I know Americans and Canadians definitely would've appreciated Terranigma. But I also think it would've been pretty cool if we got some the European sports games you guys exclusively played in your region. I think it would've helped us Americans understand and appreciate other sports played outside the U.S. much like you guys with Madden.
The biggest differences to me from a german point of view. 1. Similiar to the UK with the Sinclar ZX, the C64 was very popular in Germany. 2. It seems that almost every kid in Germany had a Game Boy, so Nintendo was a allready established name. 3. In Germany you could get the Nintendo Club Magazin (Nintendo Power) for free at your local toy store. 4. Nintendo put a lot of effort into localization! (It was even printed ontoo the boxes "Mit deutschem Bildschirmtext", so Zelda-A Link to the past, was a huge sucess, simply because german kids could finally got what was going on and follow the story.) 5. No Arcades! The legislature put video game machines in the same categorie as slot machines, so you wouldn't find Video Games outside of shady casinos, billiard saloons etc. all prohibit to persons under 18 y.o. (Therefore no kid in germany would even know what an arcade mode in a game was. We just called it ultra hard mode or mode with time limit^^) 6. No comperative advertising, also prohibit.
Ehm no. The explanation was given, that it fell under the same law as slot machines. Yes, it was stupid and I am thankful to know arcades from the US Armee basis. But still, sometimes we could experience it at festivals etc.
Actively I only experienced the late part of the "war", with one friend of my parents having a SNES and another one an Amiga 500. So that is basically the stuff I played. Later on I had a Gameboy and got the PS1 from my father, chipped obviously. So I was one of those who had both, a Playstation and N64 back then. Games like Speedball 2, Lemmings, SWIV, Wings of Fury, Super Mario World, Lion King, Donkey Kong Country, Tetris, etc
Brilliant video once again ! The Americans sometimes have an hard time believing the NES and Nintendo weren't omnipotent. Thanks for bringing the European story to the masses.
+Martin Sutcliffe Nintendo did lose Europe but it was a close effort, Japan and the USA were Nintendo's and Sega did push USA market, Australia was also an area of interest, in the end, Nintendo had the numbers in Japan and USA to stop Sega from winning the 16 bit wars.
@@joed5150 That, and something I picked up on even at a kid was that the SNES had superior graphics and sound to the Genesis. I was happy to be an SNES owner and had endless fun with my small library of games for it.
amen to that, growning up i knew ONE person that had a nes my cousin, and he was a fucking pleb anyway, always laugh at the americans disbelief that not everybody loves nintendo
After the Kimblitz, I'd reckon you would have taken a long break. But these last few weeks have been the best videos you've ever done. This vid in particular is important, I find, because the European theatre (as it were) for the 16 bit wars is never covered. Your stuff is exactly what games journalism should aspire to; intriguing fact based information mixed with opinion steeped in the personality of the content maker which is approachable, charming and NOT condescending or pandering to the viewer. Keep up the good work Kim!
This is my first video of Kim's. What's the Kim Blitz? Yes I know the original comment is a year old but I'm hoping you'll see past that and answer anyway :P
As for what happened here in Brazil: Sega was huge, the Master System and the Mega-Drive sold well. After that I didnt hear much of them. 32x was nonexistent and the Saturn failed miserably in comparison to the playstation. One big reason was the high price of the games and the impossibility of playing pirate games (the playstation could play pirate games and piracy is a disease here in south america). The Dreamcast did ok, but again the piracy killed the system.
It's funny how the Sega vs Nintendo war was the reverse in the UK/Europe compared to the US/Canada. In the US/Canada, Nintendo won the 8-bit war before Sega gave them a tough 16-bit war. In the UK/Europe, Sega won the 8-bit war before Nintendo gave them a tough 16-bit war.
Very refreshing to see how Nintendo and Sega faired in the UK/Europe during the late 80's and early 90's. Mirrors my experience from that time perfectly. I wish I could recall the Rik Mayall ads though.
Have been watching your videos for year or 2 now and I must say they are probably some of the best on YT. Keep up the great work. This shits better than ANYTHING on the telly!
Another fantastic video, honestly one of the best researched and presented channels I have seen on RUclips. You'd honestly write an amazing book as you are great at not only breaking down a topic but also looking at events from another perspective. Well done :)
One thing I find REALLY interesting about this is that some people in the game industry had this goal that a game console would be a long-term household item in EVERY home, line a telephone or a television, but the industry competition kept pushing for more better faster stronger and expected you to buy a new console every couple of years. But in Europe and South America they ACHIEVED that appliance state where a console was so popular you could keep selling them forever, but they threw this advantage away in favor of unified strategy. As an American I gotta say I would far have preferred long tail product cycles like we saw with SONY where the PS2 and PS3 were sold ten years after debut. Honestly I would prefer that a really good piece of hardware be manufactured forever and they just update it slightly (give the N64 and PS2 HDMI output, fix the Dreamcast so that every game works with VGA output). Alas...marketing.
I grew up in England and only knew the NES and SNES well. Tho equally, it seemed like an even amount of kids in school were raving about Sega as much as Nintendo, it felt very even.
Brilliant video, so good to finally get a UK perspective! I grew up with an Amiga 500 until getting a SNES in 1994, a second-hand Mega Drive around 1997 and an N64 in 1999. 16-bit games were extremely cheap and easy to find in the late 1990s as everyone was buying Playstation/N64 games instead - I almost doubled my game collection in 1998 alone.
I live in the US, and I had a Master System, but I didn't get it until the end days of the NES. I already had a Genesis/Megadrive by then, but I was just a kid who loved games and wanted to try more and more kinds of games
On an anecdotal level I saw 10 times more NES consoles in Ireland than I saw Master Systems. This I believe was spurred on by there being lots of Playchoice 10's in arcades. There were MS games for rent in video shops though so someone must have owned them although I only knew one kid. The Mega Drive seemed to do slightly better than the SNES because it was cheaper and people didn't have much money at the time but there wasn't much between them by the end.
I hope a few American enthusiasts end up stumbling upon this. Being a Brit in my late '30s I can obviously relate and concur with a lot of the observations and views here. I was lucky in that as a child my first proper start with gaming was with a Sega Master System (with Hang-On / Safari Hunt built in & the light phaser peripheral and Afterburner) which was bought abroad in the States circa 1988. It took a year or so before I knew anyone else with one but it wasn't before long that loads of Speccy and C64 owners had upgraded. NES owners were always rare but we all knew that the Mario and Mega Man games were amazing thanks to the timed demo pods the local Virgin Megastore had (games were Mario 1, Mario 2, Turtles, Mega Man and Bayou Billy) - alongside a proper booth area which was dedicated to the Sega Master System. Curiously, the demo area for the SMS didn't have control pads out for the public to try: You had to wait in line and ask to try a game out, but of the selection on offer most would be ones from the budget-but-quality line - titles like The Ninja, Secret Command, Wonder Boy and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Double Dragon was far and away the most popular game, though - it was all about that 2-player co-op. Shinobi and Wonder Boy in Monster Land were the most traded games amongst the kids in the neighbourhood, and Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap was popular even after we'd got our minds blown from grey imported Mega Drives sporting Super Hang On, Super Shinobi and Ghouls n' Ghosts. PAL Mario 3 carts finally appeared in shops after the Snes Mario 4 bundle came out, by the time which the luckier amongst us had already mastered the first wave or two of Super Famicom games.
It was like the future had arrived...I remember sitting up all night playing games like Wonder Boy, Budokan and California Games, just blown away by it.
At the peak of profitability, the Mega Drive/Genesis was on top and continued to be for another 2 years. To claim the SNES won would be like saying, the winner of a race didn't really win because someone else continued to run well after the race was over.
We didn't really have a video game crash in the early 80s. By the time Nintendo came around with the Famicom/NES, 8-bit micros and homecomputers were already well established, and stayed like it far into the 90s, with some of the later machines being things like the Amiga and Atari 500.
I had never even heard of the master system til I found some retro games channels on RUclips, it's very interesting seeing all the different perspectives, awesome video, just found your channel, have a great day everyone.
Thanks for another awesome vid! It's very interesting how all these things went down in different countries. Here in Finland, the Nes and the SMS were released virtually at the same time, and the Nes was even about a fifty euros (in today's money) more expensive than the Master System, but still the SMS was totally obscured by the big N. Don't quite know why, but my guess would be Super Mario Bros. Even the MegaDrives were quite rare in comparision to other countries.
Here in Ireland it was Nes all the way, very similar to America, I only knew of one person with a master system. The mega drive was the better system in the early 90s besides the fact that all the multi platform magazines were very Nintendo biased. Although all us MD owners dreamed of owning street fighter at the time the SNES had it packed in.
