I can still remember it well. It was the early nineties and the second generation game consoles (from 8 to 16-bit) had just come out. One of the local department stores in the center of Rotterdam had a large electronics section on the second floor and the two systems were displayed behind glass: The Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. It was a time without the Internet where you only heard stories of experiences from those you knew. But these systems were new and what this store had done was put in between the two systems a card with their specifications on it. How many colors the systems could show, what the processor was, etc. It is the first moment I can remember that you had the feeling that you had to make a choice between two systems. Which camp you belonged to. That rivalry in the games industry has never disappeared. You can still see that on almost any gaming forum. And although I now myself buy the systems on which the games I want to play are release (which have been several since), the original source of these wars was in the ‘battle’ between Nintendo and Sega, summarized for me at the time on that little note.

The documentary Console Wars shows how the employees at Nintendo and Sega experienced that time. Continue reading →