Podcast - Tom Kalinske Speaks About His Time As Sega of America's CEO

It seems this was posted last month. Tom still hoping for the Console Wars film.

https://soundcloud.com/retrogamingre...f-americas-ceo

At 40:45 in Tom is asked about Sega releasing the 3DO M2 hardware in partnership with Panasonic. It's a bit confusing because at first Tom is thinking about the original 3DO system that retailed for $700 but after clarification from the interviewer, he sort of kind of confirms Sega doing M2. Also, just before that part of the interview he reconfirms what we all knew about Silicon Graphics' gaming console chip which SoJ turned down, and it went on to be used by Nintendo.

These guys are sooooo biased. They start out the interview climbing into Kalinske's behind and I am sure it will go on like that. Gotta take my medicine before being able to stomach this in its entirety.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcjpags7JT8

I thought it was a very cool podcast, it's important to get primary documents like this from people who were actively involved in history. I don't think he's maliciously lying, just misremembering. I think it's an important lesson: CEOs are just people, they're not the shining gods they're sometimes made out to be. Often, they don't know the thing they are selling very well, not nearly as well as the fans or even other people in the company. You'd be appalled if you saw how some make day to day decisions about the company. They're there to serve as a figure head and maintain relationships. And they often get to be in the CEO position because of people they know. If you listen to the podcast, Tom spends a lot of time talking about the very personal relationships he had with others in the industry, and he's very careful about names and people. The stuff we care about just wasn't as big of a deal to him.

Also, haven't heard it mentioned before, but do you think he could be confusing the fanged Sonic with Aero the Acrobat?

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

I thought it was a very cool podcast, it's important to get primary documents like this from people who were actively involved in history. I don't think he's maliciously lying, just misremembering. I think it's an important lesson: CEOs are just people, they're not the shining gods they're sometimes made out to be. Often, they don't know the thing they are selling very well, not nearly as well as the fans or even other people in the company. You'd be appalled if you saw how some make day to day decisions about the company. They're there to serve as a figure head and maintain relationships. And they often get to be in the CEO position because of people they know. If you listen to the podcast, Tom spends a lot of time talking about the very personal relationships he had with others in the industry, and he's very careful about names and people. The stuff we care about just wasn't as big of a deal to him.

Also, haven't heard it mentioned before, but do you think he could be confusing the fanged Sonic with Aero the Acrobat?

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No, Aero the Acrobat was released in 1994 IIRC.

The only time that I know of that Sonic had fangs in an official capacity was in the Japanese promotional comic.

http://i1289.photobucket.com/albums/...psca9vaxfo.jpg

http://www.sonicdatabase.com/Sonic1991/06.jpg

It's still unknown if this was what Kalinske saw. The comic was released in June 1991 so I kind of doubt it(unless he saw early artwork from the comic, I honestly don't know). Other than this comic, there has been no other concept art/official art that has surfaced that shows Sonic with fangs.

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Originally Posted by Cornholio857

No, Aero the Acrobat was released in 1994 IIRC.

The only time that I know of that Sonic had fangs in an official capacity was in the Japanese promotional comic.

http://i1289.photobucket.com/albums/...psca9vaxfo.jpg

http://www.sonicdatabase.com/Sonic1991/06.jpg

It's still unknown if this was what Kalinske saw. The comic was released in June 1991 so I kind of doubt it(unless he saw early artwork from the comic, I honestly don't know). Other than this comic, there has been no other concept art/official art that has surfaced that shows Sonic with fangs.

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I'm saying he might be getting his time line confused. If not that, then it's just some marketing mockups we've never seen (and might not ever see).

Some people want a piece of cake they never had a hand in creating. - In fact they didn't even help with the dishes yet somehow they feel they have the right to claim that without them no one could have possibly enjoyed the cake.

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

Some people want a piece of cake they never had a hand in creating. - In fact they didn't even help with the dishes yet somehow they feel they have the right to claim that without them no one could have possibly enjoyed the cake.

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I think it's as much our fault as anyone else's - it's a quirk of human psychology to want to give all the blame/credit to the leader/figurehead of an organization, whether or not that person had anything to actually do with anything.

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

These guys are sooooo biased. They start out the interview climbing into Kalinske's behind and I am sure it will go on like that. Gotta take my medicine before being able to stomach this in its entirety.

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Is it too late for me to hop into Kalinske's behind too?

