In the end, I can’t help but say my love for Sonic & Sega is a bit ironic, since I used to be a Nintendo kid. I was never part of a family that loved Sega, I was a Nintendo kid until December of 1991, when my life was flipped upside-down. My parents (bless them) had been picking up on hints for months that I really wanted a Genesis. I mean, I’m talking about putting magazine ads on the fridge, casually talking with my parents about how cool Sonic looked, and yes, having a very public meltdown at the local Sears when I saw the Genesis display with Altered Beast running.
Finally, Christmas morning came and there it was — that sleek black box with “16-BIT” written across the packaging in enormous letters. The Nintendo was 8-bit, so 16 had to be twice as good, right? That’s simple arithmetic. The minute I connected my Genesis to our old Zenith TV and heard that boisterous “SEGA!” sample, I knew my Nintendo days were behind me. My dad even put down his newspaper to give me a nod of approval. “That sounds like the arcade,” he said. At that point in time, that was essentially the ultimate compliment, as he’d taken me to Chuck E. Cheese’s often enough to know what “real” games looked and sounded like.
You probably don’t remember, but the console wars were FIERCE back in the day, and I immediately joined Team Sega. If you weren’t alive during the Genesis/Super Nintendo wars, you wouldn’t understand how much we cared about this stuff. Back in the day, you chose your console, and that was basically who you were as a person. “Genesis Does What Nintendon’t” wasn’t just some ad slogan — it was the holy scripture for kids like me who went from being a Nintendo kid to a member of Team Sega.
My friend Mike was a hardcore Nintendo kid, and our friendship nearly ended during those years. We would spend hours arguing about things like “Blast Processing” (which I found out many years later wasn’t even a technical term — just great marketing) and Mike would counter with “Mode 7!” as if that made any difference to a 13 year-old who barely knew how to programme his VCR. We would argue endlessly about things like sprite count, colour depth, etc. like we were some type of engineers rather than two suburban kids who mostly just wanted to play cool games and feel superior to our friends.
The game that ultimately sealed the deal for me was Sonic. Now, I know, Mario was fine…he was sort of…safe, you know? He was like your mum’s favourite cartoon character. Sonic had attitude. When you let him sit still for a few seconds, he would tap his foot and give you a “come on, are we doing this?” look. The speed of the first Sonic game was unlike anything I had ever experienced. Riding a bike with Mario felt like…riding a bike. Driving a sports car with Sonic felt like…driving a sports car. The way he curled into a ball and gathered speed rolling down hills and then blasting off ramps…regardless of the fact that I had to use an RF adapter to connect my Genesis to the TV (and the picture wasn’t even that great), the speed still got through perfectly.
And it wasn’t just about the mascots either. The Genesis had this whole identity built around being more mature than Nintendo. Take Streets of Rage – that game brought arcade-style brawling to the home with a dark and gritty urban setting that felt almost taboo. The first time I called in that special police attack that blew away everyone on the screen with a massive explosion, I literally leaped off the couch. The music in that game, even through the poor speakers on our TV, sounded like it belonged in an actual nightclub. That Yamaha sound chip in the Genesis produced these deep bass lines and drum samples that were just different than anything on Nintendo. I still think that the Streets of Rage 2 soundtrack stands up to actual electronic music from that time period.
Also, I have to bring up the six-button controller. Once Street Fighter II finally came to Genesis after being a Super Nintendo exclusive for what felt like an eternity, that authentic arcade layout on the six-button controller made all the difference. I was so close to asking for a Super Nintendo just for Street Fighter, but once Sega released that controller, my mind was made up. While the regular three-button pad worked okay, that six-button one was perfect. The d-pad had just the right amount of resistance that made executing special moves more precise. I spent an entire summer learning how to master Chun-Li’s spinning bird kick with that thing. My friend Steve couldn’t beat me for months, until he eventually broke down and bought his own Genesis. That was what winning looked like in the console wars.
Phantasy Star III was the second Genesis game I purchased using Christmas money from my grandmother (she always gave cash because she “hadn’t a clue what kids want nowadays”). I had never really messed with RPGs before — they seemed slow and text-heavy and boring. However, there was something about that cover art with the spaceship and the fantasy characters that caught my eye. What followed was probably a 50-hour adventure that completely changed what I thought video games could be. The multi-generational story where your choices determined which character your kid would be in the next chapter… my teenage brain wasn’t ready for that level of narrative complexity. The Genesis RPG library is largely overlooked compared to the SNES classics, but games like Phantasy Star created RPG fans out of action game kids who would’ve otherwise dismissed the genre.
