I was there for the 16 bit console wars of the 1990s. I was also one to not only fall victim to magazine marketing, I also regularly switched sides during the entire conflict. It was a treacherous time for sure.
For me it began with the Christmas of 1988. This was when my parents bought us kids a Nintendo Entertainment System. Up to this point the only home console we had was an Atari 2600 clone nobody remembers. We didn’t own a lot of NES games back then but we were fortunate enough to be able to play several others either by going to friends houses or renting them.
When I first learned of the existence of a Super Nintendo it was all I could think about. I had to get my hands on that Super Mario World game one way or another. The Christmas of 1993 was going to be that year. My mom had bought one at Kmart on Lay-a-way and had it ready to go under the tree when the time came. Unfortunately one of my sisters found the receipt and shared with us kids what we were getting that year. Mom learned of this infraction and promptly cancelled the order and bought entirely different presents instead. I was bummed.
Enter Sega. My first introduction to the company was at a friends house who had a Master System. Despite their insistence it was “better” than the Nintendo we already owned, the games he showed me did not impress at all. That didn’t stop this same kid from continuing his crusade. Every day on the bus ride to and from school he would show me Game Gear games as well as flyers advertising Genesis games. He introduced me to the words “16 bits” and “blast processing” I was gullible and so I shifted my efforts from begging my parents for a Super NES and went on the warpath to get my hands on this new, amazing Sega console I was sold on.
Needless to say this worked. My parents got me my very own Sega Genesis for my 12th birthday and I couldn’t be happier. Out of the 7 kids I hung out with after school, 3 had Sega’s, one had a Super Nintendo, one just an NES and the other loser had this thing called a Windows PC or idk something weird like that. It was easy for me to trade Sega carts with my friends and explore the depth of the consoles amazing library of rock solid action titles. As I grew up with arcade games I was more into the arcade style action games flooding the Sega console than I was the boring ass odd ball side scrollers and those weird anime themed games the magazines called RPGs or something. I was hooked on Sega.
Then a new friend moved to town and flipped everything I new on its side. All it took was one game to shift my loyalty from Sega back to Nintendo. That game of course was another arcade mega hit I already had on Genesis, Mortal Kombat II. It didn’t take long before I was starting to see how much better the SNES version was than the Sega version I was currently stuck with. This prompted me to take the money I made from my after school jobs to buy myself a Super NES as a companion to my trusty Sega. It didn’t take long before I was able to build up a solid library of Super NES games to offset my ever increasing Genesis library.
Once I had my hands on both I realized I just couldn’t pick one over the other. I found myself spending the same amount of time playing games on each. I also couldn’t decide which games I enjoyed more. While I loved the hard core action games the Sega was feeding me I also found myself finding enjoyment in the quirky Japanese games Nintendo was throwing my way. In the end I decided they were basically equals. I never could decide one over the other. Sega gets bonus points for the Sega CD, Power Base Converter and 32X. The Super NES gets bonus points for Super Mario World, Zelda A Link to the Past, Super Metroid, Sim City and the aforementioned Mortal Kombat 2. Over the years I find myself constantly going back and forth on which system I prefer. There are days where I find myself leaning towards Sega due to my nostalgia for it. Then there are days I spend hours playing Donkey Kong Country or Kirby Super Star and flip back to the Nintendo camp.
At the end of the day unlike most console war generations where I could handily pick a favorite, the 16 bit era will always remain the one video game generation where I couldn’t firmly plant my flag on either hill. To this day I love them both equally. I often ask myself if I could only own one for the rest of my life which would I pick. In the end I never can come up with a decisive answer.
Stephanie Bri 