Hidden Levels Ep. 6: Segagaga

The final episode of Hidden Levels explores the story of SEGA developer Tez Okano and the bizarre, meta-game he created: Segagaga. Okano joined SEGA in 1992, witnessing firsthand the company's tumultuous experience in the "console wars" against Nintendo and Sony. In the mid-1990s, SEGA struggled to make hardware that kept up with its rivals. The SEGA CD, the 32X, and the Saturn were all commercial failures. For Okano and many developers at SEGA, the console wars were both an exciting time to be in the video game business but also an intense and stressful time. They worked long hours, slept at their desks, and faced relentless deadlines. And so Okano decided to turn the chaotic nature of his professional life into a low-budget, self-parodying game about making video games at SEGA. In Segagaga, the player is a young developer tasked with saving SEGA's market share from the rival DOGMA Corporation (a stand-in for Sony/PlayStation). The gameplay is a mix of a role-playing game (RPG) and a management simulator, where you recruit demoralized, mutant-like SEGA employees by convincing them to join your team for the lowest salary possible. The gameplay reflects the absurd reality of game development. Players can spend a long time creating an original, hit game or they can quickly make a bunch of trashy titles (or shovelware) that barely keeps the company afloat. Okano even told us that the insults characters used in "battles" were actual quotes he heard in the office. The game was finished in 2001, just as the highly anticipated Sony PlayStation 2 was effectively dooming SEGA's Dreamcast. As game journalist Simon Parkin notes, Segagaga was released only two weeks before SEGA exited the console business entirely. This timing transformed the game from a self-parody into a memorial for a dying era, inviting players to literally defeat SEGA's failed consoles as bosses. Though Okano’s bizarre proposal was initially met with laughter by executives, the game ultimately got made and, in a strange twist, benefited from the company's decision to stop making video game hardware. Even in the face of industry chaos, some creators simply can't help but pour their love and energy into making games. Credits This episode was produced by Jayson De Leon and edited by Meg Cramer. Mix by Martín Gonzalez. Fact-checking by Graham Hacia. Original music by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Jocelyne Allen helped translate and interpret our interview with Tez Okano (truly the best). Special thanks to Lewis Cox and Tom Charnock over at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Their insight on SEGA, the Dreamcast, and Segagaga was extremely helpful in the making this story. Additional thanks to Adam Kuplowsky and 17 Bit’s Jake Kazdal. Simon Parkin has a book about the history of the Dreamcast called Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works https://amzn.to/4nIoPiE. It’s rich and beautiful and has even more details about Segagaga that we could not fit into this story. Tez Okano would like to thank the small team that supported Segagaga. Especially Hisao Oguchi, Tadashi Takezaki, and Taku Sasahara. Hidden Levels is a production of 99% Invisible https://99percentinvisible.org and WBUR's Endless Thread. The Managing Producer for Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. The series was created by Ben Brock Johnson. Series theme by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Series art by Aaron Nestor.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. A recent episode explores how AI is reshaping our schools. Stick around until the end of this podcast to preview the episode.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  When fall comes back around, there's a sense of a reset. And new pieces from Lululemon's Fall Drop are an inspiration to push your goals and elevate your routines. As your calendar fills, easy-to-layer styles meet the demands of your day. And as you challenge yourself to try even more, versatile sets transition with you. The Lululemon Fall Lineup brings new levels of comfort and confidence, whether you're starting something fresh or starting something over. Check out the latest arrivals in store and on lululemon.com now.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 0:48Speaker 03

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Swirl Bite?

• 0:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hansen? Sure, I'll try one.

• 0:53Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 0:56Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hansen's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Taylor Hansen? Nice. Try one. Mmm.

• 1:09Speaker 00

  King's Hawaiian Cinnamon Bites. There's nothing like it.

• 1:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Roman Mars from 99% Invisible.

• 1:24Speaker 05

  Ben Brock Johnson from Endless Thread.

• 1:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  Here we are, final boss of hidden levels. Are you ready, Roman? Do you have all your legendary items? Do you have full life? Did you save the game in case we lose against the final boss?

• 1:37Speaker 05

  That's an important consideration. Yes, I am so excited for this because I think this might be the first final boss I've ever encountered. Like, I've never reached the part of the video game that you actually hit the final boss. So this is thrilling for me to be here at the very end.

• 1:50Ben Brock Johnson?

  All right. Well, get ready to have a huge sense of accomplishment for beating a final boss that maybe means nothing to anyone except for you. That's a very video game feeling. Let's talk about something we've been touching on through this series, but maybe never said explicitly. Video games are art. How does that sit with you, Roman?

• 2:10Speaker 05

  It sits very well with me. I think video games are absolutely art. They are beautiful visions. They bring worlds alive for people. They teach people how to think. They change your perspective. Video games are absolutely art.

• 2:21Ben Brock Johnson?

  Totally agree. And just like other kinds of art, video games are full of reference and homage. So for instance, I think maybe you've heard of the game Metal Gear or Metal Gear Solid, that series of games?

