It was a sunny afternoon like any other when I stepped through my front door, bookbag in hand, and heard the sound of a crowd cheering down the hall. I stood and listened for a moment as men grunted and the familiar sound of a slapshot emanated from my brother’s room. I dropped my things at the door and raced into his room where his brand new Sega Genesis sat where his Nintendo used to be. In place of the old gray box, sticky with soda spray and stained with years of fingerprints, sat an aerodynamic black console with red accents. Silver letters touted “16 Bits” and “high definition graphics” around the circular frame that housed the cartridge slot. In that slot and on the television screen, a copy of NHL Hockey – Electronic Arts’ first entry into their long-running franchise.
It lacked the player’s license, but all the teams were represented, as were the basics of the sport. Infractions such as offside, icing, major and minor penalties were all included. The crowd reacted to great saves, goals, and even booed when their home team was on the receiving end of a hard bodycheck. Lights reflected off the ice surface, animations were fluid, and players skated with a certain momentum and would tire over time. Blades of Steel on the NES (and in the arcades) had been impressive, but this was a whole new level – the next level, one might say. This was realism far beyond what the NES had been capable of, not just in terms of graphics but the complexity of gameplay.
My brother was primarily a sports gamer, but even I was entranced by what I was seeing. The TV ads had blared “Genesis does what Nintendon’t,” and I was skeptical. No way could Sega dethrone my beloved Nintendo. One look at NHL Hockey and my skepticism vanished. When I asked if I could play Sonic the Hedgehog, the game that came packed with the system at the time, he gave me the usual stipulation that I could but I was only allowed to play the system when he was home.
The Blue Blur sped past the corporate logo as a choir sang “Seeee-gaaaaa!” then Sonic popped out of his logo, wagging his finger with all the 90s ‘tude he could muster and I was sold. The instant the game started, I had been converted. Nintendo was the past, this was the future. So what if the NES had hundreds of games? Sonic looked better than all of them! The colors were so vibrant and beautiful. The graphics practically leapt off the screen. Even the backgrounds were full of animation. And the music… The music was incredible. The memories come flooding back every time I hear Green Hill Zone – Act 1 to this very day.
The Genesis had already established a small following thanks to solid arcade ports and sports titles that touted professional player and coach endorsements on the packaging – Joe Montana Football, James “Buster” Douglas Knockout Boxing, Pat Riley Basketball – but it was Sega’s brilliant strategy of packing in Sonic with every console that made people sit up and take notice. It wasn’t an unheard of strategy – Nintendo eventually packaged Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt in with their 8-bit juggernaut – but Sonic was still brand new at the time. It was the killer app – the game that would make people want a Genesis, and Sega were giving it away with the console at a reduced cost!
By the time Nintendo released the successor to the NES, aptly named the Super Nintendo, Sega had effectively painted the industry leader as old, outdated, slow, and a machine for kids. Sega marketed the Genesis as the hip system for teenagers who had grown out of Nintendo’s family friendly model. Their ads went right at Nintendo – comparing footage of the comparably slow Mario Kart to games like Sonic 2 and touted “Blast Processing,” little more than a marketing term for a faster central processor, but it worked. Sega began gaining market share and shelf space, and eventually overtook Nintendo for a brief time. The shots had been fired and the Console Wars were on.
Kids in schoolyards all across the country picked sides and argued the merits of their console of choice, disparaging the other. There was even that weird hipster kid who said NEC’s ill-dated TurboGrafix 16 was the best, but it barely registered a blip on the radar as the two titans duked it out. Sega had gone from less than 10% market share to over 50% in a single console generation. When I eventually convinced my parents to buy me a Super Nintendo for Christmas (Divorce – the easiest way to exploit parents), I was so firmly entrenched in Sega’s fanbase that I practically bled Sega blue. The SNES sat under a dresser and was mostly used to play the superior port of Mortal Kombat II – at least until I got the 32X version.
In fairness, it wasn’t just smart marketing. The Genesis truly was a great system, loaded with great games. There were plenty of standard games such as excellent ports of arcade hits like Altered Beast and Capcom’s Strider, but Sega showed a willingness to take chances and create daring, unique games. ToeJam & Earl featured two funky aliens exploring randomly generated levels for parts of their crashed ship in humorous a two-player Rogue-like. Phantasy Star II eschewed the traditional Dungeons & Dragons-influence of Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior for a science-fiction setting with a deep story. It even killed off a main character halfway through the game years before Final Fantasy VII. Shining Force was a turn-based strategy-RPG not unlike Nintendo’s Fire Emblem series, which had never seen a Western release before the Gameboy Advance games years later. Comix Zone was a beat ‘em up with an unforgettable living comic book aesthetic. Ecco the Dolphin was a challenging adventure game with no killing, or even any human characters. Even Sonic himself was a far cry from Nintendo’s mascot. He wasn’t necessarily better than Mario; he was just different.
There were plenty of mainstream games too, of course. Konami graced the Genesis with exclusives like Castlevania: Bloodlines and Contra: Hard Corps. Sega and Capcom eventually worked out a deal to bring their immensely popular Street Fighter II to the Genesis. The Special Championship Edition featured additional turbo speed settings that even the SNES Hyper Fighting version lacked, though it practically required the purchase of a new six-button controller in order to be enjoyed fully.