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

I thought it was a very cool podcast, it's important to get primary documents like this from people who were actively involved in history. I don't think he's maliciously lying, just misremembering. I think it's an important lesson: CEOs are just people, they're not the shining gods they're sometimes made out to be. Often, they don't know the thing they are selling very well, not nearly as well as the fans or even other people in the company. You'd be appalled if you saw how some make day to day decisions about the company. They're there to serve as a figure head and maintain relationships. And they often get to be in the CEO position because of people they know. If you listen to the podcast, Tom spends a lot of time talking about the very personal relationships he had with others in the industry, and he's very careful about names and people. The stuff we care about just wasn't as big of a deal to him.

Also, haven't heard it mentioned before, but do you think he could be confusing the fanged Sonic with Aero the Acrobat?

---

I used to think this way but the more I've heard Kalinske ramble on over the years and the more I've seen his stories get debunked the more I've come to the side of him having an inflated ego. Maybe he is misremembering some things but others are outright fabrications that are sometimes disrespectful to the contributions of creators and other executives of the time.

Don't get me wrong, he was part of what made Sega a success in the US and subsequently part of my life, but I'm sick of him blurring history with his misinformation that tends to get accepted without hesitation by folks not willing to do any additional digging.

My ultimate point is take everything he says with a grain of salt because it's often not the whole truth.

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Originally Posted by Obviously

I used to think this way but the more I've heard Kalinske ramble on over the years and the more I've seen his stories get debunked the more I've come to the side of him having an inflated ego. Maybe he is misremembering some things but others are outright fabrications that are sometimes disrespectful to the contributions of creators and other executives of the time.

Don't get me wrong, he was part of what made Sega a success in the US and subsequently part of my life, but I'm sick of him blurring history with his misinformation that tends to get accepted without hesitation by folks not willing to do any additional digging.

My ultimate point is take everything he says with a grain of salt because it's often not the whole truth.

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I must admit that I don't know the full history of everything, that's just the impression of it I get from the podcast. However, taking credit for other people's work is pretty common with CEOs, so I'm not surprised!

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Originally Posted by parallaxscroll

It seems this was posted last month. Tom still hoping for the Console Wars film.

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What is up with that? It's been a year and still no info

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Originally Posted by Cornholio857

No, Aero the Acrobat was released in 1994 IIRC.

The only time that I know of that Sonic had fangs in an official capacity was in the Japanese promotional comic.

http://i1289.photobucket.com/albums/...psca9vaxfo.jpg

http://www.sonicdatabase.com/Sonic1991/06.jpg

It's still unknown if this was what Kalinske saw. The comic was released in June 1991 so I kind of doubt it(unless he saw early artwork from the comic, I honestly don't know). Other than this comic, there has been no other concept art/official art that has surfaced that shows Sonic with fangs.

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To be fair Michael Kats has mentioned the fanged sonic as well. I seem to remember he said something about de-fanging sonic as well.

Sega of America screwed us. We should have gotten the vampire rockstar :p.

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Originally Posted by stika

To be fair Michael Kats has mentioned the fanged sonic as well. I seem to remember he said something about de-fanging sonic as well.

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can you please link to that? i dont remember katz ever saying that. maybe madeline schroeder?

anyway, kalinske most likely heard it from schroeder and then made the story his own. that's why he always says "we" when he talks about these things. "we" meaning the people that were actually around at the time, not him.

i think schroeder mentions fangs in that youtube documentary, but she does it in such a passing way that its not clear if she's being literal or just trying to illustrate how aggressive sonic looked.

it definitely has nothing to do with that comic which was released just before the game.

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Originally Posted by Obviously

I used to think this way but the more I've heard Kalinske ramble on over the years and the more I've seen his stories get debunked the more I've come to the side of him having an inflated ego. Maybe he is misremembering some things but others are outright fabrications that are sometimes disrespectful to the contributions of creators and other executives of the time.

Don't get me wrong, he was part of what made Sega a success in the US and subsequently part of my life, but I'm sick of him blurring history with his misinformation that tends to get accepted without hesitation by folks not willing to do any additional digging.

My ultimate point is take everything he says with a grain of salt because it's often not the whole truth.

