Segata Sanshiro, a play on the Japanese セガサターンしろ (meaning, "play the sega saturn!" said in a sort of aggressive way) arranged so that it sounds like a dudes name was a series of advertisements played on Japanese TV to, obviously, promote the Sega Saturn. The first few snippits of these adverts depict our man, Segata Sanshiro, a bloke in a karate gi, approaching groups of youths who are not playing Sega Saturn and then beating them up and demanding that they go and do so. Later adverts depict him doing absolutely insane super-human feats that relate to the theme of whatever individual game they are trying to sell. For example, one of my favorite versions of this is where Segata is acting as goalkeeper in a football match and instead of just blocking the oncoming ball, he proceeds to flip the entire goal net over his shoulder so TECHNICALLY the ball didn't go in. After some clips of the game, World Cup 98 ~Road to Win~, the ad ends with Segata being red-carded by the referee while shouting "OH NO!" in an overexaggerated katakana-English accept.
The absolutely insane thing about this series of adverts is that when it came for the release of the Dreamcast, the ad involves a bunch of business folks celebrating the launch when a missle is launched at Sega HQ. Segata, who just happens to be standing on the roof of the building, proceeds to catch the missle in mid-air, rides it into space where it then explodes and kills him off. Honestly, a truly hilarious way to give the mascot a sendoff for the next piece of hardware.
Segata Sanshiro seemed to be such a well-liked figure within Japan that he even got his own game on the Saturn but I've heard its an extremely lackluster mini-game collection where your reward for beating the games is the ability to watch the adverts which, honestly, seems trash but having not played it at time of writing this article I'll withhold judgement. More well liked that the mascot though is the man himself Hiroshi Fujioka who is a bit of a legend here in Japan. Known chiefly for being in Kamen Rider he's a sort of cultural icon that even my wife, who knows barely anything of video games and even less about Tokusatsu, knows who he is. Hell, when I looked him up on Wikipedia before writing this blog I found out he even has a fucking planet named after him.
I wouldn't be surprised if this ad campaign is the reason that the Saturn is remembered quite a bit more fondly in Japan than it is in the west. Back in England I barely knew anyone who even knew what the Sega Saturn was, let alone had played one. It was one of those systems that only weirdos like me owned alongside things like the Neo Geo and even today its only really hardcore enthusiasts willing to dig into gamings history that give enough of a shit to look at its libarary. In Japan though it's a little bit more well remembered. I've met plenty of folks who have at least got some memories of having fiddled with a game or two on the system in their childhoods. I even met one guy in a bar once who spent the better part of 2 hours trying to convince me to play Wachenroder which, while it looks cool, I still haven't done yet. Sorry.
There's a lot of weird, gross and shitty video game advertising out there, especially from the 90s and early 2000s, but Sega really knocked it out of the park with this one. It's a shame it wouldn't last and Sega would bow out of the hardware biz after the Dreamcast but at the very least their efforts gave us some truly hilarious bits of old advertising to look back on fondly
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