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The Combatants: Super Nintendo Entertainment System vs. Sega Genesis
The weapons: Sonic the Hedgehog (Genesis), Super Mario Kart (SNES), Mortal Kombat (Genesis), Street Fighter II (SNES)
The trash talk: "Genesis does what Nintendon't." - Sega ads
"Sega came out slamming us in their commercials. They were naming us by name, and that was a really big deal. It's like somebody calling your team 'crap.' We took it good-naturedly and competed the best we could." - Don James, VP of Design, Nintendo of America (to Steven L. Kent in The Ultimate History of Video Games)
The battle: After barely registering a blip against the NES with its Master System, Sega realized it was better to focus on 16-bit gaming. Why, that's twice as good as 8-bit! Genesis launched six months before Nintendo had a chance to release its NES sequel, the cleverly titled Super NES. Sure, Nintendo fans were loyal, but six months is an eternity when you're 12 years old. Combine that with Sega's marketing push - a fury of speed and attitude that touted something called "Blast Processing" and often ended in someone screaming "SEGA!" - and the fight got downright dirty. It was aspirational marketing at its best: Cool people played Sega; children played Nintendo. Sega gamers were unstoppably xtreme before the term really existed, while Super NES owners clutched their boring beige kiddie consoles, playing "censored" versions of games like Mortal Kombat.
Trouble was, Nintendo had a track record of brilliant games, and enjoyed a brand loyalty that's still the game industry standard. So the SNES Kombat had sweat instead of blood? No problem - Street Fighter II was for skilled, technical gamers whose hearts were not on the verge of exploding. Plus, the SNES' Mode 7 graphics made games like Pilotwings look almost 3D. And do we even need to mention the pricey Sega CD and Sega 32X add-ons? If you wanted to upgrade your Nintendo games, you bought... more Nintendo games.
The spoiler: What's almost as lovable as hedgehogs and plumbers? Cavemen, of course! Big-noggined Bonk was the mascot for NEC's TurboGrafx-16, which featured games on either slim cards or CDs - plus NEC produced an advanced portable system that played the same game cards AND let you watch TV. Cool. Weird. Expensive. And the other kids didn't have it. Looking back, 11 million units worldwide was a good haul.
The victor: Despite the Sonic boom, the combined family-friendly forces of Link, Samus, and Mario proved unbeatable. With 49 million SNES units sold worldwide, Genesis managed just 29 million by comparison...which is, of course, a "failure" that vastly exceeds the total sales of the Master System and the Dreamcast combined.
