Is Nintendo the next SEGA?

I remember my very first video game console like it was yesterday. The year was 1990, and for my birthday, I got the NES! The Nintendo entertainment system. I remember the very first game i got was the super Mario bros. duck hunter collection. I also had the gun to go along with the system.

 

 

 

 

To name off some games i actually owned, I had final fantasy, super Mario bros. 1, 2, and 3, Rad racer, the legend of Zelda, mega man, double dragon, Zelda 2, and many more games. This system was very revolutionary. After the great game crash of 1983, video games where a dying breed. Nintendo many would argue single handedly saved the game industry. Atari almost did the game industry in. by 1991, 30 million consoles had been sold in the united states alone! 34.00 million units were sold in the United states, 19.32 in Japan, and worldwide a total of 61.91 units worldwide. Nintendo was a house hold name and turned every child single handedly into a hardcore gamer.

 

Next was the Gameboy, a handheld gaming system for on the go. Games such as Tetris, Poke'mon, Metriod 2, came on the console. Yet again Nintendo did something quite incredible. you could play games on the go. the system was quite big and bulky. but would eventually get smacker, go from black and white and play games in color, and yes, even get a new look and move away from 8-bit gaming to 32-bit with the Gameboy advanced. The Gameboy advanced would make many changes also. Built in light, flip open screen, the works. Nintendo would also make the Gameboy micro, but i am not even going to go there.

 

 

 

Now moving on from 8-bit to 16-bit, the SuperNintendo, ore SNES, was an incredible system. But this time it had a little bit of competition. The SEGA Genisis. The SNES sold 49.1 million units vs. SEGA’s 29 million. So another victory for Nintendo. Not only could you play SNES games on your SNES, you could also play your Gameboy games with a little attachment called the super Gameboy. Another huge footstep by Nintendo. You could even argue it was the grandfather of backwards compatible gaming on a system. Nintendo also started using AV cables and moving away from old RF TVS. You now had stereo gaming! For it’s time, this was quite wonderful. The system had games like street fighter 2, final fantasy 2 and 3, Super Mario world, mortal Kombat, mega man x, super Metriod, and way too much to count. Okay, i will put in star fox to make people happy.

 

 

 

Next is the virtual boy, well, this system was just a complete and utter flop. Gameboy creator Gunpei Yokoi wanted a system with just gloves and glasses. With a blinding red light, crappy games, and not much sales, the system was a flop.

 

Next was the big move to 3d gaming, with the release of the Nintendo 64 in 1995, Mario, Zelda, and star fox were in full 3d. But they still played in cartridges. The max memory in an n64 game was 512 megabytes, but with companies like Sony getting involved into the console war, and 3rd party companies like square, Capcom, and many more going to the Playstation for the cheaper CD format, Nintendo was losing the 3rd party companies, to a cheaper, yet more memory CD format. Despite the fact the Playstation was 32 bit, with at least 800 MB per disk; you could work more with Polygons and longer games. The N64 would go on to sell 33 million units and loose a console war to the upstart Playstation. Playstation would gain more hardcore gamers. Still though, the unit was a huge success. With huge success with Mario 64, Zelda oot, super smash bros., and star fox 64, Nintendo would do just fine with itself developing their own games.

 

 

Next Nintendo would release the GameCube. And move away from the cartridge and go on to the disk format finally. I am not sure how much the unit sold but I can at least tell you Xbox, and PlayStation 2 outsold it by a mile. But the system had great games like smash bros. melee, Zelda Wind Waker, Mario sunshine, Luigis Mashion, Star Fox Adventures, and Grabed all third party developers too, including are unite with Square-Enix. With the lack of a DVD player or music player, I am guessing this is why PlayStation and Xbox out sold it.

 

 

 

Today, we have the Nintendo DS, 3DS, and the Wii. Again all sales figures real solid with the DS being the most successful handheld all time, the Wii beating the 360, and ps3 for an amount of time, the introduction of the touch screen and motion control gaming, and 3D gaming with no glasses. But Nintendo has kind of left its hardcore gamers in the dark. Nobody really knows what to think of Nintendo now. With the Wii u on the way and negative feedback on the upcoming system the Wii u, slumping sales of the 3ds, and nearly a 100 dollar price cut, is Nintendo facing the same destiny as the all mighty SEGA? No more good games and systems. What was once the revolution in the game industry is now becoming behind the times. When Wii U releases I am pretty sure that son y and Microsoft will have better consoles. Is Nintendo finished? Is it slowly digging its own grave? What can Nintendo do get back into this thing? Is casual gaming the way? Does Nintendo see something we don’t?