Sega is not a Japanese word. It stands for Service Games, a company that began in Honolulu in the 1940s supplying slot machines to US military bases before moving to Japan when the machines were outlawed in US territories. This episode follows the company's repeated reinventions: the 1960 dissolution after a US government investigation, the 1965 merger under Air Force officer David Rosen that created Sega Enterprises, the accidental move into manufacturing through repairing secondhand machines, and the 1966 electromechanical hit Periscope that helped standardize the 25-cent arcade play.

We trace the Gulf and Western acquisition, the 1982 arcade crash, the management buyout by Rosen and Hayao Nakayama, the Master System's failure in North America under toy company Tonka, Tom Kalinske's razor-and-blades strategy for the Genesis, and the desig ...