Gadgetory

(synth music) - [Blake Harris] One of my favorite things about working on the book Console Wars was that I sort of imagined, at first, it would be like these two great heavyweights slugged it out, like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. And they didn't really like each other at the time, but they had respect for one another and pushed each other to new heights. But 28 years later, talking to the people who worked at Sega and the people who worked at Nintendo, they hated each other, still. (drums) The people of Sega thought that the people at Nintendo were bullies. And the people at Nintendo thought the people at Sega were frauds who had no style and no substance, that it was all on marketing. (edm music) - I love retro games. I love the ability to boot up an old school game that I grew up with and relive that nostalgia or even find old hidden gems that I never knew existed or just never gave a shot before. And there's a lot of different ways to play retro games, but they're not all equal. Some are really accessible but don't really give the best way to re-experience these games. Others are more expensive. And, sometimes, you just want to rig up an old school CRT with a system, which works, too, but isn't always practical these days. And an option that's been really growing on me the last couple years is the analog line of retro systems. They started off with the Nt, which allows you to play old school NES games. Then, they released the Super Nt for Nintendo. And, now, they're giving us the chance to relive one of the greatest and most defining moments in gaming history: the console war between Nintendo and Sega. This is their latest system. The Mega Sg. A console that allows you to experience not only Sega Genesis games but a variety of other Sega systems thanks to a number of different adapters. This, combined with a Super Nt, allows you to relive one of the most intense and most important moments in gaming history. When Sega went against Nintendo with two very definitions of what exactly is okay for a game. Something that really defined the modern gaming landscape. I think a lot of people don't really give the Sega Genesis the credit it deserves. I think when a lot of people talk about Sega, in terms of consoles, they go, oh yeah, they were really neck-and-neck with Nintendo back in the day and, then, they lost. And that's not really, entirely fair. I mean, yes, the Sega Saturn did not do great. And, probably even more depressingly, the Dreamcast failed. But the Genesis was a huge deal. I think the way Sega went about opposing Nintendo, and the kind of tone it created for that entire console war, really shaped modern gaming. And to really kind of get more at the core of this we should talk to Blake Harris, an author behind a book called Console Wars, which does a whole deep dive into that entire competition and is really enlightening. - Back in the late 80s and early 90s, I was just a kid. And I was a soldier on the front lines of these console wars. And, so, in 1989, when the Mega Drive in Japan and the Sega Genesis in the United States came out, Nintendo literally, or almost literally, had a monopoly. They had 95% plus of the market. One of my favorite archival finds is a advertisement that basically says there's no such thing as a Nintendo, meaning that Nintendo was becoming so synonymous with video games like Kleenexes with tissues or Jacuzzi is with hot tubs. The Nintendo was trying to protect the trademark. And, so, when the Genesis came out in 1989, they were just a gnat in Nintendo's mind. There's two things that I really appreciate about the analog series of consoles. One, the physical design of the systems themselves. And, two, the actual gameplay experience you get out them. Now, getting both of these upsides together doesn't come at a super cheap cost, but no one else is really doing this kind of work for retro games. First, the physical build. So like the Super Nt, the Mega Sg is very much designed to be sort of like a micro scaled down slimline version of the system it's based on. It's not trying to mimic the exact appearance of it, like a classic edition system. But, instead, it just has little kind of notes and references to its design while having the small, compact shell. In the Mega Sg's case, it's this ring that runs along the top having different colors for the front buttons, which match the designs on the Sega Genesis and Mega Drives themselves. And one little note that I like is it also adds this little in-depth info of what kind of graphics and quality it runs for the games, which is very reminiscent of the old school Genesis having that line of high definition graphics on the top. Now, like the Super Nt, this one does come in four different colors. Three of them are based on the different designs the Mega Drive or Genesis had in different countries. And, honestly, all very similar. They're black systems. They just have light different accents. This is the US one with this red and white up front. The Japanese version looks very much the same but is blue right here instead. And the European version has more white and gray accents. As a fourth option, that is entirely different from all of them, you can also just get a straight up