Michealene Cristini Risley was Sega of America's secret weapon

She built Sega's licensing empire, brokered its biggest sports deals, and founded the Girls Task Force.

by Alex Rojas with Michealene Cristini Risley

Sega Retro · January 21, 2025

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AR:

You're someone who's worn quite a lot of hats, from author to activist, and most relevant to today's interview, you're also a veteran of the entertainment industry. You're essentially one of the people who made Sega of America into the company that it still is today. I just wanted to begin on that note with a question going into your background. You actually spent a good amount of time working in Hollywood before joining Sega of America, correct?

MCR:

Yes I did.

AR:

What was your first entry into the entertainment industry?

MCR:

My first entry in entertainment was in game shows with Ronnie Greenberg.

AR:

Television shows?

MCR:

Yes, game shows. He was very well known in the game show area. One of my best buddies from high school and I moved out after college, and I needed a job. So he gave me an assistant job and it was great; it was lovely.

AR:

You eventually also moved to a position at Mattel, where it looks like you specialized in licensing deals… acquiring high profile licensing deals?

MCR:

Correct.

AR:

Actually, I think I'm skipping over your Disney work.

MCR:

Oh yeah, I was at Disney twice. I know my background is all over the board. Part of it is, I love doing lots of different things. I've always been [this way]. Even in college, I worked my way through college as a TV reporter. Then my first job was literally working for the Detroit Free Press and writing; and then we packed up and went west. So it was game shows. Then I was at, before it turned into a Fox station, I was at KTTV. It was an odd time for women then. It still is an odd time, but I had been trying to get to work at Disney for a long, long time.Literally, I even have letters from the head of production saying, "Your interest in Disney is duly noted." Okay. Like, stop sending me notes. It's interesting. You sort of latch onto why you think you want to work somewhere. Ultimately, it could be disappointing. So when I went to Disney the first time, I worked for Steve McBeth, he hired me. There were six divisions under licensing and I was there to really build a PR arm for them. I really got my feet wet into licensing.

AR:

You eventually became Marvel's vice president of production, and I think you were managing the animated television output that they were doing at the time, right?

MCR:

That's correct. We were doing specials with McDonald's on Magic Paintbrush, and we were building out Biker Mice from Mars.

AR:

I wanted to ask about Marvel, because I believe you working at Marvel was kind of… was that what got you headhunted by Sega of America in the first place or did that put you on the radar? How did that whole exchange first work out?

MCR:

It was a couple things. When I was at Mattel doing licensing, somehow they had asked me to help them develop a Barbie movie. Then I started working on doing an animated special for PJ Sparkles, which was one of their big dolls. The actual producers of the PJ Sparkles animation recruited me for Marvel.Then, when I went to Marvel, Rick Ungar (who was my boss at Marvel), I'd known [him] for a long, long time. We were in the middle of Biker Mice and a number of other things, I had just worked for Stan Lee on trying to develop a new motion picture off of a comic book I fell in love with. I had no interest in leaving. I had met my husband, we were engaged, we were getting married. So there was a lot going on. When Sega approached me, they had just done a deal with Andy Heyward at DIC and Allen Bohbot at Bohbot Entertainment to take Sonic to television. Honestly, I mean think about it. They were less than 3%, 4% market share at that time.

AR:

It was pretty small.

MCR:

This is horrible to say, but I didn't even remember how to say their name properly. Seega? Sega? Then literally I got home one day and I'll never forget, my house was full of boxes.

AR:

I remember that story. Yeah.

MCR:

Shinobu Toyoda and probably Tom Kalinske had sent me so much product. It was like a toy store.

AR:

To overwhelm you. Hope you say yes.

MCR:

It did. It was fascinating. I started to do my homework on it. Honestly, my husband and I didn't want to raise kids in LA. It was a personal choice on my part.

AR:

Understandable.

MCR:

"Let me take a look." I knew I was going to interview with Shinobu Toyoda. I had a friend who was Japanese, and she taught me through a recording: I practiced how to speak certain words. In fact, I did it so well [that] when I interviewed with him, he started speaking to me in Japanese. I'm like, oh no, sorry!

AR:

"Oh my gosh. You caught my bluff!"