• 2:34Speaker 05

  I've never played it, but Metal Gear, I'm aware of Metal Gear.

• 2:36Ben Brock Johnson?

  So Metal Gear was created nearly 40 years ago by game designer Hideo Kojima. Kojima is now one of the most loved and respected auteurs of video games, in part because he has always put his own personality into the games that he makes. He's got strong ideas. He's committed to them, even when they're basically referencing other pieces of art. The main character Roman in Metal Gear, Metal Gear Solid, is named Solid Snake. Solid Snake, he wears an eye patch. He's got a stubble beard on his Chad-like jaw. When you look at this game character Roman, does he look familiar to you?

• 3:13Speaker 05

  So I'm looking at a picture of Solid Snake, and he is a dead ringer for Snake Plissken from the movie Escape from New York.

• 3:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nicely done. I think we'd have very few arguments on movie night, Roman.

• 3:25Speaker 05

  It's a great movie.

• 3:26Ben Brock Johnson?

  It's a great movie. Solid Snake was inspired by Snake Plissken, as you say, the character played by Kurt Russell in that 1981 sci-fi classic. You gonna kill me now, Snake?

• 3:37Speaker 05

  I'm too tired. Maybe later. So Kojima is obviously like a movie fan.

• 3:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  For sure. And Kojima actually has this new set of games that is also turning into their own franchise, Death Stranding and Death Stranding 2.

• 3:53Speaker 05

  Okay, well, those are new to me. I've never heard of Death Stranding.

• 3:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  So this game goes further than just references and homage. The game has been described as sort of a walking simulator.

• 4:06Ben Brock Johnson?

  Because the main character is not a warrior. He's not a sniper. He's not a smash and bash him kind of guy. He is a courier, Roman. So in the game, you are delivering packages. That's the game.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  I love this. I love this. This does seem like my kind of game.

• 4:21Speaker 05

  I'm having a hard time imagining why a game about a courier is called Death Stranding. That that doesn't quite make sense to me.

• 4:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, I mean, it does all take place in a post apocalyptic environment. You're you're currying babies.

• 4:34Speaker 05

  Oh, my goodness.

• 4:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  In this game, so it's stakes are high. Stakes are high for sure.

• 4:39Speaker 05

  Well, that makes sense. The stakes are high when you're delivering babies in a post apocalyptic environment.

• 4:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, and you know, we're laughing about this, but the game is also like a piece of commentary. You can see Kojima thinking through big questions, like the dangers of living in a society where we barely physically interact. And he's doing it through this delivery guy, this courier in Death Stranding. So Kojima is an example of how an artist's personality, their point of view can get coded right into the game itself. And today, Roman, we're going to talk about another one of these examples, a game really coming from the inside of one man's brain, his anxieties, his hopes, his fears about the industry he works in and the company he works for.

• 5:32Ben Brock Johnson?

  This is where we're going to start our final boss episode of Hidden Levels with a Sega employee who had a front row seat to all of the chaos of working in the gaming business in the 1990s. And we're going to learn how he turned his experience into the most strangely iconic meta video game, maybe of all time.

• 5:51Speaker 05

  99PI producer Jason DeLeon brings it home for us.

• 6:01Speaker 06

  When I first met Tez Okano, I wasn't sure what to expect. I had reached out to talk about a video game he created nearly 25 years ago. An obscure and fun Japanese title that had become a sort of fixation of mine. It's a game that you can't really begin to understand until you get to know the person who made it.

• 6:24Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm a rural person. I'm originally from Tokyo, but I'm not a Tokyoan.

• 6:33Speaker 05

  So I'm a country bumpkin. I live in Tokyo currently and have lived in Tokyo for a while, but I am not a Tokyo person.

• 6:40Speaker 06

  Through an interpreter, Okano told me about his early life in rural southern Japan, and how growing up in the 1970s, just as video games were taking off, set the stage for everything that was to come.

• 6:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  I'm really a rural person. There's nothing.

• 6:58Speaker 05

  Like, I really have to insist on it. I am from the country. There's like, nothing. Literally, nothing. In terms of entertainment, what we had was like, the great outdoors. So anything with a hint of, you know, the city lingering on it, it was just something that we all, like, longed for.

• 7:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  We all longed for it.

• 7:17Speaker 06

  As a kid, Okano dreamed of leaving the countryside. But often, video games were his closest escape. He remembers playing versions of the classic tennis and brick breaker titles of the 70s, which were fun, but those games didn't really move him. He says his love really started when one iconic title landed in his hometown.

• 7:40Ben Brock Johnson?

  Space Invaders. Do you know Space Invaders?

• 7:45Speaker 06

  When Okano first played Space Invaders, he was struck by something he had never experienced in a game before. It had characters and stakes. It felt alive.

• 7:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Space Invader is creature. It's invading.

• 8:01Speaker 06

  It's a story.

• 8:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yes, story, world. Emotional, emotional.

