Sega Almost Licensed The Technology That Went Into The Virtual Boy

[foxtail]

Ka-pi96 said:

JRPGfan said:

disolitude said:
Man I love Tom Kalinske. Such a cool cat.

Se lets recap:

1. Sega talked to SGI first and turned them down, hence they went to nintendo to make n64
2. Sega talked to Sony after they parted ways with nintendo and they agreed on a joint console idea, but Sega of Japan turned them down
3. Sega talked to 3DO for a console but turned them down
4. Sega talked to Virtual Boy people as well but turned them down also

Sega then released the mess that was the Saturn.

W
T
F
!

1) Thats unlucky. N64 turned out great for nintendo.

Yeah but largely because it had Mario, Zelda & Rare. So even if Sega had made an N64 like console unless Nintendo decided to release their games on it instead of having their own console it still would have been a failure and mostly forgotten about by now.

To add to that Rare also had a giant head start on the N64 because their previous experience with SGI machines.  They had 2 SGI workstations before but during the development of Donkey Kong Country they were allotted large sums of money to buy more Silicon Graphics workstations (SGI Indigo 2, Challenge L/XL) that they used for their advanced rendering techniques that required intensive processing power.  With the help of Nintendo they were also one of the first studio's in the UK and Europe to invest so heavily in the expensive SGI workstations.

Rareware's prowess and skill with with the SGI machines impressed Nintendo greatly and was probably one of the reasons Nintendo chose Silicon Graphics (SGI) to develop the graphics processor for the Ultra 64.  Development of Goldeneye started on Silicon Graphics Onyx machines before the N64 was finalized.  The infamous Final Fantasy VI 3D demo was also done on a  Silicon Graphics Onyx machine.