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I'd trust Kalinske himself every time over haters on a forum who weren't actually there. Even after it's proven that yes, Sonic did have fangs (some of the art is even posted in this thread), the Katz fans here are still claiming it's not true... but it sure seems to have been proven accurate. Preferring Katz over Kalinske doesn't make much sense, the latter was far more successful and for good reasons.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Even after it's proven that yes, Sonic did have fangs (some of the art is even posted in this thread)

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In a promotional comic that was off-model and had no bearing on Ohshima's work and the official designs. The best case scenario is he rejected the promotional comic for US distribution (which makes sense because his job was to MARKET the game not DESIGN it) which is a far cry from directing Sonic's character design. From the earliest concept art and game alphas done well before Kalinske was even shown Sonic for the first time there's no evidence that fangs were ever part of Sega's official character design for Sonic. On this matter my most charitable opinion is that he's misremembering the details and my least charitable opinion is that he's blowing the details out of context.

And as for trivia on Sonic's design (such as the origin of the red sneakers) I'd rather trust the guy who actually DESIGNED THE CHARACTER.

It's of course not limited to Sonic, another example off the top of my head is the whole Sega and EA deal which is very different depending on whether you're listening to Trip Hawkins version or Tom Kalinske's version but that's a battle of the egos in which both parties are probably fabricating a few things.

I'm not a Kalinske hater. He decided how to distribute Sonic and his opinions were possibly a factor in Sonic's human girlfriend getting the axe (though most extra bits were axed from the game due to time and space restrictions such as Sonic's band which was going to be a sound-test mode). He did an excellent job of marketing the game in the US and I'm not trying to take anything about his success away from him. His success with the Sega brand made him one of the architects of my childhood.

But people aren't just saying the things he says are inaccurate and should be taken with a grain of salt just because they don't like him. Many of his claims are contradicted by other interviews from people who were also there. I'm not basing my opinions solely on Sega-16 forum threads and I don't care about the SOA vs SOJ nonsense that often crops up here (both branches had victories and defeats), I've just become more aware of the fact that Kalinske's version of history doesn't always jive with what some of the creators have stated or with the evidence we have available to us. I choose to remain skeptical of some of his claims and I'm not a fan of how they're often accepted without taking any other sources into account.

I'd really love for someone to interview him and ask him to clarify a few contradictions. I'm open minded about this, I'd totally accept him putting me in my place if he's in the right.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

I'd trust Kalinske himself every time over haters on a forum who weren't actually there. Even after it's proven that yes, Sonic did have fangs (some of the art is even posted in this thread), the Katz fans here are still claiming it's not true... but it sure seems to have been proven accurate. Preferring Katz over Kalinske doesn't make much sense, the latter was far more successful and for good reasons.

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lol you gotta be trollin or just downright crazy if you think kalinske designed sonic's red shoes just because he said he did (despite the actual designer specifically saying on more than one occasion that the design was his own). even the madonna thing yuji naka said was only a place holder yet again somehow kalinske's account trumps the game designer's? give me a break.

some people are just so gullible and eager to lick up dog shit it's funny

oh but it was "proven" so you must be right :blah:

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Originally Posted by Obviously

In a promotional comic that was off-model and had no bearing on Ohshima's work and the official designs. The best case scenario is he rejected the promotional comic for US distribution (which makes sense because his job was to MARKET the game not DESIGN it) which is a far cry from directing Sonic's character design. From the earliest concept art and game alphas done well before Kalinske was even shown Sonic for the first time there's no evidence that fangs were ever part of Sega's official character design for Sonic. On this matter my most charitable opinion is that he's misremembering the details and my least charitable opinion is that he's blowing the details out of context.

And as for trivia on Sonic's design (such as the origin of the red sneakers) I'd rather trust the guy who actually DESIGNED THE CHARACTER.

It's of course not limited to Sonic, another example off the top of my head is the whole Sega and EA deal which is very different depending on whether you're listening to Trip Hawkins version or Tom Kalinske's version but that's a battle of the egos in which both parties are probably fabricating a few things.

I'm not a Kalinske hater. He decided how to distribute Sonic and his opinions were possibly a factor in Sonic's human girlfriend getting the axe (though most extra bits were axed from the game due to time and space restrictions such as Sonic's band which was going to be a sound-test mode). He did an excellent job of marketing the game in the US and I'm not trying to take anything about his success away from him. His success with the Sega brand made him one of the architects of my childhood.

But people aren't just saying the things he says are inaccurate and should be taken with a grain of salt just because they don't like him. Many of his claims are contradicted by other interviews from people who were also there. I'm not basing my opinions solely on Sega-16 forum threads and I don't care about the SOA vs SOJ nonsense that often crops up here (both branches had victories and defeats), I've just become more aware of the fact that Kalinske's version of history doesn't always jive with what some of the creators have stated or with the evidence we have available to us. I choose to remain skeptical of some of his claims and I'm not a fan of how they're often accepted without taking any other sources into account.