MCR:

Yeah, they recruited me and I really wasn't ready to go [from Marvel]. With that, I ended up negotiating quite a few things in my package. Like an assistant to help me with my wedding. Just all kinds of crazy shit.

AR:

Right. The wedding help, I do remember. Also that… two-week female studies training… was that Stanford? Yeah, Stanford, I think.

MCR:

You know a lot about me. Actually, that wasn't part of the negotiation. But when it came up, my boss Shinobu Toyoda was pretty remarkable on letting me do [a lot]… The great thing is, when I went to Sega, there were three executives: It was Tom Kalinske, Shinobu Toyoda, and Paul Rioux. They were on one side of the building. When I came in, they brought me on the same side of the building. So I was on the executive side.

AR:

That's interesting.

MCR:

Not only was it interesting, but it also protected me.

AR:

Yeah, I can imagine the insulation from the rest of the company. There was a lot going on in Sega of America, a lot of internal politics and just people doing their own things, trying to get their own projects through. I can imagine that helped quite a lot.

MCR:

Very much so. The good news is that it protected me. The more challenging [news] was that, like, for example, when Doug Glen and the executive team wanted to do Sega Channel, it was like, "Oh, great, Michealene, go get all these rights." [sarcastically] Wait, let me… I'm going to go to Haim Saban and say, "You know, we want to do Sega Channel and we don't want to pay you for Power Rangers." But it gave me a lot of experience because now, entertainment licensing, and licensing out in all new entities that involved contracts and negotiation and licensing, came to me.

AR:

Interesting. I was just going to ask if you were the company's go-to "We need something tricky, take care of it for us."

MCR:

Yes. How the Sega Girls Task Force came about is: if you look at historically my background, I've always been more of a humanist, and you could call me a feminist too. Even when I was in TV, I pushed for female characters in shows.It was something when I worked with Margaret Loesch, or even with Jill Barad. Jill Barad was a big mentor of mine from Mattel towards [the idea of] women leaders, who really got that this was really important culturally. When I looked at all of our games, I said, "Well wait a minute, why are we not getting girls?" Half the population, over half of the population is not playing games. Not only from a career directory, from a cultural trajectory, there are so many elements of this that were really poor for girls.

AR:

Actually, to speak on the Task Force… To start off, I believe the Task Force was '93, correct?

MCR:

Correct.

AR:

Could you describe the group in your own words?

“I think that some men tend to believe that their perspective is universal, and it's not.”
— Michealene Cristini Risley

MCR:

Let me sort of tell you how it evolved if that'll help. I went to management after I'd seen that we're missing a large portion of the market. I set up a meeting. It was all the senior management: Tom, Shinobu, Paul, I remember Joe Miller being in that meeting. Judith Rossner was a woman who wrote a book called America's Secret Weapon, which was women. I went into that meeting saying, okay, how do I turn this to where we look at it as a missed opportunity? I literally remember presenting this to the team and I was barefoot in front of them. I'll never forget this because I always worked better barefoot. I'm showing them the numbers, and even if we captured 10% of this market, what kind of volume it was; but I didn't talk about it from a "We're leaving girls out" [perspective]. I didn't look at it from that, because it was all about - how do we turn this into a model that they're all gonna want a piece of that market?

AR:

Right. It's almost like they understand that vocabulary better than…

MCR:

Labeling it.

AR:

Because that's what they know, you speak in their language, which is unfortunate, but you got it through.

MCR:

Yeah. I remember when I was done, Joe Miller was like, "Yes, finally!"

AR:

Oh, that's very cool.

MCR:

Joe was a big proponent. That's sort of the beginning. Then, you know, we brought in Cynthia Modders, who was part of my group in licensing and really was the day-to-day on Sonic. She's remarkable. Cynthia came in… Lydia came in from the toy division. Then Cindy Claveran came in from the development side. She did a lot of the young Pico girls games. It was a perfect transition. Then Diane Fornasier was in marketing.I would say that most of this would be categorized as the beginning of the development of Sega as a big player, and many of the senior executives were women. It was probably the best time to be in video games. There wasn't the toxicity of women in games. The senior management was really great. I think my challenge had always been with Japan.

