A History of Video Games: The First Console War

The Nintendo Color TV-Game 15

The next few years were slow for video games. It seemed that gamers at the time were fed up with games that had no oversight and no quality and turned to other hobbies. That was until 1986. A small Japanese company named Nintendo that had primarily been known for making playing cards for almost 100 years had created a home video game console of their own. Now, they had created some games before with the “Color Tv-game” console, one of the first handheld gaming consoles the “Game and Watch”, and some arcade cabinets. One of the arcade games they made became a historic hit at the time before the release of their first large scale console. The game was called “Donkey Kong” and featured a small man trying to save a blond lady from a giant gorilla. The man was named “Jump Man” since that was his main way to avoid the barrels that were thrown at him. But in 1986, they were about to make history with the wide release of the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). With games like “Super Mario Bros.”, “The Legend of Zelda”, “Metroid” and more, the NES became a smash hit all over the world.

The Sega Master System

Shortly after the release of the NES, another game manufacturer, Sega, that had been doing business since the 1940’s decided to release its own home console to compete with the NES, the Master System. Sega had tried to make innovations to what Nintendo had created and made a system that was more powerful, but it was falling behind in the market. To beat Nintendo to the punch, Sega began working on a 16-bit console that would change the game, so to speak. The Sega Genesis was billed as the next great thing and was held up as a great technical leap in the console market, but still failed to capture a larger audience. Enter Sonic the Hedgehog and the start of the first “Console War”.

When Tom Kalinske took over Sega of America in 1990, it was trailing Nintendo who had control over the video game market with the NES. His plan was to use Sonic to bring Sega into the forefront and start a new chapter for the business. With his team of advisors, he went directly head-to-head with Nintendo and developed an aggressive strategy to get Sonic into the hands of every person who purchased a Sega Gensis, he bundled the game with the system. The first holiday season the Super Nintendo (SNES) was available, the Genesis outsold it two to one since it had a larger library, a lower price, and an overall head start being released a full year before the SNES. Nintendo controlled 60% of the video game market at the end of 1992 and only 37% at the end of 1993 due to Sega’s successful maneuvering and the popularity of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Check out the movie adaptation of the book Console Wars!