History of video game consoles (fourth generation)

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 Mega Drive (also called 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; it had little success breaking into the fray in the North American market, but was quite successful in Japan.

The Beginning

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 this year, Namco released Kyuukai Douchuuki, World Stadium '90, Final Lap 2, Pistol Daimyo no Bouken, Souko Ban Deluxe, Dragon Saber, Steel Gunner, Rolling Thunder 2, Golly! Ghost! and developed an unreleased prototype, Puzzle Club. 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. This was the true beginning of the 16-bit war.

The Sega vs. Nintendo "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" that posed as a technical advantage for the Genesis. Sega advertising was very confrontational in this time, with slogans like "Genesis 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, and later 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 2sday"), 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 did not have as many store representatives or as focused in-store promotion as in the larger urban areas. The Japanese version of the TurboGrafx, 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 kept the content in the game, allowing players to access it via a special code. Nintendo has had a long-standing 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 II was ported to the console, all of the violence was intact.

Many (particularly younger) gamers labeled 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 system 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.

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 in color.

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, opting to team with Philips in the development of the less than successful CD-i system. The Super NES CD-ROM 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. PlayStation went on to badly hurt CD-i sales, and Philips dropped the product line in 1998.

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:

Because PAL has a refresh rate of 50Hz (compared to 60Hz for NTSC) and a vertical resolution of 625 interlaced lines (576 effective), compared to 525/480 for NTSC, a game designed for the NTSC standard without any modification will run 17% slower and have black bars at the top and bottom. Developers often had a hard time converting games designed for the American and Japanese NTSC standard to the European PAL standard. Companies such as Konami, with large budgets and a healthy following in Europe, readily optimised several games (such as the International Superstar Soccer series) for this audience, while smaller developers, or those who placed less emphasis in the European market, did not.
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 problems was simply fitting all of the full translations into one cartridge. The cost of creating multiple full translations was also prohibitive. Only the UK saw any number of RPG releases, and even then the number was a fraction of what was being released in the US or Japan.

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:

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, Star Fox, F-Zero, Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, Seiken Densetsu (Secret of Mana), Sonic the Hedgehog, Front Mission, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, and many others had either their first releases or some of their most popular titles during the 16-bit era.

Metroid: Super Metroid, released in 1994 on a 24 megabit cartridge for the SNES, was the third game in the series, after the original was released on the NES in 1986 and the Game Boy version came out in 1991. It was Super Metroid, and the detailed graphical depiction of Samus Aran, that cemented this series' success.

Zelda: A Link to the Past courted popularity even larger than that of its predecessors on the NES. As well as generally being a well-made game, it was one of the few action-adventures to be released early in the SNES's lifecycle. The Adventure of Link on the NES had been mostly action-based and was side-scrolling, whilst A Link to the Past drew more inspiration from the original with its top-down adventure format. Zelda's mixture of action and adventure elements continues to this day.

Dragon Quest: Although none of the Dragon Quest franchise was published during this era outside of Japan, it remained the most popular RPG there. Two main installments came out for the SFC, as well as the remakes of the first three games originally released for FC and a dungeon crawler spin-off: Torneko's Great Adventure, which started Chun Soft's popular Fushigi no Dungeon series.

Star Fox: Star Fox was the first SNES game to feature the Super FX chip in 1993. It is a spacecraft-flying game featuring Fox McCloud and his teammates Slippy Toad, Peppy Hare and Falco Lombardi. This marked the first quest at stopping the evil Andross from taking over the Lylat System (which would later be reprised on its sequel Star Fox 64 for N64 in 1997). There had been a Star Fox 2 with new characters in development for Super Nintendo, but this game was cancelled in the beta stages because of the approaching release of the N64. There were two more releases, Star Fox Adventures in 2003 and Star Fox Assault in 2005, both for the GameCube.