In Poland the story was a bit different. During the Cold War, all we had was Pong and Atari 2600/5200 clones and home computers (Atari, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore, IBM) and that's only assuming one could even afford those. Once the era of communism ended in 1991, we got a taste of a "real" 8-bit video game console, which was the NES, or rather the Famicom, or rather a Chinese Famiclone that one company (BobMark International) decided to "officially" distribute and advertise in Poland under the name "Pegasus"... with absolutely no involvement from Nintendo whatsoever. The "Pegasus" became pretty popular but its success didn't last long as in 1994 the new Polish Copyright Law was regulated. That was when the company decided to jump ship and signed a deal with SEGA to officially distribute the Mega Drive and Saturn in Poland, which, as you can guess, didn't last long either. After the Saturn failed, BobMark switched from video games to soft drinks and now they're distributing a Coca-Cola knock-off known as Hoop Cola. As for Nintendo, once the copyright law was there, they decided to get some third-party company to officially distribute their consoles in Poland as well, starting with the SNES and while the distributors changed with every next generation, Nintendo's image in Poland remained consistently niche. Neither SEGA nor Nintendo were really all that popular (maybe the GameBoy but that's about it), so the concept of the 16-bit wars was completely unknown to us. Poland was for the most part a PC country, at least until 1996 when the PlayStation came and took the entire Europe (Poland included) by storm.
Very interesting story. I think today not just Nintendo, but Japanese game companies are niche in Eastern Europe (former countries of Warsaw pact) because in 90s and 2000s they were releasing games mostly for consoles (as personal computers were equally unpopular in Japan as non-Sony consoles were in Eastern Europe). Capcom were the ones which localized on Polish first with Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4. Sega and Square Enix were only localizing games by western development studios and for PC.
+Shinku Quickman The European SNES never got EarthBound (which was released in North America) either. Europe had to wait until it was released on the Virtual Console for Wii U to play it legally.
Appreciate the video, as an American i thank you for the educational video. Being a life long gamer in my 30's i had some knowledge of the differences between the US and European game markets but you brought up a lot of details that i had no idea of. I'm actually a little shocked that so many people had no idea that the video games market was vastly different in other countries. Even today there are significant differences depending on where your from, just look at how hard of a time Microsoft has had in Japan since the original Xbox.
I think a lot of it is basic economics for uk familys at the time, spend 40 quid on a game for an nes in 1988 or buy a microcomputer and get games for as little as 99p (cents) or 7 quid for a brand new release and that's it really, when sega came along they managed to keep the price pretty low while the quality was as good in not better than the nes so people got on board with sega also i think the arcade recognition helped with games like outrun shinobi eect ect
Excellent video as always. Shadowrun and Flashback for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive were my two favorite games of that generation, and I still play them through every year or two. They were both so unique and beautiful and interesting. If anyone hasn't played them, I recommend them even today.
Also yeah it's always been pronounced seega in Australia and I found it odd when I started seeing videos of people that pronounced it different But apparently we are the ones not saying it correctly ???
+S Wils Sega pronunces it like the American "SEGA!" in ads and pre roll you hear in many Sega games. Is also pronunced and written as "SEGA" in Japan. Some marketing firms didn't stay on message. On an aside, in Canada we say both S N E S and snes but as "sness" and not "snez". I hear the former less often among non retro/gaming people though.
I recall reading a preview of Chrono Trigger in either Total or NMS and getting very excited for it, only for it to never show up (at least until the DS, but I didn't wait that long to play it!). Another superb vid with a much needed alternate perspective on the 16-bit days, those were great times indeed.
Superb vid Kim. Another thoroughly entertaining doc that for once was refreshing to see the UK perspective. It's so weird for me hearing the nes didn't have much of a foothold here as I had a nes back then and I never got that impression. Most of my mates had nes consoles and I remember when the tmht game got a pack in release it was a pretty big deal. Of course I did know people that had micro computers and master systems but the nes seemed just as high profile around my way. Maybe it was just in London as I have been told the nes was virtually non existent in other parts of the country in particular up north.
Another awesome vid, thank you! Incidentally, the console wars 'The Northern Version' was: The hard kids got a Mega drive, the rich kids got a Snes, the rest of us played Street Fighter 2 on our Commodores. Your best mate was basically the kid you knew with Sensi soccer and a second controller :)
Great video, finally someone who doesn't tell the american story of the console wars. I have found memory's of both NES/SNES and Master System / Megadrive. I have the idea that the NES in the Netherlands was a bit bigger then the Master system. During my childhood i remember seeing more NES system then Master System. A Russian who lived a few blocks over had the Master System and i loved it :D But then again in europe we had 2 distributors. Pal-A was mattel and Pal-B was probably Nintendo itself ?
He is welsh actor Peter Wingfield, also known for playing in Soldier, Solder; Stargate SG-1, Holby City, NCIS: LA, and he had a role in X2: X-Men United as well as the awful Catwomen from 2004.
I am so shocked that Sega done so well in the UK, I only knew one person that had a mega drive, my mates older brother, and I only once saw a master system at a cousins house.maybe it was a south London thing. I remember MD adverts but not MS, I remember when I got my NES, I'd never played one, I couldn't believe it would get any better than that.I had come from a C64 mind you.
I was a C64 then a Nes owner. I knew Sega did well even though I myself never knew anyone with a Master. To hear some here talk you'd think Nintendo didn't exist in the UK! I then got a Megadrive. :D
@@Mr_Smith_20 Wrong. In school I knew kids who had Nes, Amiga, Atari, no master. Then it was Megadrive and Snes. I'm not daft or ignorant enough to assume kids never saw Master's though. 16 bit started in the UK with the Amiga and the 8 bit and 16 bit time co-existed till the mid 90's when both the Nes and Maser were discontinued. By 1991 Nes had sold 800,000 and the master 700,000, the lead flip-flopped a few times and by the end they'd both sold 1.5 million. Biggest selling console of 1991 was the Nes with 325 units shifted (pre-price drop), a nice Turtles tie-in. The master sold one third of it's total haul in 1992 (536 units) after the price dropped in 1991, since the Megadrive had been released and the Master was 50 quid, 500,000 units shifted. The Nes then dropped it's price in 1992 and sold 275k units, because the Snes was out. Sales speak for themselves though, as opposed to anecdotal tales, and they don't change. My own anecdotal memory of school yard is swapping Nes games. The chat at that point was Amiga and Nintendo as far as home games went.
@@Mr_Smith_20 Yes you were wrong about the Nes not being a thing, the sales are the sales, and you ignorantly label me; not unusual with some sorts. Computer games were the real cheap games, 2 quid for a tape, cheaper if you copied (this was the case for disks later on too). My first machine was a 64. By 1991 Nes has 800.000 units sold, the master 700,000. The Nes was the best selling console of 1991 and best 8-bit of 1993. Master was the best selling 8-bit console of 1992. Megadrive was the best selling of 1992 and 1993. All those so called 'rich kids buying Nes' and making it the best selling machine of 1991. All machines were 'expensive' kit, until they were reduced, which happened to all machines as they age. The price of a Vic 20 in 1980 was more in real terms than a Nes in 1991.
@@Mr_Smith_20 Four rapid replies, blimey, temper tantrum! Somebody got their knickers in a twist. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, I see now that was misplaced, ah well, c'est la vie. "copy and paste", now that is funny. "Lies" too, anyone with basic reading ability (so not you) can check on the independent figures, one thing Nintendo were never shy about is figures, unlike someone else, but there's good reason for that. ;) Anyway, it's a matter of independent record. I did try and find a Nes a while back, to use on a modern telly, there was loads. I still have my original 1987 Mattel® version but I've not had a crt for years. The one thing you are correct about (stopped clock?) is Nes games being roughly a tenner more than a master. In 1991 this was not as bad as it was ten years earlier. "Preserve of the rich kids", your ignorance and chip is really quite telling here, it's also illogical. Bu there's no helping some people. The fact you say Nintendo has been proven to lie about sales figures shows me what you're about. Ho-hey. ;) Also, you lay claim to how Brits should talk, you were born in the late 80's so it's no surprise that you are totally ignorant and clueless about this period, but there are scans of magazines from that time, which help; Argos catalogues too, to help people who weren't actually there. ;) Walk into any newsagents and half the consoles mags were about the Nes. 2000-2004, wow, such a font. I've seen lots of Nes games at car boots. Just weren't popular when they were half the 8-bit market, haha, OK genius, all those magazines, Electronic Arts and all websites are all in on the scam, because your knowledge from 2004 is the best knowledge! No that really does deserve a LMAO> Euro 8-bit nerds? Crikey lad you're thick as you are ignorant as you are rude, there's o helping sorts like you. I was a gamer, go read up on sales figures. I went out and earned my pennies, as did most gamers back then. Thinking on, seems you're a tad xenophobic as well. Always the case though, when facts don't mater cry and scream and attack the person.
