History of video games (16-bit era)

Categories: History of computer and video games

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Video game crash of 1983
8-bit era
16-bit era
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In the history of video games, 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 in the North American market, but was quite successful in Japan.

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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.

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.

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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" -- basically, a buzz word, posed as a technical advantage for the Genesis. Sega marketing was very confrontational in this time, with slogans like "Sega does what Nintendon't" and the "Sega scream".

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 and US, 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.

NEC pushed the TurboGrafx 16 using their mascot Bonk. This head banging caveman was used in most of the TurboGrafx advertising from 1990-1994. The platform was well received initially especially in larger markets in the US. In smaller metropolitan areas the TurboGrafx was difficult to find as NEC didn't have as many store reps or as focused in store promotion as in the larger urban areas. The Japanese version of the Turbo Grafx the PC Engine was quite successful in Japan through the popularity of its titles available on the at the time new CD-ROM format. NEC released a CD add-on in 1990 and by 1992 had released a combination TurboGrafx and CD rom system known as the TurboDuo.

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". Sega's gamble paid off, and their version of Mortal Kombat was often given higher and more favorable reviews in the gaming press. As a result of this, Nintendo reconsidered its position, and when Mortal Kombat 2 was ported to the console, all of the violence was intact.

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 each other's hardware and software fuelling the flames of fanboyism.

By 1994 the TurboGrafx 16 and its CD combination sytem the Turbo Duo were out of manufacture in North America, though a small amount of software continued to trickle out for the platform. NEC released the 32-bit PC-FX console the same year in Japan. Plans were underway for a US release of the PC-FX but an already flooded market of platforms including the far more powerful 3DO and Atari Jaguar systems caused TTI (who had taken over running the TurboGrafx platform) to halt their North American release plans.

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Add-ons

Nintendo, NEC and Sega also competed with hardware peripherals for their consoles. NEC was first out the door with the release of the Turbo-Grafx CD system in 1990. Retailing for $499.99 at release the add-on CD was not a popular purchase but was in large part responsible for the platform's success in Japan. Sega made two attempts: the Sega Mega-CD (Sega CD in the US) and the Sega 32X, neither of which were very successful. The Sega CD was plagued by a high price tag ($300 at its release) and a limited library of games. The 32X faced a number of problems, primarily technical and commercial. (The peripheral would occasionally not work with some consoles. Additionally, some retailers were not able to meet the initial demand for the add on, leading to shortages.)

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 Kutaragi.

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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 problem 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 (modchips), 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" (i.e. install a modchip) 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 grey 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.

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The rise of franchises

While their seeds were sown in the 8-bit era, many of the major franchise titles came of age and solidified in the 16-bit era. Metroid, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Seiken Densitsu (Secret of Mana), Sonic, Front Mission, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and many others had either their first releases or most popular titles during the 16 bit era.

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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.

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Consoles of the 16-bit era

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Video game franchises established during the 16-bit era

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See also

Major video game consoles
The first home video games
Magnavox Odyssey | Coleco Telstar | Pong
Pre-crash 8-bit systems
Atari 2600 | Magnavox Odyssey² | SG-1000 | Intellivision | Colecovision | 5200
8-bit era
NES | Master System | 7800
16-bit era
SNES | Mega Drive/Genesis | TG16 | Jaguar
32-bit / 64-bit era
Nintendo 64 | PlayStation | Saturn
Sixth generation era
Dreamcast | GameCube | PS2 | Xbox
Seventh generation era
PlayStation 3 | Revolution | Xbox 360
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References

  • Bjarneby, Tobias. (May, 1996). Rollspel. Super PLAY, p. 15.