With Sega's cable-based digital distribution service, Sega Channel, being in the news once again, thanks to the Video Game History Foundation's recent discovery of over 100 previously undumped ROMS, we thought we'd share something interesting with you.
Over the past year, we've been conducting more interviews with former Sega Channel staff, trying to gather enough information for a possible update on our 2022 article on the service, and it led us to uncover a pretty fascinating story about a potential collaboration that was once being floated between the Beastie Boys and Sega in the mid-'90s.
This collaboration, according to Christopher Bergstresser (the former Sega Channel production manager who shared the story with us), would have had the Beastie Boys and other artists on the group's Grand Royal label providing music for the service's menus, while also partaking in other cross-promotions.
For instance, the Sega Channel programming team also envisioned a potential game based on Beastie Boys materials (Sabotage is used as an example), TV, Radio & Multimedia promotions/spots featuring the group, tour date/album announcements via the service, and potential discounts and offers for those who bought Beastie Boys albums.
Speaking about the collaboration, Bergstresser told us, "I had direct discussions with Mike D and his number two person for his record label Grand Royal to have them, or at least maybe even some of the acts under the Grand Royal label, contributing music to Sega Channel.
"The aim was to make Sega Channel something a lot deeper, and a lot more interesting to a broader audience. Because, again, looking at the feedback that we got from some of the audience through the website, it was, 'Hey, we want more.' We also had a lot of people saying at the time, 'This could be the MTV of games', so we were trying to think dynamically on how we could make it more of a destination rather than just a landing place to download games."
To back up his story, Bergstresser shared a series of emails, dated between March 1995 to May 1995, which revealed more information about the possible collaboration, but as he notes, despite various back and forths with Mike D and others at Grand Royal, it never came to pass, with the band eventually turning down Sega's initial $2000 offer.