I can’t begin to estimate the impact Sega has made on my life. Growing up I followed them as most boys followed football – who the key players were within each development team, which games from other platforms I’d like to be transferred (usually very, very few!) and even filling my Sonic sticker album. I still consider the Sonic Team of ’96 – Naka, Ohshima, Katano, Setsumaru, Iizuka, Matsumoto, Hataya, Moriya and the rest – to be among the greatest line-ups in history. Most of them are still there of course, which is doubly awesome.

As a youngster I wrote to Sega almost as often as I update this blog. If there was a game I liked, a question I had or a design I’d thought of – I’m still waiting to hear back about "Rocky the Mountain Hare"! – I got out the pen or typewriter and let them know about it.

They always replied. Stephen Wombwell and Mark Maslowicz became familiar names (there were others I’m sure!) and they always gave good answers, and sometimes cool gifts too – Sonic 3 pinbadges, a t-shirt (that I still wear sometimes!), a Sonic and Knuckles LCD watch, signed Sonic R artwork (drawn by me!) and even my prized possession, a silver pre-production copy of Sonic Jam. Awesome!

This series of posts, then, is my latest love letter to Sega. Over time I’ll be posting my thoughts and feelings on what I believe to be the fifty greatest Sega games of all time. I’ve tried to keep multiple entries from the same series to a minimum, but naturally there’s more than one Sonic, Shining and Shinobi. Only the top twenty are in any sequential order, and some might be contentious entries, but they’re all amazing games that were either developed by Sega, Sega console exclusives or ones I primarily associate with Sega.

For all my years of Sega fandom, I still find it impossible to pin down that Sega je ne sais quoi. This project is my attempt to figure that out once and for all.