HOW SOON IS NOW?
A guide to modern videotronics
A Feature News Article By: BIRD
Photo’s and layout By: Padgo
Part Two: King of the Castle
"Console Wars"
During the later part of the 1980's and going into the 1990's it was Nintendo verses Sega at every step of the way. Both companies waged war in producing and outdoing one another in an effort to be the first manufacturer to release to the public the latest ground breaking games hardware and software
So, when Nintendo released the 16 bit NES, Sega released the Sega Master System. When Nintendo released the Super NES, Sega released the Sega Mega-drive. These new and improved home entertainment consoles were 32 bit cartridge fed systems. Software developers now were able to compete on an even playing field, with the public being the real winners. For the most part, Nintendo dominated with a host of games titles that appealed to a more broad range of people, age groups and lifestyles. Nintendo’s flag ship game titles were centred around a little known Italian plumber and his crazy adventures, thus spawning the game “Mario Brothers”.
While Donkey Kong may have introduced Mario to players world wide, it was the smash hit Super Mario Brothers for the Super NES that really put him as out front as the number one character for the Nintendo game system, infact he’s still their leading man today.
From the beginning Sega has established a credable lineage with gamers with their successful arcade games to their home entertainment division. Sega has always remained a leader in innovative software and design. Their home entertainment division has developed a good reputation amongst consumers for being first in introducing new media and elaborate system features. Sega being one the first major games developers to mass market CD based consoles for gameplay with their Genesis/Saturn systems.
With their own successful brand of characters it was Sonic the Hedgehog who won gamers hearts and minds in the first battle of the console wars.
Sadly for Sega the battle for the first place in the video game industry has been a trying experience, whereas in most cases Sega has been left in second place. Despite subsequent releases of home entertainment consoles such as the Sega Genesis, Sega Saturn and of recent years the Sega Dreamcast, Sega has only recently retired their home entertainment division as a systems developer to concentrate on software development for existing consoles and arcade games. It seems that Sega have returned to what they do best for gamers in producing the finest games in all of video game creation.
At the end of the 80’s and into the early 1990, video game companies released innovative hand held units. Nintendo with a background entrenched in hand held game play launched their Nintendo Game boy. The Game boy ruled the market place for many years despite being only available in mono black and white. Neo Geo, Atari Lynx and Sega Game-gear all launched their own hand held units, with the Lynx and Game-gear systems featuring break through colour graphic’s for hand held game play. Yet even with colour and superior graphic’s the market trend favoured Nintendo’s Game boy hand held system due to their extensive range of titles.
Nintendo haven’t had any easy time in staying at the top of the market either. Always watchful of competition in the market place, companies like Atari attempted unsuccessfully to stage great comebacks. Neo Geo was another console system that impacted on the market place in south east Asia and Japan much to the detriment of industry leaders. Seeing opportunity in the video games industry, electronic appliance giant Panasonic launched their own home entertainment system console into an already flooded market place. Sadly it was unsuccessful in this country but they would not be the last, because electronic industry leader Sony was about to launch their own home entertainment console called the Playstation.
“Console War’s Part 2: FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT”
In the 90’s the console wars were fought by three major competitors, Sony, Sega and Nintendo. During the early 90’s Sony had been working with Panasonic on a gaming console for some time before they split and went their separate ways.
Panasonic released their own console entry the Panasonic 3DO which did well over sea’s but here in Australia it was barely heard of. Sometime later Sony launched their first video game platform called the Sony Playstation.
The Playstation or PS One is a CD drive based system incorporating 32 bit graphics into a neat little grey box. Upon release here in Australia the Playstation launched with nearly 16 titles. The Playstation’s overwhelming success was due to a qwirky & inventive marketing campaign aimed at the teenage/mature/adult end of the market.
To many the PS One was viewed as the next big thing in gaming circles, you could even use it to play audio CD’s or VCD movies when not playing games through your stereo or TV. Well, that might not sound like a huge bonus feature nowadays but this was the early nineties and CD players were still expensive.
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At the same time when Sony was entering into the home entertainment market place
Nintendo was already a veteran in the video games industry. Nintendo had seen two successful consoles that had dominated the home entertainment console market during the 1980's - early 90’s. In the mid 90’s Nintendo launched the Nintendo 64, or N64.
This was the last of Nintendo's cartridge fed systems and while the N64 had some of the best developers working for them, for instance, “Rare”, with big name hits like Golden Eye, Banjo Kazooee, Perfect Dark, it failed to meet with the hopes of a generation of gamers who had grown up with a Nintendo console. One contributing factors that stands as a mood point for many embittered gamers such as myself include the fact that Nintendo chose to release more “kiddie” titles rather than simply catering to a loyal fanbase of mature gamers. If they had seeked out this end of the market place more effectively, rather than releasing simply a few titles to cater for adult interests, the N64 might have faired better. Don’t get me wrong the N64 did very well here in Australia but at the end of the day the N64 came off second best to Sony's Playstation. It sounds impossible when you consider that the N64’s graphic's were indeed slicker than the PS One, as was the bit speed comparing the PS One which was 32 bit to the Nintendo which as 64 bit. Another inherit problem for Nintendo was the fact that they were still using aging cartridge technology, which made things extremely difficult for developers. With the passing of support for this console Nintendo have learnt from their mistakes and have also adopted CD based media with their release of the Nintendo Game Cube.
Most gamers agree that it was the Sony Playstation or PS One that dominated gaming consoles throughout the first half of the 1990’s. Sony were one of the first company to find success with CD based media rather than with tried and tested cartridge based systems. Even despite having less graphic's, the PS One still won over the competition based on the way it was sold as an Adult gaming console.
The console wars as I choose to call them reached their peak at the end of the 1990’s leaving in its wake industry giants who were once so great like Atari to linger on as software developers from where they had begun.
Going into the new millennium Sega was first to launch their new console called the Dreamcast with newer and slicker hardware, this was a first strike for Sega, as they always do in order to capture the market first off. Sony was still caught up in product testing with their PS2 so Sega got some early footholds. Then, Microsoft saw opportunity within the market place and threw their own hat into the ring with the release of the Xbox. From here on in the console wars would reach their peak and enter a new phase of war for the "next gen" in a time where consoles go Live!