Sega Saturn - Marketing Techniques

Marketing Techniques

In 1996, Sega started a marketing campaign that featured a naked woman with blonde hair and blue eyes. It used screenshots from the games to cover her breasts and pubic area. It was very successful, and Electronic Gaming Monthly selected the campaign as the best ad during the 1997 Buyer's Guide.

For a time, Sega mailed out videotapes containing an infomercial advertising its system to potential customers. It ran roughly eight minutes long and featured gameplay footage and a collection of Saturn commercials. It has become somewhat infamous for its bizarre content (a bald woman with a ring around her head, a dancing slacker, etc.). The launch advertising campaign in the United States, titled "The Theater of the Eye", was also in this unusual style, describing psychological effects of playing the Saturn.

One marketing technique used by Sega to promote the Saturn was Segata Sanshiro (せがた三四郎, Segata Sanshirō?), a parody of Sanshiro Sugata portrayed by Hiroshi Fujioka. He is a Judo master who tracks down and punishes those who do not play the Sega Saturn. He uses two catch phrases, "You must play the Sega Saturn!" (セガサターン、シロ!, Sega Satān, shiro!?) and "Sega Saturn, White" (セガサターン、白, Sega Satān, Shiro?), which sound similar to his name. Sanshiro lives as a hermit high on a mountain, devoting his life to intensive Sega Saturn training. He trains physically every day by carrying around a giant Sega Saturn on his back and punching buttons on its giant controller. The character dies in his final commercial, where he sacrifices himself to stop a missile launched at the Tokyo headquarters of Sega. He appears in the games Segata Sanshirō Shinken Yūgi and Rent-a-Hero No. 1 and was also considered for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing. He was received with critical acclaim in Japan. The Sanshiro character was originally planned to be in the Dreamcast title Segagaga, but licensing issues prevented this from happening.

Another notable commercial was released right after the Nintendo 64's launch. It consisted of Nintendo 64s launched into the air like clay pigeons and then shot one at a time. It was referred to as a "Pretendo" and at the end of the commercial the narrator said, "Face it Pretendo, you weren't worth waiting for."

During the first year-and-a-half of the Saturn's US life, Sega also had a marketing campaign similar to the one used for the Sega Genesis in the early 1990s, where they would directly attack the PlayStation through a series of aggressive MTV-styled ads. Typically, they would showcase a Saturn exclusive like Nights Into Dreams... and end with a reminder that such a game was "not on PlayStation." In some advertisements for the core Saturn system, Sega also boasted that the system had two 32-bit processors while the PlayStation only had one.

A device resembling a Saturn appears briefly in Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 23, with a Sega-badged TV. Sega was a sponsor of the program and the movies. Another device resembling a Saturn also appears briefly in You're Under Arrest episode 48, with the case opened and being repaired by Miyuki. A Sega Saturn can be seen in the movies Mars Attacks!, Mallrats, First Kid, and Dead man on Campus. Also in the Jet Li movie Black Mask, Tracy Lee is playing a Sega Saturn with various games while she is being held hostage by Tsui Chik, with two of the games being Virtua Fighter and Darius Gaiden.

The Sega Saturn was also prominently featured atop Drew Carey's TV in The Drew Carey Show for some time, even after its discontinuation. Eventually, in Season 6, it was replaced with a Dreamcast. In Shenmue for the Dreamcast, a Sega Saturn can be seen in Ryo's TV Room in his house, which can be played on later in the game. In Choukou Senshi Changerion, the main character owned a Sega Saturn that was prominently displayed on top of his TV; this was done also because the toys and show were sponsored by Sega. In Neon Genesis Evangelion, Toji Suzuhara and Kensuke Aida are seen with a Sega Saturn, and Asuka Langley Soryu is seen playing a video game with a Sega Saturn-type controller.

Curiously, in the game Alpha Protocol, the protagonist Michael Thorton can find a white Sega Saturn game console below the TV set in his safehouses in Rome and Saudi Arabia.