E3 1995: The SEGA/Sony Keynote

This month, UGO takes a look back at E3 events from previous years to see how they have shaped the industry. Today they look back at E3 from 1995. They write:

"In '95, SEGA was a presence. Three colossal stalls filled the right side of expo's Expo South Hall, dwarfing set-ups for Konami and EA. Emasculated by the back-to-back hardware failures of SEGA CD and 32X, Sega needed some spit and vinegar to keep up with long-time rival Nintendo and the newcomer Sony."

[DrRobotnik]

Now this was a battle that actually showed the difference in hardware power. Saturn, with its large ram capacity, could push 2d games to arcade perfect. Yet had poor 3d capabilities. Playstation, with its dominating 3d architecture, had 3d games that rivaled n64. Yet its 2d games were trash.(other than COTN. that was pure genius.)These differences were actually something noticeable. Not slight lighting effects. Or one or two missing textures. If you spent $60 to just zoom in on a crate, in the corner of a level for hours. Then maybe you shouldn't be playing videogames. Maybe you should go and become a CSI agent. Make some good money.

[Timesplitter14]

very well said, good sir

[BigPete7978]

I agree. Well said, bubbles.

[poopsack]

Yes.

[iDystopia]

Great comment Dr. Eggman.

[ShabzS]

''grind my gears''? isnt that a family guy quote... anyways good comment though bubble up

[50CALheadshot]

everyone knows this all started with the master system and the nes, and their similar games and controllers.sega had the less popular identity, especially since nintendo had mario.SNES and Genesis both had similar boasts of power, but it was nintendo that had the superior console.

I remember playing sonic, mario and what not, but never noticed the genesis' inferior sound differences until street fighter2 and mortal kombat 3 were released(just look at the character detail, and listen to audio.) The blast processing that genesis claimed was a joke, btw. Snes wins with the better hardware.

Nintendo had sega by the balls when games like dkc,starfox,dkq, and other titles that focused on graphics were released. None of you can even say, that donkey kong country WAS NOT HOT. at this point genesis had nothing to battle snes, enter 32x and segacd. While a nice try, it was really more of a gimmick (funding for saturn) since both had a total of 4 good games.LOL.

SNES was the superior console of that gen, along with the neo geo of course. Matter of fact, i love those two consoles SOOOO much that i have them BOTH running on my psp, along with all the capcom fighters. I have practically turned my psp into a handheld portable arcade unit..

[hitthegspot]

I still have my shirt from this one...

[ElementX]

Who the hell cares about something that happend 13 years ago? I sure as hell don't. This site is called N4G (News 4 Gamers) not Old Ass Happenings for Gamers. BTW, this is a blog post, and a lousy one at that. It doesn't contain any relevant information for today, just some cheap ass ideas from the writer. LAME. Quit submitting this garbage

*EDIT*
The submission guidelines say that blogs are ok if they're from industry sources. This blog is just some random guy's recollection and shouldn't be submitted. Take this trash elsewhere.

*EDIT*
This is a blog post and should be labeled as a BLOG!!!!! Read the blog guidelines.

*EDIT*
According to the N4G guidelines:................... .....
What is news?
What is newsworthy and what is not. There is no easy answer here but there is one thing that is essential and that is that the story you submit has to be new. Submitting “news” that is several weeks old will only annoy other members, and most likely someone else has already submitted the story back when it was real news. So “new” is the keyword, it has to be new to be news.

What's "new" about an article which describes an event 13 years ago?

*EDIT*
Taken from the N4G guidelines..........
Posting Articles
You can also post articles to N4G. Articles posted to N4G should be of interest to the gaming community and be professional and well written. Opinion pieces are also OK as long as they are written by well established websites or people who work in the game industry.

Is this blog site established or is the author "in the game industry?" NO, absolutely not.

[Bathyj]

Jeeze man, its just a little food for thought. Dont read it.

Maybe if more people minded the mistakes of the past we wouldn't keep repeating them all the time.

I'm sorry your valuable time was wasted.

EDIT
Dude, you're way to upset over this.
You wasted 2 minutes reading it, but you wasted another half an hour complaining about it. If your time is that important to you, dont you think it would have been better to read it, and then just move on?

BTW I'm holding my thumb and index finger about the width of a piece of rice paper apart. Thats how much I care about the guideline for submitting stories here. They're constantly broken a few dozen time a day, everyday so big whoop. I just want something to read and to learn some info from time to time.

[Mo0eY]

Element, how old are you? 12 or 13? Are you one of those new-aged kiddie gamers who plays the Wii, or did you come from the land of Gaylo?

Be respectful of the past because it just might haunt you some day.

[ElementX]

I'm 28, will be 29 on July 5. I've owned Sega Master System, NES, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, 3D0, Playstation, Xbox, Xbox 360, Wii, Playstation 3, PSP, Nintendo DS, and my father had an old Atari system.

What's your point? News is something "new", not some reminisce from 13 years ago.

[hitthegspot]

Why all the hate towards the "article"? No disrespect, but in about 12Hrs you will see how hot this "article" gets and that the N4G community (the same community that approved this "article") likes or dislikes this "article".