I'd really love for someone to interview him and ask him to clarify a few contradictions. I'm open minded about this, I'd totally accept him putting me in my place if he's in the right.

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From listening to the podcast, what it sounds like he's saying is that was shown some mock up marketing material for how they wanted to sell Sonic in America - this included a more "extreme" look with fangs, etc. This is jut how they wanted to market him, not really having anything to do with the game. It would have appeared in print ads, the box art, etc. It was not uncommon at the time for the print ads and box art to not really look all that much like the game. If true, fans have never seen this look because it's never been shown to us. It would have gone back into some artists drawer/portfolio after being rejected, and might have ended up in the trash. We might never actually see it. The comic above probably has nothing to do with it.

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

From listening to the podcast, what it sounds like he's saying is that was shown some mock up marketing material for how they wanted to sell Sonic in America - this included a more "extreme" look with fangs, etc. This is jut how they wanted to market him, not really having anything to do with the game. It would have appeared in print ads, the box art, etc. It was not uncommon at the time for the print ads and box art to not really look all that much like the game. If true, fans have never seen this look because it's never been shown to us. It would have gone back into some artists drawer/portfolio after being rejected, and might have ended up in the trash. We might never actually see it. The comic above probably has nothing to do with it.

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that could be the case, but i don't really get that impression from listening to the interview. he again says things like "we changed the character" but based on the timing of his hiring and everything else it really seems like "we" should be "madeline schroeder".

an interesting thing in this interview is that kalinske gives credit to katz for the montana deal with EA, which goes directly against what it says in console wars, the book kalinske is endorsing (cw says kalinske was behind the deal).

kalinske says at 17:00 "the soj guys didn't want to change the character, and they wanted to keep madonna and they wanted to keep the band. nakayama put his fist down and said 'no, we're going to do what sega of america wants to do, what tom wants to do.'"

in 'the history of sonic', yuji naka says: "I wanted to add a female character named madonna, and sonic was supposed to save this madonna. but we thought this would be too close to mario saving his princess, so even though I still thought it would be a good idea, we had to give up on it. but when sonic 1 was first revealed at a toy show, we still had sonic and madonna in the same picture, so if you were at the show you would have thought that madonna was going to be in the game."

that's the tokyo toy show he's talking about, held in june 1990. so even though madonna was shown at the toy show, she had already been scrapped. kalinske wasnt hired by sega until 5 months later.

in gamespy's interview with naka, he says: "we wanted to have a separate sound-test screen with an animation of Sonic break-dancing while a "Sonic Band" played the game music. We were working on the images, and had enough space left on the cartridge memory for it, but once again time constraints prevented us from putting it in the program."

so the band was in the game but was ultimately scrapped due to time constraints and was replaced with the se-ga voice.

kalinske just isnt credible when it comes to sonic's history. it's not clear if he is just 'borrowing' other peoples' stories since he was hired so late in sonic's development (and that's why he always says 'we'), or if he is just confusing promotional material with the actual game or what. and let's not even bring up the red shoes...

btw, lets not forget katz's summing up of kalinske from his sega 16 interview: "It really irks me, that subsequent Sega management has taken credit for a lot of this. They ought to study their history a little better, “get a life,” and try to take credit for what they really did or didn’t do."

as somebody on the previous page said, its common for CEOs to take credit for a lot of stuff they didnt actually do. self-marketing is an important part of the job.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Preferring Katz over Kalinske doesn't make much sense, the latter was far more successful and for good reasons.

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I still think the console was successful because it was a good console with good games. And Sonic really was a killer app. It did not really matter who was at the helm of the company in 1991. Once all of the parameters fell into place they hit the jackpot.

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

I still think the console was successful because it was a good console with good games. And Sonic really was a killer app. It did not really matter who was at the helm of the company in 1991. Once all of the parameters fell into place they hit the jackpot.

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Just being a good console with good games isn't enough (just look at the Dreamcast). There's been a lot of those, heck, TG16 was a good console with good games but it didn't take off. Genesis was a good console with good games, but that doesn't explain why it was so successful. It was successful because of good marketing. Sega really went for the throat, they said the kind of stuff no one had said before. It made Sega seem cool and grown up. At around that time I was still in school, and it was seen as uncool to play Super Nintendo, like it was baby stuff. That's how successful Sega was with their marketing.

goddamn, the amount of people coming for Tom Kalinske on a Sega forum is...strange to see

thanks either way OP!