I got a NES for Christmas in 1990 when I was 4 in London, it was a great system and I owned it till I was 7. At infant school and early primary school almost all of my friends had a NES although 1 or 2 had a master system- no one was playing the spectrum, in fact I never even knew there was such a thing. I think a lot of these videos from older guys in the UK over-emphasise the popularity of these inferior devices just because they have big in the mid80s when they were young. By 1994 in the 16 bit era Mega Drive was the most popular console at school, I think nearly everyone had it, it was the cool console.
Awesome video Kim - definitely a different experience you had in the U.K. with the console wars than we did in the US, just like it was with computers. I’d be interested in a similar video on the BBS experience there including BBS games. Thanks for being awesome!
It's always interesting when talking about games with people that only have the US history to go on. People will preach about how we wouldn't have games today had it not been for the holy Nintendo, yet have absolutely no idea of what was going on in other parts of the world and no knowledge of the home computer market. Nintendo obviously did a lot of great work, but to give them all of the praise and all of the credit when they did just as much to destroy it, it's just a crying shame. Given how expensive the games were and how much alternatives were on offer, some people will just not understand that Nintendo didn't really effect your time with games. I have some fond memories of Nintendo games, but they are a very small part of my time with games.
I think that just comes from youtube being very American dominant, Even Brit RUclipsrs pronounce things like septics these days. I had commodore, Sega and NIntendo, but it's NIntendo that made up most of my gaming in the UK :D
Didn't Starwing release at £40 the same as most of Nintendo's first party games? maybe i remember wrong but the most expensive game I recall is SF2 which was £70 on release I seem to recall. I used to hate saying SNES or Super NES and always called it the Super Nintendo. It's funny how the numbers say Sega won yet the majority of collectors now mainly want Nintendo games and systems, even the people I know who had Megadrive's in the 90's now prefer the Super Nintendo when they want a spot of retro.
superb video Kim, I've wanted to see someone do this subject for years. Very well done. Isnt it odd that the star of Segas adverts was one of Rik Mayalls crowd and best known for playing Spudgun in "Bottom" alongside Mayall?
I grew up with an NES(I'm American) and the whole time I never knew the Master System existed. I actually thought Sega's first console was the Genesis until just a few years ago. It looks like a great system.
Seems strange that Sega had Spudgun and Nintendo had Rick Mayall from Bottom. Yes, the UK pretty much had it's own game industry after the crash of 83. NES didn't impact much over C64, but Master System did.
C64 was the main machine up until the 90's, then both the 8-bit consoles took over. Commodore and Amstrad saw the writing on the wall a lil earlier and tried to make consoles which both bombed.
Great Video Kim Justice! As an American it's great to hear the UK/Euro perspective on this and the early computers... Now to see if you have a video on the Atari ST.. :)
Wait, they discontinued the Mega Drive 2 in the UK after 96? I can vividly remember the Argos and Index catalogues having Mega Drive 2's with a 6 in 1 cart available for about £40-£50 up to about 2000! I'd ask 'would that have been unsold stock' but when I think how big the system was they would have sold them all waaaay before 2000.
madcapoperator You're right. Even in 2000, the old Woolworths (RIP) on Argyle Street in Glasgow still had a Mega Drive II hooked up to a TV with Sonic 2 looping. I can't remember if it was actually for sale, but that Mega Drive unit must have been set up in the same place for at least six years -- just shows how often they changed their store layout! ;)
Matt Neilson Probably just old stock to sell off, the the last Mega Drive game released in the UK was Fifa 98 in late 1997 by then the N64 as out and the Playstation was starting to get ridiculously popular and became number 1 in the UK. Saying that up until summer 1998 you could still rent Snes and Mega drives games from Blockbuster.
It's true that SNES's library aged better but back then in an RPGless Europe? Let me give you a gist: "OMG THE MEGA DRIVE POWER RANGERS GAME IS FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!" We had different standards back then...
Nice video. Very much appreciated. Was always curious of the why and how regarding Nintendo's relative lack of dominance in Europe as opposed to Japan and the US, which has translated into Sega and then Sony doing very well in the EU.
The Megadrive aka Genesis was the first properly cool console. When you're being asked to spend a lot on cartridges, that matters. The UK Megadrive advertising was brilliantly pitched, sort of Bladerunner-like meets quirky. Sonic the Hedgehog was like playing a rollercoaster. The whole ethos of Sega seemed to tap in to the slightly psychedelic, acid house, British imagination which liked the dayglo colours of the Commodore Amiga. It was a big step up in image for them from the dry marketing that the Master System had here. The Megadrive was a bit like an Amiga in console form. The SNES was also popular in the UK, particularly for British studio Rare's tech landmark Donkey Kong Country but the grittier Megadrive (which had some fantastic Disney games, remember) sold a bit more here, even though the SNES sold more worldwide. Sega had a larger arcade game heritage whereas Nintendo weren't as cool in that respect.
I live in the Netherlands, and I don't remember the nintendo systems ever being referenced here by an acronym. I didn't even know they where called NES or SNES until I watched some docu vids on youtube. They where just called the nintendo for the NES or the super nintendo for the SNES. Also the original nintendo over here was thought of as a little kids games machine. I myself had a Commodore 64 (also fully said ussuallly and not refered to as a C64) and later an Amiga(bought second hand for around 300 gulden which was less then 100 pounds at that time or 134,75 Euro). My kid sister (who is 9 years younger then me) however got a Nintendo when she was 7 or 8 for Sinterklaas (celebrated on the eve of 5 december and a similar childrens oriented holiday as christmas is in the UK and US). However I think home computers (as they where referenced here instead of as micro computers) where more popular here because of piracy. My sister had something like 3 or 4 games for her nintendo in total. I had hundreds of illigal copies of games for my C64 and Amiga. I think only around 95% of my C64 games where original ones (mostly tape version bought at discount stores for 5 gulden(Somewhere between 1-1.75 pounds at the time or around 2.25 Euro. Though later I managed to save most of those tape games to a floppy using addon cartridges like the KCS powercartridge or the Final Cartridge III ) a piece. My original Amiga games where even less. I don't think they even made up 1%. So for a lot of kids from poorer families (like my own) home computers where the only affordable gaming option at the time, at least if you wanted to be able to play more then the 3 or 4 games you would be able to afford on consoles. The fact that a lot kids at school had those same homecomputers and would lend you their pirated copies so you could make copies of them, made the choice of getting a home computer instead of a console even more appealing. And I have to say lateron I did use the C64 quite a lot for school work. Mostly in the form of book reports or physics and tech reports.
Thanks for this window into the 16-bit wars in Europe. You guys got some nice releases over there; Flink, especially looks great. Much more color than I would have expected from a Genesis game. Edit: Just looked up Flink and realized it did get a release in the US. It's over $100.00 now, though.
My first Nintendo experience was a NES in-store display (an M82, I would later discover) at a local department store. While I was introduced to Mario and Zelda through the Super Show on GMTV, my first Mario game was Super Mario Land played at a friend’s house. You’re certainly right about discovering games through non-game sources; I was a massive Sonic The Hedgehog fan despite having almost no gameplay experience. The N64 was my first console; until then, it was playing at friends’ houses or renting consoles. (Anyone remember renting consoles?)
Hmmm, Kim Justice, what you say in the beginning of the video is not quite true for all of Europe. Mattel published the NES only in certain areas of Europe. However not in France, not in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and some other countries. In Germany, Nintendo hired a company named Bienengraeber to do the main work like advertising and so on, but ultimately kept control in terms of releases and pricing. This changed shortly before the game boy was released. That is when Nintendo took over and founded Nintendo of Europe with its HQ in Großostheim,. Germany. Which is why the NES' success came late in central Europe, but it came. In Germany e.g. the NES was way more popular than the Master System and easily outsold the Mega Drive. Not only due to more available games, but also kind of neglectable stuff like colored instruction booklets, better package design, better sale offerings and a more steady awareness among players due to more TV ads and so on. Sega caught on in germany shortly before Sonic 2 came out - by intensifying TV ad messages and delivering better games.
