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Fourth generation of gaming

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

The 16-bit era was the fourth generation of video game consoles. It was dominated by the rivalry between the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis, making it one of the most intense periods of competition in North American video game history. The TurboGrafx 16 was also part of this era, however it had little success breaking into the fray.

Contents
1 The beginning
2 The "console war"
3 Add-ons
4 European importing
5 In the end
6 Consoles of the 16-bit era
7 Video game franchises established during the 16-bit era
8 See also

The beginning

In 1989 Sega and NEC simultaneously released the Genesis and TurboGrafx 16 just before Christmas. The two systems did very brisk business despite the fact that Nintendo had about a 90% share of the market for the Nintendo Entertainment System, proving that the market was ripe for new technologies. The more powerful Genesis quickly outpaced the TG-16's sales, and took a commanding lead starting in early 1990. In 1991, Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog, in response to the impending release of Nintendo's updated system, the Super NES.

In a fortuitous circumstance, 1989 was when the US Court of Appeals ruled that Nintendo's licensing agreement, which had been largely responsible for the lack of games for the Sega Master System and Atari 7800, was illegal, and Sega quickly and efficiently obtained licensing agreements of their own with numerous companies. By the end of 1990, more than 30 third parties were making games for the Genesis, compared to a mere eight for the TG-16.

Sega advertisements during the 1991 holiday season underscored the speed of their new mascot. Also in late 1991, Nintendo released the 16-bit Super NES to compete with the Genesis. Packaged with the new system was Super Mario World, a new game from the very popular Mario franchise. The 16-bit war was born.

The "console war"

Sega and Nintendo pushed hard for advantages in the marketplace. The Sega mascot Sonic the Hedgehog was swiftly marketed as the "cooler" alternative to Nintendo's Mario. Sega coined a marketing term called "Blast Processing" - made-up nonsense, posed as a technical advantage for the Genesis.

Nintendo countered with franchise games such as the Mario series, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong Country, and many others for the Super NES and Game Boy. Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992 amidst a huge marketing push (in the UK, it was released on "Sonic Tuesday", an odd pun), which became more popular than the first game. Less than a year later, Nintendo released enhanced remakes of the original NES Super Mario games on the Super NES titled Super Mario All-Stars.

When the Mortal Kombat controversy hit the consoles, Nintendo decided to censor the game's gore, while Sega turned a blind eye. Nintendo had long had a policy of censorship, but now Sega began to position itself as the more "mature" console, willing to give gamers the content Nintendo deemed "not family friendly".

Many (particularly younger) gamers labelled themselves as either a Nintendo fan or a Sega fan, and the two were mutually exclusive. Even single-format magazines got in on the rivalry, with poorly constructed attacks at eachother's hardware and software fuelling the flames of fanboyism.

By 1994 the TurboGrafx 16 was discontinued, due to poor sales in North America. NEC released the 32-bit PC-FX console the same year, exclusively for Japan.

Add-ons

Nintendo and Sega also competed with hardware peripherals for their consoles. Sega made two attempts: the Sega Mega-CD (Sega CD in the US) and the Sega 32X, neither of which were very successful.

Nintendo made an attempt with their successful Satellaview and Super Game Boy. The former was a satellite service released only on the Japanese market and the latter an adapter for the Super Nintendo that allowed Game Boy games to be displayed on a TV.

Interestingly, Nintendo, working along with Sony, also had plans to create a CD-ROM drive for the Super NES, similar to the Sega CD, but eventually decided not to go through with that project. The project was cancelled, and Sony used the name ("PlayStation") for their own stand-alone CD-based console, overseen by former SNES sound-chip engineer, Ken Kuturagi.

European importing

The 16-bit era was also the era when the act of buying imported US games became more established in Europe, and regular stores began to carry them. This was especially popular with SNES games, due to several reasons:

  • The European PAL-games were usually much slower than their American NTSC-US-counterparts. European and American televisions have different refresh rates, and developers often had a hard time converting games designed for the American and Japanese NTSC standard to the European standard.
  • Few RPGs were released in Europe because they would have needed to been translated into many different languages. RPGs tend to contain much more text than other genres, so one of the biggest problems was simply fitting all of the full translations into one cartridge! The cost of creating multiple full translations was also prohibitive.

So-called multi-x chips, which were installed in the consoles and converters, were common at this time. The chips were accessories that bypassed the built-in lockout mechanism. However, due to Super FX chips and different copy protection techniques, European consumers were often forced to buy new converters at regular intervals or mod their consoles in order for the imported games to function properly.

Popular US games imported at this time:

* - It did have a European release, but the game was rather unsuccessful commercially. The Swedish video game magazine Super PLAY's editor in chief attributed its failure to the fact that by the time the game was released in Europe, RPG fans had already bought imported US versions.

'Secret of Mana was actually released officially in all of Europe, but long after the US release. RPG fans had already bought the game through grey importers, which led to low sell numbers.'

To this day, the game remains rather hard to get hold of in the Scandinavian market and are often auctioned off at high-prices (about 50 EUR as of 2004) for the complete PAL-set; cartridge, box, manual and the map.

In the end

By 1995, the 16-bit craze had started to die down due to Nintendo and Sega both having new consoles in the works, as well as "outsider" manufacturers such as Sony, Commodore, and Phillips. These machines were referred to in the specialist press as the "superconsoles" due to their use of then-innovative 3D graphics, and are known as the 32-bit era.

In the current the 128-bit era, Nintendo competes with Sony and Microsoft. Their former rival, Sega, is now a third-party software developer for all three companies' consoles.

Consoles of the 16-bit era

Video game franchises established during the 16-bit era

See also

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