Interview:Tom Sloper
This entry is not finished. Please use with caution.
GDRI: What was Sega's presence in America at the time you were working there (this was before Sega of America had been established, but they obviously had a division in the US)?
TS: I see on your website that you have this written about Sega Enterprises, Inc.:
"American subsidiary in the early eighties. Published and supervised the ports of Sega games to home computers and consoles. Did they have any in-house programmers? Did they make any arcade games of their own? Shows up on arcade flyers and home releases from 1982-1984."
Your site also mentioned Sega Electronics, Inc. That would have been the arcade company. After David Rosen and Hayao Nakayama formed Sega in Japan as an amusement machine company, the first US operation was in the San Diego area - Sega and some other arcade company initially merged, but I'm blanking on the name of the other San Diego company. I'm pretty sure Sega Electronics Inc. is the company that made the Star Trek arcade game, if that helps.
I don't know if this is entirely correct, but it appears that Sega Electronics, Inc. went away when Sega Enterprises Inc. (hereafter, "SEI") was formed as a result of the acquisition of Sega by Gulf+Western (slash Paramount Pictures).
The company list on your website doesn't mention the closure of SEI at the end of 1984 and the creation of "Ages" (Sega backwards) to clean up the remaining financial issues, IP ownership matters, etc. SEI was headed by Jeff Rochlis, who'd formerly been a partner of GCE's Ed Krakauer I think, and one of the SEI VPs was Gary Niles, who'd been Jay Smith's VP at Western Technologies.
