On the 29th of May, 2014 - seven years ago to this day - the first episode of The SEGA Lounge aired on RadioSEGA. The show was born from the crazy mind of one KC who thought a live talk show with all sorts of SEGA-related guests would be a good idea, but didn't have a clue what he was doing at the time (like he does now!) nor did he have the equipment necessary to make it work. That, coupled with having guests with different technical expertise, equipment and network connections, explains the several technical difficulties and mixing mishaps the first several episodes suffered from.
Joining said crazy person was community news personality and guy who was everywhere at the time, SSF1991, aka Donnie, who co-hosted the show for its first two seasons or so. Our first guests were The Megadrive Band, who I had the pleasure of meeting at Summer of Sonic 2013.
Along the way, people like Awinnerwasyou and Shadid, aka Dwang, joined the team. The former to share his memories of SEGA games, the latter to report the news for a while. After SSF1991 stepped down as co-host, I enlisted the help of several of my RadioSEGA staff mates and even other community friends to join me in interviewing some of our amazing guests.
At some point in 2018, I decided it was time to stop, at least for a while. For several reasons, I felt tired and uninspired. So I thought it would be for the best to take a breather and stop doing shows and that included The SEGA Lounge. However, I still returned to RadioSEGA every now and then for the odd special and during community events. At the end of 2019, I started missing the Lounge... I felt like I really missed the conversations, the challenges, the joy of meeting new and interesting people. I also thought there was nothing quite like it in the SEGA podcasting scene. So I started planning a return.
With the help of the talented Manuel García Melgar (mine and RadioSEGA's go-to artist) and OSC (my go-to musician) I worked on giving the show a much needed face lift and moving from a radio show to a podcast format. GreenViper8 was gracious enough to let me air a more radio-friendly version of it on RadioSEGA and so season 5 of The SEGA Lounge began in February 2020.
And that brings us to 2021 and the show's 7th anniversary. Again, for this season there was a slight graphical update. And RadioSEGA started airing the podcast version of the show. In fact, in the past seven years, much has changed in the community. Much has changed on RadioSEGA. Much has changed for The SEGA Lounge, which is now a podcast. And much has changed for SEGA themselves. But, much to my surprise if I'm being honest, seven years later we're still around. And the core concept of the show remains unchanged. None of this would be possible without your support so I'd like to thank you for listening. Whether this is the first time you're hearing about The SEGA Lounge or you've been around since 2014, I truly appreciate the fact that you let me ... into your ears!
Happy anniversary to The SEGA Lounge! Happy anniversary to our listeners and supporters, to our amazing guests and even to our fake sponsors!
PS: That reminds me, from now until the 20th of June, you can get 15% off all The SEGA Lounge merch by entering the code "TSL7" at checkout in our store.
