/vr/ - Retro Games

4) Mouse
In 1991, Sega was equipped with the third version of its Digitizer System. According to AGE43, graphic designer on the arcade version of Shadow Dancer, its architecture was based on the System 16B (an arcade system similar to the Mega Drive hardware) and was attached to a PC-98 which allowed to save data on 3.5-inch disks. The designer used a drafting mouse connected to a tablet which calculated the absolute position of the mouse (instead of its relative position as it’s the case with traditional mices). In other words, if the mouse was on square 2-F on the tablet, then the cursor was on square 2-F on the screen.
Working with a mouse could be less tiring than with a light pen that you had to hold in front of you, an arm in the air, but the Digitizer System had at least one major drawback according to one of its former users: it often froze.
Sometimes around 1994, when the first Saturn and 32X games entered production, Sega stored its Digitizer System and replaced them with Macintosh systems. It seems that the company didn’t keep any unit in its archives. However, a picture published in the April 1996 issue of Next Generation features a Digitizer System in one of SEGA Technical Institute’s development rooms, a US studio in which many Japanese developers came to work during the development of Sonic 2 and 3. Tom Payne, one of the graphic designers who worked there at the time, remembers that he used one of these units with a drafting mouse.
Other graphic designers used more traditional mice, be it Satoshi Nakai during the development of Last Armageddon (1988), Right Stuff’s employees on Alshark (1992) or some SNK developers during the production of Art of fighting 2 (1994) and The King of Fighters ‘94.