Game Industry Legends - Interview with Tom Kalinske (Mattel, Barbie, Sega, Sonic, Genesis)

Join AWS's Principal Evangelist for Video Games, Chris Melissinos, as he interviews former SEGA of America CEO, Tom Kalinske. They discuss his career, including how he and his team brought the SEGA Genesis to the west, Sonic the Hedgehog to the world, and how they challenged Nintendo to become a leader in the 16-bit era of the games industry. It’s a story of ambition, focus, determination, and leadership that you won’t want to miss!
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[@WarioSaysSo]

Tom Kalinske is truly a industry legend in toys and video games! He was indeed a generational tallent who earned the fame from fans and industry companies. The only miss was not on him, but how Sega could not keep the OG Mega Drive name in the US to Genesis - unlike the rest of the world who had the real name.

[@jpetersongaming]

Thank you Tom Kalinske for holding your ground on the 5-point plan. Sega Genesis was amazing and changed our lives

[@ddust102]

Just finished the console wars book. Tom seemed like a great guy and even great person to work for

[@stanleyford2575]

As a Sega fan the lost of Tom Kalinske was big at time Sega of Japan was Sega down fall because Sega was and still is my favorite gaming company

[@MaxAbramson3]

I remember that there was STILL demand for the Neptune CD even when the Dreamcast was announced. People still wanted it and new games that pushed the limits. But SEGA was like, "No, buy a Saturn." And everyone was like, "No, the games look like crap." The people who sold videogames began to hate that company as much of those of us who were duped into getting the Sega CD--which had maybe 8-10 games that actually put the powerful ASIC-DSP and its scaling, rotation, warping, 3D hardware to some actual use! Kalinske turned out to be right after all.

[@falksi3182]

Brilliant stuff. Thanks for making this

[@AWSGameTech]

Glad you enjoyed it! Lots more to come in 2024!

[@venomtang]

32:45 will finish later

[@dmsbang]

Is this recent? 2023?

[@AWSGameTech]

Yes, this interview was recorded on August 3, 2023.

[@dmsbang]

@@AWSGameTech Good to see TK doing well.

[@astrozoo]

An overlooked aspect of the Genesis was it's redesign as model 2 and model 3. Though model 2 looked sleek and graphics were brighter, the sound chipped totally sucked, far inferior to the original Genesis--and model 3 was the ultimate in cheapening of hardware. After these model changes, it became a mantra that SNES sounded better than the Genesis.

[@AWSGameTech]

Yes, the original Genesis had 2 different variants of the Yamaha sound chip (YM2612/3438) and there is debate as to which one sounds better. However, the Model3, while having a high quality output, also had a hiss to the audio. If you have a MiSTer FPGA stack, you can actually switch between different sound chips while a game is running to hear the differences in quality. Really neat!

[@astrozoo]

​@@AWSGameTech As an audiophile, I hook up my Genesis to a powerful stereo system and model 1 sounds amazing! But model 2 always sounds cheap. I can excuse model 3 and its mono output, at one point they were retailing for 20 bucks!

[@asapgareth]

Great watch, thanks Chris and Tom, will be resharing with friends and colleagues. Gareth @acidworks

[@AWSGameTech]

Thanks Gareth! Appreciate it!