, Thunderblade, all were released for Amiga, and a few of those for the C64 too.

What is even more curious is that many people believe that U.S. Gold had the rights to port Sonic to Amiga too, but after the success of the game in the Mega-Drive, Sega regretted that, and managed to stop U.S. Gold releasing a port for another system.

SheSaidDutch · Post by **SheSaidDutch** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 12:52 pm

Shatterhand wrote:What is even more curious is that many people believe that U.S. Gold had the rights to port Sonic to Amiga too, but after the success of the game in the Mega-Drive, Sega regretted that, and managed to stop U.S. Gold releasing a port for another system.

WOW

Sonic appearing onthe Amiga,I'm glad Sega stopped the port from finialising.

How popular was the actual Amiga? nichie or rather popular?

If the port went ahead would that have affected the sales of the Megadrive console and the MD Sonic?

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 1:10 pm

Amiga was already pretty much dead at the time, at least in the US.

Neon · Post by **Neon** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 2:57 pm

They did port all the "best" saturn games to the pc. Guess they already knew it would fail...

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 3:55 pm

FRO wrote:All the Sega games that were released on the NES were done by Tengen, and they were unlicensed games. It was a big deal at that time and Nintendo even produced all their new NES systems after that point so they wouldn't be compatible w/ the Tengen games. Thankfully, I have an earlier NES that plays them.

Wrong. Tengen didn't make the majority of the SEGA NES games, they just published them. After Burner US was actually a slightly altered version of the After Burner II Famicom that was done by Sunsoft. Alien Syndrome wasn't publsihed by Tengen in Japan and it's the same as the US NES version. Fantasy Zone Famicom was published by Sunsoft in Japan and is different from the US version. There was also a Famicom Space Harrier that was released by Takara.

I have four or five black cartridge Tengen games and they all work fine on my model 2 NES. Micro Machines from Camerica works fine too, though I have to filp the built in switch to turn the anti-region protection off since the region protection has been removed from the model 2 NES.

Where did you get this info that black cartridge Tengen games don't work on the model 2 NES? Ms. Pac-Man, RBI Baseball (black cartridge), Shinobi, and Rolling Thunder all work fine on it. I haven't tried any others, but I don't think Nintendo purposely made it so certain games don't work.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:02 pm

Neon wrote:They did port all the "best" saturn games to the pc. Guess they already knew it would fail...

Well, they already announced that fact in July 1997 when Bernie blurted out the "stillborn" comment so you expect it had been in mind for a few months. But that was already after they ported over the big 3 (VF2, Daytona, and VC) to the PC, which itself was likely a result of their 16-bit Sonic ports doing on the PC well even earlier. Then again, porting to the PC is hardly the same as porting to the competing platform.

FatCobra · Post by **FatCobra** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:36 pm

It's still sad that Sega doesn't make their own consoles anymore....and I feel they're a shadow of the company they used to be 10 years ago.

I think Sega was more about the arcade games anyway, they had alot of kickass stuff like Daytona.

BrianC · Post by **BrianC** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:42 pm

I miss SEGA consoles, but I love some more recent SEGA games like F-Zero GX and Virtua Fighter 4. I like Nightshade so far, but I have to play more for a better opinion.

Ganelon · Post by **Ganelon** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 4:47 pm

FatCobra wrote:I think Sega was more about the arcade games anyway, they had alot of kickass stuff like Daytona.

Yeah, I liked them better when they actually made arcade games rather than the oddities they often make nowadays.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 6:54 pm

Ganelon wrote:Amiga was already pretty much dead at the time, at least in the US.

Only in US then...

On Europe, I believe the Amiga was the leading computer between 1989 and 1993 (Though I never lived on Europe, so I may be completely wrong

). It's fall begun in 1994, and I'd say the "death" of Amiga happened in 1997.

I am pretty sure the Amiga was HUGELY popular in Europe. I consider the Amiga to be the pinnacle of gaming, the most amazing, greatest games ever were born on Amiga.

The system had more than 5000 games released for it.

I dunno if this being released on Amiga would hurt Sonic and the Mega-Drive sells, but I'd bet it would do. The port would probably suck anyway (Like most U.S.Gold ports do). I think it's more to do with the fact that Sonic was the mascot for the Mega-Drive, it would be no good if the mascot was appearing in other system.

