We did not all know so much about Super Nintendo in childhood, except that from the programs “Dendy is a new reality”, where Sergei Suponev actively advertised the inaccessible luxury for our brother. It so started that the game consoles of the Nintendo family have not been in demand in the CIS countries for centuries. At first, due to the fact that Bolshaya N simply did not see the point of promoting their goods in such a mysterious market, and after because their devices were simply not a pocket of the country’s population. Naturally, their prefixes flaunted on the shelves of shopping centers, someone could even afford to fork out for their child with such an expensive gift, but there were “two times and were deduced”.

In the 90s, Dendy and Sega Mega Drive were filled in the gaming market, after the PlayStation and DreamCast arrived, many even had 3Do 3DO. PS2 had already conquered us into the zero, but the stationary PC took all the glory, and Nintenda somehow did not find a place with his N64, GameCube and other consoles. It is worth admitting that all these prefixes passed very in vain past in our childhood. All of them were unique in their own way and had a gorgeous library of games on board, many of which became standard and had a significant impact on progress in the gaming industry. But was it really only in the price tag? Did the whole world play and stood on his ears from the word “nintendo”, when we did not even know that it was at all? The fact is that Nintendo Entertainment System made a lot of noise in the game business. Nintendo captured the market, which, practically, by monopolists in the production of gaming prefixes, earning hundreds of millions of dollars in this matter. Of course, where such a lot of money is spinning, there are those who also want to bite off a piece of cake, and maybe even pick up the whole pie to themselves. Sega was the first company to have a serious attack on the big N and was a headache for Nintendo because of its Mega Drive, it is Genesis. In the early 90s, a real battle erupted, which later received a catchy name-“console wars”, this term denotes the confrontation of Sega and Nintendo, Genesis against 8-bit NES, and 16-bit Snes-Super Nintendo Entertainment System. SNES is still called one of the best gaming consoles of all time, and this is true, but it is from the time of the release of Super Nintendo, when the company’s management felt competition, they began to slowly make various mistakes, which almost brought them to unconditional surrender and complete departure from the gaming industry market. But, let’s figure out what the great Super Nintendo was, and how exactly did she act as a catalyst for a new era in the history of gaming business.

So, in the yard of the 80s, in native Japan Nintendo occupies dominant positions in the market of stationary and portable prefixes. Yes, the consoles of competitors also flaunt on the shelves of stores, but their share in the industry is too insignificant so that the highest ranks of Nintendo pay attention to them. At the other end of the planet – in North America, no less important for the market of the market, things are even better. "Big N" controls 95% of the market, being an unprecedented monopolist of the game business. Their 8-bit NES masterpiece continues to fly away from the shelves with millions of circulations, and American children and adolescents really go crazy from Nintendo. Nes, for several years was the most welcome gift for Christmas. The company’s management was very worried about their authority and were afraid to undermine it in front of gamers. To control the entire flow of games for the console and prevent the release of outright debris, which could undoubtedly undermine the reputation – Nintendo puts its conditions for partners who want to release the game on their prefix. You can release no more than 5 games a year, all production and release of cartridges are also under Nintendo control, and a certain group of people of the company decide for themselves when exactly one or another game will go to conquer the hearts of players on store shelves. In addition, they check each game from a third -party developer, thereby determining it to give her green light, or send it for revision. If “everything is ok” – then the game received a dice of Nintendo quality, this automatically meant that the game meets all the necessary quality standards.

Naturally large N took a small percentage from each implemented cartridge. You might think that Nintendo was a real manifestation of evil, and completely sadistic treated her partners, but all this was done due to the fact that they were too afraid to repeat the fate of Atari, and to flood the market with mediocre games, the interest in the players would disappear sooner or later. Such strict conditions were able to hold the quality bar for many years, because the company bathed in money, and everything was in chocolate. But as you know, being on top is constantly – it is impossible, and the lack of competition and being in the comfort zone will sooner or later lead to regression.