AR:

In the Polygon article by Richard Moss, you'd touched on Japan in that they had thought it was strange, but they kind of gave you the okay. But then I was reading your… I think it was the MSU speech that you gave, I remember you recalling a story about taping a picture of your face to your shoe?

MCR:

With an arrow, with the arrow!

AR:

Yeah, with the arrow! I'm sorry, I'm too eager here. Can you detail how Sega of Japan interacted with the Task Force?

MCR:

Yes, so a couple things happened. Sega interacting with the Task Force was all a US thing, nothing to do with Japan. We would be sitting down with the commercial company, sitting down with the team, and really trying to create a product that spoke to girls. It was a fascinating process because, I looked at scientific research and I did a number [of pieces], I think I did a Good Morning America piece and something else at that time, talking about the very differences in how boys and girls learn and what they perceive. Like for example, girls have a stronger auditory nerve in their ear. How do we relate that to games, right? There's lots of things like that we started to think about, and how we could address it, in a commercial. I sat down with Jeff Goodby. Jeff Goodby was the head of Goodby…

AR:

Goodby Something and… Sloan?

MCR:

Something and Silverstein? I can't remember.

AR:

Yeah, right, right.

MCR:

Anyways, to talk about how we could really begin looking at it this way… My brain has always worked that way. But culturally and from a marketing perspective, at that time, nobody really got it. So we started, we created a new commercial.We storyboarded, Diane work closely with Lydia, and we did this whole new commercial addressed to girls. What was so fascinating about that too… Shinobu, Tom, and Paul again were really supportive, but I'll give you an example. The little girl (the young girl in the commercial), Paul Rioux wanted her to ride a banana bike. I said, "Girls do not ride banana bikes." So it got to be like, "No, I want the banana bike." I go, "Paul, girls don't ride [banana bikes]." It was challenging, because I think people want to program from their area of comfort.

AR:

Right, their own experience.

MCR:

Yes, and so it was kind of funny.

AR:

Then you have most of the people doing it from their own experience being men. Then you get male perspectives.

MCR:

It's really important because I think, how do I say this nicely? I think that some men tend to believe that their perspective is universal, and it's not. So we did commercials, we pushed. By the time I left there, I think we were close to 26% penetration of a female audience.

AR:

I knew it grew quite a lot. I didn't know it was 26%. That's incredible. Congratulations, by the way.

MCR:

Oh, thank you. It wasn't just me. There was a whole group. It was the awareness to push them to start focusing on a larger market, frankly.

AR:

One of the things that always really impressed me about the Task Force was, when you started this, you didn't have any body of knowledge, or body of data to reference. You had to almost create a Girls Task Force research group to get all this data together and make sure that it's all sound before you move forward. What was that process like?

MCR:

What's interesting is, you're right: there was no data. The whole process was like walking into holes all the time; like putting my foot in a hole and tripping. Lydia came from the toy group, and Roberta Jacobs had a great background in toys as well. I would call Jill Barad or Margaret Loesch or anyone who'd been a part of it to say, "Hey, how do we do this?" Because they had access to that, they had access to data.

AR:

Oh, from their past employment, past experiences?

MCR:

Right. Jill was… she built Barbie in a huge way, and was CEO of Mattel for a long time. I still stay in touch with Jill and Margaret, really remarkable women. I have to tell this story because, so for a long time, and I think that it's still true in some sense: women are taught not to stand out. [A newspaper] wrote this story. I don't remember who it was… might have been the Chronicle? Did you ever see the picture of all of us in the Sega Girls Task Force?

AR:

I saw, I wish I had a larger picture of that. I saw it in your presentation, but it was this tiny.

MCR:

I think Cynthia might have a copy. But what happened was: I had no idea that article was coming out. They talked to all of us. When it came out, I seemed to be the center of it. I remember my mom was in town then, and she was so excited, and I was horrified. It's like, oh my god, how did I…? Granted, I did pitch this idea. It was, to be honest, driven by me, but I didn't ever want to stand out from the group that we were putting together. There's a lot of anger about that [in politics]. So it wasn't just that you wanted to create a change for girls. You had to navigate the cultural issues of that time.

AR:

You had to be the figurehead. Then all of a sudden you have more responsibilities.

