Endless Thread

The final episode of Hidden Levels explores the story of SEGA developer Tez Okano and the bizarre, meta-game he created: Segagaga. Okano joined SEGA in 1992, witnessing firsthand the company's tumultuous experience in the "console wars" against Nintendo and Sony. In the mid-1990s, SEGA struggled to make hardware that kept up with its rivals. The SEGA CD, the 32X, and the Saturn were all commercial failures. For Okano and many developers at SEGA, the console wars were both an exciting time to be in the video game business but also an intense and stressful time. They worked long hours, slept at their desks, and faced relentless deadlines. And so Okano decided to turn the chaotic nature of his professional life into a low-budget, self-parodying game about making video games at SEGA. In Segagaga, the player is a young developer tasked with saving SEGA's market share from the rival DOGMA Corporation (a stand-in for Sony/PlayStation). The gameplay is a mix of a role-playing game (RPG) and a management simulator,