In the late 80s., Japanese companies NEC and Sega have released their consoles: PC Engine and Mega Drive, respectively. Both systems were designed using 16-bit architecture, which, according to the quality of graphics and sound, were supposed to erase the 8-bit Nes to the puffs. But technology alone is not enough to overthrow the whole giant who seized the market. NES continued to dominate for several more years, and aggressive advertising provocations from the Sega did not cause any reaction among Nintendo bosses, until the American market Genesis has finally achieved success. Initially, the Nintendo leadership, especially Hiroshi Yamauti, did not show any interest in developing a new system at all, but due to the 4 generation prefixes gaining popularity – they revised their position, realizing that NES began to obsolete, and the company may lose significant positions in business if they do not take up their heads in time. In general, we can say that the situation has forced a large N to create a new 16-bit console, however, they say that the chief engineer developed NES-Masayuki Wemur, began work on the prefix of the next generation, almost immediately after NES in the United States.

The Wemura team took advantage of the fact that Super Famicom was born, two years later, Mega Drive, and this gave the advantage to be more advanced in technical terms. Super Famicom also supplied powerful 16-bit central, graphic and sounds. Sound chip, by the way, for SNES was developed by Sony engineers. The beginning of partnerships with Sony and their consequences in the future will play a colossal role for the entire game world, but we will touch it a little later. The so -called “Mode 7”, similar to 3D, is one of the main “fichens” of the console, the mode – with which the effect of the prospect was achieved. This technique will be used in many future SNES hits, such as F-Zero, Star Fox, Mario Kart, and many other games. It is worth noting another of the tricks of Nintendo engineers. SNES architecture was the possibility of using additional chips on cartridges. Such a non -standard solution was invented due to the fact that it would not be advisable to use an expensive processor that would be outdated after a few years. Instead, the concept of upgrade, t, t. e. Games that lacked the full -time capabilities of the console contained special chips in the cartridge that provide the necessary opportunities. Such games can be found out by the presence of several additional contacts in the cartridge connector (usually there were 16). One of the first such games using the Super FX chip was Star Fox, but Snes used the Donkey Kong Country filling, impressive gamers of the 4th generation console incredible by those standards for those standards. With its clear graphics and high sound quality, Donkey Kong Country could compete with games released on 32-bit consoles. Over the past 45 days of 1994, 6 million copies have been sold, thus, this game has become the most quickly sold in history at that time. Such a move made it possible to remain competitive in the world market even after the next generation of game consoles is released.

NES was wildly popular, which means that the players have acquired a large library of games over the years of its existence, but the gamers received “from the gate of the turn” in the hope of seeing reverse compatibility with NES. Nintendo decided not to do it, because it would force them to insert another processor into the console, which would fly into an additional 75 dollars to the cost of the console, and given that the price tag was supposed to remain acceptable – the top of the company quickly abandoned this idea, despite the anger of the owners of the NES. Super Famicom turned out to be a cool, revolutionary console, the most powerful of all that existed at that time. She was perfectly designed and was ready to repeat the success of the NES, and once again prove to the whole world that no one could withstand the greatness of Nintenda.

SNES appeared on the shelves of the Land of the Rising Sun on November 21, 1990 and was sold at a price of 25,000 ¥ ($ 210). The prefix received a lightning success, the first delivery amount of 300,000 copies was sold out in a few hours, and subsequent riots in society forced the Japanese government to ask for game consoles to plan a weekend for weekends. The level of excitement around the SNES has reached the point that Yakuza became interested in the bailiff, whose members were strongly determined to have financial benefit on the popularity of the console, as a result of which it was decided to deliver the goods at night, in order to avoid robbery.

In Japan, Super Famicom began to crowd out his main competitor represented by Mega Drive, so Nintendo again became the leader of the market of game consoles. This happened in many ways because the companies managed to maintain partnership with most third -party developers, such as Capcom, Konami, Tecmo, Square, and Enix, which previously created games for Famicom. And in general it is worth saying that Nintendo was not particularly steaming about the home market, there they stably have everything more than successfully. The main revenue for the company poured from American children, and the main direction for Big N at that time was to maintain key positions in the market, which was actively trying to seize Sega Genesis.

