We were fortunate enough to talk with former SEGA of America President Tom Kalinske today.
We discussed a variety of topics, including:
– Who Tom thinks should play he and Al Nilsen in the upcoming Console Wars movie;
– His thoughts on Al Nilsen’s idea to blow up a building to promote Streets of Rage 2;
– His feelings on violent video games and if he was still president of SOA if he’d allow these violent games on a SEGA console;
– His thoughts on women in the video game industry and if he was hesitant of sending Madeline Schroeder to Japan to convince SEGA of Japan’s executives to make changes to Sonic the Hedgehog’s look;
– The technical problems that hurt the SEGA Channel’s success;
– If he felt it was a mistake to release the 32X and SEGA CD add-ons for the Genesis rather than focusing on an all-in-one device like the SEGA CDX;
– Other prototype devices like the SEGA Neptune and SEGA’s VR headset and why SEGA ultimately decided not to release them;
– The possible effects on the video game industry that would have been made if Nintendo partnered with Sony on the SNES CD add-on and if he thinks Sony would have entered the console business anyway;
– If SEGA ever came close to releasing a Sonic the Hedgehog movie in theaters;
– If he felt it was a mistake to announce the surprise release of the SEGA Saturn during E3 1995 and the response from his retail partners;
– His favorite SEGA memorabilia that he still has in his collection;
– If he thinks it was a good idea for SEGA to discontinue the Dreamcast and go third-party and if he thinks there was any way they could have salvaged the system and stayed in the console business;
– He describes what his relationship with SEGA founder David Rosen; and
– He talks about the possibility of SEGA re-entering the console business at some point in the future.
We’d like to thank Tom for speaking with us, and we hope you enjoy the interview. Let us know what you think in the comments below!
