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It is difficult to think of a more influential figure in the arcade game industry than David Rosen, who has died aged 95. The co-founder of Sega, who remained a director of the company until 1996, was instrumental in the birth and rise of the video game business in
One of Rosen’s great skills was in finding and employing people who instinctively understood where games were heading. In 1979, he spotted rising industry star Hayao Nakayama, director of Esco Trading, another arcade company. As Rosen explained to me in 2013: “Nakayama was very active as a distributor at the time – he was someone I felt was very astute and was quick to adapt to what was happening in the industry, and I wanted him – we did it via an acquisition of his company. By assimilation, we had him and the staff join us.” Nakayama would go on to be the president of Sega Japan during its heyday from 1983 to 1998.
During this time, Sega rose from a competitor alongside fellow arcade manufacturers Namco, Capcom, Taito and Konami, to an industry leader. Its sleek, stylish coin-ops of the 1980s – Outrun, Space Harrier and AfterBurner – changed the image of arcades from nerdy hideouts to cool aspirational hangouts, while 1990s titles Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter established the company as a technological powerhouse.
From the late-1970s, Rosen pursued a new market: home TV games. He encounter a major rival, Nintendo, which dominated with its Color TV-Game console, and later the Nintendo Entertainment System. When Rosen returned to the US in the early 1980s, he was determined to take a slice of the global console industry from his Kyoto-based competitor. “Nintendo was responsible for the revival of the home console market after the Atari collapse of 1983,” he told me. “We wanted to see if we could make a device that would be competitive. Unfortunately our first attempt failed to compete. It was just made up of off the shelf parts, it wasn’t until 1986 that we brought out the Master System …”
Rosen would stay active in the company in various senior roles until retiring in 1996. Although Sega’s home console business would falter in this period due to the rise of the Sony PlayStation, the company’s arcade supremacy remained for the rest of the decade. I spoke to him in 2013 while writing the book Sega Mega Drive Collected Works. As a lifelong Sega fan, my hour-long chat with him that day was a career highlight. He talked fondly about his time in Japan, the people he worked with and his journey through the industry. He told me with considerable glee that while out and about in his home town of Los Angeles, strangers would still shout ‘Sega!” at him when passing on the street.
Author: 360 Technology Group
Website: https://gamersnewz.com
It is difficult to think of a more influential figure in the arcade game industry than David Rosen, who has died aged 95. The co-founder of Sega, who remained a director of the company until 1996, was instrumental in the birth and rise of the video game business in
One of Rosen’s great skills was in finding and employing people who instinctively understood where games were heading. In 1979, he spotted rising industry star Hayao Nakayama, director of Esco Trading, another arcade company. As Rosen explained to me in 2013: “Nakayama was very active as a distributor at the time – he was someone I felt was very astute and was quick to adapt to what was happening in the industry, and I wanted him – we did it via an acquisition of his company. By assimilation, we had him and the staff join us.” Nakayama would go on to be the president of Sega Japan during its heyday from 1983 to 1998.
During this time, Sega rose from a competitor alongside fellow arcade manufacturers Namco, Capcom, Taito and Konami, to an industry leader. Its sleek, stylish coin-ops of the 1980s – Outrun, Space Harrier and AfterBurner – changed the image of arcades from nerdy hideouts to cool aspirational hangouts, while 1990s titles Virtua Racing and Virtua Fighter established the company as a technological powerhouse.
From the late-1970s, Rosen pursued a new market: home TV games. He encounter a major rival, Nintendo, which dominated with its Color TV-Game console, and later the Nintendo Entertainment System. When Rosen returned to the US in the early 1980s, he was determined to take a slice of the global console industry from his Kyoto-based competitor. “Nintendo was responsible for the revival of the home console market after the Atari collapse of 1983,” he told me. “We wanted to see if we could make a device that would be competitive. Unfortunately our first attempt failed to compete. It was just made up of off the shelf parts, it wasn’t until 1986 that we brought out the Master System …”
Rosen would stay active in the company in various senior roles until retiring in 1996. Although Sega’s home console business would falter in this period due to the rise of the Sony PlayStation, the company’s arcade supremacy remained for the rest of the decade. I spoke to him in 2013 while writing the book Sega Mega Drive Collected Works. As a lifelong Sega fan, my hour-long chat with him that day was a career highlight. He talked fondly about his time in Japan, the people he worked with and his journey through the industry. He told me with considerable glee that while out and about in his home town of Los Angeles, strangers would still shout ‘Sega!” at him when passing on the street.
Author: 360 Technology Group
Website: https://gamersnewz.com