MCR:

But also at the same time, you're not supposed to stand out. Men don't have that issue. It's an interesting dichotomy we would put women in corporate life in, or even in life. It's like, okay, you can't do this, you can't do this, but you can't be too ambitious, or you can't be too aggressive.

AR:

Right, but you still have to reach the finish line somehow.

MCR:

Yes, exactly.

AR:

With these bricks taped to your ankles.

MCR:

Yes.

AR:

What were some of the largest problems you saw that would need to be addressed in order to tackle the issue of girls in games?

MCR:

I think the biggest issue is they had no role models. All the models were male. I would love to sit with young students or kids and talk about games; girls weren't having those conversations. At that point in time, we're doing games, then we went into television. It's a pretty common thing if you look at the number of role models for females: there weren't any. Which is why Princess Sally was so important. Tails too, because Tails was more effeminate. I think, did I answer that question?

“Even if we captured 10% of this market, what kind of volume it was.”
— Michealene Cristini Risley

AR:

Yeah, absolutely. It was very interesting to have two shows based off the same character at the same time. I understand why you did that, one for syndication and one for the networks. I believe you were the head of that push, right? The projects to get them going were kind of there before you arrived, but you were the one that took the reins, right?

MCR:

Well, they did deals and then no one had the experience. It was like, "Oh, Michealene great, here you go." There was a couple other elements of this that we don't really talk about much, but… there was a perception, and this came from Sega of Japan, as they were very worried about the portrayal of the characters, right? So, [from there] it's trying to get my hand on: let's build a production entity, let's work with DIC and Bohbot. We bought an animation facility, TMJ. Was it TMJ? [TMS] Anyways, we bought an animation facility, one of the best at that time. We had to integrate them in the process. It became this big production.

AR:

Was that a Japanese animation facility?

MCR:

Yes. The other part of that, too, was that management was concerned about being taken advantage of. It costs us a lot of money to oversee the overseeing, right?

AR:

Was it Japanese management worried about being taken advantage of by the Americans, or the other way around?

MCR:

No, the Americans were, so the Japanese were worried about the portrayal of the characters. The American executives were worried about getting taken advantage of by the production entities like DIC [and others].Honestly, they kind of threw me in the middle of this, and what's so funny is… and I know he doesn't talk about this, but I had to make sure that we weren't being taken advantage of [by licensors]. It put me in a pretty awkward position, particularly with DIC. I remember going over to Disney, because during that time, home video was still very big. I met with the head of the home video division, and we're talking and stuff and halfway through he just stops and he goes, "Oh my god." I go, "What?" "You're just a normal, nice human being."I looked at him. "Well, why wouldn't I be?" I was put in the Wicked Witch of the West [role] because I was overseeing all of this.

AR:

Going back to the Girls Task Force. We know that there were three main games that are associated with the Task Force. But in addition to the games, because we'll get to the games in just a moment… Diane Fornasier had mentioned working with different retailers to give these games a chance. Do you remember what retailers you worked with or what kind of groups you reached out to?

MCR:

That would have been much more under Diane. Diane and sales… Richard Burns was head of sales at that time. He had Sue Hughes and Lynn Warner at that time, both females who got it, who were in the mix on it. That was one of the best things, there were a lot of women in senior management that helped push this through.

AR:

I'd imagine that's pretty helpful.

MCR:

Oh, big helpful. I'll give you an example, a perfect example. I did Adidas maternity, it was literally the very first branded product in maternity. When my partner and I at the time [would] call the sales execs, they're like, "Women don't need this. I just let her unzip my pants."

AR:

Yeah yeah, "My old clothing," I remember that quote!

MCR:

[That's] why it was so important to have those women in those roles, they could talk to it.

AR:

Speaking of the actual games… I'm looking at this from our perspective as a wiki, where we kind of understood the Task Force through the games that it had involvement in. Obviously, there's much more to the activity of the group. But to quickly touch on those games here…

MCR:

What games do you have listed as…?

AR:

We have Baby Boom, Crystal's Pony Tale, and Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure. Baby Boom was not released, the other two were. Do you remember anything about those three?

MCR:

I remember all of them and Baby Boom I loved!

AR:

Really? Baby Boom looks fun!