F-Zero: F-Zero, which was an early release in 1991, is a futuristic racing game of hovercars at speeds of 900 Km per hour. This game was an incredibly fast racing game that influenced the PlayStation racing series Wipeout. The original four racers (Captain Falcon, Dr. Stewart, Pico and Samurai Goroh) are still featured in most of the games, although the series now features over 30 different racers. This successful series was also featured in 1998 (F-Zero X for N64), 2001 ( Maximum Velocity for GBA), 2003 (both F-Zero GX for the GameCube and F-Zero AX, the arcade version), and 2005 ( GP Legend for GBA, which was based on the animated series that same year.)

Final Fantasy: Despite irregular releases - only two of the four FF games produced in Japan made it to Europe and North America - Final Fantasy continued to grow in popularity in the early 1990s. Not until Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation did it reach blockbuster status outside Japan, but for a SNES title, it was a popular series. Such was the enduring appeal of the 16-bit titles, many of them are being translated and re-released for handheld systems (years after they were translated for emulator-use by enthusiasts.)

Seiken Densetsu: This series was introduced to Europe and North America in the form of Secret of Mana, which was actually the second in the SD series (again, SD was translated by enthusiasts.) The series lives on with Sword of Mana on the Game Boy Advance, and Children of Mana for the Nintendo DS, showing how fond memories of SoM have created a lasting fanbase. There is a common misconception that Secret of Evermore for the SNES was meant to be a follow up to Secret of Mana, or a replacement for an english translation of Seiken Densetsu 3. The "Secret of" was tacked on at a point late in development to cash in on a perceived relation. Seiken Densetsu 3 was held back from a north american release due to elements of the story perceived to be "too mature".

Street Fighter: An arcade smash hit, Street Fighter 2 made it to the 16-bit consoles without significant loss of quality or features. Sprites were decreased in size and the backdrops lost a bit of their flashiness, but for the most part it was a faithful recreation that sold voluminous copies. The series is still being produced today. It is worth noting that, whilst the original Street Fighter was deemed innovative and fairly popular, it was the second on the series that produced a lasting fanbase and a slew of (mostly sub-standard) imitations.

Seeking to follow the example of the above titles, several more franchises were born during this era, many of which have not survived to the present day. While game sequels were far from uncommon during the 8-bit era and even before, it was at this time that the potential of series games was realised.

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 and Philips. 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. 1996 was the last year of greatness for 16-bit systems, being the last that they would retain over 50 percent of the marketshare in sales.

Game Systems of the 4th Generation (16-bit era)

Consoles

Image:PCE and TG16 thumbnail.jpg|NEC PC Engine / TurboGrafx 16
1987-1996: Japan 1989-1994: U.S.'' Image:SegaMegadrive.jpg|Sega Mega Drive / Genesis
1988-1996: Japan 1989-1998: U.S.
1990-1998: Europe Image:Neo1.jpg|SNK Neo-Geo
1989-2004: Japan 1990-2003: U.S.
''1991-1996: Europe Image:Super_Nintendo_and_Famicom_thumb.jpg|Super Famicom / Super Nintendo Entertainment System
1990-2003: Japan 1991-1999: U.S. 1992-1998: Europe Sega CD (add-on)
1991-1996: Japan 1992-1996: U.S. 1993-1996: Europe

Handhelds

Image:Virtual Boy kit.jpg|Virtual Boy
1995-1996: Japan, U.S. Image:Game_Boy_Pocket.jpg|Game Boy Pocket
1996-1998: Japan, U.S., Europe

Video game franchises established during the 16-bit era

¹ The Fire Emblem video game franchise was established in Japan during the 16-bit era, but Nintendo did not localize a Fire Emblem game to North America or Europe until the sixth generation era. It was partly due to the popularity of Marth and Roy in Super Smash Bros. Melee that Nintendo decided to localize Fire Emblem games to North America and Europe. Rekka no Ken was the first Fire Emblem game to be released in North America and Europe, where it was marketed as Fire Emblem.

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