• 8:09Speaker 06

  Some people might only see an 11x5 grid of pixelated aliens when they play Space Invaders, but Okano saw a whole new world. And that passion led him away from the countryside and into a university where he studied game design. As a student, Okano created games on MSX, a type of home computer that helped shape the 80s Japanese gaming scene.

• 8:33Ben Brock Johnson?

  MSX is awesome.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  And I love MSX. Like, I just love, love, love MSX. It's burned into my brain making games like that.

• 8:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  MSX is the best.

• 8:43Speaker 06

  One of Okano's MSX games was a silly 8-bit shoot'em up called Salad Man. The game was a spoof of a famous Japanese game called Salamander. MSX magazine wrote about Salad Man and said it was funny and kinda crazy. And ultimately, that playful, oddball spirit helped Okano land the job straight out of college at Sega.

• 9:07Ben Brock Johnson?

  I think you're seeing a lot of people who are changing.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  And you know, like, you can see, you can tell that I'm kind of a weird guy.

• 9:15Speaker 06

  Okano joined Sega in 1992. At the time, the company was riding high on the success of the Sega Genesis. It was the first console to challenge Nintendo's grip over the home gaming industry. This kicked off what we know today as "The Console Wars", a decades-long competition between companies for gaming supremacy. Early on, Sega and Nintendo competed over who had the better 2D graphics. But by the mid-'90s, video games were heading in a new direction.

• 9:46Ben Brock Johnson?

  As soon as I joined the company, I saw the 3D era.

• 9:51Speaker 02

  Right after I started working there, like, it was, everything was 3D. It was the era of 3D. You wanna do pixel art or anything pixel, anything flat. No, it's...

• 10:00Ben Brock Johnson?

  Over, that time is over. You can't sell pixels, you can't sell that kind of stuff. 3D is what sells.

• 10:08Speaker 06

  When Okano created Salad Man, he had to meticulously draw and color each individual graphic. On MSX, this meant following a strict set of rules on the number of pixels he could use, and how to color them. But 3D required a very different skillset. So when he arrived at Sega, Okano recalls that a bunch of pixel artists suddenly needed to adapt, or they might find themselves out of work.

• 10:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  And that really rubbed me the wrong way. It made me sad. You know, I got into games because I like pixel art. But by the time I got my start in this industry, the world of pixels was already on its way out.

• 10:51Speaker 06

  Okano feared that with the whole industry pushing towards 3D, pixel artists like him would become a thing of the past. He described it to me as watching the collapse of an empire. And his fears were warranted. Sega couldn't be concerned with all that meticulously drawn, color each pixel artsy-fartsy stuff. They needed to innovate or risk falling behind their rivals. But in Sega's push to bring new technology and 3D gaming into homes, the company just kept screwing up. Make, make my, my, my, my, my videos gay. Peace. I'm out. Like, shout.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  For example, are you a fan of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch? No? Well, too bad. Here's a game Sega put out on the Sega CD, where you make Mark Wahlberg's music video.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  You wanna make my video? Give me more shots of Marky with his shirt off. Honey.

• 11:48Speaker 06

  The Sega CD was an add-on to the Genesis that tried to cash in on the popularity of CDs at the time. But the device just didn't have many games. And, big surprise, the Marky Mark one wasn't flying off the shelf. Sega followed this debacle up with yet another doomed piece of hardware, called the 32X. It was a device that you literally stuck into the top of your Genesis to supercharge its processing power. Just stick it in your Genesis.

• 12:19Speaker 06

  The 32X was too little, too late. People were ready to move on from the Genesis. They were ready for a true 3D console. But the company's next system, the Sega Saturn, totally missed the mark.

• 12:34Speaker 07

  So the Sega Saturn is really a machine that's very, very good at moving sprites, so that's the 2D bits of art, around a screen very, very quickly. It's less good at handling 3D, and this is a miscalculation on Sega's part because by the mid 90s, everyone wants 3D games.

• 12:54Speaker 06

  This is Simon Parkin, a game journalist and host of the podcast My Perfect Console. Simon says, haha, that with each new piece of hardware, Sega further confused and alienated their audience. After all, the company hyped the Saturn as an era-defining 3D console. But when they couldn't deliver the goods, a total newcomer to the industry stepped in and did.

• 13:18Speaker 07

  Sony's PlayStation is the first really, really capable 3D machine.

• 13:25Speaker 06

  The PlayStation was Sony's first console, and it was a massive hit, selling tens of millions of consoles worldwide. Pair that with the release of the Nintendo 64, another console with 3D graphics, and suddenly Sega was in crisis. The high times of the Genesis were only a few years in the rearview, but it was fair to ask if Sega was going the way of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. Gone were the good vibrations, and so long went the sweet sensations. Sega needed to hit the reset button, and that's exactly what they did with the Dreamcast.

• 14:02Speaker 07

  The ads emphasize firstly, an apology almost, like, sorry for how far Sega has fallen, and also then, you know, switching it to be all about the return of Sega. And I think that was the name of the campaign in Japan, the return of Sega.