MCR:

That was Ed Annunziata. Ed Annunziata was and is still amazing. He's always been; he's always had a gift with creating product that I could scale commercially. Baby Boom was one of those. I loved Baby Boom.

AR:

That's an interesting way of putting it. Can you describe that? A product that you can scale up easily?

MCR:

It's a gut feeling I've had for years. I can look at a project and go, "Oh, you know what? This would make a great TV show. This would make a great film." [That feeling] looks basically on the characters and the storyline. I remember when Ed first pitched me that concept. From a female perspective [it was appealing]. You had to take the little babies and it was like Space Invaders for babies. You'd have to turn them in the room and get them out of the danger.

AR:

It's one of the games that I was kind of sad to not see release. It looks like it could be a lot of fun.

MCR:

Yeah, I loved it. Baby Boom was [produced by] Ed. Then the other two were Cindy. Cindy has still has great instincts, you might want to talk to Cindy about that, but she just always had great instincts, and they came from licensed characters.

AR:

You mean- oh, Berenstain Bears and Crystal's Pony Tale?

MCR:

Yes. They were both part of a franchise, right? Particularly Berenstain Bears; there were so many books, there were so many stories. Cindy is female, and I think that she came at it from a really good perspective.

AR:

I'll have to ask her more about that game, it's something that we know very little about. You could also look at these games like kind of like a first stepping point. A lot of these games hadn't even been tried before.

MCR:

[in agreement] No. Pico helped too, because it was a younger demographic for that product. Pico was an amazing platform. We could bring in girls at a younger age.

AR:

It seems for Crystal's… I don't know if this happened for all three of the games that you worked on but, Crystal's Pony Tale… you guys also did focus testing with young girls through Sega, correct?

MCR:

Yes, that would probably be more Diane and Cindy, but yes, I remember that happening.

AR:

Diane and Cindy. I'm gonna have to go to everyone here and bother them with a bunch of questions.

MCR:

If you reach out to Cynthia again… Cynthia in licensing, she did have a picture from the Chronicle of all of us.

AR:

Yeah, I'll have to check that. Speaking of working with external developers, Pamela Kelly… it doesn't seem like she was one of the main task group [members], but a lot of times she's grouped in with them. What was Pamela Kelly's involvement in the group?

MCR:

I don't recall that she was part of our group. She might've been… She's female, she's in marketing. She worked for Diane.

AR:

I think that she might've been just lumped in under that?

MCR:

Yeah.

AR:

Gotcha. Because she had mentioned that, around the same time, she had mentioned reaching out to Virgin Games USA to David Perry on Aladdin, trying to bring the difficulty of that game down. She thought the difficulty was just a little too high to be… that if you brought it down, you could make it a little more accessible. Do you recall that at all? Do you recall any other instances?

“The senior management was really great. I think my challenge had always been with Japan.”
— Michealene Cristini Risley

MCR:

No, I don't. But I would say that she probably would have talked to Diane about that. There was so much going on, right? The Sega Girls Task Force was above and beyond our daily work.

AR:

That was another question of mine, was: how official was it? Were you being paid for it? Was it just out of your own goodwill.

MCR:

Out of all of our own love of the game and wanting girls to experience it.

AR:

That's wonderful. That actually makes quite a difference. Do you know when and why the Task Force ceased activity? Was it just you leaving Sega of America that did it?

MCR:

Yeah, it was probably that. I had just become pregnant and I just couldn't imagine doing those kind of hours and having a healthy baby. Then that's when I started my own company.

AR:

Do you remember exactly when you left Sega of America?

MCR:

Huh. I wanna say it was the Fall… no, it was Winter. I remember cause I had already gotten a call from Nike who had said, "Hey, would you consider coming in and building a video game division for us?" I was like, [sarcastically] yeah, how can I do that? Anyway, I think it was winter.

AR:

Sorry, that was Winter '95, you said?

MCR:

Yes. I still worked with Sega when I left, of course.

AR:

Were you working with Sega Sports a little after you left, or was that before you left? Someone associated you with Sega Sports somewhere.

MCR:

Yeah, I did all the deals for Sega Sports. Any deal that happened in Sega Sports, it came through me, came through our group [Entertainment & Consumer Products].