^ As a Sega Saturn fanboy... I have to say what you're saying seems to ring true... "Hurrah for Tom Kalinske! Last American Samurai!"

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

Just being a good console with good games isn't enough (just look at the Dreamcast). There's been a lot of those, heck, TG16 was a good console with good games but it didn't take off. Genesis was a good console with good games, but that doesn't explain why it was so successful. It was successful because of good marketing. Sega really went for the throat, they said the kind of stuff no one had said before. It made Sega seem cool and grown up. At around that time I was still in school, and it was seen as uncool to play Super Nintendo, like it was baby stuff. That's how successful Sega was with their marketing.

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The irony is that marketing was directed at and only worked on babbies.

I was in high school during the height of that marketing and no one cared, everyone loved SNES and playing baby games like Street Fighter II. We were too old to be the actual target of the marketing.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59...sgrvk5edt.jpeg

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

I still think the console was successful because it was a good console with good games. And Sonic really was a killer app. It did not really matter who was at the helm of the company in 1991. Once all of the parameters fell into place they hit the jackpot.

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Considering how many times now it's been explained at length how good games don't sell a console all on their own, your stubborn naivete on this issue is hard to understand. Just having good games, and nothing else, has never sold a console. You also need good marketing, good market position, the right kinds of games for the region in question, and more. And those things are exactly what Kalinske brought that Katz didn't, and couldn't have. Those Western-developed games you hate so much were a key part of the system's success, Kalinske's marketing was better and more successful than Katz's, etc. Katz's failure to appreciate Sonic alone should say a lot, considering how central that game was to the system's success. Sonic isn't a killer app without Kalinske's major marketing campaign and pack-in effort. With Katz Sonic would not be the Sonic we know. The game might well be the same, but the franchise, the popularity, it likely wouldn't have had those things. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't a hit in Japan, after all. Without Western success, Sonic isn't Sonic.

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Originally Posted by IrishNinja

goddamn, the amount of people coming for Tom Kalinske on a Sega forum is...strange to see

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It's particularly ironic when you consider that there are surely more than a few people on this very froum who would never have even considered buying, or maybe even never HEARD, of the Sega Genesis if not for Tom Kalinske. Sure, "Sega does what Nintendon't" is a decent ad slogan, but it didn't convince huge numbers of people to buy a Genesis, and it was only with Sonic that the system hit the mass market.

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Originally Posted by Crom

that could be the case, but i don't really get that impression from listening to the interview. he again says things like "we changed the character" but based on the timing of his hiring and everything else it really seems like "we" should be "madeline schroeder".

an interesting thing in this interview is that kalinske gives credit to katz for the montana deal with EA, which goes directly against what it says in console wars, the book kalinske is endorsing (cw says kalinske was behind the deal).

kalinske says at 17:00 "the soj guys didn't want to change the character, and they wanted to keep madonna and they wanted to keep the band. nakayama put his fist down and said 'no, we're going to do what sega of america wants to do, what tom wants to do.'"

in 'the history of sonic', yuji naka says: "I wanted to add a female character named madonna, and sonic was supposed to save this madonna. but we thought this would be too close to mario saving his princess, so even though I still thought it would be a good idea, we had to give up on it. but when sonic 1 was first revealed at a toy show, we still had sonic and madonna in the same picture, so if you were at the show you would have thought that madonna was going to be in the game."

that's the tokyo toy show he's talking about, held in june 1990. so even though madonna was shown at the toy show, she had already been scrapped. kalinske wasnt hired by sega until 5 months later.

in gamespy's interview with naka, he says: "we wanted to have a separate sound-test screen with an animation of Sonic break-dancing while a "Sonic Band" played the game music. We were working on the images, and had enough space left on the cartridge memory for it, but once again time constraints prevented us from putting it in the program."

so the band was in the game but was ultimately scrapped due to time constraints and was replaced with the se-ga voice.

kalinske just isnt credible when it comes to sonic's history. it's not clear if he is just 'borrowing' other peoples' stories since he was hired so late in sonic's development (and that's why he always says 'we'), or if he is just confusing promotional material with the actual game or what. and let's not even bring up the red shoes...

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Everything Naka said could well be true, but how do you know that Kalinske and other SoA execs' input was not also considered, at least by management above Naka (he was just the programmer, after all)? You don't. Naka and Kalinske both could be telling the whole truth, and just leaving out the part where others influenced things. Considering Yuji Naka's history, I think it'd be entirely in his character to leave out other peoples' influence on things he worked on...