• 14:18Speaker 06

  The Dreamcast was Sega's response to the PlayStation, and the company's biggest punch in the console wars yet. It was the world's first console with a built-in modem for online play. It also had a graphics card that blew the competition out of the water. Not just 3D, but the best-looking 3D by a long shot. With the Dreamcast, Sega was looking ahead to the new millennium and leaving its recent tumultuous past behind.

• 14:46Speaker 07

  So yeah, this is the gamble that Sega is making. We'll get out early, we'll have the most powerful machine on the market, and we'll also invest in our own designers here in Tokyo with the view of not only pushing the technological boundaries of what the Dreamcast can do, but also the kinds of games that are being made. There was this atmosphere of experimentation and freedom, and you had the chance to try something new and see if it paid off.

• 15:14Speaker 06

  The late 1990s are known at Sega as the Dreamcast years. And during the Dreamcast years, Sega's developers could, as one executive put it, do whatever they wanted. The mandate was to be original, to make games and create experiences that people had never seen before. Sega was throwing everything behind the Dreamcast to salvage their position in the console wars. And a lot of Sega's developers took that to heart, including Tez Okano.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Sega was the challenger, right? Sega was never the king. Sega was just coming up to the king and asking for a fight. So we had that kind of attitude, that underdog attitude at Sega.

• 16:07Speaker 06

  Okano told me that the first few titles he worked on at Sega were not a commercial success. There was a Dragon Ball Z game that just didn't do great, a game where you ride in the back of a runaway railcar that was kind of a bust, and a dirt racing game.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Which also did not do that great, was not a winner.

• 16:30Speaker 06

  When the Dreamcast years arrived, Okano was eager to try something new. But he was also aware of his not-so-stellar track record developing games. So any idea he had needed to work on a shoestring budget.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  And you know, like after my string of failures and like I was just a total loser, basically, no one's gonna come along and be like, oh...

• 16:53Ben Brock Johnson?

  Here's 700 million yen, make whatever game you want. Like, no, that wasn't gonna happen. No one was giving me any money.

• 16:59Speaker 06

  The console wars had left their mark both on Sega and on Okano. For years, developers like him worked long hours trying to make the company relevant again. They slept at their desk and showered at the office. Okano himself had to work extra hard to learn all the new techniques 3D games required. The stress was high and the deadlines were relentless. And all of this gave Okano the idea for his next game. What if he could give people a peek behind the curtains? What if he made his next game a video game about making video games? No, more than that. A video game about making video games during the console wars? Actually, no, no.

• 17:43Speaker 06

  What if he went full Monty and made a game about making video games during the console wars while working at Sega?

• 17:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  Nothing I was making was really coming across too well until finally we get to Sega Gaga.

• 18:05Speaker 07

  He sort of mangoes the name of the game and makes it Sega Gaga or whatever, Sega Gaga, yeah.

• 18:12Speaker 06

  It's the three G's, yeah.

• 18:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, so, you know, that's how he gets away with calling it that.

• 18:17Speaker 06

  Sega Gaga is part role-playing game, part management simulator. A game in which Tez Okano hands the controller to us, the players, and says, "Look, Sega is a mess. Do you think you can do any better?"

• 18:32Speaker 07

  Like, it's really a sort of act of self-parodying documentary, really about Sega's fortunes during the 1990s.

• 18:42Speaker 06

  Sega Gaga is a game that ticked all the boxes. Dreamcast had just launched, and Sega wanted developers across the company to create original games. And, well, this was that. And, yeah, he was one developer with a run of bad games under his belt, but Sega Gaga wouldn't need a lot of resources. He would create the story, the characters, and all the ins and outs of the gameplay himself. Because, after all, he had lived through this whole experience. For Okano, it was just a matter of crafting his pitch to get Sega's executives to say yes.

• 19:20Ben Brock Johnson?

  I had my presentation set up and it was really funny. It was really hilarious, well received. The whole room was busting a gut and just like, "Oh, you really got us."

• 19:35Ben Brock Johnson?

  And they thought it was a huge joke, so they didn't give me any money.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  Okano actually had to go back another day and give the whole presentation again.

• 19:47Ben Brock Johnson?

  And I was like, "No, I was serious the other day." Like, "I was being for real. This is not a joke." And it was such a stupid, ridiculous kind of story that they just couldn't believe that I was serious.

• 20:03Speaker 06

  There are a lot of reasons Sega would probably want to say no to Okano. But chief among them is that the game is acknowledging a pretty embarrassing fact about the company. It spent a lot of the 90s missing the moment. And maybe it was just the ethos of the Dreamcast years. Or maybe it was Okano's charm. Or maybe it was just the fact that the cost of the game was more or less a rounding error. But to Okano's delight, Sega said yes. So were you surprised when Sega gave you the green light?

• 20:38Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, no, I was desperate. I was like back against the wall at the end of my rope. But at the same time, I was really certain that I could make a good, fun, interesting game. And when they came back with a yes, I was just like over the moon.

