Sega.

That's what voices saying over the vanity card for the 1991 video game Sonic the Hedgehog,

an international mega hit for Sega's 16-bit Mega Drive, rebranded as the Genesis in

the US.

While our caden and computer games of the era were already capable of speech playback,

the micro-song was a revelation for a home console, and the digitally compressed chorus

served as a symbolic moment of triumph for the video game company.

Sega was here to stay.

So the Genesis era ended up representing the peak of the company's relevance, Sega

did indeed stick around, it had by its speedy, spiny mammal mascot, a remarkable evolution

for a business that began as a coin-operated amusement distributor in the 1950s.

The name Sega comes from an abbreviation of its original corporate title, Service Games,

the words in English because this Japanese game giant was in fact founded by an American.

After the Second World War, Marty Bromley, a coin-operated machine-worker who wasn't

Hawaii during the Pearl Harbor attacks, saw an opportunity to import slot machines into

the land of the rising sun.

This sort of post-war intermingling of Japanese and American business interests extended

far beyond the mechanical amusement industry, and greatly influenced the economies and cultures

of both nations, including of course its food.

Japanese food like sushi and ramen went from an exotic delicacy in the US to being readily

available in strip malls and grocery stores, similarly Japanese audiences developed tastes

for American food like fried chicken and burgers.

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