Sega of
America, in their hardware-oriented, semi-autonomous 1990's incarnation, were responsible for the
Sega Genesis becoming extremely successful and effectively providing the
blueprint for
Sony to follow with the
PlayStation in their crusade to win mindshare from
Nintendo.
Unfortunately they spent the remaining 99% of their time and effort trying to screw things up and pissing of their customers, their developers, and Sega Japan in the process. Two defining characteristics were repeatedly misjudging their audience's taste and releasing peripheral devices in knee-jerk reaction to similar Super Nintendo gimmick hardware. Here are some of their worst howlers (in non-chronological order):
I presume that
Sega Japan have curtailed most of their powers in the light of the
Dreamcast situation, and that via external distributors and publishers they will no longer foolishly deny the Western world from playing most of their supposedly 'Too Japanese' games. In my opinion Sega of America's single greatest achievement (in game quality terms, rather than commercial success) was probably financing the development and publishing of
ToeJam & Earl.