Testers

Since the early 1990s, Sega has operated its own internal testing teams, whose purpose is to "test" products and feed back to the development staff. As a console platform holder, Sega of America operated a very large testing department, not just to cover its own products, but third-party developers hoping to produce products for Sega's systems. The existince of a test team was vital to ensure that software would ship with as few bugs as possible, and that any potential issues could be addressed before the customers discovered them.

Some groups have more say in how a product is changed than others. In video game terms, traditionally a tester's job is to play the game and report any problems that might manifest, however others test for specific features, for example making sure the content of the game adheres to the publisher's guidelines. Examples might include ensuring every Sega Saturn game implements the software reset, or that there isn't too much violence or nudity to meet a specific age rating.

Sega (and others) have used numerous terms to describe these roles, from simply "tester" to "compliance" and "standards", often grouped under a wider "quality assurance" (QA) banner. Testers can range from people pulled off the street with no prior experience in gaming, to those who test games for a living. Developers will also be testing their work during the development process; the dedicated testing teams exist to spot the bugs developers missed (often with extreme edge cases that which the programmers don't have the time to test themselves).

Sega Retro treats localisation testing (e.g. making sure that an English-produced product can be converted to something more suitable for French audiences) under the wider banner of "localisation", because it is difficult to determine who is actually translating content, and who is testing and reacting to content already translated.