Sega

History

Sega's roots are American. Standard Games was founded in Honolulu in May 1940 by Martin Bromley, Irving Bromberg and James Humpert to supply coin-operated machines to military bases; its successor, Service Games, set up a Tokyo operation in 1952, and the abbreviation "Sega" first appeared on a slot machine in 1954. Bromley established Nihon Goraku Bussan in Tokyo on June 3, 1960, and in 1965 it merged with David Rosen's company to form Sega Enterprises. For two decades Sega was an arcade company; it entered the home market with the SG-1000 in 1983 and the Mark III, sold abroad as the Master System, soon after.

Sega's first great role-playing game was a direct answer to Nintendo's dominance. Phantasy Star reached Japanese stores on December 20, 1987, two days after Square's Final Fantasy, and it looked like nothing on the Famicom: a science-fantasy star system of three planets, animated monsters, and first-person 3D dungeons in the manner of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Designer Kotaro Hayashida and programmer Yuji Naka led a team that included an unusual number of women, among them the artist Rieko Kodama, and the heroine, Alis Landale, sets out to avenge her murdered brother. Its 4-megabit, battery-backed cartridge made it the Master System's most expensive game, and it reached Western players before either Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy did.

On the Mega Drive, Sega widened its RPG line. Phantasy Star's sequels ran through Phantasy Star IV (1993). Climax Entertainment, founded by Kan Naito and Hiroyuki Takahashi, an assistant producer on Enix's Dragon Quest IV, made the dungeon crawler Shining in the Darkness (1991), and the Takahashis' teams followed it with Shining Force (1992), a Tactical & Strategy RPGs that for many Western players was their first taste of the form Nintendo's Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light had popularized in Japan. On the Saturn, Sakura Wars (1996) mixed tactical battles with visual-novel romance.

The Dreamcast was Sega's last console, and its most important RPG was online. Sonic Team's Phantasy Star Online, released in Japan on December 21, 2000, let four players team up over the internet to hunt through instanced dungeons for Loot & loot tables — the first successful online RPG on a home console, at a time when online RPGs meant PC games like Ultima Online and EverQuest. Sega discontinued the Dreamcast after March 31, 2001, and became a platform-agnostic publisher. In 2004 Sammy Corporation acquired it, forming Sega Sammy Holdings.

Notable work

Beyond Phantasy Star and Shining, Sega's modern RPG catalog is broad: Valkyria Chronicles (2008), Phantasy Star Online 2 (2012) and New Genesis (2021), and Yakuza: Like a Dragon (2020), which turned its crime series into a Turn-based combat RPG. Its biggest RPG move was financial. When Index Corporation, Atlus's parent, went bankrupt in 2013, Sega bought it for ¥14 billion, completing the deal on November 1, 2013. Atlus brought the Megami Tensei series (from 1987) and Persona; its Metaphor: ReFantazio (2024), a high-fantasy story of a kingdom's election, sold a million copies on launch day and won Best RPG at The Game Awards 2024.

Legacy

Sega never owned the Japanese RPG the way Nintendo's platforms did, but it kept supplying alternatives: science fantasy instead of swords and castles, a woman at the head of the party, and online adventuring on a console years before Final Fantasy XI. Kodama, who died in 2022, is remembered as one of the genre's pioneering women. Today, under president Shuji Utsumi, Sega's RPG identity lives largely through Atlus and the Phantasy Star online line, published on every major platform.