• 20:56Speaker 06

  Sega Gaga is the kind of idea Okano would hear floated after work at a happy hour. Something so zany and out there that people would laugh and joke about it. And then, you know, just get up from the table and go back to doing whatever they were doing.

• 21:13Ben Brock Johnson?

  But I did not walk away from it.

• 21:15Speaker 06

  I spent two years in that drunken state, working on, on this game. In the opening title card to Sega Gaga, you, the player, are given the marching orders. Sega is in bad shape, so it's time to put the company's top-secret plan into action.

• 21:37Speaker 07

  Alright, um, let's go ahead and dive into the game.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's do it. This is Existence DC, a gamer that's working on an English translation of Sega Gaga. And he's gonna help me explain it, because honestly, there's a lot going on in this game.

• 21:54Speaker 07

  We can always bounce around, but I'll start like a brand-new game here.

• 21:58Speaker 06

  In Sega Gaga, you play a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed developer. Someone who hasn't been run down by the console wars and the business of creating games. And your goal is to win back Sega's market share from the Dogma Corporation.

• 22:12Speaker 07

  Uh, Dogma's supposed to represent like Sony.

• 22:15Speaker 06

  The PlayStation is what they're trying to nod at here.

• 22:17Speaker 07

  Yeah, exactly.

• 22:19Speaker 06

  In order to make games that will eventually bury PlayStation, mm-hmm, Dogma, you, the hero developer, have to recruit a team to make hit games. The problem? Almost all of your potential teammates have turned into mutants, who live in the dungeons below Sega headquarters.

• 22:37Speaker 07

  So we're gonna go into our first dungeon.

• 22:39Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 22:41Speaker 06

  It's obvious that the stress and pressure of creating games has gotten to them. Some of these characters are over-caffeinated employees with bottles of energy drinks lying around them. Some have just been reduced to a gigantic blob of pixels.

• 22:56Speaker 07

  Other characters are Sega employees with their faces blurred, and it's literally a photo of them, uh, where it's like, "Let's take a photo of you, blur out your face, and put you in the game."

• 23:05Speaker 06

  The development dungeons are 3D environments, but you and the feral developers moping about are made up of 2D sprites. This gives the game an odd sort of look from the jump. It's slapdash with pixel art and other 2D elements that Okano has carefully pasted into the game. For example, one character you run into in this dungeon slash lab has a big 3D over his head, and he's actively weeping.

• 23:32Speaker 07

  That's basically, he's supposed to be like a guy who's in it, who does 3D modeling, so an artist on the project. And they're being crushed under the weight of 3D.

• 23:40Speaker 06

  Like, it just like how difficult it is to render things in 3D?

• 23:43Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 23:44Speaker 06

  Yeah. If this sounds absurd and insanely meta, that's because it is. And for Okano, that was the whole point. He wanted the game to reflect what life in the development lab was really like. Take another example. One key part of the game are these battles where you, the hero developer, are trying to convince people to join your team. But there's a catch. You want to convince them to join on the cheapest salary possible. Because, of course, the cheaper your team's overall budget, the higher the profit margin.

• 24:20Speaker 06

  In these battles, you try to weaken your opponent by basically launching insults at them. And instead of a typical life meter, these characters have a will meter. And it decreases as you unleash hell on them by saying their previous games suck, or that they'll never get a girlfriend. Here's Tez Okano again.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  I actually, all of the, like, attacks in the game where there's the fighting, those are all like lines, actual things that people in the office were saying that I just picked up and put in the game. Like, these are actual quotes from my coworkers. So basically, it's almost all true. Like, the whole game is basically just real life. The panic, the running around, the busy, the whole busy atmosphere of everything, and, you know, deadlines approaching, that's all real.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  Depending on the team you've assembled,

• 25:28Speaker 06

  you can make big-hit games which take longer to produce, but win you back a bigger piece of market share. Or you can quickly make a bunch of trashy titles that barely keep the company afloat. And all of this is happening on a timer. You have deadlines to hit. And this, by the way, I think is the funniest part of the game. Right next to your deadline is an additional deadline titled "More Realistic Deadline." But even these extended deadlines are hard to hit because occasionally you're thwarted by a totally random event. Maybe one of your developers loses their mind and walks off your team. Or maybe someone downloads a bad attachment and suddenly your team is dealing with a computer virus.

• 26:12Speaker 07

  It kind of goes back to the larger kind of idea with Sega Gaga is that it's not just kind of about Sega culture. It's also about development and the challenges of getting a game to the finish line and the things that happen.

• 26:24Speaker 06

  Sega Gaga also has a whole story that unravels as you clear the different development stages. In these animated cutscenes, you watch Dogma, or PlayStation, attempt to sabotage Sega. And as if that isn't enough, between each of these chapters is a, um, how do I describe this? A puppet show that Okano filmed with his coworkers?

• 26:58Ben Brock Johnson?

