Sega co-founder David Rosen has died | Hacker News Reader

Sega co-founder David Rosen has died

theguardian.com

256 pointsn1b0m37 comments

SEGA has lost it's shine over the years, but IMO they are the greatest game company of all time. Their arcade output was STELLAR, their game dev teams were the most elite all through the mid 00's.

Seriously, look at their list of output. Just banger after banger. Not to mention their arcade hardware was top notch and was widely adopted.

Rest in peace David! Thank you!

They do what Nintendon't!

Even though I haven't liked a lot by Sega in quite awhile, I really respect at how amenable they seem to be with fan projects, so much so that they hired one of the biggest Sonic hackers (Christian Whitehead) to make Sonic Mania. I'm sure Sega is aware of most of the fan projects (e.g. Sonic Robo Blast 2), and they seem to be somewhere between "not caring" and "supportive", which is pretty cool.

Sega also embraced emulation pretty early. I remember as a kid I had "Sega Smash Pack" on my PC, which used Kega Fusion, and on Steam I have "Sega Mega Drive & Genesis Classics", which is using vanilla Genesis ROMs that I believe you can load in virtually any emulator.

Compare this to Nintendo, who took down stuff like AM2R, and multiple Switch emulators.

I never knew that "Sega" was "Service Games" shortened.

I never knew it had an American founder. All of my life I'd assumed Sega was entirely a Japanese company, founded by Japanese engineers.

Same thing with Taito, founded by ukranian jew Michael Kogan. The company that created the phenomenal Space Invaders and spark the japanese video game industry from a niche hobby to mainstream.

This has been a fun trivia bit I’ve brought up to people over the years.

IIRC, Sonic 2 was actually developed within the US, in California.

Yes, but largely by a Japanese team moved over out of hopes they could train the Americans and corporate politics.

And I believe Tommy Tallarico was the first American to work on the Sonic franchise, ever.

Still? Pretty sure it's widely acknowledged as one of his many fabrications.

He absolutely was not. The first Sonic game involving American developers was Sonic 2 on Genesis (developed at Sega Technical Institute with a combined American and Japanese crew), and he did not work on that game.

Right. Check out the products they started with. Lots of YouTube out there on the topic.

The Sega Genesis was the last console with a "game console", "non-domestic-PC", and "non-toy" auras, for me. At a non-internet time, game consoles were like magnets for socialization and for making friends through shared experiences. I never knew who David Rosen was. Unfortunately only today I know who he was. And he was the kind of person that did significant work that influenced and nourished the imagination and experiences of many young people and adults. Thanks a lot for Sega, for the arcades, for the Master System, for Akai Koudan Zillion and for the Mega Drive/Genesis, Mr. David Rosen. Rest in peace.

If you’re interested in David Rosen’s story or Sega history in general I highly recommend Console Wars by Blake Harris. https://amzn.to/4q3YaOl

In Rosen's last Sega-related interview with Keith Stuart for the book Mega Drive Collected Works, he disagrees with the Sega internal conflict narrative as presented in Console Wars and says it was just Sega of America CEO Tom Kalinske being unable to understand why certain decisions had to be made.

After Console Wars, he apparently stopped giving interviews because he didn't like that game historians were constantly getting the Sega story wrong.

> After Console Wars, he apparently stopped giving interviews because he didn't like that game historians were constantly getting the Sega story wrong.

Classic, nobody dislikes journalism as much as someone who lived through something journalists have covered. They always get stuff wrong in pursuit of an angle or narrative.

I worked on a project with tech and animals. We were cautious about media, because any work with animals naturally invites welfare questions. Our project was aimed at improving welfare, and we really cared about this. So we refused to allow the media to film the animals at all, let alone our experiments. We provided them with our own professionally filmed footage, and I prepped carefully to avoid traps in interviews, which went well.

A national TV news network dubbed the sound of alarmed animals over our provided footage for their broadcast. Apparently the original audio of happy animals making happy sounds was not exciting enough to use, despite the contentment of the animals being the point of the work. I was so mad and sad.

I learned my lesson about the media after a spate of interviews I did about a decade ago. The difference between what I said, and what they cut and edited it into was completely wild. It completely changed the narrative.

It as a result completely changed how I see everything in the media. It's not that I distrust it as such, but...I try to ensure I can get as many angles as possible to converge into a more whole picture, as opposed to fewer sources.

Oh, "Collected Works" - for a moment I thought this was a book with a wacky name.

Oops! Fixed.

Wow I saw this come up and just assumed he had co-founded Sega USA, not Sega period.

Definitely didn't expect one of Japan's most famous video game companies to have been started by a GI named David.

Taito was founded by a Ukrainian guy called Michael https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito

It's part of the strange history of Sega. Even back in their heyday, Sega of Japan had a pattern of treating its American and European offices as subordinate, yet the founders of the company just a few decades earlier were Americans

For those so-inclined the They Create Worlds podcast did a nice episode on the history of Sega: https://podcast.theycreateworlds.com/e/the-untold-history-of...

Thank you, David. One last Sega! for ya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rosen_(businessman)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sega

Not to be confused with the (much younger) David Rosen who co-created Humble Bundle and Wolfire Games.

SEGA does what Nintendon't!

Does anyone know Rosen's role in Sega Saturn? I owned one and loved it so much. It was ahead of its time, given few mastered its design intricacies while those who did are legendary.

RIP, we will always remember him.

cultural landmark for 80s kids

So, 2 people submitted the same thing earlier today and got ignored, but this time it makes the front page? And this seems to be happening often here. Not the most encouraging system to submit something...

Are you submitting for Internet points or because you think something is interesting, important, or cool? Discussion is more interesting, even if it is limited, when you aren't trying to just get points.

My point here is that submissions were the exact same thing. Is it deemed "interesting" or not depending solely on the user? Logic does not check here.

Happens 2-4 times/week with my submissions, usually 3-7 days later.

Just wait 3-7 days before posting your submission next time.

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