Fascinating Look Back at SEGA Pods, the Motion-Sensing Electronic Game You Never Knew Existed

Photo credit: SEGA Retro
SEGA is best known for their Master System and Genesis consoles, but did you know they also released a motion-sensing electronic game back in 1994? That’s right, it’s called SEGA Pods, and consists of three sensor-equipped “pods” that the player must hold their hand over in order to play its seven built-in games. The special sensor was able to detect the height of the player’s hand, as long as it’s held 12-inches or below.

When SEGA Pods were initially released in 1994, the company carried over the ‘WELCOME TO THE NEXT LEVEL’ marketing strategy used with their consoles. They actually compared the SEGA Pods to the classic electronic game, Simon. This was mainly due to the fact that games 2-4 are an extension of Simon, as many of the games simply have the player re-create the random pattern generated by the internal computer.