My Black Belt
Brian Kellogg
bkellogg@capecod.netIf I were in charge of overseeing the development of Sega's next system, this is what you'd get. Let me start off by saying that there's no way in hell I could ever sit down and design the circuit board for the Saturn, let alone the Blackbelt. I do know what most of the major components are and somewhat how they work, but my design assumes the circuitry to be already designed. Now, let's get to it!
The Blackbelt would be about the size of the Saturn, with a sloped front and rounded corners (to match my aerodynamically designed toaster!). In the top center would be a CD drive cover with parallel seams on each side of it. When you take a closer look, you'll notice that there is another seam that runs through the center of each side. Each of these four sides is held on by a screw in the center and comes off with the twist of an allen wrench. Then they slide out of cartridge ports and you see that they are actually four separate modules. Each one is different so they are not interchangeable. The modules are about 2x3 inches and 1 1/2 inches thick with small writing on each to identify: memory, processor, display and AUX.
When you turn the unit over, there are two more allen wrench screws. When these are removed, what's left separates into two pieces: a power base and the CD drive that looks something like a portable CD player. The drive is connected to the powerbase via a cartridge slot. What you now have is six totally separate components that comprise a system. This will give the Blackbelt upgrade options never thought possible on a console. Upgrades would work similar to a PC, all Blackbelt games would work no matter what upgrades were added or not added but graphics loading time and certain game options could change.
Now, some more of the interesting features. If you open the CD drive with no CD in it, you'll see a small plug-in for a territorial lockout chip. If you get the lockout chip, you'll be able to run Japanese software. While you have the drive door open, you'll notice something else different. There are TWO laser lenses for faster loading and to be able to play music independently of the game data loading or for running full motion video games.
On the back of the unit are all the connection points. There will be: power connection, phone jack for the modem (which should be built in), multi A/V outputs, a port for linking Blackbelts together, and a port for an external memory device (i.e., hard or floppy drive). In the front of the unit will be two large controller ports.
Now let's talk about what this thing should be able to do. First off, it should play all Sega's Model 3 games easily and possibly DVD movies. Right out of the box it should have: web surfing, online gaming, a CD emulator that could be loaded into the RAM to allow Black belt to play Sega CD and Saturn games (and possibly Playstation and 3DO games, too).It should be able to display at least a million polygons per second with light sourcing and texture mapping at 60 FPS.
On the software side: a Sonic 3D game, VF3, Scud Racer and a new Phantasy Star game ready to launch so that all genres are covered. Peripherals could and should include: force feedback controllers, virtual reality glasses, hard drive and printer.
Hardware upgrades would be handled in the following manner. When a new module was added, the old one could be sold and used as replacement parts for repairs or to make "new" used systems. All modules could be bought separately so as to faze the old ones out with each new upgrade.
This would give Sega's Blackbelt "POWER AND POSSIBILITY"
If you like my dream of the Blackbelt, write Sega and tell them to hire me as head of Blackbelt development! Maybe someone could start a petition.......