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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 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.
In a fortuitous circumstance, 1989 was when the US Court of Appeals ruled that Nintendo's licensing agreement, which had been largely responsible for the lack of games for the Sega Master System and Atari 7800, was illegal, and Sega quickly and efficiently obtained licensing agreements of their own with numerous companies. By the end of 1990, more than 30 third parties were making games for the Genesis, compared to a mere eight for the TG-16.
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.
After word about Sonic the Hedgehog got out, many people started thinking that Sonic was cooler than Mario due to the speed of the character. Also, Sega came up with a marketing term called "Blast Processing" -- made-up jargon used to explain the speed in the games (and Genesis superiority).
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.
Gamers became either a Nintendo fan or a Sega fan, and the two were mutually exclusive. Sega released Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in 1992 and it 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.
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".
By 1994 the TurboGrafx 16 was discontinued, due to poor sales in North America. NEC released the 32-bit PC-FX console the same year, exclusively for Japan.
Nintendo and Sega also competed with hardware peripherals for their consoles. Sega made two attempts: the Sega Mega-CD (Sega CD in the US) and the Sega 32X, neither of which were very successful.
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 PAL-games were usually much slower than their American NTSC-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.
So-called multi-x chips, 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 Final Fantasy IV
* - 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 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.
By 1995, the 16-bit craze started to die down due to Nintendo and Sega both having new consoles in the works. Nintendo went on to have much success with the release of the Nintendo 64 in 1996 and greater success with the Nintendo GameCube in 2001, as well as the Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance in the Handheld console market. However, Sega was not as successful after the 16-bit era. Their Sega Saturn was released in 1995, but it was a complete failure. Eager to jump-start their skeptical console fanbase in 1999, Sega released the Sega Dreamcast, which saw a bit more success but ultimately not enough to keep Sega in the console hardware business. Sega left the home console market in late 2001.
By the end of the Genesis' run in the U.S., it out-sold the Super NES by roughly a 5% margin. However, total world sales of the Super NES were about twice as much as the Genesis, making Nintendo the world-wide winner of the 16-bit war.
Now as part of the 128-bit era, Nintendo competes with Sony and Microsoft. Their former rival, Sega, is now a third-party software developer for all three companies' consoles.
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