Yes, yes... I know. It's unlikely. But hey, if it's a wish, reality does not need to be a barrier, right!?
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Picture this: It's the 90's, SEGA and Nintendo are "at war" in the hearts and wallets of gamers all around the US, Europe and Japan, but there's one place where this war is already decided. Where victory has been declared early and this domination will last all the way to the Playstation 2.
Some already know where this is going, well, the title gives it away, I'm an idiot teehee. But yes, in Brazil, the tides were turned and where Nintendo held a very good majority in the console market (Europe is a wildcard with how prevalent and cool PC gaming was), here it was quite the contrary.
SEGA made a deal with a Brazilian start-up known as TecToy and they were given the rights to manufacture, translate and distribute SEGA content here, from games to consoles to accessories and everything in between.
Started out with the Master System which was and STILL is a major hit, it's where many Brazilian gamers from back then got their start, all the way into the 90's and even some into the 2000's, seeing as it's still manufactured to this day and is significantly cheaper than the competition, with games and systems being easily accessibly, my friend had one before he got his PS2, and he says there couldn't have been a better place to start.
The Mega-Drive (Or Genesis in the US/Canada) was also a phenomenal hit when it came out and it beat out the Super Nintendo. That's not to say Nintendo didn't have a presence, whilst SEGA had TecToy, Nintendo used Gradiente, a well known electronics company to manufacture and sell SNES's here. However, Gradiente and TecToy were significantly different. TecToy needed SEGA to survive and focused everything into that, even rebranding Japanese games with Brazilian IPs:
"Wonder Boy in Monster Land" here became "Mônica no Castelo do Dragão" based on the wildly popular Mônica series by comics writer Mauricio de Souza.
Gradiente however couldn't care less about Nintendo and barely put in any effort, with games rarely beeing localized and prices staying high, they had bigger fish to fry and their other endeavours were already massive and far outweighed anything Nintendo could do for them.
My personal story with SEGA begins with a 90's rivalry. My uncle bought a Mega-Drive, as most people were doing, and my dad a Super Nintendo. Dad was absolutely in love with Mario World and Mario Kart, my uncle just absolutely loved the arcade offering from SEGA and of course, the little blue blur.
I was born in 2001, my cousin in 2003 - we inherited these consoles from our parents but we were children, we wanted fun, we didn't care if they were different and by then, the PS3 was already out (just not affordable here, at all). We would go to each other's places practically every weekend to play and this made me love SEGA so so much. Their games had such a different feel to whatever Nintendo made, and dad had quite a massive collection of games by that point - I still couldn't get enough of Bonanza Bros, Gain Ground, Sonic and of course the beauty that was Virtua Racing. My cousin enjoyed his time with my SNES but we both agreed on one thing: SEGA did it better.
As we grew older, we both got PS1s, PS2s, PCs, etc and we left that in the past, and when I eventually become obsessed with retro-gaming and collecting, I was extremely sad to learn on what exactly happened to SEGA worldwide. The absolute failure of the Saturn despite it to this day still being my favorite console (even if I only got a hold of it in 2014) and the fate of the Dreamcast, which started life with so much optimism but was utterly destroyed by Sony. I don't blame Sony, I'm not a fanboy, the PS2 still is an incredible machine and it's no wonder why it sold 155 million units, also became the best selling console in Brazil, cementing the death of SEGA as a hardware maker... Or did it?
Remember when I said the Master System is still manufactured and sold here? Well... Same for the Mega-Drive! In fact, take a look at this.
I took this picture in 2017, TecToy had just come out with their latest Mega-Drive model. It's a far cry from the 1989 original, but it's still... There. In the selves of a big BIG electronics store (MagazineLuiza) alongside a pretty decent PS4 bundle.
And that isn't an isolated case. This happens everytime TecToy releases a new system, be it a Mega-Drive or a Master System. Master Systems alone sell upwards of 100 thousand units every year here, that's not a joke.
I know, I know. It's a weird case, Brazil isn't everywhere. It's a miracle story, something straight out the holy books of gaming history... But it makes me think, what if SEGA had survived? What if they manage to come back? Even to this day the SEGA community here is huge and one of the nicest I've ever met online. The Dreamcast is still something many people are looking to own, me included, and have tons of Facebook and Discord groups dedicated to it. Be that helping newcomers with homebrew solutions or organizing hours to play online on private servers, all that is still alive and well here.
As much as this sexy beast paled in comparison to the PS2 juggernaut sales-wise, it still has one of the most attractive and fun libraries out there, with a community that still uses it as their main system to this day and with officially licensed games coming out until 2008 and unlicensed games still being developed to this very day! Not having any copy protection might have hurt it a little back then, but it became its saving grace now (I still recommend just buying a GDEMU if you can).
It's a wish, it's a dream, but if a genie ever gave me 3 wishes, having SEGA back in this space would be one of them. All of their consoles and their libraries have this unique feel to them, and all of them are infinitely replayable and fun. SEGA was and still is in a league of its own, but I miss holding a controller made by them, popping in a cartridge or GD disc with SEGA logos. Having that magic feeling.
Nostalgia goggles? Maybe for the Mega-Drive, but I discovered the Saturn and Dreamcast way later on. Whenever I see an old SEGA arcade machine in the wild, you better know my Brazilian centavos are going to be spent in that thing, all afternoon.
Times may change, companies and people may move on, but the dream? The Dream never dies.
Ayrton Senna holding the SEGA Sonic statue at the British GP in Donington Park, 1993
Thanks for reading.
