You know? I always found console wars to be quite funny.
PC "Master Race" embarrass themselves from time to time, too.
Today we can see Sony and Microsoft fanboys sniping at each other,
taking pot shots every time the company they don't feel "attached to"
gives them the chance to do so, just like clockwork, or even trying
to undervalue the system of their "rivals" to make "theirs" better,
using whatever silly argument as weapons of choice, while
making any forum or online platform their battlefield.
This is something that has been happening for a looong time,
and as time passes, the more embarrassing and juvenile gets to me,
even more when you find that the average age of "gamers" is, well...
35 Years. No, really.
Sounds crazy to me. I'm not even 30 at this point in time.
But anyway, all this really got going back in the fourth generation,
the so called "16-Bit Generation", and as unnecessary as it was back
then as it is today (Unless you're making money out of it, I guess),
at the very, very least there was a kinda sorta point to it... Somewhat.
The two most popular home consoles back then where really different.
Hardware was very different, controllers were very different, the types of games
that stud out on each platform were very different, and both platform creators
offered very different first party games.
While the discussion on the "War level" I find useless, at least things
varied a lot from one to the other, so discussions where at least, logical.
Also, back then the average ages were far lower, that kinda counts too.
But anyway, let's talk about one of the two contestants of that "first war".
This is the introduction for the Super Nintendo.
And I feel sorry for the "console wars" to be one of the most "memorable" things of that time and for using it as the introduction, as I find other matters during this generation much more interesting, but I also got to rant about it for a minute, so whatever. Anyway...
As you may imagine, the Super Nintendo, or Super Nintendo Entertainment System, is the successor of the original Nintendo Entertainment System.
Funny enough, the SNES, for shorts, was the last console to appear during the fourth generation. The NES proved to be such a hit that still sold decently even after systems like the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive and the TurboGrafx-16 / PC-Engine made their apparition, to the point where the NES still sold more units than those 16-Bit systems for a short while.
This gave Nintendo the chance to wait a bit longer on the plans for a new system, but the need to start working on a better system started to rise nonetheless once the interest in the NES started to soften.
For the design of this new creation, Nintendo brought back their golden man that gave them the success of the previous generation: Masayuki Uemura.
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| Some very weird prototypes of the American version of the Super Nintendo. I get the first one, but the second one is like a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma. |
Fortunately for Uemura's (and Nintendo's) plans, that extra time that the NES gave them was very, very nice advantage. They could add better hardware to make for a more impressive machine, with functions that the other companies' systems couldn't replicate (or at least, not nearly as well).
For starters, the palettes could be much better than the ones present on the Genesis /MD, or the TG-16/PC-E, but beyond that, it would be capable to scale and rotate graphics (by itself, backgrounds, and with the help of on-cartridge special chips, also sprites) which opened a lot of possibilities; it could do transparencies, and imitate 3D environments thanks to the, affectionately called "Mode 7".
All that was great, and a gigantic jump from the NES, but if you ask me, the biggest pride and joy of the system was, the Nintendo S-SMP, or in other words, the audio processing unit of the console. Created through a collaboration between Nintendo and Sony (back then, renowned by their sound and video equipment), composed of a SPC700 core, a 16-Bit DSP and 64KB of SRAM, and a 64 bit boot ROM. The audio is pretty much independent from the rest of the console, too.
If you don't care about the technical stuff (and it's not like I understand how everything works exactly either), let me say this: the jump in quality from the NES to this was so huge that left Sega's and NEC's systems quite a bit behind. Of course, amazing sound tools are nothing without someone who knows how to use them well; and we have great soundtracks on the Genesis/MD and TG-16/PC-E, but, well, better tools are better no matter how you look at them, and they would end being used to craft some of the most memorable and fine soundtracks of the medium.
I personally would have chosen different games, but it's a decent representation of SNES music!
Released in Japan on the 21th November, 1990, it had a really successful launch, selling the entire initial stock of 300.000 units in a few measly hours; and it would never leave the first spot on sold hardware on that country, making the so named "SuFami" a great heir to the Famicom's throne.