Excellent video! It's so interesting that back then, being pre-internet, we were so unaware of the differences between UK video games and the outside world, particularly 1) How far behind NES games were. I was probably only just discovering the magic of Mario 1 when Mario 3 was coming out in Japan. 2) I had no idea what a turn-based RPG was. I thought Zelda was an RPG. 3) Name changes. Shadow Warriors, Starwing, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Illusion Of Time .... nowadays I'm almost forgetting the names of these games I originally knew,
Did you not read the mags at the time? I remember getting Club NIntendo and them saying Archon would come out, then I'd get C&VG or Mean Machine and see it wasn't but then I@d see all the import games that wouldn't play on my mattel Nes, I was pretty annoyed! I even wanted to start importing games! I also thought Zelda was a RPG and still do to this day, don't like the turn based stuff. And I also got confused over some of the name changes. :D
Those were the days when consoles had personality, it was a real choice. These days, apart from the odd exclusive, it doesn't matter, obviously not counting Nintendo in that.I'm, and always will be a Nintendo fan (I did struggle to defend the wii u, in fact, apart from virtual boy, its the only Nintendo I didn't buy) but I love Sega, I've recently started playing MS emulations and I've been blown away, you can tell a Sega game from Nintendo from a mile off, they both had a distinctive graphical style and certainly sound.
I was a gamer in the 80's. Commodore, Speccy and Atari were dominant at that time, I had a Vic 20 and then a 64. Then a Nes, Mattel model, one of the first. The Nes games at that time started at £18, much more than the £3 games for the computers. The first £49.99 game was Zelda, which was just amazing at the time, I saved up pocket money for it. Must have been 1987? The Master System and Nes both started slowly but they both broke the UK market at roughly the same time in the 90s. Master system and Nes (without the robot) were the same price, By 1991 Bandai had sold over 700,000 Nes units in the UK, Sega were more secretive on their numbers but Bandai claimed they were ahead. I think the Master stayed on the shelves longer than the Nes as I recall Master System2s' in magazines for £49.99 (maybe less?). The marketing for the Nes was abysmal until around 1991 when Nintendo took over and they had the big Turtles tie-in. As a big Nes gamer and magazine reader I was really irritated by how few games the UK got compared to Japan/USA. I actually imported a few games and looked to import the PC Engine and the Famicom disk system. :D I would say you're wrong on Mario. Mario 1,2 & 3 sold well in the UK. Aside from the cartoons I swapped games (including Mario games) in the late 80's, and Mario as a game creature was well known. I then bought the Megadrive, and then the snes. Nes games were usually around 5-10 pounds more than Master games, which was annoying, I don't recall but the Snes games being the same, but I suppose they were. I do recall Street Fighter being yuge! If you look at sales of Nes to Master, Nintendo actually had already established themselves, and sold more units. From looking at the 16-bit era, the Megadrive sold more in the UK, the solid adverting campaign I think has a lot to do with this. They were still edgy whilst not being as awful as the septic ads. I still can picture Spudgun as the face of the Megadrive. I think I can vaguely recall the Rik Mayall ad. He was in the New Statesmen at the time and still a yuge name. Wish I'd bought that 4-1 cart.Yes, I think the Megadrive ads were the prototype for what the Playstation did later. Sega was definitely edgier than any other advertising campaign. I think Rik was a yuge equaliser, but Sega did seem to do very well as presenting themselves as British. Even though there was now a Nintendo UK, and Club Nintendo had been a thing since 1987, they had a much more backseat lassie-faire attitude than Sega, who seems headstrong and unstoppable. Loved Zelda massively at the time, and I would have loved Earthbound and Secret of Mana. I had Sword of Vermillon on the Mega, which was OK. I never knew about Centy or Thor, I would have bought them! I'm not going to dig it out, but I'd bet you a bob that my copy of Zombies Ate My Neighbours is the name. I agree it's a tad sad when brits on videos try and be septic wannabes. Wow, so wish I'd bought Yoshi's Island. The 'other' sales figures are a bit off, if you take Japan and USA away from total Snes numbers, it leaves 12 million. The Megadrive at 10 seems high from what I've read in the sales thread. www.neogaf.com/threads/retro-sales-age-thread.981407/. There's lots of debate on areas, like Europe, this is a murky area, to within a few million, but worldwide there's no debate, it's clear from sales data that Nintendo definitely took the 16-bit with most sales.
If you liked this then think about having a gander through my social media, and get yourself on my Patreon: www.patreon.com/KimbleJustice
Excellent documentary, much better than this one ruclips.net/video/HRNXVtuhyYI/видео.html
I totally forgot that Rik Mayall was in Nintendo ads....
Got other country on Europe 🇪🇺 type Sweden 🇸🇪, Denmark 🇩🇰, ect Sega channel or not? I is Swedish 🇸🇪.
It was 2007 not 2004.
I know Americans and Canadians definitely would've appreciated Terranigma. But I also think it would've been pretty cool if we got some the European sports games you guys exclusively played in your region. I think it would've helped us Americans understand and appreciate other sports played outside the U.S. much like you guys with Madden.
The biggest differences to me from a german point of view.
1. Similiar to the UK with the Sinclar ZX, the C64 was very popular in Germany.
2. It seems that almost every kid in Germany had a Game Boy, so Nintendo was a allready established name.
3. In Germany you could get the Nintendo Club Magazin (Nintendo Power) for free at your local toy store.
4. Nintendo put a lot of effort into localization! (It was even printed ontoo the boxes "Mit deutschem Bildschirmtext", so Zelda-A Link to the past, was a huge sucess, simply because german kids could finally got what was going on and follow the story.)
5. No Arcades! The legislature put video game machines in the same categorie as slot machines, so you wouldn't find Video Games outside of shady casinos, billiard saloons etc. all prohibit to persons under 18 y.o. (Therefore no kid in germany would even know what an arcade mode in a game was. We just called it ultra hard mode or mode with time limit^^)
6. No comperative advertising, also prohibit.
I live in germany but I didn't experience that time.
Nice to know how it was in germany back then!
Ehm no. The explanation was given, that it fell under the same law as slot machines. Yes, it was stupid and I am thankful to know arcades from the US Armee basis. But still, sometimes we could experience it at festivals etc.
Actively I only experienced the late part of the "war", with one friend of my parents having a SNES and another one an Amiga 500. So that is basically the stuff I played. Later on I had a Gameboy and got the PS1 from my father, chipped obviously. So I was one of those who had both, a Playstation and N64 back then.
Games like Speedball 2, Lemmings, SWIV, Wings of Fury, Super Mario World, Lion King, Donkey Kong Country, Tetris, etc
@@nickthelick I think it was a bit more about gambling. Not unlike what is happening today, just in a slightly different way.
spectrum boys 4 life!
Brilliant video once again !
The Americans sometimes have an hard time believing the NES and Nintendo weren't omnipotent. Thanks for bringing the European story to the masses.
+Martin Sutcliffe Nintendo did lose Europe but it was a close effort, Japan and the USA were Nintendo's and Sega did push USA market, Australia was also an area of interest, in the end, Nintendo had the numbers in Japan and USA to stop Sega from winning the 16 bit wars.
Haruhi Suzumiya it wasn't close at all in europe between nintendo and europe.
It's hard to understand because as much as I loved my Genesis, NES and SNES just had truly superior libraries.
@@joed5150 That, and something I picked up on even at a kid was that the SNES had superior graphics and sound to the Genesis. I was happy to be an SNES owner and had endless fun with my small library of games for it.
amen to that, growning up i knew ONE person that had a nes my cousin, and he was a fucking pleb anyway, always laugh at the americans disbelief that not everybody loves nintendo
After the Kimblitz, I'd reckon you would have taken a long break. But these last few weeks have been the best videos you've ever done. This vid in particular is important, I find, because the European theatre (as it were) for the 16 bit wars is never covered. Your stuff is exactly what games journalism should aspire to; intriguing fact based information mixed with opinion steeped in the personality of the content maker which is approachable, charming and NOT condescending or pandering to the viewer. Keep up the good work Kim!
+H.D Beird Absolutely this. I can't echo this enough.
This is my first video of Kim's. What's the Kim Blitz? Yes I know the original comment is a year old but I'm hoping you'll see past that and answer anyway :P
As for what happened here in Brazil: Sega was huge, the Master System and the Mega-Drive sold well. After that I didnt hear much of them. 32x was nonexistent and the Saturn failed miserably in comparison to the playstation. One big reason was the high price of the games and the impossibility of playing pirate games (the playstation could play pirate games and piracy is a disease here in south america). The Dreamcast did ok, but again the piracy killed the system.
