Sega History by Sega World

part 2-Arcade and up to the 80´s

Being a company involved in the business of entertainment, it was only a matter of time before Sega would look into video games. Seeing the success of Atari's Pong, Sega branched out into video game importing and later development, allying themselves with Gremelin industries in North America. As electro-mechanical games were displaced, Sega began to make a name for itself through games such as Turbo and Zaxxon, as well as through distributing Frogger in the States.

Seeing the potential, 1984 saw Rosen and a group of outside investors
(including Hayao Nakayama, Shoichiro Irimajiri and the chairman
 of CSK, Isao Okawa) bought back Sega, and as an independent
 company once more, continued to expand rapidly into the 1980s.

 The company began expanding rapidly, producing more and more elaborate hits, and recruiting new developers that would help to define the company creatively. SEGA's games would come to distinguish themselves from their peers with their eye-popping graphics that marked some of arcade gaming's baby steps into 3D.

 The game industry was booming and SEGA along with it, but a storm was brewing in the industry, and David Rosen knew it before the rest of the world was willing to face it. He urged the arcade business to reform, and start offering conversion kits to allow operators to inexpensively turn over machines. This idea would later help the arcade industry to begin its second life, but at the time, his remarks were met only with boos and jeers. Rosen's fears were well founded, and when Atari began its downward spiral in 1983, many lost confidence in the industry. SEGA's benefactors (who by then included Paramount) began looking to get rid of the company.


Sega prospered heavily from the Arcade gaming boom of the late 1970s, with revenues climbing to over US100 million by 1979. In 1982, Sega's revenues surpassed $214 million.


 That year they introduced the first game with isometric graphics, Zaxxon the industry's first Steroscopic 3D game, Subroc 3D, and the first laserdisc video game, Astron Belt. Astron Belt wasn't released in the U.S. until 1983, after Dragons lair.



Other notable games from Sega during this period are Head ON (1979), Monaco GP(1979), Carnival(1980), Turbo(1981), Space Fury (1981), Astro Blaster (1981), and Pengo (1982).





 On the next article about Sega, we will take about Sega entering the domestic console market.
to be continued...