Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA/The History of Sonic the Hedgehog

Service Games: Rise and Fall of SEGA Sam Pettus CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2012. Acknowledgements, images. 396 pp. $17.99 paper. ISBN: 9781463578473The History of Sonic the Hedgehog Pix'n'Love Ontario, Canada: UDON Entertainment Corp., 2012. Images, bibliography. 297 pp. $49.99 cloth. ISBN: 9781926778563By now, the ty pical digital gamer has become so familiar with the words con- sole war that he or she scarcely bats an eye when someone invokes them. Still, in the aftermath of the 2013 Electronic Enter- tainment Expo and the ongoing struggles between console manufacturers to capture consumer dollars and loyalty, we should remember how the competition evolved over more than thirty years of video game marketing. As we rapidly approach the eighth generation of the home-console war, and current titans Sony and Microsoft vie for attention, reviewing the landscape is both interesting and illuminating. Sam Petus's Service Games: Rise and Fall of SEGA offer a history lesson from a for- mer console contender about the way the world of digital games has changed.SEGA (a n acronym for Ser v ice Games) remains a household name in the gaming industry, although the company is less prominent than in the past. Once an industry standard for home gaming hardware, SEGA now focuses primarily on software production for multiple hard- ware platforms. Pettus's book serves an in-depth introduction to the SEGA Cor- poration, offering chapter-length descrip- tions organized chronologically for each individual generation of console hard- ware. Each chapter offers less a focused argument than a detailed account of hardware components and technical specs. But the work also explores the relationship between title licensing and the successful generation of a marketable public image.I find compelling the attention the book pays to the culture of the advertising of each generation, sporadic as that atten- tion is. Petus focuses on the frequently euphemistic rhetoric in advertisements such as The more you play with it the harder it gets! (pp. 66-67) and offers an analysis of SEGA as growing an anti- establishment image that better resonates with younger Western gamers. He outlines how other companies and console manu- facturers have ultimately used this strategy since to displace SEGA and capture mar- ket shares. Here, perhaps the book shines most, looking closely at both the advertis- ing of games and consoles and the specific titles that hardware systems offer to com- mand attention or generate a marketable rebel image. reader quickly draws parallels to the current game market, and the advertising rhetoric used to distinguish console manufacturers into the buyable- identity commodities of fan culture.Pix'n'Love's History of Sonic the Hedgehog also attempts to characterize the growth and popularity of the SEGA brand but does so by focusing on the evolution of its highly popular mascot. From an organi- zational perspective, the attempt to chron- icle the history of a character as prolific as Sonic is complicated. Rather than sticking to a strict chronology, the editors instead frame the story as an evolution of the char- acter from a technology demo in 1990 (p. 35) to Sonic's current game stardom across multiple consoles. Doing so allows them to consider the development of the SEGA console hardware and to discuss the need for the emerging game company to estab- lish a rival for Nintendo's Mario character. …

Récupéré en direct depuis OpenAlex et désinversé. Les résumés ne sont pas conservés dans cette base de données : les index inversés représentent 8,6 Go des 9,3 Go de texte de la base, et le serveur dispose de 13 Go libres.