ARCHIVE INTERVIEW: Tom Kalinske - Sega of America President & CEO 1990-1996

Original Recording Date: Saturday February 20, 2021
This was a LIVE ZOOM panel interview for Long Island Retro's UPLINK Expo 2021. While we were a bit rushed for time due to the format, we still got in several great questions for Tom, and he shared a lot of great insights with us.

[@Gorilla_Jones]

Wonderful! I luckily got to meet Tom twice. Once at E3 95 the day before the fateful announcement. What a wonderful man! Sega would still be in the hardware business if Sega Japan would have heeded his advice.

[@SEGASATURNSHIRO]

Hey Gorilla, can't find your contact info, but would love to connect... Email me at davidlee [at] segasaturnshiro [dot] com. -Dave

[@protocetid]

Now that he's been briefed on the current state of retro Sega consoles, we show him the number of games being made for them and hire him to once again convince developers to return to the Genesis/MD and Saturn. Let's see what his game plan is for taking on the current consoles lol.

[@segaboy128]

Thank you tom kalinske! Sega saturn is my favorite!

[@theironhorsegamer2097]

What a wonderful man. I managed to talk with him during covid via Skype. Read Console Wars and Game Over, both were great books on the video game industry at the time. Awesome interview man. Really awesome stuff.

[@MRSAUltraviolet]

Great interview!!

[@robbyrobot3303]

The 7x increase in market cap wasnt all Tom. The arcade sector was absolutely massive during that time also which was Japan's primary interest Great interview still, thanks for sharing!

[@protocetid]

In my excursions into the Sega community I don’t see the same amount of awe and intrigue for prototype hardware that there is in Nintendo circles. Why is that? There’s the Pluto yes, I witnessed it popping up on Assembler, it was first time the world had laid eyes on it. Folks were suitably excited, but it faded and so did talk of highly secretive Sega items that never saw the light of day. Sega Retro has documented a respectable amount of prerelease Sega information, they’ve got tentative specs for the Saturn amongst other things. What I’m getting at is that I think this was a missed opportunity to learn more about untold Saturn and Sega history. He did got into it a tad, without rewatching I think he didn’t say anything that wasn’t on Sega Retro. There is nothing but a few small pictures of proto Saturn hardware out there, could Tom have any units himself? Wouldn’t you guys like to see the cancelled budget Saturn model known as the Sega Jupiter? Could he have or know about early builds of games and internal demos? I also would’ve asked him what he thought about the famous Segata Sanshiro marketing campaign. edit: I just found out 2 proto Saturns were discovered and sold, neat.

[@arenschultz]

It’s always nice to here from Tom. Him and his team could have made Sega the number 1 hardware manufacturer. Or at least PlayStations rival

[@a.stockton4817]

hey, what program did you use for his portrait?