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

From listening to the podcast, what it sounds like he's saying is that was shown some mock up marketing material for how they wanted to sell Sonic in America - this included a more "extreme" look with fangs, etc. This is jut how they wanted to market him, not really having anything to do with the game. It would have appeared in print ads, the box art, etc. It was not uncommon at the time for the print ads and box art to not really look all that much like the game. If true, fans have never seen this look because it's never been shown to us. It would have gone back into some artists drawer/portfolio after being rejected, and might have ended up in the trash. We might never actually see it. The comic above probably has nothing to do with it.

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Right. Kalinske probably is not talking about art and stuff publicly shown at the time, but private internal things, potential marketing materials, etc. That comic there is an example of the kind of thing Kalinske's SoA rejected.

My first blush with Genesis fandom was definitely in 1990 under the stewardship of Katz and Genesis Does... and I've never been impressed by Sonic.

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Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

The irony is that marketing was directed at and only worked on babbies.

I was in high school during the height of that marketing and no one cared, everyone loved SNES and playing baby games like Street Fighter II. We were too old to be the actual target of the marketing.

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59...sgrvk5edt.jpeg

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At the time, I was in the US and at the perfect age/socioeconomic group for the advertising, and let me tell you, it WORKED. We were immature, we were very concerned at that age with what was "adult," and Sega's marketing at the time tapped into that beautifully. You would get laughed at for admitting that you played SNES.

Sonic and "blast processing" were huge (not that we knew what it was). Mortal Kombat having blood in the Genesis version sealed the deal. Everyone in my neighborhood had that code memorized.

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

At the time, I was in the US and at the perfect age/socioeconomic group for the advertising, and let me tell you, it WORKED. We were immature, we were very concerned at that age with what was "adult," and Sega's marketing at the time tapped into that beautifully. You would get laughed at for admitting that you played SNES.

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Right, you were an actual babby.

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I still think the console was successful because it was a good console with good games.

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Master System was a good console with good games and it sold poorly in USA. You need a good branding and marketing to sell a product (even a very good product).

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Considering how many times now it's been explained at length how good games don't sell a console all on their own, your stubborn naivete on this issue is hard to understand. Just having good games, and nothing else, has never sold a console. You also need good marketing, good market position, the right kinds of games for the region in question, and more. And those things are exactly what Kalinske brought that Katz didn't, and couldn't have. Those Western-developed games you hate so much were a key part of the system's success, Kalinske's marketing was better and more successful than Katz's, etc. Katz's failure to appreciate Sonic alone should say a lot, considering how central that game was to the system's success. Sonic isn't a killer app without Kalinske's major marketing campaign and pack-in effort. With Katz Sonic would not be the Sonic we know. The game might well be the same, but the franchise, the popularity, it likely wouldn't have had those things. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't a hit in Japan, after all. Without Western success, Sonic isn't Sonic.

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I totally agree :nod:

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Master System was a good console with good games and it sold poorly in USA

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Mega Drive had Sonic and John Madden and that made a huge difference to the MD.

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Originally Posted by A Black Falcon

Considering how many times now it's been explained at length how good games don't sell a console all on their own, your stubborn naivete on this issue is hard to understand. Just having good games, and nothing else, has never sold a console. You also need good marketing, good market position, the right kinds of games for the region in question, and more. And those things are exactly what Kalinske brought that Katz didn't, and couldn't have. Those Western-developed games you hate so much were a key part of the system's success, Kalinske's marketing was better and more successful than Katz's, etc. Katz's failure to appreciate Sonic alone should say a lot, considering how central that game was to the system's success. Sonic isn't a killer app without Kalinske's major marketing campaign and pack-in effort. With Katz Sonic would not be the Sonic we know. The game might well be the same, but the franchise, the popularity, it likely wouldn't have had those things. Sonic the Hedgehog wasn't a hit in Japan, after all. Without Western success, Sonic isn't Sonic.

It's particularly ironic when you consider that there are surely more than a few people on this very froum who would never have even considered buying, or maybe even never HEARD, of the Sega Genesis if not for Tom Kalinske. Sure, "Sega does what Nintendon't" is a decent ad slogan, but it didn't convince huge numbers of people to buy a Genesis, and it was only with Sonic that the system hit the mass market.