But that's just one "region". When we look at it internationally, the story becomes quite different and much more interesting. By the time Nintendo's 16-Bit system was ready for a worldwide release, Sega's console was already being sold for some time, and they had the attention of people who wanted to jump into this new generation. Not only that, Sega had already in their hands several western developers making games for them, specially sport games, and also had a good chunk of Arcade ports; not to mention, the marketing.
It's -not- a secret to everybody that Sega of America (and later reused in Sega of Europe) used some, for the time, really aggressive marketing tactics in North America and Europe to gain attention, improve their sales, and most important of all, to humiliate their direct competition, Nintendo, with things like the infamous "Genesis does what Nintendon't", which we got even on song form, which I find quite catchy, and super cheesy. Nintendo would be pointed as "for babies" and Sega would always show pride on how much Arcade stuff they got, going so far as to coin their visuals "Arcade Graphics".
Sega of America would even invent things like "Blast Processing", a marketing term used to point at one thing the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive was better than the Super Nintendo, processing power.
On the other hand, Sega also made deals with famous celebrities, like Michael Jackson himself.
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| Yeah, they went to this extent to gain attention and popularity. As of today it kind of has the opposite effect... |
But of course, Casa de Mario would take their own weapons too. For starters, Nintendo of America and Nintendo of Europe would get more "intense" marketing, trying to appeal to older audiences in a similar way that Sega did. Gaming had to be edgy and cool, hip and in-the-know, you got that?
I have to admit, playing on such screen could be cool.
Not only that, just like Sega got relations with sport-game makers, Nintendo used their connections with companies that already worked with them hand had built relations during the prior generation to secure exclusive bombs that would put their system on the map. For example, one of those exclusive games was Street Fighter II, which would be "Only for Super Nintendo" for over a year, something that added a lot of value to their system.
Mario and Sonic would become flags for each system, and people would argue constantly about who was better. As far as sales go, there wasn't a clear victor during the generation, as both consoles would one-up the other, constantly changing who was the leader and, of course making each companies' successes be announced as loud as they could.
But that changed in 1994, when certain old face came back to the front stage.
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| This put the world upside down back then. |
Combined with a compression system created by Rare themselves, they could store sprites with better fidelity, it quickly became the centre of attention, with video game outlets and people making a lot of noise around it.
When the game released it caused a big impact, with both people and the critic having high praise for the game, to the point that it actually gave Nintendo a slight advantage over Sega, something that would last over the second half of the generation, as other big games were released. I didn't know this, but Nintendo's system even rivalled the Play Station 1 and the Sega Saturn for some time, as sales were strong.
Anyway, after several years of fighting for leadership, sales-wise Nintendo would end up in first place on North America, but not very easily as they managed this by the end of the generation, with Sega on second spot and NEC's TurboGrafx-16 on a far third one (although the system was quite successful in Japan, thankfully!).
I've looked around for a bit, and I found this revised document from 2014 where it states that Super Nintendo sold 20 million units against Genesis' 18.5 million units on the U.S. giving the crown of that kingdom to Nintendo's Brain of the Beast (it was named like this in certain places, like here in Spain!). Somewhere I read about SNES selling 23 million, so I really don't know which is the true number, but it's really not that important. Before this appeared, others documents point to the opposite, curiously enough.
Overall, Nintendo conquered on North America and Japan, while Sega would be king on Europe and South America, which is pretty much the same thing that happened during the NES / Master System era. As far as how many units each sold, seems like Sega managed to sold around 35 million systems, and Nintendo around 50 million systems, thus ending the generation and this silly, silly war (and starting the N64 vs PS1 vs Sega Saturn one. *sigh*).
...At the very least, on a company level, because even today, decades later, you can find people arguing and fighting over this stupid matter.
And that lets us to talk about actually interesting stuff!
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| W-Wait, is there a Scooby Doo for Super Nintendo...? |
"Why can't I like both?"
As a kid, I had a NES, and I loved it (although I still have nightmares about Bart VS. The World, ugh), and then I got a Mega Drive, as I was completely absorbed by Sonic The Hedgehog, after seeing my cousins playing it in their home. I also loved it, trying many different games and enjoying it as much as I did the NES before it.