  Oh yeah, that's so, the puppet scenes are so funny. I love them. I love them so much.

• 27:03Speaker 06

  I know, I know. All of this sounds kind of batshit. But the game is also like, pretty fun.

• 27:10Speaker 07

  I do think it's a good game. I definitely think, I think it holds up. I think the variety makes it great. Like, it's almost better than I expected it to be. And it's more modern than I expected it to be. And I enjoy the story more than I think I expected. So yeah, I actually really love the game.

• 27:25Speaker 06

  To Okano's credit, when he first showed Sega Gaga to Sega's executives, he didn't try to hide anything or make it something it wasn't. He just showed them the game. This absurd, bizarre game.

• 27:41Ben Brock Johnson?

  I guess in a word, the reaction was, "What kind of idiocy are you doing here?" Um, basically with Sega Gaga, I did everything that Sega hates. So the concept of the game was, "Everything that Sega hates, it's like, not really well made. Uh, it's cheap, it's sort of sloppy, it's weird." So it didn't fit in any boxes at the company, which was the beauty of it.

• 28:09Speaker 06

  Look, Sega's executives could have just killed this game right then and there. It didn't cost much money to make, and it would have been pretty easy for them to just take the L. But that's not what happened. Okano's strange game actually made it to market under the Sega banner. And that's partly because of a big development in the console wars.

• 28:32Speaker 06

  Okano completed Sega Gaga in 2001. By that time, the Dreamcast had been out worldwide for almost two years. Here in America, the launch was the biggest ever for a console, bringing in nearly $100 million in 24 hours. Things were looking up. Well, at least for a second.

• 28:52Speaker 07

  But the big problem is people know the PlayStation 2 is coming.

• 28:57Speaker 06

  Here's game journalist Simon Parkin again.

• 28:59Speaker 07

  And Sony is very, very effective in trailing the PlayStation 2 and saying, essentially, "Oh, look, Sega's got this new system that's coming out." But it's really a stopgap. You know, if you pick this up, it'll be dead in the water in two years, because then the PlayStation 2 will be here, and it runs on something called an Emotion Engine, which is a great piece of marketing.

• 29:23Speaker 06

  Wow, yeah, that is.

• 29:25Speaker 07

  It's got an Emotion Engine. You know, this is a console that's gonna be so powerful, it can make you cry. All of this nonsense.

• 29:32Speaker 06

  Is that a real thing they said?

• 29:34Speaker 07

  Yeah, they did say that. And, but it's, you know, it was extraordinarily effective.

• 29:39Speaker 06

  With the PlayStation 2 on the horizon, sales of Sega's Dreamcast basically flatlined. Sony's marketing team convinced enough people that the system just wasn't worth it, that the PlayStation had something even better in the works. And suddenly, the story in Tez Okano's game crept closer to reality. Dogma, or PlayStation, was squeezing Sega out of the console market. And then, it actually happened.

• 30:09Speaker 07

  Sega formally announces that it's ceasing production of the Dreamcast and that the Dreamcast is gonna be its last piece of hardware that is exiting the console business. It continues to make games and publish games, which it still does to this day, but it's no longer gonna build any video game hardware.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  When Sega called it quits on consoles, it was a shock to the gaming industry. This was like Wonder getting out of the bread business. Reese's saying, "Sorry, everyone, we're done making pieces." But in a strange twist, the big move actually benefited Sega Gaga. After all, Tez Okano had finished the game. It was already paid for. And it would be one of the last games released for a console that had already been discontinued. Instead of being laughed at, why not join the gag?

• 31:00Speaker 07

  So the timing is extraordinary, completely prescient and weird. Okano has proven to be a little bit prophetic with all of that.

• 31:13Speaker 02

  Sega comes out and announces the end of Dreamcast, which is like all the free publicity you could ask for. I mean, the whole world was talking about Sega pulling out of the console business. So it was on TV, it was in the newspapers, and of course, they're talking about us because we're a game and we're the last game. So it was really great in that way.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Still, with Sega moving out of the console business, it wasn't about to support Sega Gaga that hard. The company gave Okano 30,000 yen, which is about $200 to promote his game. He and his publicist took that money and commissioned a friend to make a custom wrestling mask, one with big letters on top that read "SGGG: Sega Gaga."

• 32:02Speaker 02

  So I just drew the design. That's all I did. I drew design. And then the idea was that I wear masks and go places.

• 32:09Speaker 06

  If you happened to be in the famous electronics district of Tokyo when the game launched, you might have seen Okano running from game store to game store in that mask, signing autographs for all of the Sega diehards who showed up. When Okano was making Sega Gaga, he wasn't expecting Sega's console business to collapse. But when it did, his game took on a whole new meaning. Now, it wasn't just a self-parody of life at Sega during the console wars. The game acted as a sort of memorial for an era. As you move through the story of Sega Gaga, you meet characters from the company's past, like Alex Kidd, Sega's mascot before Sonic took the world by storm.

