thicc_girls_are_teh_best
Gold Member
Another great video from SEGA Lord X, this one on Namco's 3D arcade games from the '90s. Once again, I always learn a little something new with these retro vids from these sort of channels; apparently Namco were actually trying to merge with SEGA ahead of Sammy back in 2003, but in the end SEGA and Sammy merged and the rest is history.
Man, simply imagine how much better things would've been if Namco and SEGA merged. We'd probably have had a Tekken vs. Virtua Fighter crossover by now, maybe a sequel to Prop Cycle (give it a try in MAME if you haven't played it yet; very whimsical and interesting game), and if they still decided to publish FROM Software games, maybe even a Chakan cameo in Dark Souls. Not to mention the Namco side bringing their superior business-making decision skills on-board, provided its corporate seniors would've retained that power in merging with SEGA (seeing that SEGA was the one seeking out a merger at the time, I imagine that would've been the case).
One thing made clear in the vid, beyond the fantastic competition Namco and SEGA gave each other in the '90s, is that Namco seemed more aware of the changing market and making adjustments to their business strategy compared to SEGA. It really does beg the question of why SEGA didn't make the ST-V board their flagship arcade platform for games like SEGA Rally and VF2/VF3, since that would've made Saturn ports MUCH easier (and therefore afford them more time to put in a swell of bonus home-exclusive content). Seeing as how Namco's games like Ridge Racer and Tekken did extremely well in arcades even on much weaker hardware than the Model 2 and Model 3, it really does make their decision look like the better one in hindsight.
Although I don't know how difficult it would've been for Namco and SEGA to do up-ports/conversions of System 11/ST-V base versions of Tekken and Virtua Fighter 2 to their then-high end arcade boards, that could've been a really good option especially if in addition to the beefed up visuals of those high-end boards you'd get all the home-exclusive content of the console ports released earlier.
Anyways, really neat video, just wanted to share!