As you know, Sege did not particularly manage https://rolletto-casino.co.uk/ to promote his flagship in his native country. Sales left much to be desired, the third -party developers were connected by hands in connection with the obligations to Nintendo, and exporting the prefix exclusively on their own, making exclusives by internal studios, it was hardly possible to. Sega relied on North America, wanting to crush Nintenda in the most arrogant ways and put to the post of President Sega of America a brilliant business – Tom Kalinsk. And here it begins the most interesting, t. To. Sega had one “trump card in the sleeve”.

Super Nintendo was supposed to appear on the New World shelves on August 23, 1991, complete with the main systemseller systems – Super Mario World, at a price of $ 199. In the same year, at the 1991 CES summer exhibition, Sega collided with Nintendo face to face, for the first time presenting the world her main exclusive Sonic the Hedgehog. They waited until the last to surprise Nintedo what quality they managed to achieve, everywhere and everywhere they struck in every way and did not miss the moment to emphasize how colorful, cool, modern and fast.

Genesis had a more powerful processor in relation to SNES. 60 available colors, up to 80 outlet sprites on one screen, and the resolution that the system was able to lower in order to release more capacities for processing animations, which allowed Sonik to move so quickly along the screen, all the gameplay was an endless drive, that the catchy of almost every player was the attention of almost every player. Sega mocked Super Mario World, not counting the picture and gameplay of the game with something breakthrough and unique. Seeing Sonic, some of the Nintendo began to fuss, but the top of Nintendo of America, led by Howard Linkolol, were too confident in the new game about a plumber and did not pay due attention to the seg. Thereby significantly underestimating the opponent. However, it is stupid to deny the fact that Sonic instantly focused on Sege and Genesis, despite the fact that Nintendo continued to trump the technical superiority of Snes. Marketing Director Sega of America El Nilsen was especially proud of the moment when a reporter ran up to him with the question “Super Nintendo 32,768 flowers, and you have only 512 that you can answer this?". Nielsen brought the reporter to the stand, where the blue hedgehog ran on one screen, and on the other Mario said “Well, where you see 32 thousand flowers?". The reporter turned and silently left. This was the first, serious blow for Nintendo, but the company’s bosses did not despair, because Segi did not stupidly had retail space where Genesis would be sold, because all the retailers were under the hard control of Big N, and no one wanted to spoil the relationship with them and lose a lot of money with them. In addition, according to the assurances of a group of persons within Nintendo of America, competitors responsible for monitoring, the bosses have always been given the same thing-apart from Sonic, Genesis still did not come out of really high-quality games. Yes, the picture is beautiful, but the games are so -so, and there are practically no support of third -party developers.

Well, in truth, Nintenda’s employees were right, but at the helm of Sega of America there were people who were able to creatively and non-standardly approach doing business, which I already talked about in my cycle “History of Sega”. So, Sege manages to solve one serious problem – to establish a sales market. The largest US retail network, Wal-Mart, gave the go-ahead to allocate a trading section on the shelves for Genesis, and after them the other large retailers of the country began to allocate their regiments for the SEGA console, simply because if a giant, like Wal-Mart, could do not give a damn about the ban on a large n.Reteiler – passed.

A few months after the release of Super Nintendo in North America, the battle was already raging between Genesis and Snes. Sales and excitement around Genesis is increasing every day, and Sonic is already bypassing Mario in popularity. More and more developers begin to cooperate with the sega, cunningly bypassing the obligations of exclusivity to Nintendo – they simply released the same game with insignificant changes and under a different name, which ultimately forced to terminate the exclusivity policy, so as not to lose all their partners. Sega successfully competes, and even breaks out leadership in the market. For a long time, 2 prefixes were on equal terms, both companies owned almost the same market shares by April 1992, and not one of the consoles for several years could become a clear leader. It was Nintendo that recognized the Sega as a competitor, and began a tough struggle for each buyer.

Genesis relies on an adult player, mocking Nintendo and their games for "kids". Each commercial necessarily had a mockery of the big n, saying “Sega is a cool console for cool guys, and only ended suckers play in Nintendo”. More and more adult games appear on Genesis, with elements of violence and without censorship. A partnership with EA, which had contrays with Nintendo, in connection with their obsessive obligations, played a rather important role. Thanks to this, the Genesis library has replenished the popular electronics titles, and of course sports hits from EA Sports. All this led to the rapid attention to the prefix in adolescents and older people.