Most importantly, Electronic Arts brought their popular John Madden Football title from the PC to the Genesis and started a revolution in sports games. Though many of their games also appeared on the SNES, the consensus was that the Genesis versions were better thanks to its faster processor. EA became one of the most prominent and prolific developers for the Genesis. In addition to their annual sports games, they produced games such as the James Pond trilogy, the fantastic Strike series of isometric helicopter shooters, terrific and original one-offs like Haunting starring Polterguy, and alternative sports games such as the irreverent Mutant League Football, and a trio of combat motorcycle racing games called Road Rash.
Sega’s in-house developers also worked wonders with the system. After striking some high profile licensing deals, Sega released games such as Castle of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse - a sublime platformer that showed off the power of the console early on – Spider-Man, and later two X-Men action games. The arcade hit Golden Axe received a solid port, as well as a Genesis-only sequel (though it should be noted the eventual arcade-only sequel was superior), but as far as beat ‘em ups go, the Streets of Rage trilogy set the bar so high it still hasn’t been topped.
I have countless fond memories associated with the Genesis. Streets of Rage was the first game I bought for the system. In fact, I didn’t even own a Genesis myself. I bought it in secret to play on my brother’s console when he wasn’t around. I eventually sold my NES and all my games to buy my own Genesis at a local comic book shop. My friends and I would go to the video store, rent a few games, then stay up practically all night playing them. I remember renting SNK’s Fatal Fury, and mocking its paltry three characters until we started playing and realized what a great fighting game it actually was. The Immortal, another EA published game, was another favorite. Despite being a solely single player experience, its soul-crushing difficulty led to a lot of passing the controller around and putting our heads together to figure out the game’s puzzles. Eventually, I bought my own copy, and after being stuck on the game’s infamous worm room for ages, I broke down and called EA’s hint line only to be told it was mostly luck that would get me through. Road Rash was another favorite. We rented the game almost a dozen times, and the final time I returned home from the store to discover my brother had finally just bought a copy of his own.
It’s almost impossible to talk about the Genesis, or the Super Nintendo, without mentioning Mortal Kombat. When Midway’s smash hit came home, Nintendo’s version looked and sounded fantastic, but they foolishly decided to censor the game’s major selling point – the blood and fatalities. Sega wisely left it intact, but hidden behind a simple code – ABACABB, a reference to the album Abacab, by the band Genesis. The Genesis version of Mortal Kombat outsold the SNES port almost 3:1.
Not everyone was thrilled about the uncensored MK coming home to impressionable children, however. Advancements in technology had made video game violence too realistic for some, and the United States Senate took notice. In a series of hearings that featured input from both Sega and Nintendo, whose chairman Howard Lincoln proudly proclaimed that level of violence would never appear on a Nintendo system. Among the other games discussed in these hearings was Digital Pictures’ Night Trap, an early FMV game for the Sega CD – the first of several add-ons designed to prolong the Genesis’ lifespan.
The Sega CD wasn’t the first CD-based console to market, but with Sega’s branding behind it, it outsold NEC’s TurboGrafx CD. Its single speed CD-ROM drive wasn’t ideal for gaming, and the video quality was grainy, but the Sega CD does have a pretty solid library of hidden gems including the Lunar series of RPGs, an amazing sequel to the Genesis-exclusive fighting game Eternal Champions, a port of Final Fight that eclipsed the SNES version in every way, and Snatcher, a cyberpunk adventure game from Hideo Kojima that was heavily inspired by Blade Runner and now fetches extremely high prices.
I got a Sega CD for Christmas, but in the weeks prior to that I would hook the system up when my parents weren’t home and play Sewer Shark, the God-awful pack-in game. Thankfully, when Christmas rolled around I also got a copy of The Amazing Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin, an excellent enhanced port of the Genesis game with new stages, CD audio, and animated story sequences.
Ironically, it was Sega’s focus on add-ons that ultimately disrupted the Genesis’ momentum. As the Super Nintendo began gaining ground, Sega of Japan foolishly thought that offering expensive extra hardware was the key – completely ignoring Sega of America’s strategies that had put them on top. Sega of Japan resented Sega of America’s success, and in the first of many self-sabotaging acts, insisted on unveiling the 32X – yet another add-on with a 32-bit processor and its own library of games.
The 32X was a flop. Most of its games were barely enhanced ports of existing titles, and most of the original games were lackluster. Games like Cosmic Carnage featured Neo-Geo style scaling effects, but played poorly. Space Harrier and Afterburner both received arcade-perfect ports, but the fact remained that those were already 5-year-old games. Mortal Kombat II was a step-up from the Genesis version, but it was debatable whether it surpassed the SNES version, and if you already had a SNES there was certainly no reason to buy new hardware just for that. That’s not to say there weren’t a handful of decent games. In addition to the aforementioned titles, the 32X received a port of the PC and SNES game Blackthorne with new graphics and an exclusive world. Metalhead showcased some impressive 3D (for its time). Star Wars Arcade was fun in short bursts. There was even a port of Virtua Fighter that was very impressive if you didn’t feel like spending $400 on the Sega Saturn.
The 32X was also a Christmas gift, but I never owned more than three games for it originally. Even I couldn’t defend it, especially not when the SNES was capable of playing games like Star Fox, Doom, and Donkey Kong Country that looked better than most 32X games. Worse yet, it was another misstep by Sega that saw them once again losing ground to Nintendo.
When the dust settled and the Console Wars were over, the Super Nintendo had outsold the Genesis, but for a brief, shining moment, Sega was on top of the world. They had made a believer out of many gamers who would stick with them throughout the years – bad decisions and all – because of their willingness to take chances.
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