O Mega-Drive e meu console favorito! Tenho memorias fantasticas dele nos anos 90!! Good old times!
in chile the megadrive was kinda popuiar, but we had one of the worst tv commercials for sonic 1.
Juan Vedder for me in the UK the Mega Drive/Genesis was king. I didn't know anyone who had a SNES.
The Dreamcast was born dead.
@@Bellocks1 I has a Megadrive and then a Snes, and knew several who had a Snes, but i think the Mega sold more in the UK.
I think this my all time favourite Kim video. And that’s saying something
It's funny how the Sega vs Nintendo war was the reverse in the UK/Europe compared to the US/Canada. In the US/Canada, Nintendo won the 8-bit war before Sega gave them a tough 16-bit war. In the UK/Europe, Sega won the 8-bit war before Nintendo gave them a tough 16-bit war.
Razor Edge
Actually Sega didn’t even win so called 8 bit war in Europe.
Very refreshing to see how Nintendo and Sega faired in the UK/Europe during the late 80's and early 90's. Mirrors my experience from that time perfectly. I wish I could recall the Rik Mayall ads though.
First video of yours I've watched. Wow, these must take ages! Great watch.
To get this good. It takes Ages.... Sega
Have been watching your videos for year or 2 now and I must say they are probably some of the best on YT.
Keep up the great work.
This shits better than ANYTHING on the telly!
Another fantastic video, honestly one of the best researched and presented channels I have seen on RUclips. You'd honestly write an amazing book as you are great at not only breaking down a topic but also looking at events from another perspective. Well done :)
One thing I find REALLY interesting about this is that some people in the game industry had this goal that a game console would be a long-term household item in EVERY home, line a telephone or a television, but the industry competition kept pushing for more better faster stronger and expected you to buy a new console every couple of years.
But in Europe and South America they ACHIEVED that appliance state where a console was so popular you could keep selling them forever, but they threw this advantage away in favor of unified strategy.
As an American I gotta say I would far have preferred long tail product cycles like we saw with SONY where the PS2 and PS3 were sold ten years after debut. Honestly I would prefer that a really good piece of hardware be manufactured forever and they just update it slightly (give the N64 and PS2 HDMI output, fix the Dreamcast so that every game works with VGA output).
Alas...marketing.
I grew up in England and only knew the NES and SNES well. Tho equally, it seemed like an even amount of kids in school were raving about Sega as much as Nintendo, it felt very even.
Yeah, it was about 50/50
Brilliant video, so good to finally get a UK perspective!
I grew up with an Amiga 500 until getting a SNES in 1994, a second-hand Mega Drive around 1997 and an N64 in 1999. 16-bit games were extremely cheap and easy to find in the late 1990s as everyone was buying Playstation/N64 games instead - I almost doubled my game collection in 1998 alone.
In that Sega ad at 17:30, isn't that Peter Wingfield who played Methos in the Highlander TV show and was also in Holby City?
I always love hearing about the video game market in other parts of the world. Thanks for sharing!
Another top video Kim, keep up the great work.
I live in the US, and I had a Master System, but I didn't get it until the end days of the NES. I already had a Genesis/Megadrive by then, but I was just a kid who loved games and wanted to try more and more kinds of games
On an anecdotal level I saw 10 times more NES consoles in Ireland than I saw Master Systems. This I believe was spurred on by there being lots of Playchoice 10's in arcades. There were MS games for rent in video shops though so someone must have owned them although I only knew one kid.
The Mega Drive seemed to do slightly better than the SNES because it was cheaper and people didn't have much money at the time but there wasn't much between them by the end.
I hope a few American enthusiasts end up stumbling upon this. Being a Brit in my late '30s I can obviously relate and concur with a lot of the observations and views here. I was lucky in that as a child my first proper start with gaming was with a Sega Master System (with Hang-On / Safari Hunt built in & the light phaser peripheral and Afterburner) which was bought abroad in the States circa 1988. It took a year or so before I knew anyone else with one but it wasn't before long that loads of Speccy and C64 owners had upgraded.
NES owners were always rare but we all knew that the Mario and Mega Man games were amazing thanks to the timed demo pods the local Virgin Megastore had (games were Mario 1, Mario 2, Turtles, Mega Man and Bayou Billy) - alongside a proper booth area which was dedicated to the Sega Master System. Curiously, the demo area for the SMS didn't have control pads out for the public to try: You had to wait in line and ask to try a game out, but of the selection on offer most would be ones from the budget-but-quality line - titles like The Ninja, Secret Command, Wonder Boy and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Double Dragon was far and away the most popular game, though - it was all about that 2-player co-op.
Shinobi and Wonder Boy in Monster Land were the most traded games amongst the kids in the neighbourhood, and Wonder Boy III: The Dragons Trap was popular even after we'd got our minds blown from grey imported Mega Drives sporting Super Hang On, Super Shinobi and Ghouls n' Ghosts. PAL Mario 3 carts finally appeared in shops after the Snes Mario 4 bundle came out, by the time which the luckier amongst us had already mastered the first wave or two of Super Famicom games.
"I hope a few American enthusiasts end up stumbling upon this." Why's that? Shame we didn't get Elite on the NES at any rate. Cheers.
@Johnny B. Bad I was a UK Nes owner, rare made some of my favourite games, I had most, they were just the best.
It's funny, the most traded games in my playground were Super Mario 2 and Zelda. Toys'r'us had yuge selection of Nes games (and Master and C64)
Wow going from the Spectrum to the Mega Drive I bet you felt like a boss
It was like the future had arrived...I remember sitting up all night playing games like Wonder Boy, Budokan and California Games, just blown away by it.
Double Doobie Nah going from spectrum to the Super Famicom. THAT is when people felt like a boss
Lucas O'heyze Nah it wasn’t. If you play Super Metroid, Star Fox, R Type, F Zero, Contra 3, and Sonic Blast Man, those games will blow your balls off.
@@firemonger5409 I like how you are dictating other people's memories 😂
Lol I went from an amstrad to mega drive it was amazing I couldn’t believe what I was seeing
As a Yankee who never knew any of this side of the story, this was a great video. Thank you so much.
This video is marvelous at almost 42 Mins! Very good job!
At the peak of profitability, the Mega Drive/Genesis was on top and continued to be for another 2 years. To claim the SNES won would be like saying, the winner of a race didn't really win because someone else continued to run well after the race was over.
Know Your Video Games
I love the fact Nei is your avatar. Nothing to do with your comment, I know. But any reference to PS2 fills my heart with joy.
Exactly snes only won when sega focused everything on the saturn. Snes loss during the 16bit era time period. Fact
David Steck and that's the same here in the States. Sega won!!
Reginald Eberhart Nope.
TheAlphaOmegaX3 yep
We didn't really have a video game crash in the early 80s. By the time Nintendo came around with the Famicom/NES, 8-bit micros and homecomputers were already well established, and stayed like it far into the 90s, with some of the later machines being things like the Amiga and Atari 500.
Your videos are quickly becoming the best thing about Mondays, especially your documentary like videos. Can't wait for the next vid. :D
I had never even heard of the master system til I found some retro games channels on RUclips, it's very interesting seeing all the different perspectives, awesome video, just found your channel, have a great day everyone.
Kim, your documentaries are excellent, please keep up the great work! I always get excited when I see that you have uploaded a new vid!
Thanks for another awesome vid! It's very interesting how all these things went down in different countries. Here in Finland, the Nes and the SMS were released virtually at the same time, and the Nes was even about a fifty euros (in today's money) more expensive than the Master System, but still the SMS was totally obscured by the big N. Don't quite know why, but my guess would be Super Mario Bros. Even the MegaDrives were quite rare in comparision to other countries.
Best strike witches but poor taste (Sega boy here) in old consoles!
Strike Witches seems pretty interesting, at least after five minutes of research. First time I ever heard of such a thing, so thanks!
THe Nintendos' really sewed up the Nordic area.
Thanks Kim, this is one of my most watched vids of yours, excellent work!
One of your best videos yet Kim! They were such magic days *sniff*
Another great video Kim!! Wonderful to hear a thorough point of view from another perspective. Keep up the GREAT work!!
Here in Ireland it was Nes all the way, very similar to America, I only knew of one person with a master system. The mega drive was the better system in the early 90s besides the fact that all the multi platform magazines were very Nintendo biased. Although all us MD owners dreamed of owning street fighter at the time the SNES had it packed in.
Alex Kidd is GOD in Brazil \o/
Master System and TecToy forever, man!!!
The amount of detail you put into your videos is inspiring.