Arcade ports were great too. After years of playing poorly-recognisable NES versions of arcade hits, seeing games like Golden Axe and After Burner II that looked virtually identical to their coin-op counterparts was nothing less than magical. My uncle, who wasn’t into games, but enjoyed taking me to the arcade on occasion when he took me to the mall, stopped dead in his tracks when he saw me playing Golden Axe at home. “That is the same game from the arcade,” he stated flat-out, not asking but observing in awe. For kids without unlimited quarters, bringing that arcade experience home was revolutionary.
Not everything Sega tried worked out, however. The add-ons… man, where do I even begin? The Power Base Converter that allowed you to play Master System games seemed cool for about a week before I totally forgot it existed. The Sega CD, which my parents bought me for my 14th birthday after months of begging, was a mixed bag at best. Night Trap was horrible, but it had that forbidden allure with its cheesy full-motion video of real women running around in nightdresses. Sonic CD was actually great. Sewer Shark was… well, it existed, and it had live actors, which was impressive at the time. But even the failures felt exciting – Sega was experimenting with new ideas, while Nintendo kept making the same types of games, just prettier.
Something embarrassing to admit: I actually liked the FMV games on the Sega CD. Not because they were any good – most were terrible – but because they represented this bizarre moment in time when no one had any idea what gaming’s future would look like. Watching something like Ground Zero Texas with its terrible actors and “interactive movie” premise was hilarious in its awfulness, but at the time it seemed like maybe this was the direction gaming was headed. I would invite friends over to watch these things, set up my room as a mini-cinema, and we would all laugh at the acting and cheer when we managed to kill the alien at the exact right moment. It was social gaming before online multiplayer existed.
The 32X, however… By 1994, I had made enough money from my summer job at the local grocery store to buy one, despite my dad telling me I was “throwing good money after bad.” And guess what? He was right. That mushroom-looking thing on top of my already ridiculous Genesis/Sega CD stack looked like something from a bad sci-fi film. But Star Wars Arcade on that system… for about three weeks, I somehow convinced myself it was the greatest achievement humanity had ever accomplished. Flying a polygonal X-Wing that somewhat resembled the spaceships from the films was enough to justify the purchase for the short-term. Reality set in when no other decent games came out for it. This is what it means to be a Sega fan — you ride the highs and the lows, and sometimes those lows include mushroom-shaped accessories.
The collecting community for Genesis games has gone completely bonkers in the last decade, which I find somewhat satisfying for all those playground arguments. Games I remembered my friends saying were inferior to their Super Nintendo counterparts now sell for thousands of dollars on eBay. That complete copy of Castlevania: Bloodlines that I traded to Mike for his extra NBA Jam (at the time, I thought it was a fair trade) would probably pay for a nice holiday today. I’ve rebuilt roughly half my original collection over the past several years, focusing on the games that mattered to me and not trying to collect for bragging rights. My original Genesis died sometime in 1998 due to a rather unfortunate Dr. Pepper incident during college (my roommate’s fault, not mine), but I recently bought a Model 1 at an estate sale and it works perfectly. That Genesis start-up sound still gives me chills every single time.
It’s difficult to describe to people who didn’t live through it how the Genesis influenced not only what we played, but how we viewed ourselves as gamers. Nintendo had this wholesome, family-friendly image that became increasingly childish as I entered my teenage years. Sega portrayed an image that mirrored how I wanted to view myself – cooler, more rebellious, and into faster and more edgy things. It is no surprise that Sega sponsored actual sports events and used actual athletes in commercials, while Nintendo continued to feature cartoon mascots. Choosing Genesis wasn’t just choosing a console – it was declaring who you wanted to be.
The limitations of the hardware led to the perfect conditions for creative development. Developers could not rely on photorealistic graphics or voice acting, so they had to focus on developing the fundamentals – solid gameplay, feel, and creating memorable environments with minimal resources. A game like Gunstar Heroes, with its unrelenting pace and incredible visuals, shows the potential of talented programmers when they grasp the true capabilities of their hardware. When my Super Nintendo owning friends would come over, and I would boot up Gunstar Heroes, there would be an initial moment of stunned silence as they realised what they were seeing, followed by “Can I play?” That was what it meant to win in the console wars – not in terms of sales figures, but in that instant of pure jealousy.
The Genesis wasn’t perfect, of course. The three-button controller could be a pain in the hand during marathon sessions of Ecco the Dolphin (no judgement — that game was ridiculously hard). There were certainly games that had better graphics and sound on Nintendo. But the Genesis had attitude. It had a vibe that declared games didn’t have to be cute or wholesome to be enjoyable. In an industry that often takes itself too seriously, that is a lesson worth remembering.
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