Sega co-founder David Rosen has died at the age of 95. The news was confirmed by Rosen’s spokesperson Brad Callaway, revealing that Rosen passed away on Christmas day at his home in Los Angeles.
Since the founding of Sega, Rosen, alongside fellow co-founders Marty Bromley, Ray Lamaire and Dick Dodderer have been important to the gaming industry as a whole. The company was initially founded with the intent of focusing on amusement operations, and was originally called Service Game. This name would eventually get shortened to its present name: Sega.
The founding of Sega is its own unique tale which revolves around Rosen originally founding Rosen Enterprises Ltd. back in the 1950s in Japan. The company’s initial focus was on art dealing and photography for official documentation. After the founding of Sega, Rosen would be a key figure in not only the home console market, but also the at-the-time thriving arcade market.
“Right off the bat, the machines were tremendously successful,” recalled Rosen in an interview with Next Generation Magazine in 1996, as caught by VideoGamesChronicle. “It’s embarrassing to say this, but the return generally came in less than two months.”
“At this point, I was opening up arcades with these shooting and hunting games throughout Japan, and we were fortunate… I don’t know [how many arcades we had], but by the time I left, there wasn’t a city in Japan that didn’t have one of our arcades.”
After the success that Sega had seen thanks to its arcade games, the company would be acquired by Gulf+Western, who would keep Rosen on as the CEO of the Sega division in 1969. 1984 saw Rosen and Hayao Nakayama forming their own group to buy Sega out from Gulf+Western.
Rosen would continue to serve in his leadership role at Sega until the buyout, which would lead to Isao Okawa becoming chairman and Nakayama taking on the role of president of the company. Rosen himself would help in setting up Sega of America, which would handle the company’s American businesses. Rosen would serve as the division’s chairman, as well as director of Sega Japan until 1996.
During his time at the company, Rosen had seen the release of a number of different gaming systems across various generations. Having kicked off Sega’s home console business with the short-lived SG-1000 in 1983, the company would make waves in the industry with the release of the Master System in 1985. 1988 would then see the launch of the Mega Drive, or Genesis depending on where you lived at the time, which would go on to introduce iconic characters like Sonic to the world.
The last major console release by Sega would be 1998’s Dreamcast, which was launched well after Rosen’s resignation from the company. Beforee that, however, his tenure also coincided with the launch of the Saturn, the handheld Game Gear, as well as a variety of add-ons for the Genesis, like the Sega CD and the 32X.
“Sega was involved in videogames very shortly after they were invented,” said Rosen. “Certainly we were importing games like Pong from day one. We started producing our own videogames shortly thereafter.”
