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Fourth generation of video game consoles

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The 16-bit era was the time in the early 1990s when the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and the Sega Genesis dominated the game console market and were major rivals. It was one of the most intense periods of competition in North American video game history. The TurboGrafx 16 was also part of this era.

The beginning

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. Nintendo had capitalized on it with their mascot Mario against Sega's new mascot. The 16-bit war was born.

The war

Sega took a huge advantage that Sonic was fast and used it to get gamers' attention. After word about Sonic the Hedgehog got out, many people started thinking that Sonic was cooler then Mario due to the speed of the character. Also, Sega came up with a marketing term called Blast Processing which was what made the speed in the games.

Nintendo was able to easily keep up with the competition with their own blend of games such as other Mario games, 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 had either one system or the other. 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.

By 1994 the TurboGrafx 16 was discontinued.

In the end

By 1995 the 16-bit craze started to die down due to Nintendo and Sega both having new consoles in the works. Nintendo would go 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 Advance. However, Sega was not as successful after the 16-bit era. After the Genesis, they released the Sega Saturn in 1995 with very little fanfare. Wishing to jump-start their failing console market afterword, Sega released the Sega Dreamcast in 1999 which had a bit more success, but it was not enough and eventuality caused Sega to leave the home console market in late 2001. By the end of the Genesis' run, it out-sold the Super NES by a slight margin. The Sonic series was mostly responsable for it.

Now as part of the 128-bit era, Nintendo competes with Sony and Microsoft and their former rival, Sega, is now a third-party software developer for all three companies' consoles.

Consoles in this era

Video game franchises born in this era

See Also

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