Explosion of Video Games in the 1990s

The 90s was such a great time to be a gamer. The gaming console war between the Super Nintendo and the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was unlike anything, we had ever seen before, and there has not been anything like it since.
If you prefer, you can read about arcade games and gaming consoles in 80s, which pretty much dominated the gaming market earlier, in 1980s.

Nintendo gaming system rocks!

Let's back to 90s. Nintendo would not have things as easy with their Super Nintendo model (featured on the right picture). Sega with their own 16-bit console gave Nintendo a real run for their money.

At the end of the day, both famous consoles just had a great library of games that could entertain the whole family members.

The Super Nintendo Entertainment System (sometimes called Super Nintendo, SNES or Super NES) is a successful video game console, well known by gamer from around the globe. We are sure that it was the successor to the earlier Nintendo Entertainment System gaming console, which was popular in 80s.
It had many world's popular and massively played games, including famous Super Mario World (with Super Mario World 2 version, later on), Super Mario All-Stars. Yoshi's Island, Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, Mario Paint, or Mario is Missing (as seen on the left picture).

By the way, do you know that the name Nintendo means "leave luck to heaven" in Japanese. This success-story Japanese games producer, released many popular gaming series, including the mentioned Super Mario series, the Legend of Zelda, Pokémon, and many more.
We believe that Nintendo brand new consoles revived the North American video game industry, after the famous video games crash of 1983.

The competition between Nintendo and Sega

Each of the competing systems have some great games, eagerly played by millions of gamer around the world. For example, Sega has some great exclusive games like Sonic, Streets Of Rage, and Road Rash, to name a few.

This famous Sonic game was designed to become the alternative to Nintendo's Mario series of games. Sega wanted a super-star video game that young gamer could love, while leaving arcades and heading home to play with their consoles.
The scene from the Sonic game is available on the right picture.

Of course, it's competitor the Super Nintendo gaming system had also great games, like mentioned famous Mario series, Zelda and Donkey Kong.
In addition, each system having their own games, but the amount of 3rd party support for each console was just staggering.

These new 16-bit consoles were now capable of matching what arcade machines could do. Games like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II really brought the arcade experience home.

The end of the game cartridges era

The 16-bit consoles era is seen by many, as the golden era of gaming.
However, during the mid 90s, the compact disc (CD) technology was really coming into the scene. Gaming consoles and hardware has moved into the 32-bit era, and it seemed like cartridges were a thing of the past.
The Phillips CD-i and the 3DO tried to muscle in on the console war, but they both failed miserably.

Sony PlayStation dominated the gaming market

It was the Sony PlayStation modern gaming machine (as seen on the left picture) and the Sega Saturn models that would really bring in the 32-bit era.
The PlayStation is a fascinating story because, it was the result of a failed venture between Nintendo and Sony. In essence, Nintendo actually created their own competition because of their dealings with Sony.

The Sega Saturn was just blown away by the Sony PlayStation that was simply more powerful. However, many gamer and publishers had some bad feelings towards Sega, thanks to their Sega CD and 32X add-on for the Sega Mega Drive.
The PlayStation was a game changer when it was released in 1994 in Japan, and in 1995 for the rest of the world. The console offered 3D graphics unlike anything we have ever seen. The games publishers such as EA, Namco, Activision, Capcom and many more, were just lining up to make games for the system.

Sega has seen a calmed success, as well, and it's revolutionary and in the popular one-on-one fighting genre arcade game called Virtua Fighter, became a big hit story in Japan. Sega was then one of Sony's main competitors in the console market war.

In the first weeks after launching of the Sega Saturn console model in Japan (as seen on the right picture), sales was higher than PlayStation model.

In that era, the Sega Saturn model was an extremely powerful console, equipped with dual 32-bit RISC processors (with 50 million instructions per second of processing power), and a 32 channel sound processor (CD quality sound).
The Sega's Saturn have also unique feature and availability to add hardware expanding possibility, through its cartridge slot or MPEG slot.
People love to play retro games and we can see that many gamer and collectors, from around the world, seem to be paying well for old Sega Saturn hardware and games.

Sony won the battle and sold over 100 million of PlayStation models worldwide, and Sega Saturn model was sold in around 10 million units, all around the globe.

The 32-bit era of gaming

The 32-bit era of gaming would also be the start of the decline of the arcade industry.
The gaming market was then at a stage, where the technology of the home consoles had caught up with (and in many cases surpassed) what arcades could do.
One of the best examples are the games: Tekken and Ridge Racer, produced for the Sony PlayStation. It was then really hard to justify going to play the arcades, when you could save up and get what in some cases was a better (and more complete version) of the game to play at home.

Sony were the kings of gaming in the mid 90s.
Nintendo tried to get back their market share with the release of the Nintendo 64 gaming console (on the left picture). However, thanks to its delayed release and Nintendo's decision to stick with using cartridges, the Nintendo 64 did not even come close to matching the sales of the PlayStation.

The Nintendo 64 though was not a technological failure of a gaming console and with its analogue controller, and powerful processor, we were able to play great games like: Super Mario 64, Zelda Ocarina Of Time, Pokémon Stadium, Goldeneye 007, Super Smash Bros., Donkey Kong 64 and Mario Kart 64, just to name a few.

The last games console from Sega

Sega having learnt from their mistakes with the Sega Saturn model and would release the last video game console of the 1990s.

Their Sega Dreamcast console was a powerful monster that had many great arcade games and some amazing Sega exclusive features, but sadly some publishers were not sold on the Dreamcast and decided to wait for the release of the PlayStation 2.
While the Dreamcast was a great console with some amazing games, it was not enough to turn Sega around and as a result would be the last console Sega would ever release.

The 90s was a great time to be a video game fan. From the early 90s arcade scene, the 16-bit console war, the birth of the PlayStation and redemption, but death of Sega as a console manufacturer. This really is the greatest decade when it comes to video games.