Everything Naka said could well be true, but how do you know that Kalinske and other SoA execs' input was not also considered, at least by management above Naka (he was just the programmer, after all)? You don't. Naka and Kalinske both could be telling the whole truth, and just leaving out the part where others influenced things. Considering Yuji Naka's history, I think it'd be entirely in his character to leave out other peoples' influence on things he worked on...

Right. Kalinske probably is not talking about art and stuff publicly shown at the time, but private internal things, potential marketing materials, etc. That comic there is an example of the kind of thing Kalinske's SoA rejected.

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sonic the hedgehog was the #1 best selling game on the mega drive in japan in its 7 year history. you only have to look at the famitsu sales lists for '92 to see it holding its own as the only sega game in a crowd of nintendo games. there is also a book called the All Soft Guide or something from 94 that puts sonic as the #1 best selling mega drive game. i'm not sure how the rumor that it wasnt popular got started, but i am sure you cannot provide any proof of it being true.

the development of sonic has been well documented and there is absolutely no evidence of any change to sonic's in-game design or character after kalinske was hired in 11/1990. madonna was clearly cut before kalinske was hired. sonic's first promotional appearance in sega's newsletter published 11/1990 gives a detailed intro of the character and madonna is conspicuously absent. this agrees with what naka said about madonna being cut at an early stage. and all of the oshima illustrations of sonic from mid 1990 and later show the finalized sonic so there is simply no way kalinske could have had any input on the character design (aside from something largely irrelevant like the promotional comic).

that said, it's clear that madeline schroeder did have input on the design. oshima has expressed annoyance at having to change his early design of the short, spiky sonic. the point is that this all pre-dates kalinske. the man almost certainly heard these stories from schroeder and is just telling them as his own. anyway, if you really want to believe that kalinske is telling the whole truth, i would REALLY like you to explain his statement that he designed sonic's red shoes (hint: it's a trap. he's clearly lying).

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Originally Posted by Gentlegamer

http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59...sgrvk5edt.jpeg

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only semi-related to the thread, but this is great

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Originally Posted by Tower of Power

Just being a good console with good games isn't enough. Genesis was a good console with good games, but that doesn't explain why it was so successful.

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The important thing I had hoped to get across with my last post was that with Sonic's release all the different parameters essential for success locked into place. Taken individually each of these different parameters might not guarantee success. But if all of them come together like with the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1991 - then success was the logical consequence. Sega really earned it. The Genesis' success was the result of the combined efforts of everyone at Sega as a company over the past decade.

Having you guys claim it was Kalinske who was responsible for it is an insult times ten.

Stan Lee admittedly claims anything that's not nailed down

Kalinske, in his age, no doubt takes credit for stuff that was the result of hard work of others under/around him as well

i don't like the Kirbys/etc of the world not getting their due, but even console wars didn't strike me as ignoring the other people that made sega's success happen

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

But if all of them come together like with the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1991 - then success was the logical consequence.

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I disagree. Too many consoles already prove this theory wrong. The Master system (which had Sonic), the Dreamcast (which had Sonic), the Saturn, the TG-16. Nothing is set in stone

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Originally Posted by Crom

can you please link to that? i dont remember katz ever saying that. maybe madeline schroeder?

anyway, kalinske most likely heard it from schroeder and then made the story his own. that's why he always says "we" when he talks about these things. "we" meaning the people that were actually around at the time, not him.

i think schroeder mentions fangs in that youtube documentary, but she does it in such a passing way that its not clear if she's being literal or just trying to illustrate how aggressive sonic looked.

it definitely has nothing to do with that comic which was released just before the game.

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Seems I was wrong. I thought I had heard it from this YT video, but it looks like I was wrong

He also mentions how he was supposed to sell 1 million units and that it wasn't possible in the time frame they gave him

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Originally Posted by stika

I disagree. Too many consoles already prove this theory wrong. The Master system (which had Sonic), the Dreamcast (which had Sonic), the Saturn, the TG-16. Nothing is set in stone

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Well, I can list some completely random consoles as well if that is what you enjoy doing but there is no point in doing that, is there ?

What I was saying is that the success of the Genesis is the result of Sega doing a fantastic job at building up a strong brand reputation over more than a decade. They released the most awesome thing ever - only to come up with something even better the next day. This went on for years and years and years.

Maybe you guys are just too young to know better but it seems to me you truly are blinded by the "Sega totally sucks but Kalinske somehow saved the company and their mediocre console"-myth that people have written over the past decades. That is not what happened.