Nintendo could not leave all this unattended, they were very burned out because now, in order not to become unnecessary and forgotten-they had to violate their own traditions and release games that they would not have previously allowed to release under any conditions. Even such a scandalous game as Mortal Kombat appeared on SNES. But, of course, all these games were produced with severe censorship, while Genesis came out a completely original game with a dismemberment and blood. The MK release was very much hit by the image of Nintendo, the players were furious from the ubiquitous censorship, and preferred to choose a sega console to enjoy all the beauties of Mortal Kombat. While 1 cartridge with Mortal Kombat was sold on SNES, more than 5 were sold on Genesis. Nintendo has lost more and more authority, and most importantly – sales and income from its field of activity.

The situation was also spoiled by a few of the following facts: firstly, Genesis was sold at $ 50 cheaper, and this undoubtedly reflected in the attractiveness of the console. Secondly, at a certain point, Nintendo experienced a deficiency of chips for cartridges, and t. To. They themselves were engaged in the release of games, the partners began to resent very much, because their game was delayed with the release, which is why they could not get the expected profit. Nintendo herself forbade third -party developers to independently look for chips for the production of cartridges, which also hit their reputation in the eyes of publishers, who could only count on the mercy of Nintendo. What could not be said about Sega, because they did not drive out of such framework of third -party developers, the games could be released as much as they like, and the Electronic Arts even released games on their own cartridges, which were easy to distinguish from everyone else. Well, thirdly, the Sega allowed to legally rent cartridges in the BlockBuster network, which Nintendo categorically did not allow to do. Nintendo has always taken care of her property very much, and sued whenever someone began to come across on their developments, but while they sued, Sega could not get enough of her success and happily continued to allow the gamers to get cartridges to their prefixes as if she wanted.

Over time, Sega was too played with her coolness and mockery of Nintendo. The flow of outing games on Genesis was no longer stopped, and Kalinsk relied on the amount more than on the quality. The games became tougher, and there was no one to control. The gaming industry more and more penetrated the living rooms of America’s houses and parents began to worry about what their children play when they watched in horror how the maniac cuts demons in some Splatterhouse. Congress senators also showed interest in growing lawlessness and lack of censorship, and announced a public meeting, where the further fate of the video game would be decided. Nintendo saw in this the opportunity to finally hardly answer the annoying Sege, and the boar mounted the slices of the most cruel scenes in Genesis and sent the cassette to the state of the state. In short, the hearing began, during which nor did not lose one of the parties. Sega and Nintendo remained with their opinions on doing business, and the result of the hearing was the education of the commission to issue an age rating for each game.

Nintendo was burnt out with incredible power. SEGA continues arrogant bullying and provocations in its advertisements, Genesis has taken a leading position in North America on sales of stationary consoles, and most gamers now dream of a cherished, Krutetsk console from SEGA, the popularity of Sonic has reached the top, t. To. According to the blue hedgehog, cartoons, comics and sell various merch have already begun to make. President Nintendo of America – Howard Lincoln is tired of being tolerated in this situation and he decided to act exactly like a sega. He began publicly, with what he wrote in the column of the news newspaper the message “Drinses!»Addressed to the President of Sega of America – Tom Kalinsk. Then the commercials and the new slogan “Play it loud” were sprinkled, which, if not verbatim, meant “play boldly”/ “play loudly” (literally). Nintendo were ready to present their new hit – Donkey Kong Country, and in advertising companies the phrase “not for Segi was actively used!", In order to emphasize that Nintendo is still alive and is ready to respond to any call from competitors. It is worth saying that the newly -made Donkey Kong, which became Snes systems, helped the company to stay afloat and not to lose all its potential and the faith of players in the good old Nintendo. The company’s management also revised the censorship policy and the exclusivity of their games for third -party developers. To better demonstrate it to gamers-they have already released the next part of Mortal Kombat in their original form, without any censorship. They began to make a multi -platform on SNES as well as for Genesis. Now Nintendo began to imitate Sege, posing as bad guys who are listening to the grunge, communicate with obscene abuse and play adult games. The top of Sega of America had nothing but to smile and proudly realize that now the largest n, to which it was impossible to get to anyone, they themselves began to imitate the worst enemy. From this moment, the next step of the company began, because Nintendo now had no boundaries for the produced games, and Genesis ceased to be the only prefix for an adult gamer and, as a result, began to slowly lose customer demand. Snes sales on the contrary – went uphill.

