Three veteran Phantasy Star and Sakura Wars developers have provided a glimpse at how life was a SEGA during the early days. If you thought developer crunch was bad now then their recollections of life at SEGA should put things into perspective. The Japanese developer and publisher had specially designed nap rooms and showers installed in the offices as developers would often have to stay at the office for prolonged periods in order to get their games shipped on time. The company thankfully decided to get rid of them completely in 2012.
“In the 1990s, every new Sega office was equipped with nap rooms and showers,” Yoshida said. “Even in the 2000s, the two Haneda bases still had them, and I believe people continued to use them. It was basically expected that people would be sleeping over at the office.”
“For projects with short deadlines, our only option was to stay overnight,” Terada explained, stating that sometimes he’d only go home on the weekends, while Yoshida said “whole teams” were “pulling all-nighters during the debugging stage” in and around the Sega Saturn generation.