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

Well, I can list some completely random consoles as well if that is what you enjoy doing but there is no point in doing that, is there ?

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None of that is random. The TurboGrafx had a better library than the Genesis for at least a year, but sold a lot worse because NEC was more incompetent than Sega ever was. The Saturn has some pretty good games, but it failed badly everywhere outside of Japan. Etc. You can't continue ignoring proof like this that you are wrong.

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Maybe you guys are just too young to know better but it seems to me you truly are blinded by the "Sega totally sucks but Kalinske somehow saved the company and their mediocre console"-myth that people have written over the past decades. That is not what happened.

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Most of that is not a myth, Sega was saved in the US in the Kalinske era and he had a huge role to play in why that happened. The Genesis sold more consoles in the US and Canada than the system did in the rest of the world combined, and also more than any other Sega console sold worldwide, US included. And it's not close -- US Genesis sales are at least 5 million over worldwide MD sales, and the next-highest Sega system's worldwide total is behind that number. This was not an accident; it was the result of good work from Sega of America, starting with Kalinske but also including others.

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What I was saying is that the success of the Genesis is the result of Sega doing a fantastic job at building up a strong brand reputation over more than a decade. They released the most awesome thing ever - only to come up with something even better the next day. This went on for years and years and years.

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And once again here you ignore everywhere that isn't Europe, because Europe is the only place where Sega had a strong brand reputation before the Genesis. Sure, people liked Sega's arcade games, but until the Genesis that did not translate at all to home-console success. The SG-1000 and Mark III sold badly in Japan, the Master System did almost as badly in the US, the Dreamcast bombed badly in Japan and did only okay-ish in the US despite an amazing game library, etc. Just having a strong name in the arcades doesn't mean anything when it comes to home-console success, that is a very different market. And it was only with the Genesis that Sega built the brand reputation you talk about. Katz did some decent starter work with his success at beating the TG16, though NEC helped him a LOT there with their poor decisions, but Kalinske was the most important for that.

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Originally Posted by retrospiel

The important thing I had hoped to get across with my last post was that with Sonic's release all the different parameters essential for success locked into place. Taken individually each of these different parameters might not guarantee success. But if all of them come together like with the Mega Drive / Genesis in 1991 - then success was the logical consequence. Sega really earned it. The Genesis' success was the result of the combined efforts of everyone at Sega as a company over the past decade.

Having you guys claim it was Kalinske who was responsible for it is an insult times ten.

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I covered this already in my last post, but without Kalinske's blanket marketing campaign for the game, without the pack-in with the system, with Katz's inability to see Sonic's potential, without the various things Katz surely had a hand in such as the TV show, without the US teams that made Sonic Spinball (an important game because he knew Sega needed a Sonic game for the '92 holiday season) because Katz didn't set up any internal development teams here, etc., Sonic would not be the hit you describe. Of course Kalinske was not solely responsible, the game wasn't made here, but his contributions were very important. There are no guarantees here, and no such thing as "parameters for success locked into place". Games almost never just become big hits without any effort from the publisher. Sonic became Sonic not only because the game was great, but also because Kalinske's Sega pushed the game, and its sequels, as hard as you possibly could. That's an absolutely essential part of the games' success that you entirely overlook.

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Originally Posted by Crom

sonic the hedgehog was the #1 best selling game on the mega drive in japan in its 7 year history. you only have to look at the famitsu sales lists for '92 to see it holding its own as the only sega game in a crowd of nintendo games. there is also a book called the All Soft Guide or something from 94 that puts sonic as the #1 best selling mega drive game. i'm not sure how the rumor that it wasnt popular got started, but i am sure you cannot provide any proof of it being true.

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The #1 selling game on a third-place console with no mainstream success, low sales, and only diehard supporters is not that big of a deal. For example Mario Kart 8 may be the best selling Wii game, with an attach rate way above Sonic 1 in Japan, but I don't think anyone would argue that it's a generation-defining title. Even with Sonic, the Megadrive finished third in Japan, trailing the PC Engine HuCard and Duo systems combined by several million. You can have a very important game on a lesser-selling system, but Sonic wasn't just important, it was a massive smash hit that became a franchise which exists to this day.

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"Sega totally sucks but Kalinske somehow saved the company and their mediocre console"

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Sega had good image thanks to the advanced arcade games and Mega Drive/Genesis was a really fantastic system. Kalinske didn´t save anything, his work (and the work of all the staff of Sega of America) made Sega and Genesis the world leader for some years breaking forever the Nintendo monopoly.