If anything, you don’t think – not so bad, I just talk about what mistakes Nintendo made and how it will affect the future. Throughout the period I just spoke about, Nintendo continued to remain Nintendo. They released one after another cult continuations of their hits with NES, and such exclusives as Donkey Kong Country, Mario Kart, Star Fox simply carried the brain with their technologies and an exciting, unique gameplay. But outside the Nintendo Office, new technologies, 3D era and a breakthrough information medium, accommodating a huge amount of data, a video of the video and high -quality audio trains represented by CDs, opened new opportunities for developers. Big N decided to keep up with popular trends, and planned to develop a peripheral device for Super Nintendo. As you know, the CD disk is a joint development of Sony and Phillips engineers, and t. To. Sony have already acted as a partner for the development of a sound chip for SNES, Nintendo decided to seek help in the implementation of their idea to fellow countrymen, and both companies agreed on an agreement by which Sony had to develop a CD-adon to Super Nintendo.

In the 1992 April issue of Nintendo Power, Nintendo announced the imminent issue of CD-ROM for SNES. The company promised that for only $ 200, players will be able to "pro -APGRAM", a console operating on cartridges to support CD in January 1993. But over time, Nintendo began to doubt the success of the peripheral device. They were worried about one nuance. Discs worked much more slowly than cartridges. On Kariki, the game was loaded in 2-3 seconds, on the discs of the same seconds in 10-15. Nintendo thought, scratched their heads and decided that the CD addon seemed like a cool thing, but at the same moment the players would not be enthusiastic about such long loads. And from this moment, Nintendo themselves did not understand what they want from their partner. Sony engineer Ken Kutaraga was responsible for this project, he had previously developed an audio chip for SNES. He really believed in his brainchild, which he called the Play Station and continued to convince Nintendo that it would be a hit. As a result, there are many versions of how and what happened next, but I prefer this one: Nintendo suggested Sony to release all kinds of encyclopedias to the Play Station, for homemade karaoke and other non -aggregate applications, and leave all the games under their control and launch them only through cartridges, ignoring the release of large games on discs on discs. However, then it turned out that they were shutting down with written agreements, where no word was said about the ban on the release of games on the disks. As a result, Yamauti considered that Sony would still release games on the Play Station and were afraid that if the developers and players will come in large CD games at the Play Station, then Nintendo would not receive a center from sales of these games. All the laurels and the main income would take Sony for herself. For such a greedy company as Nintendo, such a picture looked unacceptable. But the big N still wanted CD addon, but did not want to cooperate with Sony, and in quiet I entered into an agreement with Philips on the distribution of the popular games of the company on compact disks, in return for the development of CD ROM for SNES.

An interesting fact. Here Nintendo made another mistake, t. To. The squandering of intellectual property began. For example on a game console "Sd–AND" from Philips, the players received a disgusting Hotel Mario. Further Nintendo They wanted to slowly start the capture and film industry, selling the rights to film adaptation Super Mario Bros., Where Tom Hanks was still not very popular at that moment in time, but his candidacy was delayed from the list, considering it too expensive. But in my opinion it was only at Hanks, t. To. The film turned out, to put it mildly, not very. Who knows, Tom Hanks would play there, and perhaps his career would no longer play with paints.

So, the Nintendo spokesman has already told the press that the company plans to cooperate with Philips, despite the transaction previously concluded with Sony. And when Sony announced her novelty Play Station, they already knew that Nintendo wanted to refuse cooperation.

