Five of the best: Weird Sega
Welcome to another week of Five of the Best, a series where we celebrate the overlooked parts of video games, like hands! And potions! And dinosaurs! And shops! They're the kinds of things etched unwittingly into memory, like an essential ingredient of a favourite dish you could never put a finger on. And I want to spark discussion, so please share memories as they flash into your mind. Today, another five. The topic...
It being Sega week, of course the topic would be Sega - and what better part of the company's history to delve into than the strange and fantastical things that have borne the Sega name over the years. Weirdness is baked into the company's DNA, and it's what's helped the company stand out - from the outlandish arcade games of the 80s through to the multi-million dollar folly of the original Shenmue. Join us, then, for a run through our own personal pick of five of the best weird Sega moments.
Sega's always had a reputation for pioneering - the Mega Drive was able to hook up to the internet well before the Dreamcast popularised online console gaming, and it even foresaw the likes of Game Pass with the subscription-based Sega Channel - but sometimes being a pioneer isn't necessarily a good thing. Long before Kinect was a twinkle in Kudo Tsunoda's sunglasses, Sega released the Activator for the Mega Drive - a curious octagonal device that promised to interpret player's actions into the game. The end result paints a familiar picture; unreliable and unsupported, its time on the market was limited.
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