Fan, yes, fanboy, I'd say I'm more of one now than I ever was back then. I've always had multiple systems, so I like to think I'm more objective than most people when it comes to judging software and hardware. The Genesis was always my favorite of gen 4, but the Saturn and Dreamcast, I never put on that type of pedestal. Even when SEGA left console gaming, this is what I thought in my head: "It's about time." With that said, the thing that bothers me when it comes to SEGA, is that most gamers seem to know nothing about them, and especially those born in and past 1990. Just for example, did you know that the Genesis had backwards compatibility thanks to the Power Base Converter, which was a SEGA product? Probably not, and neither did AVGN, and a lot of those same people tend to think of him as a knowledgeable source on video games.
If you want to know what made SEGA great, you have to do some research, and only real gaming enthusiasts are going to do that. The things that SEGA did to revolutionize the arcade scene, the amount of software variety they had on their systems, their push for online gaming dating back to the Mega Drive days, barely anyone talks about it. When I see people make remarks like the SEGA CD and Saturn were terrible, or that the Genesis had nothing but Sonic, it really makes me shake my head. There are literally hundreds of great games on them, and in the case of the Saturn, most of them are way more playable today than the N64's, because the system had such a heavy emphasis on 2D gaming. If you like shmups, fighters, and rpgs, the Saturn has you covered. As for the SEGA CD, most aren't going to look past the FMV games, and will glance over amazing titles like Lunar, Snatcher, Lords of Thunder, Robo Aleste, etc. Nintendo fans like to talk about Rareware, but on SEGA's side there was Treasure. Gunstar Heroes, Guardian Heroes, Alien Soldier, Dynamite Headdy, does anyone mention those classics? Many gush over FFVII, and how mind blowing it was. My question is how many of those people played Panzer Dragoon Saga, a game that had revolutionary gameplay, no grinding, and gave every NPC voice acting? How many RPGs do that sort of thing now, and Saga came out in 1998.
So just to sum up my rant, I guess I've become a fanboy of SEGA now more as a response to the lack of knowledge gamers have about them. SEGA did/does make my favorite type of games, which are arcade and action oriented, but having to defend them all the time has made me appreciate them more for what they did for gaming. They took chances on both a gameplay and hardware level, and I miss that sort of thing. Sure, they made terrible business decisions, and they had a ton of internal turmoil, but I think when you look at the overall picture, it's not hard to see that SEGA did a lot of amazing things.
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