The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

A Dreamcast Deferred

9/10/2019

On 9/9/99 The Sega Dreamcast had the most successful product launch of literally any commercial product in history. It quickly came to dominate the market, outperforming all its competition. Less than a year and a half later, it was dead, and Sega was cut down to a shell of its former self. This week, we're looking at why, and at the long storied history of failure and missteps that came along with building an entirely new creative medium like nothing the world had ever seen before: video games.
Visit our Patreon here.
Get 10% off your first month of online counseling by visiting:
http://betterhelp.com/theconstant and entering discount code "theconstant".
And check out your two free ebooks at The Whatever Happened to Series Here.

Music by:
Blue Dot Sessions
Lee Rosevere
Kevin MacLeod
Alex McCulloch
Chance de la Soul
animeistrash

3 Comments

Nassim

9/11/2019 07:21:33 am

Me during the intro : "meh, I don't get how people get sentimental over a sound"

Me when the Jet Set Radio kicked in : *shivers in my whole body, tear at the corner of my eye*

Anita

9/11/2019 12:13:14 pm

That awful Atari PacMan sound sent my brain straight back to the early '80s.

I was a pre-teen trying to establish some independence from my parents in the stupid shitty ways pre-teens do. My dad was working nights so his schedule didn't give him much time to spend with family. We hardly saw each other at all and had little in common anymore.

And then we got an Atari for Christmas. I played it like crazy and loved every stupid awful sound it made. My high score on our machine wasn't anything to brag about in the arcade, but I was proud of it nonetheless.

One day I got home from school and saw a Post-It on the TV screen. On it was written a number. In my dad's writing. It didn't take me long to realize he's beaten my top score on PacMan and that number was now the number to beat. The competition was on!

My dad and I spent I-don't-remember-how-long playing PacMan, one in the early morning hours after coming home from work and the other in the late afternoon after coming home from school, communicating our new high scores by Post-It, and sharing something fun at a crucial time when we hardly saw each other at all.

Sure, I admit that PacMan sound is awful, but it sure sounds sweet to me.

Tee

9/11/2019 02:55:35 pm

I gotta tell ya -- I'm in my 50s, I never got into video games, I have exactly zero interest in this topic ... and I loved this episode. I'm on YouTube, looking at videos of Sonic. You really know how to tell a story. This is a great podcast.

The Constant: A History of Getting Things Wrong

A Dreamcast Deferred

Leave a Reply.

The Constant

Archives

Categories