Game On

BY David Hewitt

It began in 1889 as a family business producing traditional playing cards, and has dabbled in toys, taxis, and even a ‘love hotel’. But most of us first encountered the name Nintendo through Game and Watch. In the early 1980s, Gunpei Yokoi’s innovative handheld LCD games were everywhere. Every self-respecting kid had a schoolbook with the pages precisely razored out to conceal one. You could hand over your lunch money to an enterprising older kid to prise open your game and disable the sound, so you could play it during class in complete secrecy.

Sega has its roots in an American company that sold coin-operated amusements to military bases during the 1940s. Having relocated to Japan, where it enjoyed some success selling photo booths, Sega became a major player in the burgeoning arcade industry of the early 1980s.

But in 1983, the home videogame industry crashed. Price and quality plummeted, and the public lost interest in what seemed like just another fad. Atari buried millions of ET game cartridges in New Mexico landfill, and most assumed the games industry was buried with them.

In 1985, however, Nintendo redesigned its Japanese Famicom console and packaged it with a plastic lightgun and a robot. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System, and it saved gaming. The cartridges bore the “Seal of Quality”, and for a glorious while, that proudly worn badge actually meant something. You didn’t play videogames – you played Nintendo.

Sega’s Master System held its own against the NES. But the 1989 launch of the Megadrive changed everything. Remember the blue blur that made you stop and stare when you first saw it racing by on a shop window TV screen? Yuji Naka’s Sonic the Hedgehog had ‘attitude’ (which meant he was spiky and wore red shoes – these weren’t the days of Grand Theft Auto), and he literally ran circles around Nintendo’s Mario. Many fondly remember this era as gaming’s golden age.

Not to be outdone, Nintendo released the 16-bit Super Nintendo in 1991. A new Mario title, fancy “Mode 7” scaling effects, and strong support from Japanese third-party videogame developers saw it reclaim much of Nintendo’s lost market share. Meanwhile, Nintendo’s Game Boy was gathering steam. It would become the best-selling videogame system of all time (over 120 million units sold), besting hardware from Atari, Bandai, SNK and Sega.

Sega’s ill-fated 32X and Mega CD add-ons splintered the Megadrive user base, and even Sega’s biggest fans became disenchanted as support for them dwindled. The promising Saturn and Dreamcast both fell victim to this loss of faith. Meanwhile, the shadow of Sony’s PlayStation juggernaut fell over even Nintendo. The Nintendo 64 and Gamecube consoles couldn’t continue Nintendo’s dominance, despite further hardware innovation and some excellent first-party titles. Game developers and a maturing audience jumped ship to the PlayStation.

These days, sadly, the only Sega console you can buy is second-hand. Nintendo, meanwhile, is hoping that its upcoming Wii, with its motion-sensing, gyroscopic controller, will save a stagnating games industry once again. Here’s hoping.