The Name of the Game is the Game
Except When It’s Not
Let’s go back in time.
It’s 1983. The North American home video game market has crashed. Literally thousands of Atari cartridges are buried in a New Mexico landfill.
It’s 1985. After the success of their first home video game console in Japan, Nintendo believes that reports of the market’s death in North America have, indeed, been greatly exaggerated. To the horror of retailers everywhere, Nintendo releases the Nintendo Entertainment System, or NES, in the United States.
It’s 1990. 30% of American households now own an NES. Only 23% of households own a computer. Nintendo’s gamble has paid off. They’re untouchable.
It’s 1992. The relatively unknown Sega’s Genesis console now controls 65% of the 16-bit system market in the United States, beating out Nintendo’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System, or SNES. This is the first time Nintendo has not been the market leader since its legendary rise to power.
How could Sega have made this David and Goliath caliber underdog story into a reality? Sega might have liked to say that it was purely due to the quality of their games. After all, a popular saying in the industry went something like this: “The Name of the Game is the Game.” Your hardware could be better than anything else on the market, but if your games were no good, you were no good. The truth of the matter, however, was not so simple. If good games were all it took, then Sega’s Genesis would have put up a much better fight against Nintendo in its native Japan, where sales never quite picked up. So what exactly was the secret sauce that convinced so many American gamers to drink Sega’s Kool-Aid? It was the marketing, of course. Sega’s advertising team, comprised of a number of bold risk takers, was able to target a few key chinks in Nintendo’s armor in order to solidify themselves as a legitimate competitor in the home console space.
It does need to be said that the games Sega had on offer were absolutely a huge part of the Genesis’ success story. Games like Sonic the Hedgehog, which was available exclusively on Sega systems, are regarded as classics, even in today’s gaming community. And even among games that were released on both the Genesis and the SNES, it was not uncommon for the Genesis versions to be better received. For instance, the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat greatly outsold the SNES version thanks to its inclusion of the graphical violence fans expected based on the original arcade release (the SNES edition was heavily censored.) Disney’s Aladdin was also released for both systems, and while which version is superior has been hotly debated for many years, the Genesis version had some clear advantages. Chief among these advantages was a unique “digicel animation” system, which allowed Disney’s actual animators to collaborate with the game’s developers. The result was that Sega’s Aladdin was far more beautiful (compare them yourself: SNES vs Genesis.)
We know that the Genesis had great games, but great games simply weren’t enough to combat the nigh impenetrable wall that was Nintendo. So, how exactly did Sega’s scrappy marketing make them stand out from the pack? The answer is that they incorporated an extremely aggressive, borderline misleading advertising campaign against Nintendo. The message was clear: Nintendo was lame, and Sega was cool. Considering that games like Mortal Kombat were very noticeably watered down on Nintendo’s system, who could argue against this? This idea was exemplified in what became something of a mantra for Sega: Welcome to the Next Level. Nintendo was for kids, and if you were ready to level up, it was time to buy a Genesis.
Furthermore, Sega wanted everybody to know that the Genesis was a more technologically advanced system than its competitor. This task became difficult, however, when it became apparent that the SNES was actually the more capable system- but that didn’t stop Sega’s marketers! Some background: one of the SNES’ claims to fame was its Mode 7 capability, which was enabled it to create 3-D like images at a time were 2-D was the standard. Sega had nothing like this, so they scrambled to to find something, anything, that they did have. Eventually, they learned that there was an obscure yet somewhat neat trick you could do with the hardware that helped the Genesis achieve faster processing speeds. It didn’t actually have much practical purpose for games and wasn’t simple to employ, but what mattered was that Nintendo couldn’t do it. There was one issue though: the name was boring as all get-out: Direct Memory Access, or DMA. So, they did what any competent marketing team would do, gave it a more exciting name, and BOOM. A legend was born. Say hello to Blast Processing, the grandfather of meaningless buzzwords.
Thanks in no small part to their friend Sonic and their aggressive advertising campaign, Sega was able to hold its own against Nintendo, even if only for a short while. In more recent times, Sega has left the hardware business, unable to compete well enough against the likes of Nintendo and Sony. Instead, they now choose to develop for the consoles of other companies- Nintendo included. It’s funny going to the store and seeing Mario and Sonic sharing a game together. To those involved in Sega and Nintendo’s legendary rivalry, it’s a sight that probably would have been unthinkable all those years ago, and yet here we are. As Nintendo itself is looking to reinvent itself following a strong decline in sales, it is difficult not to wonder what the future may have in store. At the very least, if the speedy blue hedgehog and the mustachioed plumber were able to put aside their differences, then who knows what the gaming industry will look like a few decades from now?
