Sega Vs Nintendo - The European Battle

[Sut]

The NA and Japanese battles between the two gaming giants are well documented. The European battle has been touched on before, but one of YouTubes best retro game documentary makers has put together this video.

http://youtu.be/5LxrgiMrHXI

Check it out if your interested in the bigger scheme of things and how the most famous console war played out on another front.

[scotland]

This is an excellent video! Thanks for posting.

Its quite long, but it begins in the 80s. We have a thread on the rise of the NES in the US, and the video briefly goes through the UK 8 bit times.

The NES was the first significant console in Europe, and a game, even a fun one, was 50 quid. Speccy software was a fraction of that cost. This is a point I have tried to make on the younger American NES fans. The earlier Atari/Odyssey/Intellivision days of expensive and often mediocre quality games soured many of us who lived through them on buying a few games a year of questionable quality.

Instead, my 8 bit computer game library was vast. Vast. Yet it seems like 8 bit computers never became as commonplace in the US as in Europe. May have to find some stats.

The AVGN made his name on the legion of crappy NES games, so that 50 quid NES gam, with its seal of quality, was no guarantee of a great game worth 5 or 10 times a speccy game. Had a computer company been able to make a cheap 16 bit successor to the speccy, maybe they could still have outcompeted Sega and Nintendo in the late 80s.

In Europe, without Atari, games were always cheap cassettes and floppies. Why would anyone spend so much more for NES games on unusual expensive ROM carts? Yes, ROM carts have advantages, but tapes and floppies do too. It was like the Neo Geo in the early 90s, that was so expensive that its really not competing in the same market.

Its fascinating that while Nintendo may have resurrected console gaming in the US, it had to build console gaming from the ground up in the UK. That is a difference. Also, NES was marketed by Mattel in the UK. How odd since there was no longer a US Mattel console for Mattel to be doing that. If you are going to go with a toy company for the UK, at least have the sense to go Corgi or Dinky. Now where did I leave my Thunderbird 2?

[VideoGameCritic]

I watched most of this video and really enjoyed it. I was especially surprised to hear Europeans played American Football games (Madden) and even NCAA football!

[SilveryFire]

Lemme guess, Kimble Justice? He does some nice retrospectives. His older "Mega Weeviews" are entertaining too.

[jon]

Apparently once the NFL started airing games in the United Kingdom in 1983, it became relatively popular. The Miami Dolphins in particular were very popular and Dan Marino has a lot of fans across the pond. They have good taste, because I'm fan too.

[Wallyworld]

Lemme guess, Kimble Justice? He does some nice retrospectives. His older "Mega Weeviews" are entertaining too.

Kim Justice makes great videos on the history of video games. I've seen all the videos on the channel. I'm not sure Kims a male though. I watched a couple videos that were like a vlog and Kim was wearing lipstick and a dress. I really don't care one way or another its just an observation.

[Sut]

I think he's transgender or a cross dresser. Like you say I don't care either way. His shows are very well researched and almost broadcast quality.