• 32:53Speaker 06

  There's even an Easter egg for the real retro gaming heads out there. A 2D shoot-'em-up made in that classic 1980s Sega style. Only the bosses in Okano's game are all of Sega's old failed consoles. The Sega CD that's in there, the 32X, huge boss, and it all culminates with the Sega Saturn, the daddy of them all. In a literal sense, you're trying to defeat Sega's history.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  So Sega Gaga is like a practical joke of a game. You know, it's poking fun of the things we made. It's self-deprecating, warts and all. But like, I love games, you know? Like, I'm really proud of my work as a game creator.

• 33:49Speaker 07

  The moral of the story is that, you know, in the game's ending, the character decides to keep making games, even after he's seen how challenging it could be. You know, it's a industry that, for better or worse, thrives off the passion of the individuals who pour their creativity and energy into it. And I think, you know, that is, that's the ultimate message of the game.

• 34:13Speaker 06

  While Okano repeatedly and pointedly pokes fun at his employer, he also wants the people who made the games to know that he sees them. Creating is full of frustration. There's never enough resources and there's never enough time. You can do all the right things and sometimes the work just still falls short. But that's okay because you made it. You and your team turned an idea into something that people can experience, maybe even enjoy. And in Okano's world, that is a cause for celebration.

• 35:03Speaker 05

  Tez Okano is still making video games. His latest is an MSX-style Shoot 'Em Up, or Schmup, as I'm learning right now as I read this, which was released in August. It's called "The Girl from Gun Makai", and actually, the song you're hearing right now is from that game.

• 35:20Speaker 06

  You can find Okano's new game and the rest of its soundtrack on Steam. He also recently released a pixel art movie called "The Final Request". Learn more about what he's up to at his studio's website, hugastudio.com. That's H-U-G-A-studio.com. When we come back from the break, we're going to wrap up Hidden Levels.

• 35:53Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questram School of Business. How should employers measure real skills in the age of AI?

• 36:06Speaker 06

  Instead of observing the final artifact, instead of observing the final essay or the final program, observe the entire process of creation.

• 36:15Speaker 00

  Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and stick around until the end of this podcast for a preview of a recent episode on rethinking academic and job assessment when AI can do the work.

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new Fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 37:02Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays.

• 37:04Speaker 07

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Uh, Taylor Hanson? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 37:11Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 37:13Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hanson's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 37:17Speaker 03

  Taylor Hanson? Nice.

• 37:19Speaker 07

  Try one.

• 37:20Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 37:24Speaker 07

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.

• 37:37Ben Brock Johnson?

  Roman Mars, I think we got past the final Boss episode of Hidden Levels.

• 37:41Speaker 05

  We did, and what a doozy it was.

• 37:43Ben Brock Johnson?

  Yeah, that's right. That Jason DeLeón guy, he's a ringer, man. I heard he was actually once such a heavy video game player that he was globally ranked?

• 37:52Speaker 05

  Yeah, if I'm not mistaken, Jay was a ranked Halo 2 player.

• 37:56Ben Brock Johnson?

  That is amazing.

• 37:57Speaker 05

  And he used to like fight jujitsu, too. Like, he's multi-talented.

• 38:02Ben Brock Johnson?

  Don't mess with Jay in the digital or the real world. Fair. Well, Jason's story was a perfect, I think, final video game cinematic to our collaboration. Roman, at the end of our long quest to explore the hidden levels of how the video game world influences the real world, how you feeling? What are you thinking about?

• 38:19Speaker 05

  I mean, I loved this collaboration. It was so much fun to explore video games in depth. And particularly because video games are this place in which every pixel, every decision, every piece of design came out of someone's brain. And it tells you so much about their values, what's important to them, what's important to the gamer. It's just this great way to explore a lot of things that I like to think about all the time.

• 38:45Ben Brock Johnson?

  Absolutely. And I think we're in a really interesting moment to look at video games in this way, right? Video games are going through some of the disruptive change that so many creative industries are going through. Film, art, animation, AI, other technologies, conglomeration, these kind of larger tectonic shifts bring a lot of uncertainty to how we do and think about, I guess, telling stories. So it's been wonderful to celebrate that. And what Jason's story, I think, typifies, and what gives me some hope, is that humans are endlessly amazingly creative. You know, whatever the larger trends in the industry bring.

• 39:19Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I think it's important to note is that so much of our premise was that video games influenced the real world. But video games in and of themselves are just worthy of study. They are fascinating. They tell you so much about what life is like and what life means to people. It's just, it's a rich text. So this is where our couch co-op of Hidden Levels ends for now. I think my mom got us some chicken nugs that we can heat up in the microwave. I brought the Mountain Dew. This is where gamers and I see eye to eye about the, just the virtues of Mountain Dew, the greatest drink that was ever invented.

• 39:55Ben Brock Johnson?

  Do the do.