In Poland the story was a bit different. During the Cold War, all we had was Pong and Atari 2600/5200 clones and home computers (Atari, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad, Commodore, IBM) and that's only assuming one could even afford those. Once the era of communism ended in 1991, we got a taste of a "real" 8-bit video game console, which was the NES, or rather the Famicom, or rather a Chinese Famiclone that one company (BobMark International) decided to "officially" distribute and advertise in Poland under the name "Pegasus"... with absolutely no involvement from Nintendo whatsoever. The "Pegasus" became pretty popular but its success didn't last long as in 1994 the new Polish Copyright Law was regulated. That was when the company decided to jump ship and signed a deal with SEGA to officially distribute the Mega Drive and Saturn in Poland, which, as you can guess, didn't last long either. After the Saturn failed, BobMark switched from video games to soft drinks and now they're distributing a Coca-Cola knock-off known as Hoop Cola. As for Nintendo, once the copyright law was there, they decided to get some third-party company to officially distribute their consoles in Poland as well, starting with the SNES and while the distributors changed with every next generation, Nintendo's image in Poland remained consistently niche. Neither SEGA nor Nintendo were really all that popular (maybe the GameBoy but that's about it), so the concept of the 16-bit wars was completely unknown to us. Poland was for the most part a PC country, at least until 1996 when the PlayStation came and took the entire Europe (Poland included) by storm.
Nice info, ta.
Very interesting story. I think today not just Nintendo, but Japanese game companies are niche in Eastern Europe (former countries of Warsaw pact) because in 90s and 2000s they were releasing games mostly for consoles (as personal computers were equally unpopular in Japan as non-Sony consoles were in Eastern Europe). Capcom were the ones which localized on Polish first with Resident Evil 5 and Street Fighter 4. Sega and Square Enix were only localizing games by western development studios and for PC.
Still can't believe that the European SNES never got Chrono Trigger. What a mistake.
+Shinku Quickman The European SNES never got EarthBound (which was released in North America) either. Europe had to wait until it was released on the Virtual Console for Wii U to play it legally.
+Shinku Quickman Based on this video they really got burned rpg-wise. :\ Rough stuff...
+Bunnellius Well, Europe did get Terranigma. Never got released in America.
There was lots of games neither those in North America or Europe have gotten.
Yeah, I was gonna say Earthbound but someone beat me to it. Seriously, with no EB and Chrono Trigger, you guys BARELY HAD A SNES
Thanks for clarifying the snes pronunciation differences, I always wondered why people spell it out online lol
Every video you have made lately is pure deep fried gold.
Appreciate the video, as an American i thank you for the educational video. Being a life long gamer in my 30's i had some knowledge of the differences between the US and European game markets but you brought up a lot of details that i had no idea of. I'm actually a little shocked that so many people had no idea that the video games market was vastly different in other countries. Even today there are significant differences depending on where your from, just look at how hard of a time Microsoft has had in Japan since the original Xbox.
I think a lot of it is basic economics for uk familys at the time, spend 40 quid on a game for an nes in 1988 or buy a microcomputer and get games for as little as 99p (cents) or 7 quid for a brand new release and that's it really, when sega came along they managed to keep the price pretty low while the quality was as good in not better than the nes so people got on board with sega also i think the arcade recognition helped with games like outrun shinobi eect ect
Excellent video as always. Shadowrun and Flashback for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive were my two favorite games of that generation, and I still play them through every year or two. They were both so unique and beautiful and interesting. If anyone hasn't played them, I recommend them even today.
Great video again! Thank you Kim.
Great video Thanks Kim!
Sweet! Got my Kim Justice fix tonight!
Also yeah it's always been pronounced seega in Australia and I found it odd when I started seeing videos of people that pronounced it different
But apparently we are the ones not saying it correctly ???
+S Wils Sega pronunces it like the American "SEGA!" in ads and pre roll you hear in many Sega games. Is also pronunced and written as "SEGA" in Japan. Some marketing firms didn't stay on message.
On an aside, in Canada we say both S N E S and snes but as "sness" and not "snez". I hear the former less often among non retro/gaming people though.
Fun fact, the boffin actor in the Sega adverts would go on to play Spudgun in Bottom, which starred Rik Mayall
The Sonic 2 on the Master System wasn't a port of the one on the Mega Drive/Genesis, it was an entirely new game.
I recall reading a preview of Chrono Trigger in either Total or NMS and getting very excited for it, only for it to never show up (at least until the DS, but I didn't wait that long to play it!). Another superb vid with a much needed alternate perspective on the 16-bit days, those were great times indeed.
big up youself kim. your content is always awesome and your channel is my new favourite on the whole of youtube.
Superb vid Kim. Another thoroughly entertaining doc that for once was refreshing to see the UK perspective. It's so weird for me hearing the nes didn't have much of a foothold here as I had a nes back then and I never got that impression. Most of my mates had nes consoles and I remember when the tmht game got a pack in release it was a pretty big deal. Of course I did know people that had micro computers and master systems but the nes seemed just as high profile around my way. Maybe it was just in London as I have been told the nes was virtually non existent in other parts of the country in particular up north.
Same here, I had a Nes and so did friends. The sales were 50/50
LMAO! Kim I absolutely LOVE your “SEGA!” impersonation at 16:58! 🤣
thanks for sharing Kim Justice
The Sega dude, on the UK commercials is Welsh actor Peter Wingfield, he was part of the Highlander TV series cast.
Another awesome vid, thank you! Incidentally, the console wars 'The Northern Version' was: The hard kids got a Mega drive, the rich kids got a Snes, the rest of us played Street Fighter 2 on our Commodores. Your best mate was basically the kid you knew with Sensi soccer and a second controller :)
Another great video Kim, i've really enjoyed your last 4-5.
Yet another fantastic video, what a great body of work you've produced, nice one.
£50 for a game in the 1980s was obscene
In the four whole years before I moved to 🇨🇦, I hadn't heard or seen Nintendo - my Spectrum 48k had my full attention until the day I left in 1989.
Great video, finally someone who doesn't tell the american story of the console wars. I have found memory's of both NES/SNES and Master System / Megadrive.
I have the idea that the NES in the Netherlands was a bit bigger then the Master system.
During my childhood i remember seeing more NES system then Master System.
A Russian who lived a few blocks over had the Master System and i loved it :D
But then again in europe we had 2 distributors. Pal-A was mattel and Pal-B was probably Nintendo itself ?
Yeah, they pronounce it "See-ga" here in Australia. I found out the British pronunciation from the song "Jump Around" by House Of Pain!
another great video, really enjoyed it. Very informative some interesting facts I did not know
17:05 that actor looks like Methos from the Highlander TV show.
+Phil V He is!
He is welsh actor Peter Wingfield, also known for playing in Soldier, Solder; Stargate SG-1, Holby City, NCIS: LA, and he had a role in X2: X-Men United as well as the awful Catwomen from 2004.
Phil V I thought I saw a puddy cat. Kidding thought at first glance I saw a Seth Green
I am so shocked that Sega done so well in the UK, I only knew one person that had a mega drive, my mates older brother, and I only once saw a master system at a cousins house.maybe it was a south London thing. I remember MD adverts but not MS, I remember when I got my NES, I'd never played one, I couldn't believe it would get any better than that.I had come from a C64 mind you.
I was a C64 then a Nes owner. I knew Sega did well even though I myself never knew anyone with a Master. To hear some here talk you'd think Nintendo didn't exist in the UK! I then got a Megadrive. :D
@@Mr_Smith_20 Wrong. In school I knew kids who had Nes, Amiga, Atari, no master. Then it was Megadrive and Snes. I'm not daft or ignorant enough to assume kids never saw Master's though. 16 bit started in the UK with the Amiga and the 8 bit and 16 bit time co-existed till the mid 90's when both the Nes and Maser were discontinued. By 1991 Nes had sold 800,000 and the master 700,000, the lead flip-flopped a few times and by the end they'd both sold 1.5 million. Biggest selling console of 1991 was the Nes with 325 units shifted (pre-price drop), a nice Turtles tie-in. The master sold one third of it's total haul in 1992 (536 units) after the price dropped in 1991, since the Megadrive had been released and the Master was 50 quid, 500,000 units shifted. The Nes then dropped it's price in 1992 and sold 275k units, because the Snes was out. Sales speak for themselves though, as opposed to anecdotal tales, and they don't change.
My own anecdotal memory of school yard is swapping Nes games. The chat at that point was Amiga and Nintendo as far as home games went.
@@Mr_Smith_20 Yes you were wrong about the Nes not being a thing, the sales are the sales, and you ignorantly label me; not unusual with some sorts. Computer games were the real cheap games, 2 quid for a tape, cheaper if you copied (this was the case for disks later on too). My first machine was a 64.
