Sega Black Belt

Real3D and 3dfx

With the collapse of the NVIDIA deal, Sega started looking for another partner and eventually hooked up with Real3D, then a subsidiary of Lockheed Martin. This seemed like a good match as Sega had worked with Real3D on the development of the Model 2 arcade machine, and would later work together again on the Model 3. The console chip would likely have been at the same performance level or just slightly below Real3D's PC chip, the Intel i740.

The console was codenamed "Black Belt". Sega reasoned that casual gamers could get a "white belt" gaming system such as a PC, but real gamers would want something better, a "black belt" system.

Although there were discussions between Real3D and Sega, Real3D never made any silicon for the Black Belt. 3dfx had beaten Real3D by offering better performance and a more robust feature set. Officially, Real3D stated that the business model for the console market did not create a win-win situation with Sega as it did in the high-end arcade market.

Sega awarded 3dfx with the chip contract. The console's Black Belt name remained even after the graphics chip was to be replaced by a variant of the 3dfx Voodoo2.

3dfx, NEC, and VideoLogic

While Sega of America was working on the 3dfx-based console, Sega of Japan was tasked with the development of a parallel console powered by NEC/VideoLogic's PowerVR chipset, codenamed Katana. The teams were told that the "winner" wouldn't necessarily be the machine with the best performance. It would be the one which would have games up and running more quickly.

The contest would became an exercise in futility as Sega of Japan and NEC eventually struck a deal to use the PowerVR chip before the two consoles were actually ready to be compared. Black Belt engineers insisted that their 3dfx-powered system would have won the race.

After walking through the entire PC 3D graphics industry, Sega finally found its chip. Fortunately for Sega, the PowerVR Series 2 chip, which NEC and VideoLogic had been co-developing for some time, turned out to be a most impressive chip for the console, with exciting features such as texture compression and deferred rendering. The PowerVR-based console was presented to the AM groups who gave it the green light: the Dreamcast was born.

3dfx later sued Sega, NEC and VideoLogic, alleging that Sega deliberately mislead 3dfx to gain access to confidential technologies before choosing to go with NEC and VideoLogic. 3dfx, Sega, NEC, and VideoLogic eventually reached a settlement out of court.