Cognition Dissemination: We Got the Worse Nomad Design
It’s been a little over a week since Sega surprisingly revealed the Sega Nomad prototype, an early version of the portable Sega Genesis handheld from the mid-1990s. This was shown in a so-called “Sega seminar” on YouTube showcasing all their old hardware to commemorate the company’s 60th anniversary. The name comes from how it was presented in the form of a college lecture, with info that would be on a test if the class wasn’t given a pop quiz at the end of it. It’s a good history lesson and refresher, but the Nomad prototype, codenamed “Venus” because Sega loved using planet names at the time, was among the most interesting aspects thanks to it never being shown before. The lecturer, Professor Miyazaki, claimed he only recently discovered it.
The prototype also stands out because of just how superior the design is compared to the version we received, to the point that I’m questioning why they went with the final Nomad’s form in the first place.
The design differences are immediately apparent for anyone who played their Nomad for hours upon hours, especially in the 90s. (I’m talking about me here.) The buttons were the biggest change. The prototype contains the same circular variants that adorned the six-button Genesis controller, with big depressed A, B, and C buttons, and smaller X, Y, and Z, buttons on top. It was a great controller for arcade ports, especially fighting games that demanded six buttons like the Street Fighter titles. The final Nomad kept the six buttons, but their oval shape made them less comfortable to press. This might have been done so the system would have more room on its face, but it would have been a sacrifice worth making. The final machine was heavy and bulky battery eater regardless.
The directional pad also changed from one with four indented directions and diagonals to a completely different one that removed the indentations. The final one was perfectly usable, but having the indentations can make it easier to prevent directional mistakes — not that I often made them. The prototype one also looks prettier.
The prototype came in a gray blueish color, but in no way would this stick for the final form. Most of Sega’s products at the time contained a sleek retro futuristic look to them for the initial readily-available designs, especially outside Japan. The colors are notably close to the Japanese Sega Saturn, which came in the usual black outside Japan. It took until Dreamcast for them to try something different with the first line of consoles, which ended up being their last. Maybe that’s part of what jinxed it.
There’s a key outstanding question here: Why? Why did the final design contain so many changes? The prototype is only briefly shown in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it segment, and there’s no explanation on how changes came about. Maybe Sega will elaborate on this themselves one day, perhaps even in the form of another lesson from Professor Miyazaki. Someone could also interview a person at the company with knowledge about it, or a former long-departed hardware engineer. (Not me, I’m afraid. My Japanese is limited to what I’ve heard in games and anime with Japanese language options.) But there’s real fear that we may never get an answer.
This has me thinking about how much I used my Nomad during my junior high school years, a system that didn’t get the appreciation it deserved until it was too late. I knew it was in trouble early on when my parents told me they had no issue getting one for Christmas, and when I found out I was the only person in school I knew of who owned one. It released at a price higher than most people wanted to pay near the end of the Sega Genesis’ life, who didn’t feel portability was worth the extra cost, especially if they already owned the Genesis console. This was actually my first (and only) Genesis, my introduction to its software library after being a Super Nintendo owner for years. The system had plenty of great exclusives.
Of course, it would have been a little better had Sega not made the design changes from the prototype, outside coloring it black. But it’s not like it wasn’t possible to hook up another controller to the bulky system and play it that way. Playing it for too long outdoors also wasn’t too practical even compared to other handhelds at the time thanks to how it drained batteries, despite demanding a whopping six AAs. But I still had good fun with it during trips.
It’s always good to remember the time when Sega was still making hardware, and the period in which they could be experimental enough to take risks like the Nomad. I’d love it if we could find out more about why the changes were made between the prototype and final system, but this assumes anyone at Sega will be willing to discuss it following this 60th anniversary celebration year. If not, and there are no outside hardware engineers who worked for Sega who don’t have a figurative muzzle on their mouths, we might have to wait until the 65th anniversary. Or the 70th.
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Geoff
News Editor | Geoff is some nerd who writes for a blog and thinks he's knowledgeable. He write a lot about video games, but is capable of writing about other subjects, too. Twitter