AR:

That was for the endorsees, like the celebrity athletes?

MCR:

The Montanas, the Deion Sanders, yes, all of them. Any deal that was done came through our division. It was either on the licensing inside (it'd come through John Leonhart and myself), or licensing out, which would be Cynthia and myself. Then Bob Harris, who really was on the day to day; he worked his tail off on the day to day of the television series.

AR:

You were the head of Entertainment & Consumer Products, correct?

MCR:

Correct.

AR:

Were you brought on to create that, or was that already created and you were brought on to guide it or be the head of it? How did that work?

MCR:

It was… no, they had no idea [how to license]. We had no idea. I had to sort of put the systems in place.

AR:

You were the one that taught them how to… how licensing works and how this works in the business of theirs.

MCR:

When they hired me, I set up an office in Beverly Hills, California. Then I worked closely at that point with CAA, with a number of people there: Kevin Gasser and just a whole group of people there. I had to figure out what we were going to do. How do I build this? What am I building? So it wasn't just the TV shows, which was a big part of it. But it was, well, wait a minute, if we want to do Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, how does that look? What are we going to do? Then if we want to take Baby Boom, for example, and license it out to TV or film, that's a whole other area. There was a lot going on. I built a terrific team.

AR:

Much of Sega of America's current business is built on your work. It's interesting to see that the company really had no capability for doing this before you showed up, and here you are, all your hard work is still bearing fruit so many years later.

MCR:

Aw, well, I don't know if that's true, but I'll say thank you. If I'd gone into Nike and built a video game division, that's like your pinnacle of your career, right? But I didn't think it was a smart move for them. That's probably the difference between me [and others]. I'd like to think that's a difference that sets me apart. It's not about what's best for me. It's what's best for the company.So I said to Nike, you know what? I can do that and I can bring a team in, but I don't think you should do that. I think you should let me license out your stable of athletes.

AR:

I think that was smart.

MCR:

Yeah. I think they had to focus on their core business. Could I have done it? Yes. But in the meantime I took Tiger Woods out and, you know, I think we still hold the record for the highest deal in the video game business. So that was fun. But what I was going to say is that, I had such a great training there [at Sega]. Then when I started to see the rise of tech, I would sit down with Google or Apple, and this was years ago, and I'd say, hey, let's talk about licensing. They didn't get it, not in the same way.I'll give you another example. When I went to Zynga, I went in and Tom Kalinske went with me, and we sat with Don Mattrick, and Don goes, "Where do you wanna go?" Had I really thought about it, I should have said, "I want to take all your characters and license them out." I was getting calls from Allen Bohbot and Andy Heyward [and I was] saying, "Hey, let's take Farmville and take it to television." No one wanted to do it. They didn't understand it.

AR:

It's almost like you're doing the same job you did in the 90s over again, explaining this to people.

MCR:

The difference is, from our Sega days versus now, there's an arrogance about those tech companies where they believe they know what's best, and they've lost a whole level of knowledge with that arrogance. By the way, a whole lot of money.

AR:

On that note… so you come from Hollywood and Hollywood's kind of style of licensing, speed of licensing, and all that. What were some of the biggest differences between working in Hollywood and working in games?

MCR:

Interesting. I think initially the perception of video games was they're like this bastard stepchild, you know? Then I remembered… it was such a great story: the day the CAA, all of their agents came up to Sega (because they've been trying to convince me to hire them, to represent Sega) and it hit the trades that video games have now outgrossed motion pictures and television.It was like, oh, that's so interesting. On the day all these agents are coming up, like you need us. [sarcastically] Right. Anyways, I think the difference between the two is there are people in Hollywood who really get a licensing and entertainment connection. Gale Anne Hurd and I sat down when she was doing something and we wanted to start the game when they were actually filming the series. People understood. A lot of them didn't though.It was like, let's come back to you [about a game tie-in] when it's all over. I think that the gaming sector at that time, at least with the people I interacted with, got it. They knew. But it was a really fascinating intersection between the two.

AR:

Right. Yeah, I'd imagine a lot of people in gaming… gaming hasn't been around too long. They were the ones that figured out how to be successful in this industry by themselves. All of a sudden someone comes in being like, "Hey, we're going to work like Hollywood." I can imagine there'd be a bit of butting heads there.