Andi · Post by **Andi** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 7:50 pm

I am pretty happy they are making games for other consoles now. I really like some of Sega franchises (Shinobi, Sonic, Panzer Dragoon) but I don't really like buying Sega hardware that will always be poorly supported in the US and eventually fail.

neorichieb1971 · Post by **neorichieb1971** » Wed Apr 20, 2005 8:08 pm

The reason the PC engine got Sega games was because of a deal Sega did with NEC.

NEC make computer chips, Sega needed lots of computer chips. NEC made PC engine, PC engine needed games. It was a cross over deal where Sega got the chips it needed cheaply in return for Sega porting games to other systems.

I have no idea why Sega would make NES game

Post by **Shatterhand** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:22 am

I just want to add more 2 cents.

No Amiga port of any Sega game would hurt Mega-Drive selling. It would be the opposite actually, it would be more like "SHIT! This game sucks, I want to play a decent version of it!"

With the exception of Golden Axe (Arguably BETTER than the Mega-Drive port... excellent work from Probe, who also did awesome works in both Mortal Kombat games and T2: The Arcade game on Amiga) , and Shadow Dancer (Which is not awesome, but it's pretty good), all the other Amiga versions of Sega games pretty much suck bad.

Most of them were published by U.S. Gold, that, as most people know, never released one single good game in all their history

GaijinPunch · Post by **GaijinPunch** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 4:43 am

Don't forget Choplifterby by Jaleco, Fanatsy Zone II done by Sunsoft, Shinobi by Asmik, and Space Harrier & Thunderblade done by NEC Avenue. None of those were done by Tengen.

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 8:24 am

Shatterhand wrote: On Europe, I believe the Amiga was the leading computer between 1989 and 1993 (Though I never lived on Europe, so I may be completely wrong ).

...

I am pretty sure the Amiga was HUGELY popular in Europe. I consider the Amiga to be the pinnacle of gaming, the most amazing, greatest games ever were born on Amiga.

Aside from it being the pinnacle of gaming (which is quite debatable imo) you're quite right in your assessments.
Amiga was enormously popular those years (especially the HUGE demo scene and the easily available pirated copies of games (:() helped the succes of the machine, it having the best out of the box music capabilities helped too

).
When the SNES and Megadrive came around though (and the pc-engine on import...) it was obvious the hardware (of the non AGA Amigas) became
a bit outdated. The AGA Amigas (1200 and so on) gave it a little revival though.
One of the earlier Sega games on the Amiga: Space Harrier got quite a decent conversion too if I can add to the list.

On a side note: Sega games also appeared on the MSX system.
I figure it was because Sega wasn't yet the Powerhouse on the homeconsole market it became in it's Megadrive period. I guess they were betting on more than one horse at the time (which at the time made sense I think).

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 9:42 am

GaijinPunch wrote:Don't forget [...] Fanatsy Zone II done by Sunsoft [...]

Sweet. I never knew FZII appeared on any other system. I always thought it was a Master System exclusive. Well, judging from the screenshots on the box, the NES wasn't quite capable of recreating the colourful graphics of the SMS version.

Post by **Shatterhand** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:17 pm

I say the amiga was the "Pinnacle of gaming" because it had the best library of games ever IMO.

On the English Amiga Board ( eab.abime.net ), there's a guy making polls to discover what's "the best game of each year"

Last week or so, it was launched the poll for "BEst game of 1993 year"... man you have to look at that, JUST THAT year is better than probably the whole library of most systems around

But yes, that's a completely personal, biased opinion

Yes, Sega released some MSX games... I am not sure, but I think those are even pre-SMS, that's why I didn't relate them. I am not sure, but I think there are even a few non-arcade games from them on MSX. (Kendo and Gulkave, for example, I've never seen in any other system).

And unlike the Amiga ports, the MSX games were pretty good

Herr Schatten · Post by **Herr Schatten** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:20 pm

Shatterhand wrote:Kendo and Gulkave, for example, I've never seen in any other system.

Wasn't there a port of Gulkave for the SG-1000? Or am I mixing things up here?

Super Laydock · Post by **Super Laydock** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 1:35 pm

Shatterhand wrote: Last week or so, it was launched the poll for "BEst game of 1993 year"... man you have to look at that, JUST THAT year is better than probably the whole library of most systems around

I can't believe that the Second Samurai got only 1 vote! Bloody fantastic game that was!