By 1991 Nes has 800.000 units sold, the master 700,000. The Nes was the best selling console of 1991 and best 8-bit of 1993. Master was the best selling 8-bit console of 1992. Megadrive was the best selling of 1992 and 1993. All those so called 'rich kids buying Nes' and making it the best selling machine of 1991. All machines were 'expensive' kit, until they were reduced, which happened to all machines as they age. The price of a Vic 20 in 1980 was more in real terms than a Nes in 1991.
@@Mr_Smith_20 Four rapid replies, blimey, temper tantrum! Somebody got their knickers in a twist.
I gave you the benefit of the doubt, I see now that was misplaced, ah well, c'est la vie.
"copy and paste", now that is funny. "Lies" too, anyone with basic reading ability (so not you) can check on the independent figures, one thing Nintendo were never shy about is figures, unlike someone else, but there's good reason for that. ;) Anyway, it's a matter of independent record. I did try and find a Nes a while back, to use on a modern telly, there was loads. I still have my original 1987 Mattel® version but I've not had a crt for years.
The one thing you are correct about (stopped clock?) is Nes games being roughly a tenner more than a master. In 1991 this was not as bad as it was ten years earlier. "Preserve of the rich kids", your ignorance and chip is really quite telling here, it's also illogical. Bu there's no helping some people.
The fact you say Nintendo has been proven to lie about sales figures shows me what you're about. Ho-hey. ;) Also, you lay claim to how Brits should talk, you were born in the late 80's so it's no surprise that you are totally ignorant and clueless about this period, but there are scans of magazines from that time, which help; Argos catalogues too, to help people who weren't actually there. ;) Walk into any newsagents and half the consoles mags were about the Nes. 2000-2004, wow, such a font. I've seen lots of Nes games at car boots. Just weren't popular when they were half the 8-bit market, haha, OK genius, all those magazines, Electronic Arts and all websites are all in on the scam, because your knowledge from 2004 is the best knowledge! No that really does deserve a LMAO>
Euro 8-bit nerds? Crikey lad you're thick as you are ignorant as you are rude, there's o helping sorts like you. I was a gamer, go read up on sales figures. I went out and earned my pennies, as did most gamers back then.
Thinking on, seems you're a tad xenophobic as well. Always the case though, when facts don't mater cry and scream and attack the person.
Enjoyed that, thanks Justice
man im a brazilian gamer and in brazil we don't say sega genesis we like japan and europe say sega megadrive
I got a NES for Christmas in 1990 when I was 4 in London, it was a great system and I owned it till I was 7. At infant school and early primary school almost all of my friends had a NES although 1 or 2 had a master system- no one was playing the spectrum, in fact I never even knew there was such a thing. I think a lot of these videos from older guys in the UK over-emphasise the popularity of these inferior devices just because they have big in the mid80s when they were young. By 1994 in the 16 bit era Mega Drive was the most popular console at school, I think nearly everyone had it, it was the cool console.
I reckon so.
Awesome video Kim - definitely a different experience you had in the U.K. with the console wars than we did in the US, just like it was with computers. I’d be interested in a similar video on the BBS experience there including BBS games. Thanks for being awesome!
It's always interesting when talking about games with people that only have the US history to go on. People will preach about how we wouldn't have games today had it not been for the holy Nintendo, yet have absolutely no idea of what was going on in other parts of the world and no knowledge of the home computer market.
Nintendo obviously did a lot of great work, but to give them all of the praise and all of the credit when they did just as much to destroy it, it's just a crying shame. Given how expensive the games were and how much alternatives were on offer, some people will just not understand that Nintendo didn't really effect your time with games. I have some fond memories of Nintendo games, but they are a very small part of my time with games.
I think that just comes from youtube being very American dominant, Even Brit RUclipsrs pronounce things like septics these days. I had commodore, Sega and NIntendo, but it's NIntendo that made up most of my gaming in the UK :D
15:00 I remember demoing Contra and Chip n Dale Rescue Rangers for the NES in Sears and the video game stores in the United States.
Another fantastic video Kim. You seem to somehow be improving the quantity and quality of your work? Incredible stuff! :-)
Didn't Starwing release at £40 the same as most of Nintendo's first party games? maybe i remember wrong but the most expensive game I recall is SF2 which was £70 on release I seem to recall. I used to hate saying SNES or Super NES and always called it the Super Nintendo. It's funny how the numbers say Sega won yet the majority of collectors now mainly want Nintendo games and systems, even the people I know who had Megadrive's in the 90's now prefer the Super Nintendo when they want a spot of retro.
Same, I love both but prefer the Snes
You do great work Kim. Keep it up!. Also, good on ya for dropping an OSW Review reference.
superb video Kim, I've wanted to see someone do this subject for years. Very well done.
Isnt it odd that the star of Segas adverts was one of Rik Mayalls crowd and best known for playing Spudgun in "Bottom" alongside Mayall?
I grew up with an NES(I'm American) and the whole time I never knew the Master System existed. I actually thought Sega's first console was the Genesis until just a few years ago. It looks like a great system.
It was a lot stronger. Look up Phantasy Star.
Did you mean to reply to a different comment?
America did a complete Number on the US brainwashing it. Europe had a thriving diverse games market
I think you mean marketing. Brainwashing is something else.
Brainwashing is a turn of phrase, meaning Nintendo completely manipulated Americans through marketing and illegal practices.
I still remember the TV ad that said "Do me a favour... Plug me into a SEGA" aww good times.
+KaotikKnight Is that the advert with the talking colour bars?
GeoNeilUK yes it was.
brilliant video as always
Seems strange that Sega had Spudgun and Nintendo had Rick Mayall from Bottom.
Yes, the UK pretty much had it's own game industry after the crash of 83. NES didn't impact much over C64, but Master System did.
There was no crash in Europe whatsoever
The crash only really had a negative affect on the US IMO.
Japan carried on with the console. Europe had it's own computers and developers.
C64 was the main machine up until the 90's, then both the 8-bit consoles took over. Commodore and Amstrad saw the writing on the wall a lil earlier and tried to make consoles which both bombed.
Great Video Kim Justice! As an American it's great to hear the UK/Euro perspective on this and the early computers... Now to see if you have a video on the Atari ST.. :)
Bloody amazing Kim thanks again
I was looking around for a UK version of what happened with Sega and Nintendo.
This video is absolutely amazing great work Kim justice these videos are amazing keep up the great work 👍
Wait, they discontinued the Mega Drive 2 in the UK after 96? I can vividly remember the Argos and Index catalogues having Mega Drive 2's with a 6 in 1 cart available for about £40-£50 up to about 2000! I'd ask 'would that have been unsold stock' but when I think how big the system was they would have sold them all waaaay before 2000.
madcapoperator You're right. Even in 2000, the old Woolworths (RIP) on Argyle Street in Glasgow still had a Mega Drive II hooked up to a TV with Sonic 2 looping. I can't remember if it was actually for sale, but that Mega Drive unit must have been set up in the same place for at least six years -- just shows how often they changed their store layout! ;)
Matt Neilson Probably just old stock to sell off, the the last Mega Drive game released in the UK was Fifa 98 in late 1997 by then the N64 as out and the Playstation was starting to get ridiculously popular and became number 1 in the UK. Saying that up until summer 1998 you could still rent Snes and Mega drives games from Blockbuster.
It's true that SNES's library aged better but back then in an RPGless Europe? Let me give you a gist: "OMG THE MEGA DRIVE POWER RANGERS GAME IS FUCKIN AWESOME!!!!" We had different standards back then...
Can't wait to dig into this. Cheers!
Nice video. Very much appreciated. Was always curious of the why and how regarding Nintendo's relative lack of dominance in Europe as opposed to Japan and the US, which has translated into Sega and then Sony doing very well in the EU.
Eh, Sony crushed in US and Japan as well. Exception in 32 bit era was the Saturn beating the N64 in Japan and no where else.
@@eila2088 it definitely beat the N64 here in Portugal, and left it in the dust
@@skurinski Have you got sales figures?
11:31 Kylie Mole was flogging the Amiga 500 in the UK??? Never knew that.
Big like dudue! I LOVE your documentaries man, you're my go to guy. Keep up the good work.
Love your stuff. Patreon next month.
Great video Kim
HUGE kudos for using the HWA track. I thought I was the only one who remembered (let alone bought) Super Sonic.
Great channel Kim Justice!
