Sega was officially founded in 1940, which is an amazingly long time ago. At that time, the company was still called “Standard Games”, and in 1951 it was renamed “Service Games of Japan”. Back then, the company was making coin-operated machines, a far cry from today’s digital products.
Periscope: This is how SEGA became big
Nevertheless, the SEGA history shows that adult people were fascinated by games even before the complex virtual adventures started. A simply constructed mechanical coin-operated game was apparently enough to make SEGA big.
In 1966, SEGA developed its first electromechanical slot machine, which was launched in 1968 and generated a worldwide hype, its name was Periscope. Industry representatives traveled to Japan from the U.S. and Europe to see this machine and import it to their countries.
Humanity really seemed to be waiting for this invention! It soon led to arcades opening up in many cities of the world with machines like this and similar, attracting adults in droves. Much like online casinos with the best casino bonuses are booming today, the offers back then were hard to beat.
Anyone who has taken a look at a comparison site like Asiabet will know what is meant: There you will find a neat list of numerous online casinos with their range of games and other conditions. Discounts and bonuses are also included as a matter of course, so getting started is as easy as taking a step over the threshold of an arcade.
When video games entered the living-rooms
In 1982, things got even better for SEGA: the corporation earned $214 million from its worldwide sales and invented the SG-1000 video game console. Now, digital games were finally coming directly to people’s living rooms!
Why are we humans so fond of games? It’s probably because we like to escape from our everyday lives. Often, our days are boring or enormously stressful, depending on the stage of life we’ve just reached. Then it feels good to have a time out and forget about the world outside for a while.
Besides, we humans are creative beings, and we remain so as we grow older. We have the urge to live out our imagination – some more, some less. Doing crazy things is rarely possible in real life without embarrassing yourself. But in games, especially computer games, we can act out quite freely.
Games as a way to escape the world
Research has proven that when we play games, networks in the brain link up that are otherwise not connected. So probably this kind of activity makes us more flexible in our thinking. This can even have a positive effect on the job and on other challenges.
Sometimes it is even possible to reach the so-called flow state in a game. In this precious moment we are completely absorbed in our current activity. We actually forget everything around us, even time becomes meaningless.
Especially for adults with constant deadline pressure and a head full of to-dos, this can be very relaxing: A perfect balance to “normal” life. At the same time, the dream of being a hero never dies out inside us. Playing can fulfill this dream for us.
The urge to develop games further
Game developers make every effort to always keep their finger on the pulse. In fact, people don’t always want to play the same thing nowadays, they regularly expect innovations and improvements.
In the old days, people used to put the old Parcheesi game on the table over and over again. Today, Super Mario keeps having new adventures – and certainly does not look the same as it did 30 years ago.
Of course, such cult characters must remain recognizable. But advancing technology allows them a certain evolution, a fact that obviously pleases the game-loving people very much.
Have we become so much more demanding about our games than we used to be? I think so. That’s probably due to our fast-paced times, which are always producing something new and have “spoiled” us accordingly. Always looking for that challenge and problem solving that we look for in gaming. Actually, we could always settle for the same old games, because every game round is different – but we don’t have to.
In this sense, it is not we ourselves who have changed, but the standard has increased due to external influences. At the same time, we love the nostalgic feeling of diving into old game worlds that we had almost forgotten about: Man is and remains a creature of habit.