• 39:55Speaker 05

  But of course, yeah, I do the do way too much for a 50-year-old man. But regardless, this is not the end of hearing from us at 99% Invisible and Endless Thread. We have new stories coming to listeners every single week. Make sure you follow both of our shows, subscribe to both shows, because we are both people who like to describe and interact with and engage with the world and explain it in cool ways with people that you'll like to hang out with. So you can get Endless Thread and 99% Invisible wherever you get your podcasts.

• 40:27Ben Brock Johnson?

  Like chicken nuggets and Mountain Dew, man.

• 40:29Speaker 05

  Perfect together.

• 40:31Ben Brock Johnson?

  Reminder to folks as well that if you want to keep playing along, we have two, count them, two side quests in the Endless Thread feed, if you haven't listened to those yet. And now, like any good AAA video game or podcast.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Roll credits.

• 40:47Speaker 05

  This episode was produced by Jason DeLeone, edited by Meg Cramer, mixed by Martin Gonzalez, fact checking by Graham Haitian, original music by Swan Real and Paul Vaitkus. Extra special thanks this week to Jocelyn Allen, who helped translate and interpret our interview with Tez O'Connor. Truly the best. And also special thanks to Louis Cox and Tom Charnock over at The Dreamcast Junkyard. Their insight on Sega, The Dreamcast and Sega Gaga was extremely helpful in making this story. Simon Parkin has a book about the history of The Dreamcast called Sega Dreamcast: Collected Works. It's rich and beautiful and has even more details about Sega Gaga that we could not fit into this story.

• 41:30Ben Brock Johnson?

  Additional thanks to Adam Kuplowsky and 17Bits Jake Kazdal. Tez O'Connor would also like to thank the small team that supported Sega Gaga, especially Hisao Oguchi, Tadashi Takezaki and Taku Sasahara. The managing producer of Hidden Levels is Chris Berube. Endless Threat is a production of WBUR, Boston's NPR. Our team tackling unsolved mysteries, untold histories and other wild stories from the internet includes my illustrious co-host Amory Sivertson, managing producer Suma Tijoshi, producers Grace Tatter, Franny Monahan, sound designer Emily Jankowski, and our production manager, Paul Vaitkus. Thanks, by the way, to Ian Bogost, one of the great video game thinkers and writers of our time.

• 42:14Ben Brock Johnson?

  His work you can find at The Atlantic and in many books, you should check it out. And Marajem Did, she's a gamer, developer and author who has a great book on a similar subject to our series. It is called How Video Games Are Changing the World. It's full of amazing stories. You should totally read it.

• 42:32Speaker 05

  And for 99% Invisible, Kathy Two is our executive producer. Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director. Delaney Hall is our senior editor. The rest of the team includes Emmett Fitzgerald, Christopher Johnson, Vivian Le, Laishma Dawn, Jacob Medina Gleason, Kelly Prime, Joe Rosenberg, and me, Roman Mars. The 99% of the logo was created by Stefan Lawrence. The art for this series was created by Aaron Nester. We are part of the SiriusXM Podcast family, now headquartered six blocks north in the Pandora Building in beautiful Uptown Oakland, California. By the way, where is WBUR? Like, what neighborhood is that?

• 43:11Ben Brock Johnson?

  Roman Mars, it is in beautiful, lovely, rainy, Boston, or Brooklang, depending on who you're asking. You can come visit anytime.

• 43:20Speaker 05

  Ben, thank you so much.

• 43:22Ben Brock Johnson?

  Roman, thank you. I'll see you in that video game lobby.

• 43:26Speaker 05

  And thanks, everyone, for listening.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Support for this podcast comes from Is Business Broken?, a podcast from the Marotra Institute at BU Questrom School of Business. Follow Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Janet Kang, Executive Director of the Just Horizons Alliance, on who stands to benefit from AI in education.

• 43:59Speaker 06

  I am absolutely in favor of AI in learning in the right context.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  And just to explain why you're excited about it.

• 44:06Speaker 06

  Oh, my gosh, individualized support, right? Personalization and to be able to scale quality education in places where it was historically impossible. So for certain kinds of learners with different kinds of learning styles and disabilities, for example, speakers of different languages, there are amazing ways AI can boost learning. It just has to be with the right context. And age appropriateness is something we do a lot of work in because it is very different depending on where in that maturity cycle you are in terms of how your brain develops.

• 44:37Speaker 00

  Find the full episode by searching for Is Business Broken? wherever you get your podcasts and learn more about the Marotra Institute for Business Markets and Society at ibms.bu.edu.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon fall drop because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces. So I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  Ugh, I hate Mondays. King's Hawaiian cinnamon swirl bite? Taylor Hanson? Sure, I'll try one. Mmm.

• 45:34Speaker 03

  Hey, let's get back to work, please.

• 45:36Speaker 02

  But Taylor Hanson's making my day way better with these new soft and swirly King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites.

• 45:40Speaker 03

  Taylor Hanson? Nice.

• 45:42Speaker 07

  Try one.

• 45:43Speaker 03

  Mmm.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  King's Hawaiian cinnamon bites. There's nothing like it.