But I never understood (neither I do now) that mentality. To me the SNES and the SMD were two systems that attracted me like a fly to honey, obviously spending much more on one, the system I had, but I always was interested in what type of games the other had, even if growing up I did not have much chance to play SNES.
And now, as an adult (or a close approximation to one), the more silly I found the entire thing, because I knew more about each system. You see, to me, the Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive / Genesis are not rival systems as much as two pieces that can combine, and each one cover the weaknesses of the other.
To me, more than hardware, more than sales and popularity, a console is made by its games, and I find that, what the SMD lacks, the SNES can provide, and what the SNES lacks, the SMD can provide.
When you take a bit to see at what made each important and interesting, when you start looking at what games are worth to take a look, you'll find out that each system ends with a very different list of games, with different genres topping each list, but most important of all, each list would contain almost completely different sets of games.
That's what I see when I look at these two systems. Two almost completely different libraries of "decent to great" games that combine quite well and make each system worth to own and love, something that really hasn't been repeated at the same level since then.
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| Genesis' upper hand at fast and frantic Shoot'em Ups is a big contrast with Super Nintendo's superiority at adventurous and long RPGS. Also, Gaiares guy, I'll always love you. |
And that's the beauty of it for me. In contrast, I look at PS4 and XBO right now (or at least at the time of writing this) and I only see two black boxes with libraries that rely heavily on third party multi platform games, thus having for the most part very similar libraries, beyond the few exclusive games each system has... And then you look a bit further and you can see PC being pretty much the same, but more (except exclusives, although some made their way there too).
Of course, the world of gaming back then and right now are very different, and third party publishers can't (and don't want) to make games for a single system unless they get something from it because of the costs, but that really doesn't change that those two newer systems don't have nearly as much personality through their libraries as the older two.
Not to mention, the console wars was a creation, for the most part, by the American divisions of those companies (mostly Sega by being the first one to do it, I guess), so, I find all that even more silly.
But I digress...
Going back to the Super Nintendo, one of the elements that the Super Nintendo imprinted on the gaming industry, as a whole, was through its controller. It was a huge jump forward compared to the NES controller, instead of two, now there were four face buttons, giving much more freedom as to how design your games, like for example having 4 different actions for a character, instead of 2. Or using them for shortcut-buttns for menu driven games, to access faster certain sub-menus.
Not only that, but Nintendo also added two triggers, one at each side of the controller, logically called L and R. These two were a great addition too because it let the player to hold up to 3 buttons at the same time (L+R+Front Button) plus moving the D-Pad easily, something that could add a lot of room for control schemes and gameplay ideas. Again, this would change a lot how games were designed and how you controlled certain things.
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| I forgot, but add the Dreamcast controller too! Also, Microsoft, you fiend, you even copied the colors! |
The overall design and position of the buttons was so well received that it would end up becoming the standard for how controllers would be designed up to this very day. And also endless comments on how X copied Y (which, to be honest are right, but hey, it's also better for us, those who are going to play, I guess).
On the other hand, unlike their competitors, Super Nintendo would not end up with a CD-based peripheral like the Sega CD or the TurboGrafx CD. Thinking about it, the system really didn't need it one that badly.
With the system selling strong, there was no need to make it, and the hardware was, for the most part, already superior to the competition, which meant no need for two devices connected to the electricity, less wires around, and you had the certainty that all the software released for it was accessible with just the base system; although, being fair, there were versions of Sega's and NEC's systems that combined their cartridge-original system with their CD-based add-on in one, unique machine. Not to mention how expensive both, the add-on, or the entire combined system could be (and I was one of the three or four Spanish that had a Sega CD, so I know what I'm talking about!).
But if it didn't happen wasn't for a lack of trying, though.
Here, let me present you the Super Famicom CD... or, rather, the Play Station.
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| MWAHAHAHA, YES, CRY, YOU FANBOY, CRY FOR [Name of the company you like] ONCE WORKED TOGETHER ALONGSIDE [Name of the company you dislike]! |
Just like the Sega CD, some prototypes were add-ons connected to a Super Nintendo, while others were entirely unique machines that combined both hardwares. Funny how, for a time, it was just a rumour, but then images started to appear, until one day, the real deal made it's appearance.
