Ehhhhhhhh, they've gotten a lot better in that regard as of late. Even in that late 2000s/early-to-mid 2010s period that has a reputation for apparently being the era in which SEGA made almost nothing but Sonic and Yakuza, they still made quite a lot of other games - the important distinction to make here is that they've recently gotten a lot better at making use of their legacy IP. Either way, I don't think it's really fair to brush all that off just because a couple specific franchises haven't come back yet - and this is coming from someone who would die for, say, Skies of Arcadia or Virtual-ON to get something new (in the latter's case, at least, something new that isn't a Japan-only collection or a weird crossover game)
I guess the core of my frustration here is really just how off a lot of people's perception of SEGA's library really is. Really rustles my jimmies seeing the amount of people that essentially boil their legacy down to just Sonic, the Atlus stuff, and maybe Puyo and/or Yakuza. Basically, if it's not talked about on the newcomer thread, it might as well not exist. Granted, there have been moments where I feel they've been given a somewhat fairer shake - SEGA discussion did use to be pretty varied before Eggman became a speculation darling, and Phantasy Star has finally been getting some much-deserved attention as of late - but it's still pretty irritating whenever someone pulls the "well uhh actually, SEGA don't really have a lot of noteworthy IP outside of Sonic" card. Even worse is when their examples of the "small few other noteworthy IP" are, like, Monkey Ball and Billy Hatcher. Like, jeez, man: I love the All-Stars games to death, and they do feature a lot of genuinely important IP, but if there's something I don't like about them, it's that they convinced a whole generation of people that Billy Hatcher is one of the great pillars of SEGA history.
...Then again, I'm also not a big fan of the people that hold up a handful of their really big IP as The Ones That Matter and kinda just...dismiss everything else.
And that kinda leads into, like, the core of the core of my frustration: there's two big perceptions of SEGA's non-Sonic output floating around, and they're both pretty wack tbh. I think an anecdote that, like, perfectly sums up what I'm talking about is when I found a Twitter post that went something like "the "oh right, SEGA make games other than Sonic" starter pack", and it showed, like, AiAi, Billy Hatcher, Beat and NiGHTS. And then there was a reply that went "well these are what I think of when I think of SEGA stuff other than Sonic" and it was, like, Yakuza, Persona 5, Sakura Wars 2019 and PSO2. And, like, goddamn, that was it. That was exactly my problem: there are two prevailing perceptions of SEGA's library at play in the larger sphere of the interwebz, and I don't agree with either of them! I feel like these are both very tunnelvision-y points of view in relation to their IP that only take from a specific point of reference and ignore a large part of their legacy. So much of, like, the important ** SEGA's done over the years isn't acknowledged by either side. They're both very flawed points of view IMO. The thing is, like, there's gotta be a middle ground here. It's true that the All-Stars games aren't the best indicator of what are the most important SEGA IP are, there's a lot of big stuff they leave out. But also, I feel like it's super disingenuous to take The Current Big Stuff and dismiss everything else as completely irrelevant, because SEGA's older output abso-***ing-lutely has a place in their history as well. Even then, most of the big older stuff is ignored by the other side too, so a huge part of their history just gets no credit either way. And that's where we get back to the matter of Smash spec because this * has rubbed off on SEGA discussion here! You can see this in the "uhh well actually they don't have a lot of big stuff anyway" claims: it's either the people that have the starting roster for Superstars Tennis as their entire frame of reference, or the people that act like anything that isn't, like, in their top 5-10 sales figures is Totally Irrelevant (TM). And they're both ignoring such a huge chunk of the company's legacy.
It's frustrating, to say the least. And I guess that's why PS music being played at the Tokyo Olympics is such a big W to me, because it's like the ultimate proof that yes, their other stuff does have a legacy.