MCR:

Right. Absolutely. Because of the Girls Task Force and everything… I was at one point the highest ranking woman in a Japanese company before Roberta came. I remember being in development meetings and unfortunately, when we had a game coming out of Japan and there was some edginess to it, they would all look to me. "Okay, Mike, what do you think?" I remember this one game. There was a beer drinking game that came out of Japan.

AR:

[laughs] I wanted to ask about that one.

MCR:

The beer drinking game?

AR:

Yeah, because I don't know off the top of my head. Do you remember the title? I would love to hotlink that somehow.

MCR:

You might want to ask Ed Annunziata. But I remember sitting in this room and it was so… you know how there's the traditional anime [trope] in a Japanese anime where you get the young schoolgirl with her uniform on; it was a little girl. So these guys went into a bar, where they went in and every time they drank, a piece of her clothing would be removed. I'm like, oh, this isn't going to work very well; this isn't good. But I remember afterwards what I said is: because at that time, Disney had already done Touchstone Pictures. I said, look, if we want to do something like this, we should label it differently. I don't want to be involved, right? But again, I was looking at it from a brand standpoint. No, we don't want to do this. If there is an opportunity in another brand, like Disney and Touchstone, we should look at it. I remember I did a white paper on that. I was always doing white papers.

AR:

Oh, interesting. Do you have any of those kicking around still?

MCR:

Well, I was just going to tell you, because I have a box of stuff going to the Museum of Play. But I did find some old drives. I gave them to a guy because I couldn't open them. They were so old. I know I found the Nike contract for me. I think that if I go back another year, then I will have what I pitched to management about Sega Girls Task Force and a couple other things. I'm waiting to hear back.

“It was out of all of our own love of the game and wanting girls to experience it.”
— Michealene Cristini Risley

AR:

That'd be super cool. Pretty much all the information we have on Sega Girls Task Force are oral histories like we're doing now. We don't really have any… I think we have two magazine articles on the Sega Girls Task Force. Not including the newspaper ones. We've got some growing to do there.

MCR:

You know what's so funny though, is I remember there were so many. At that point in time, when you did an article, it would go over the AP Wire and it would just get picked up by all the local newspapers. PR would send me like a list of all the articles that my names' mentioned in or something. I remember it was everywhere, right? It was everywhere.Some reporter reached out to me, and wanted to ask about it. I started to talk to her and she goes, "Well, I talked to so-and-so and they said Michealene isn't the only one doing [projects like] this." But it was because the AP wires, they take that. I'd say, "Boy, you know what? We want to have all the help. We want women all to be doing this." But if you've looked up those Girls Task Force things now, I can't find them anywhere. I don't know-

AR:

Like other companies' [attempts]?

MCR:

It's kind of fascinating. I'd love to look on ChatGPT if you can find those, because, think about it. When the Internet came out later, they didn't go after the old newspaper articles. Right. You almost have to go into the archives of these newspapers, but there was a lot.

AR:

Right. Then so much ends up getting lost because it hasn't been scanned yet. By the time it has scanned, no one remembers it anymore, unfortunately.

MCR:

It's so true. Yeah. So true. Did I answer your question? [laughs]

AR:

Absolutely, yeah. Let's see if I wanted to ask any final questions here.

MCR:

Alexander, if you need me, you can call. I'm here. Don't worry about it.

AR:

Oh. Perfect, thank you! What I might actually do is I might, now that we've discussed this and I've learned a bunch of things, I might actually get another little set of questions together and reach out in maybe a couple weeks or a month or something.

MCR:

Once I get those… once I hear back from the editor, if I find any of the old docs… but you should also talk to the Museum of Play, because now they are expanding my papers for my whole career.

AR:

Oh! I did have one last question. Rocket Science Games, do you remember that name at all?

MCR:

Oh, sure do. I worked for them! I think I just found my offer letter the other day. I had boxes of stuff.

AR:

Rocket Science Games is just kind of a very fascinating. I was looking through the papers that you had donated to the Strong. You had four product briefs in there for Rocket Science Games. It was Obsidian, Rocket Jockey, something else [The Space Bar], and Ganymede. Ganymede in particular I'm very interested in, because I think that was Ron Cobb, who is a Star Wars artist. He did all the… in the first Star Wars movie when you go into the Cantina and all the aliens are… he designed a lot of those aliens.

