(Ethiopian Review http://xrl.us/bfmgeo ) - Coming off a
decidedly lopsided “war” against the original Nintendo
Entertainment System, Sega took their lumps from backing
the overmatched but gutsy Sega Master System. Thanks to the
power of the NES’s Holy Trinity — Mario, Zelda and Metroid
— Sega’s first console didn’t even come close to beating
Nintendo in sales. It was like trying to knock out Mike
Tyson with a whiffle bat. Still, Sega took strength from
its growing fan base and came back with Nintendo’s first
real threat: the Sega Genesis (Still available!
http://xrl.us/SegaGenesis1 )

With initial sales in Japan turning up nothing, Sega USA
used the success of Sonic the Hedgehog, along with an ad
campaign that got more ridiculously campy as time went on,
to start turning up the heat on Nintendo. Fans started
digging trenches and hurling slogans at each other, while
TV commercials told the public that Sega’s Genesis could do
“What Nintendon’t”. It was magical, and the war went on and
on.

Nintendo, on the other hand, merely touted the merits of
their own system, letting smash-hit titles like Super Mario
World, Chrono Trigger and The Legend of Zelda: A Link To
The Past do the work for them. (It also helped that they
had a magazine dedicated to their cause.) While SNES units
continued to fly off the shelves with every blockbuster
game, Sega was throwing in freebees for people to pick up
their own machine. In the end, the 16-bit era had divided
gamers for the first definitive time, with Nintendo fans
and Sega servants on opposite sides of the fence.

The Victors: Probably the video game industry, with
combined sales of roughly 80 Million Freaking Consoles
between both systems.

The Casualties: Arcades, which saw a lot of their quarter
munchers suddenly saving mountains of pocket change for $50
games.

The Fallout: Super Nintendo pulled ahead in the war,
besting Sega by a sizeable amount of units sold and dollars
earned. Try as they might, Sega never got remotely close to
challenging Nintendo’s dominance again, and their consoles
didn’t sustain much impact after the Sega Genesis faded
from shelves. Now Sonic’s barely keeping things together,
running from console to console, while Mario’s still
sitting pretty on the top of the Nintendo empire.