Sadly, after taking a look at it's insides, it was discovered that the hardware was rather disappointing. Unlike the Sega CD, that added a bit more power to the system, this one didn't; and in fact, in some aspects it was worse than the Super Nintendo itself, to the point where Ben Heck (the man in the video above) said that the Sega CD was simply better.
The only real advantage were in the format itself, the CDs for their extended storage size, so it's not that surprising that it ended un being nothing more than an experiment Obviously, this experiment ended up creating the Play Station, the first system of Sony Maybe in a parallel dimension, Nintendo and Sony continued together, and dominated the entire planet, and maybe, even the universe...
But, as I said in the beginning, what we lost may as well be nothing really important, at the very least, on the short end.
For one, SNES cartridges could store up to 6 Megabytes, which was six times more than the biggest NES cartridge could store, (and that one was for the English version of Mother 1, also called Earthbound Zero, a game that didn't release in the end). On the other hand, Mega Drive cartridges were only 4 Megabytes (Except for Super Street Fighter II, which used a rare 5MB one), and the Turbografx-16 Hu-cards could only store 1 Megabyte of data (besides, again, Street Fighter II which used a 2.5 Megabytes card).
Not only that, but most of the good CD-based games on those add-ons used the extra capacity for music; something that the SNES already did better compared to other systems; cutscenes, which could be done (but with less flair) and FMV, and losing FMV games wasn't much of a problem for most people, either.
Further into this; some Super Nintendo games would make use of special chips that would improve certain aspects of the system to give it even more possibilities, like the famous FX Chip, something CDs couldn't have offered.
And the biggest point of all, the SNES already had big games without the need of CDs, RPGs are probably the best known genre of the system, after all. Adding load times to those would have been horrible too, in my humble opinion (Just think of the Squaresoft SNES to PS1 ports) .
In fact, the Super Nintendo library is pretty damn extensive as is, with boatloads of cool games, and a huge list of games that never came outside of Japan too, a good chunk of them which thankfully have been translated (and in fact Super Nintendo is still probably the most popular system for translation years after they started).
Something I mentioned before is that the SNES library has a bigger "home-console" feeling than Sega's machine, and I said that with the best intentions. Games started to distance themselves a bit from the arcade design, with many more adding battery saves, and becoming more complex and robust than before, long enough that you needed several sittings to advance and finally beat them, in contrast to those more arcade-y experiences.
I ask myself if that's one of the reasons why it seems that the Super Nintendo is quite popular today, even more than other retro systems, between the release of translation all throughout the years and games feeling more "heavier".
Another interesting thing to talk about the SNES, is something that, like often times with old stuff, we did know knothing about until internet let us explore, and that's a peripheral that would add online-like features to the Super Nintendo. It was an add-on named the Satellaview.
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| ...Still smaller than a Xbox One. |
The Satellaview was a satellite modem that let Nintendo offer online-like services by streaming data through radio waves. Really interesting stuff (I find mystifying how old technology works, like cassettes), if you ask me.
Anyway, this service was offered through a collaboration with a TV & Radio company named St. GIGA, company that already offered similar services by themselves.
It's one of the most curious pieces of old gaming hardware you can talk about. You could buy the Satellaview itself for around 140~180 dollars, or you could rent one for six months for around 50 bucks, if my money-converting abilities are good. With the Satellaview was included a cartridge with 8 rewritable Megabits (so, 2 real Megabytes) to be able to store information.
Once you had the equipment, you would connect to St.GIGA at certain hours, appropriately named "The Super Famicom Hours". In those time slots streamed, compressed data would be aired, and your Satellaview would decode such data and reproduce it as software in your console.
The type of content was very varied, like exclusive games unique for this platform, digital versions of retail games, varied info. about the Satellaview, read magazines with different types of subjects, like public events, music, future games, and more. In the magazines example, you could actually hear people reading the magazines, as if it was an actual radio broadcast.
