Sega · 1997 · Sega Saturn (Japan)
"Sega Saturn, shiro! ("Play Sega Saturn!")"
To sell the struggling Saturn in Japan, Sega invented a stern judo master who physically assaulted anyone caught not playing it — a campaign so beloved it outlived the console and became a folk hero.
By the summer of 1997 the Sega Saturn was in trouble in Japan — moderately successful, but losing ground to the PlayStation and more than two years past its launch. Sega's response was not a specs comparison or a price cut but a character: Segata Sanshiro, a grim, headband-wearing martial artist in a judo gi whose entire purpose was to command people to play the Sega Saturn. His name was a pun on Sugata Sanshiro, the judo hero of Akira Kurosawa's 1943 debut film, and his catchphrase — "Sega Saturn, shiro!" ("Play Sega Saturn!") — punned on the console's name. The premise of the ads was absurd and violent in a way that was purely comic. Segata would discover someone doing something other than playing the Saturn — going on a date, practising baseball, ignoring a friend — and hurl them across the room with a judo throw before ordering them to play. He was portrayed by Hiroshi Fujioka, the actor famous for playing the original Kamen Rider and a genuinely trained martial artist across karate, iaido, and judo, which let the throws land with real physical conviction. The first television spot aired on 28 November 1997, promoting Sonic R. The campaign ran through 1998, and its cultural footprint outgrew the hardware it was meant to sell. Segata's theme song was released as a CD single; he was given his own Saturn game, Segata Sanshiro Shinken Yugi; and he was widely credited with helping Saturn sales in Japan during his run. The character's send-off, in which he sacrifices himself to save Sega's headquarters from a missile, gave the mascot a mythic finality that fans have treasured ever since. Segata Sanshiro is remembered as one of the great video-game advertising creations precisely because the campaign committed fully to a bit that had nothing to do with the product's features. It sold the Saturn on personality and repetition — a memorable face, an order you could not forget, and a joke that got funnier the more he threw people — at a moment when the hardware had lost the specifications argument. He remains a cult figure in Japan long after the console he championed was discontinued.