[ElementX]

Fine, if you all want to disagree with me, I don't care. This site has gone downhill fast in the past year. Everybody and their brother is submitting articles from nobodys who just want their opinion heard. They're not in the industry, they're not professionals. The guidelines speak for themselves. I'm not a hater, however it's ridiculous to sort through the "real news" and blog postings on this site. There are enough opinions out there to write 10,000,000,000 books however who gives a damn? You've heard the phrase "opinions are likes assholes, everybody has one". Every Tom, D!ck, and Harry doesn't need their opinions and ideas posted on this site. If you disagree with me, so be it. I just think this site has gotten out of hand

[slpknt6sic6]

ElementX speaks the truth people, he is right whats there to disagree with? bubble to you sir "ElementX" for your honest and truthful post.

[DrRobotnik]

I fully understand how you feel about this site element x. But you have understand that, even though this is "news for gamers" this is still an albeit, gaming website. Anything and everything about past, present and future will be posted here about gaming. I know you probably feel hurt by the fact N4G is now more than just news. Hell MTV used to music television...........now look at it. It's now RTV. Reality television. That's life.

[ElementX]

True, times change. I think that the N4G webmasters and creators should design a different site for blog postings and retro news. It would help users differentiate between what is news and what is a blog post.

When I log onto N4G in the morning, I see about 30 articles which have been approved since I went to bed the previous night. A lot of them are blogs and opinion pieces. If the webmaster created a separate section for such articles, I wouldn't have to sort through 30 postings but maybe only 10-15. It would be a great service to those, who like me, don't have time in the morning to look through all the previous night's postings.

Some people only want news, some like to read various articles. I think they should separate them so users can easily find what they're looking for.

[kaveti6616]

OF all the fanboy articles that were on today, about "360 destroying PS3" or "Microsoft losing 12 trillion dollars" or "Sega favors MS" or anything like that, you had to come on this board and bash this innocent little paragraph of a thing. It didn't say anything bad at all, and in fact, it taught me something I didn't know. I had no idea how Sega slowly got kicked out of the industry and now I have a clue. God bless the guy who wrote this because seriously in a time when every other article is written by fanboys and contains nothing but pure speculation, this article presented the cold hard history. It's one hundred percent fact.

And it is so very sad that you are 29 years old and still bother to come to this website. I hope I'm not here in 11 years. Dear God, are you on PCP or something? How could this article be the one that pisses you off? N4G is not a professional website, so don't criticize it so much.

On another note, it really sucks that Sega got kicked out like that. Like uber sucks. Sony was indeed a newcomer and Sega was old rivals with Nintendo, and E3 was the moment to shine, and suddenly, like a fart in the wind, Sega's gone. Gives me the impression that the game industry is a fickle thing. One day you could be celebrating your tenth year, and the next day you're filing chapter eleven and closing down. I really do hope Sega comes back some day. They truly did have top notch 2D. I remember playing a game... jeez what was it called. It had lots of gears and machinery and stuff. I don't think it was Sonic. Damn. If ever there was a reason to hate Sony, it was because they booted out Sega, first the saturn, then the Dreamcast. Wait, I was playing Genesis. I never got to play the saturn.

[ShiNe-Box-]

I miss those days. SEGA, the only true contender worthy of throwing down with Playstation.

[ballsofsteel]

lol i was still play my SNES back then

[specialguest]

My current console was the SNES, but I wanted to the NEC PC-FX, since I was also a TG16/Turbo Duo owner. Looking back in retrospect, fortunately the PC-FX was a Japan only console.

The next console of interest was the PSX and it was mainly due to the Sony brand name. My brothers and I never owned a Sega console, so we had little interest, even though the Sega Saturn entry level games looked amazing.

[Bathyj]

Alot of people blame Sony for killing Dreamcast, and in turn Sega, but people forget even the Megadrive, Segas best effort in my book, played second fiddle to SNES in most peoples homes. Mega CD and 32X were laughable. By the time Dreamcast came out, it was the last roll of the dice for them. They had been losing huge amounts of money for years and years, I'm surprised then had enough to get DC out the door.

Anyway, I digress.

[Persistantthug]

that was more of a side note.

The main reason for Dreamcast eventually dying was the mere mention of PS2. I remember it like it was just a few years ago, when Sony put a release date on PS2, Dreamcast sales dropped like a rock, they panicked and started to price drop their systems in hopes of stopping their slide....Never panned out. It died and PS3 went on to become the most popular game system of all time. That was the reason, everything else was side notes....lots of them too btw.

[hatchimatchi]

the saturn is awesome. I'd go so far to say that it's better than the dreamcast

[AKNAA]

Gawd damn dude, you went waaaaay to far on that one!

I honestly thought the dreamcast was better than the ps1 & ps2, let alone the saturn...

[iDystopia]

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

We have a winner.

[kaveti6616]

I had not seen that before. Now I realize what people mean when they said Sony was arrogant. at the time they actually did not offer many compelling titles, and the giant enemy crab thing now helps me understand why that one guy chose that as his username. Well, the PS3 has come a helluva long way since then.

I guess that's why Sony fanboys are so exhilarated by the fact that the ps3 is not a bad system. I have not seen that level of progress from MS. If only MS would spend some time building an engine for the 360 to wow us.