LudoScience

Service Games: The Rise and Fall of SEGA (Enhanced Edition) is a book on the history of SEGA as a console manufacturer. After a brief introduction telling the birth of the company, this thick 480 pages book details the story of all its home consoles: SG-1000, Master System, Mega Drive / Genesis with its Sega CD and Sega 32X addons, Saturn and the Dreamcast.

While the beginnings of SEGA and its first two consoles are explained rather quickly over 30 pages, the main part of the book details with high precision the story of its most famous consoles. About 150 pages are dedicated to the rise of the Mega Drive / Genesis, and its fall due to the Sega CD and the catastrophic Mars, Neptune and Jupiter projects leading to the Sega 32X. The costly errors SEGA made over the 32x will unfortunately not be solved by the Saturn, a dramatic failure compared to the roaring Playstation. When the company will finally be able to reflect upon its mistakes and start afresh with the Dreamcast, it will sadly be too late. When SEGA retires itself from the console market in 2001, it's an indeed tragic move but it's also the only way to avoid bankruptcy and be able to continue publishing games on the consoles of its former competitors. While the book is focused on the American side of SEGA history, a final chapter explains its complex story in the European Market. Despite being a bit dense and sometimes redundant between chapters, this book, full of content, is a real goldmine to anyone wondering about the story of SEGA, a popular company whose history is unfortunately less often studied than the one of its eternal competitor Nintendo.