MCR:

Yes!

AR:

Ganymede never came to fruition. It's all kind of… part of the reason we know about it was because Ron Cobb left a lot of concept art [behind]. I suppose this is more of a request, but I would love to see those product briefs. Could you tell us about Rocket Science?

MCR:

You should reach out to Jim Wicket or Steve Blank.

AR:

When were you involved in Rocket Science, and about how long before they… they kind of folded pretty quick.

MCR:

Yeah. I remember they came to me and said, hey, come work with us. But I don't remember where it fits into my career path or what. But Jim, I loved Jim Wicket, and Jim and Steve had put an offer together. Then I think they didn't last very long after that.

AR:

[in agreement] No, I think they got bought up by SegaSoft pretty fast.

MCR:

Yeah. Have you ever done any interviews with Judy Lange and Madeline Canepa?

AR:

No, and I'm writing down a bunch of names. Judy Lange… And I've heard of Madeline…

MCR:

Yeah. So Judy, you might know through Chip Lange, her son who was at EA. But Jude and Mad were both at Sega. Mad was my predecessor to Sonic in some ways and, Jude and Madeline went off and formed Crystal Dynamics.

AR:

She's that Madeline! Oh, interesting.

MCR:

I should know his name. Crystal Dynamics was Jude, Madeline, and… oh my god, he went on to do Grand Theft Auto. He came out of music. I remember because when he started to do Grand Theft, I think Jude and Mad said, we don't want to be involved with you anymore. Yeah. I can't remember, it'll come to me.

AR:

When it came to turning Sega into a household brand, what were the most important things that needed to happen to bring that to reality?

MCR:

I think that for it to become a very important brand, I think we needed to understand what the brand was. When we were building new characters, we did character bibles, so we knew what could and couldn't happen. Like my early training at Disney. Disney's the pinnacle of branding. We always had to have, for each of the characters, "Here's how Sonic would respond in this situation." "Here's how Princess Sally would." It's knowing the characters, knowing the storylines, knowing what they can and cannot do, and then expanding them beyond what I would call their origin point. For example, they came out of games, so let's look at television and film or comic books. Look past their point of origin.

AR:

Were things like character bibles and just that level of "Here's how we do it"… was that not in place before you arrived, and before Entertainment and Consumer Products was a thing? Was that not a thing at Sega?

MCR:

Yeah, you know, I saw it at Disney. No, not at Sega.

AR:

It's very fascinating. You came in and you established so much of what the company still does to this day.Oh, I have one last question, an easy ones about dates. When were you first employed at the company? Was that '91?

MCR:

Yeah, I have to look. I got married in '93. I want to say it was '92. Maybe '91. I don't know. It was short. Had I not got pregnant, I probably would have stayed there a long long time You have to remember the time too, even as a senior level there, we still didn't have the same rights as the men in the group. I remember talking to two of the senior guys one day and they were talking about their health club benefits and I'm like, "Oh, you get health club benefits?" Like, yeah, you do at… I think it was director level, and here I was a group director, right? There was a lot of discrepancies. They didn't share with us, "Hey, here's the benefit." Only when you found out that you weren't getting it did you get it.

AR:

I do have a bunch more questions here, but we are kind of reaching our time. Would I be able to maybe get another little set of questions together and reach out in about a month or something for another little interview?

MCR:

Anytime. Anytime, Alexander.

AR:

All right. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate the time and for answering my questions. I learned quite a lot today. We learned quite a lot today. Again, thank you so much for providing insight into this time that really only you could.

MCR:

Oh, thank you, Alexander. That was fun! This is what I said to Shinobu when I first met him. I'll say it to you: dozo yoroshiku onegaishimasu.

AR:

I'll have to look that up later. [laughs]

MCR:

Basically what I said to him is, "It is truly an honor to meet you for the first time today." That I think sealed the deal for me to go to Sega. [laughs] All right, Alexander.

AR:

Thank you so much again. I appreciate it more than I can express.

MCR:

Okay. See you.

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