Perhaps that is why representatives of the press left the Sony conference with the feeling that Sony planned to take advantage of the Nintendo agreement to try to go around the sphere of publication of games. Suspecting this, Nintendo decided to first strike. The day after the announcement of the Play Station – Nintendo states that he terminates the contract with Sony and is now working with her Dutch competitor Philips. Sony was shocked by the public humiliation that Nintendo inflicted on her. But the Nintendo act, which hoped to withdraw Sony from the game business, led to a completely opposite result. The humiliated, offended Sony, led by Kutaragi, collected their achievements and went to negotiations on the Sega about cooperation and the joint issue of the console. Kalinsk was eager to release Play Station in collaboration with Sega, but the Japanese office considered that Sony did not understand anything in the game business and rejected this idea. As a result, the abandoned and devoted to all Sony gathered their will into a fist and decided to take revenge on everyone who did not believe in them, and after a few months they announced their own prefix – PlayStation, without a gap in the title. Considering that the console was designed perfectly for that time, Nintedo and Sega were seriously scared and were shocked by such a turn of events. The situation was already irreversible, Sony prepared for the release of their 32-bit console, with support for 3D and CD. Nintendo simply could not answer anything, because they were just starting the development of the future N64, not suspecting that they themselves would create a headache and will act as a catalyst for the appearance of a new competitor. In short, the mess with CD Addon for SNES failed and Nintendo officially abandoned this idea, focusing on support for Super Nintendo and plunged into the development of the next generation console, so that there is something to answer Sony.

PlayStation amazed with its picture and assembly quality. A large number of franchises, which were previously exclusives of Nintendo, migrated to the console from Sony, due to its mega popularity, as well as the presence of a CD of the drive, which made it possible to accommodate a huge amount of data.

Well, under the curtain there are few facts about where the console was sold and in what quantities. You probably remember that in previous blogs about Sega, I talked about how Sega promoted her Master System and Mega Drive in those markets that Nintedo did not pay due attention. Contrary to high popularity in their native country and in the West – in the USA, they completely scored on the market of the rest of the world, t. e. Europe and the Latin part of the New World, the gap of which actively filled the Sega, and took a very strong position there, releasing many exclusives and various versions of their prefixes to match the budget of the population. Nintendo realized their mistake and slowly began to import consoles in these countries. NES and SNES began to be sold in Brazil in 1993 by PlayTronic. European countries began to exhibit Super Famicom shelves since 1992. In Russia, the prefix appeared in November 1994, and at the time of going on sale cost 420,000 non -minimized rubles ($ 135). The spread of the prefix was engaged in Steepler, which also sold Dendy. This is probably the only case when Nintedo entered into an alliance with the company that gave rise to their nes – in order to easier to enter the Iron Curtain market. In general, we can say that none of the new directions of sales of its consoles – Nintendo has not found the same popular as in the USA and Japan. If they entered the market for the USA starting everything from scratch and gradually introduced the player into their game world, which made their prefixes popular, then in the rest of the world they already came with their heads high, thinking that everyone should already know about the company and their games, but in the end it turned out that Super Famicom was too expensive, and they did not try to explain why he could overpay for such an expensive apparatus, if it was possible without problems.Play Mega Drive and other consoles affordable at a price or in popularity.

Nintendo of America stopped the production of SNES in 1999, about two years after the release of Kirby’s Dream Land 3 (this was the last game published by the company itself for this console), which took place on November 27, 1997. In Japan, Super Famicom continued to be produced until September 2003, and the games were released until 2000. The last release, Metal Slader Glory Director’s Cut, took place on December 1, 2000.

49 million SNES prefixes were implemented around the world, of which 23 million in America and 17 million in Japan. Although Snes could not repeat the success of its predecessor (NES – 61.91 million consoles around the world were sold), it was the best -selling game console of its time. Mega Drive/Genesis was in second place: about 30 million consoles sold all over the world.

Summing up, we can say the following: what the competition with Sega gave rise to? She gave rise to Nintendo’s mistakes in business. First, the big n began to lose control of the market. She was no longer so powerful, and the developers tried to bypass her prohibitions and conditions in cunning ways, in conjunction with aggressive marketing Sega – everyone managed to put Nintendo in place. Due to the same competition, they also got involved in history with the Play Station, as a result of which cooperation came to a dead end and Nintendo themselves gave rise to their future competitor ..