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The Nintendo magazine I was reading at the time promoted a bit of a mock rivalry, and kids would send in drawings of Sonic the Hedgehog being maimed in mildly amusing ways. It didn’t really carry over to the playground as far as I remember. I don’t recall any kids catching grief for owning a Mega Drive. It wasn’t really cool to talk about videogames that much anyway.
Later in life I wondered if the ‘console war’ was an American thing, but I’m starting to think that it’s played up nowadays to make our collective childhoods sound more exciting than they probably were. Another recent phenomenon that I find interesting is the shift in narrative in favour of Sega. It may have been different in other parts of the world, but as I recall, Sega were a bit of a joke. They made a good showing with the Mega Drive, but they pissed away their lead almost immediately. No one gave two craps for the Saturn or the Dreamcast, but if you look at the internet nowadays you’d think they were game-changers.
There are so many YouTube videos floating around where odd looking twenty-somethings explain how the crusty old fuddy-duddies at Nintendo made bonehead move after bonehead move while the plucky upstarts at Sega ate their lunch. This information comes third-hand from the mouths of bitter old marketing executives; and marketing people are, after all, the most trustworthy people in the universe.
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ProactiveMan!
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