Ah The Bit Wars, I served in the Sega Army. Many of my fellow comrades never came back. 😔😔
The Megadrive aka Genesis was the first properly cool console. When you're being asked to spend a lot on cartridges, that matters. The UK Megadrive advertising was brilliantly pitched, sort of Bladerunner-like meets quirky. Sonic the Hedgehog was like playing a rollercoaster. The whole ethos of Sega seemed to tap in to the slightly psychedelic, acid house, British imagination which liked the dayglo colours of the Commodore Amiga. It was a big step up in image for them from the dry marketing that the Master System had here. The Megadrive was a bit like an Amiga in console form. The SNES was also popular in the UK, particularly for British studio Rare's tech landmark Donkey Kong Country but the grittier Megadrive (which had some fantastic Disney games, remember) sold a bit more here, even though the SNES sold more worldwide. Sega had a larger arcade game heritage whereas Nintendo weren't as cool in that respect.
Looks like SEGA Does What Nintendon’t in UK, Brazil & Portugal.
I live in the Netherlands, and I don't remember the nintendo systems ever being referenced here by an acronym. I didn't even know they where called NES or SNES until I watched some docu vids on youtube. They where just called the nintendo for the NES or the super nintendo for the SNES.
Also the original nintendo over here was thought of as a little kids games machine. I myself had a Commodore 64 (also fully said ussuallly and not refered to as a C64) and later an Amiga(bought second hand for around 300 gulden which was less then 100 pounds at that time or 134,75 Euro). My kid sister (who is 9 years younger then me) however got a Nintendo when she was 7 or 8 for Sinterklaas (celebrated on the eve of 5 december and a similar childrens oriented holiday as christmas is in the UK and US). However I think home computers (as they where referenced here instead of as micro computers) where more popular here because of piracy. My sister had something like 3 or 4 games for her nintendo in total. I had hundreds of illigal copies of games for my C64 and Amiga. I think only around 95% of my C64 games where original ones (mostly tape version bought at discount stores for 5 gulden(Somewhere between 1-1.75 pounds at the time or around 2.25 Euro. Though later I managed to save most of those tape games to a floppy using addon cartridges like the KCS powercartridge or the Final Cartridge III ) a piece. My original Amiga games where even less. I don't think they even made up 1%.
So for a lot of kids from poorer families (like my own) home computers where the only affordable gaming option at the time, at least if you wanted to be able to play more then the 3 or 4 games you would be able to afford on consoles. The fact that a lot kids at school had those same homecomputers and would lend you their pirated copies so you could make copies of them, made the choice of getting a home computer instead of a console even more appealing.
And I have to say lateron I did use the C64 quite a lot for school work. Mostly in the form of book reports or physics and tech reports.
Thanks for this window into the 16-bit wars in Europe. You guys got some nice releases over there; Flink, especially looks great. Much more color than I would have expected from a Genesis game.
Edit: Just looked up Flink and realized it did get a release in the US. It's over $100.00 now, though.
My first Nintendo experience was a NES in-store display (an M82, I would later discover) at a local department store. While I was introduced to Mario and Zelda through the Super Show on GMTV, my first Mario game was Super Mario Land played at a friend’s house. You’re certainly right about discovering games through non-game sources; I was a massive Sonic The Hedgehog fan despite having almost no gameplay experience. The N64 was my first console; until then, it was playing at friends’ houses or renting consoles. (Anyone remember renting consoles?)
Hmmm, Kim Justice, what you say in the beginning of the video is not quite true for all of Europe. Mattel published the NES only in certain areas of Europe. However not in France, not in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and some other countries. In Germany, Nintendo hired a company named Bienengraeber to do the main work like advertising and so on, but ultimately kept control in terms of releases and pricing. This changed shortly before the game boy was released. That is when Nintendo took over and founded Nintendo of Europe with its HQ in Großostheim,. Germany. Which is why the NES' success came late in central Europe, but it came. In Germany e.g. the NES was way more popular than the Master System and easily outsold the Mega Drive. Not only due to more available games, but also kind of neglectable stuff like colored instruction booklets, better package design, better sale offerings and a more steady awareness among players due to more TV ads and so on. Sega caught on in germany shortly before Sonic 2 came out - by intensifying TV ad messages and delivering better games.
Nice info. The Nes also started to get strong in the UK in 1990.
Awesome video mate!👍👍👍👍
Excellent video! It's so interesting that back then, being pre-internet, we were so unaware of the differences between UK video games and the outside world, particularly
1) How far behind NES games were. I was probably only just discovering the magic of Mario 1 when Mario 3 was coming out in Japan.
2) I had no idea what a turn-based RPG was. I thought Zelda was an RPG.
3) Name changes. Shadow Warriors, Starwing, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, Illusion Of Time .... nowadays I'm almost forgetting the names of these games I originally knew,
Did you not read the mags at the time? I remember getting Club NIntendo and them saying Archon would come out, then I'd get C&VG or Mean Machine and see it wasn't but then I@d see all the import games that wouldn't play on my mattel Nes, I was pretty annoyed! I even wanted to start importing games! I also thought Zelda was a RPG and still do to this day, don't like the turn based stuff. And I also got confused over some of the name changes. :D
Those were the days when consoles had personality, it was a real choice. These days, apart from the odd exclusive, it doesn't matter, obviously not counting Nintendo in that.I'm, and always will be a Nintendo fan (I did struggle to defend the wii u, in fact, apart from virtual boy, its the only Nintendo I didn't buy) but I love Sega, I've recently started playing MS emulations and I've been blown away, you can tell a Sega game from Nintendo from a mile off, they both had a distinctive graphical style and certainly sound.
I was a gamer in the 80's. Commodore, Speccy and Atari were dominant at that time, I had a Vic 20 and then a 64. Then a Nes, Mattel model, one of the first. The Nes games at that time started at £18, much more than the £3 games for the computers. The first £49.99 game was Zelda, which was just amazing at the time, I saved up pocket money for it. Must have been 1987? The Master System and Nes both started slowly but they both broke the UK market at roughly the same time in the 90s. Master system and Nes (without the robot) were the same price, By 1991 Bandai had sold over 700,000 Nes units in the UK, Sega were more secretive on their numbers but Bandai claimed they were ahead. I think the Master stayed on the shelves longer than the Nes as I recall Master System2s' in magazines for £49.99 (maybe less?). The marketing for the Nes was abysmal until around 1991 when Nintendo took over and they had the big Turtles tie-in. As a big Nes gamer and magazine reader I was really irritated by how few games the UK got compared to Japan/USA. I actually imported a few games and looked to import the PC Engine and the Famicom disk system. :D
I would say you're wrong on Mario. Mario 1,2 & 3 sold well in the UK. Aside from the cartoons I swapped games (including Mario games) in the late 80's, and Mario as a game creature was well known. I then bought the Megadrive, and then the snes. Nes games were usually around 5-10 pounds more than Master games, which was annoying, I don't recall but the Snes games being the same, but I suppose they were.
I do recall Street Fighter being yuge! If you look at sales of Nes to Master, Nintendo actually had already established themselves, and sold more units. From looking at the 16-bit era, the Megadrive sold more in the UK, the solid adverting campaign I think has a lot to do with this. They were still edgy whilst not being as awful as the septic ads. I still can picture Spudgun as the face of the Megadrive.
I think I can vaguely recall the Rik Mayall ad. He was in the New Statesmen at the time and still a yuge name. Wish I'd bought that 4-1 cart.Yes, I think the Megadrive ads were the prototype for what the Playstation did later. Sega was definitely edgier than any other advertising campaign.
I think Rik was a yuge equaliser, but Sega did seem to do very well as presenting themselves as British. Even though there was now a Nintendo UK, and Club Nintendo had been a thing since 1987, they had a much more backseat lassie-faire attitude than Sega, who seems headstrong and unstoppable.
Loved Zelda massively at the time, and I would have loved Earthbound and Secret of Mana. I had Sword of Vermillon on the Mega, which was OK. I never knew about Centy or Thor, I would have bought them! I'm not going to dig it out, but I'd bet you a bob that my copy of Zombies Ate My Neighbours is the name.
I agree it's a tad sad when brits on videos try and be septic wannabes.
Wow, so wish I'd bought Yoshi's Island.
The 'other' sales figures are a bit off, if you take Japan and USA away from total Snes numbers, it leaves 12 million. The Megadrive at 10 seems high from what I've read in the sales thread. www.neogaf.com/threads/retro-sales-age-thread.981407/.
There's lots of debate on areas, like Europe, this is a murky area, to within a few million, but worldwide there's no debate, it's clear from sales data that Nintendo definitely took the 16-bit with most sales.