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The year is 1992. In a typical British household a typical British family is huddled around the television, still unsure about what has just transpired during the ad break of their typical British soap opera. Nestled among the traditional commercials for washing powder and breakfast cereal is a blistering whirlwind of fast editing and bizarre imagery; a smoke-filled barber's shop, a handsome hero with bionic implants and a generous helping of slickly-edited footage from a series of video games, punctuated by an infectiously catchy slogan: To be this good takes Sega. The effect is mesmerising. This is the family's first taste of an advertising campaign that will change the way video games are promoted in the UK forever. This is the birth of 'Pirate' TV.The road to this pivotal point in UK televisual marketing history is one that has been documented widely over the past few decades, but bears repeating. While Sega and Nintendo may be pretty cosy bedfellows today, thirtysomething players will vividly recall an era when these two giants fought tooth and nail, marking a dividing line in school playgrounds all over the world long before Sony and Microsoft came along and assumed the same roles. While there are subtle differences in the tale depending on whether you're based in North America or Europe, in the UK, Sega's ascendancy came out of a steadfast desire to swim against the tide and buck trends whenever possible, and the man who oversaw this gleefully disruptive approach was Nick Alexander.
Alexander's entry into the video game arena occurred in 1983, when he became Managing Director at Virgin, aged just 27. His relationship with Sega began when Virgin purchased British budget label Mastertronic, the firm responsible for Sega's European distribution, towards the end of the decade. "Sega had delivered its shipment of Master Systems to Mastertronic too late for Christmas, so furious retailers understandably cancelled their orders," Alexander explains. "Mastertronic was plunged into a financial crisis which was only solved by our acquisition of the company and the merger with Virgin Games to become Virgin Mastertronic, with myself once again in the role of Managing Director. As it happened, Sega had also failed to deliver on time to their distributors in France and Germany, and asked us if we would take on those two regions as well as the UK. We could see the NES was exploding in North America so it seemed like the right deal at the right time, so we agreed, laying down the foundations for Sega Europe - which Virgin Mastertronic would become in 1991 when Sega purchased the firm outright and I became Sega Europe CEO."
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