But it does not end there, as this was a much more Nintendo-esque experience, for you see, the menu of the Satellaview was in fact an interactive city that you could walk around and explore. It's somewhat similar as to walk around an Earthbound city.
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| It really has an Earthbound vibe! |
After that, you're dropped into the city itself, and you're free to explore it. Each building is a different service, like downloading games, reading those magazines, read announcements of St.GIGA, see the winners of contests, and even find strange things, like the Tofu Building, and such.
Here are a few screenshots I took, please click on them to see them better!
Fortunately, as you can see by the screenshots, this BIOS/Menu/City now can be seen and interacted with in English, thanks to the translation that LuigiBlood made for it! Thank you so much for letting us understand this weird but awesome little piece of video game history!
The amount of content that you could access through the Satellaview seems to be much bigger than the content you could access through Sega's own Sega Channel or Mega-Net, you can even take a look at the broadcast data and take a look for youself; you could even download RPG Maker or even music-composing tools!
Heck, I forgot mentioned already that there were contests! You see, Nintendo would organize different types of events, which you would caught on by exploring the city and such, with challenges like quizzes, or doing something in the downloadable games available like getting a high score and send it to Nintendo. Because it was a subscription, you could get sent to you physical rewards like phone cards, watches, small toys or even more rewritable cartridges so you can back up more games and stuff from Satellaview. You would even get a small "diploma" with your feat.
They would even gift small electronic gaming machines made by Konami named Beat Mania (Bemani for shorts) Pocket. I've never played with one, but they seem far more interesting than those Game & Watch clones I saw as a kid here. I've also read that once they gave golden statues of Mario, the very same that also were used to give to stores to decorate and call attention to consumers (just like those cat statues that move their paws, but it's just Mario being his jolly ol' self).
Nowadays they seem to be a highly wanted collectible!
I'm probably talking too much already, but, all of this is so interesting that I can't quite stop, but I'll comment one last thing about the Satellaview, and it's probably one of the coolest yet unneeded things ever.
Because St.GIGA was, you know, a TV & Radio station, sometimes they would air Audio Dramas, which were like soaps that you hear while you do things, with background music and sound effects and such. Nintendo and St.GIGA made something very curious:
Certain games, like The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, were offered through Satellaview while streaming CD quality music, and voice acting with characters narrating what was happening, talking to each other, or offering advices to the players as they advanced through the game.
That had to be such a cool thing to see live... I'll end with the Satellaview. It is a really awesome thing to read about, and it found decent success during the Super Famicom's life.
Before I end, I'd like to talk about one last accessory, and it's also a very neat little one, it's the Super Game Boy.
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| Now you're playing with power... Portable-on-Home-Console Super Power! |
Launched in 1994, it was a cartridge you would insert in your Super Nintendo, and a Game Boy cartridge inside it, and it let you play Game Boy games on your TV!
...In reality, it was pretty much the Game Boy hardware inside a cartridge. But there were quite a few neat things to do with it! For starters, you could add colour to your GB games, by changing the shades for backgrounds and sprites, years before Game Boy Colour was a thing.
Even more than that, you could put frames surrounding the game's screen, and even draw over it (and over the game screen if you wanted); some games would have their unique frames, and there's even animated borders!
In japan, a Super Game Boy 2 was released too, easy to spot thanks to its blue transparent case (the 90's were all about transparent cases!). It added some improvements, like Link Cable support (Pokémon became a thing in 1995 there), even more borders and a few extras for some games. One very interesting about this accessory is that a certain Space Invaders game for the GB had inside it a full Super Nintendo version that could be played through the SGB. Wizard technology, I tell you.
And besides the curiosities, it was a very useful thing, if you liked Game Boy games, as it let you play without the subpar screen of the original model, without worrying about batteries and getting enough light on the screen to see what were you doing. Not only that, this would develop into actual retrocompatibility in future Nintendo systems.
They didn't need to do all of this, but there it is. Thanks!
Anyway, I think this is enough. Super Nintendo is a great system with many, many games to offer you, and, curiously enough, while I didn't have almost any contact with it as a kid, it has grown on me purely because how solid the library of games is, to the point I kind of consider it one of the best systems out there, and for me that's quite high praise.
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