whiteout version. Visuals aside, what I really want to emphasize about just the build of the system, though, is that it is a solid little brick. It is a dense, tiny system that doesn't feel frail at all and keeps everything nice and clean looking. You've got the two ports up front for controllers, a headphone jack reminiscent like the original Genesis, and, then, on the back, just two ports. HDMI for visuals and audio and a micro USB for power. Something that's really interesting about looking back at that console war is that a lot of people don't realize that while it was during the 90s, the Genesis is actually an older system. It came out in the late 80s and just didn't really get full attention. What really ended up shaping everything was around the time that Nintendo launched the Super Nintendo, and two things that happened to Sega. - Here, in the United States, where the console wars were fierce between Sega and Nintendo, we think about this crazy, heated marketing-driven, amazing game battle. But it didn't really heat up until 1991, so two years after the Sega Genesis came out. And that was largely because of two things. One was the new CEO at Sega of America, Tom Kalinske. - Our sales, right now, are up about 50% versus a year ago at the consumer level. The market is down. I think that's an indication of where the consumer's going. - And, then, Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic changed everything. Sonic came out in the summer of 1991. And the Super Nintendo came out in the fall of 1991. And the rest is history. - [Ad Narrator] He's the fastest thing alive. He's the fastest thing alive. - Something the analogs really excel at is this concept of versatility. Where it appeals to, I think, two very different kinds of people. You've got the hardcore enthusiasts that have been collecting games for a long time. And, then, you've got the other people that are just like, oh yeah, I grew up with Sega. That was neat. I'd like to play those games, again. And the way the Sg does this is with its approach to settings. When you first boot up the Mega Sg, you're greeted by a very simple menu. It has the option to run the cartridge that's currently in it, the option to play Ultracore, which we'll talk about a little bit later, and, most importantly, the settings menu. And within the settings menu, probably the most robust section is video, which is how you're gonna be able to craft all the visuals about how these old school games are gonna appear on a modern TV. Now, by default, it's designed for people that don't really wanna go all that in depth. You can do things like choose which resolution you want, a few different pre-designed height and width ratios, and choose whether or not you'd like to have scan lines. On the other hand, if you wanna really get into the nitty gritty and just fine tune the image exactly how you want it, even by a specific game by game basis, you can change to the advanced mode options which opens up so many more choices. If you're a diehard retro fan, this is all great. Because it gives you the ability to fine tune each and every game as you start it up and figure out what looks best. On the other hand, if you just wanna be able to pop in Sonic every now and then and not care about it, you can just basically ignore all these options, aside from maybe the scan lines, and still have a great experience. In fact, you can even change the menu settings themselves to where every time you turn the system on it just skips the settings entirely and jumps right into whatever game is currently sitting in the system. - [Blake Harris] What I can attest to as someone who lived, who was fighting this battle on the playground, basically, what each company represented, it was almost like Sega represented freedom and choice and, then, Nintendo represented control. And control probably has a negative connotation, a sort of authoritarian connotation. And there is some truth to that with Nintendo. But what I really mean is that Nintendo had the Nintendo seal of quality. They had very rigorous standards. They wanted games to be very cartoon-like, family friendly. And Sega had sort of more of a grip it and rip it strategy, which was important to developers. Because developers are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. They wanted to do more mature content. They also, Sega, did a lot to push licensing. Licensed games. Sports games. So really Nintendo was all about Nintendo games. And developers and consumers were beholden to them and a certain type of game that is on the Nintendo. And Sega really did represent freedom. And, then, they also tapped into this 90s zeitgeist, sort of this MTV generation idea partnering with MTV, having commercials that really resembled MTV's flash quick cut style. (rock music) - [Ad Narrator] What the heck was that? Forgot what I was gonna say. Welcome to the next level. - [Blake Harris] Which, by the way, was also a by-product of Sega just having less money than Nintendo and needing to do things quicker. But, Sega, their marketing campaign welcome to the next level. And that is, largely, what they succeeded in doing. They welcomed gamers to a more mature, different level of gaming where anything went. Even though 16-bit graphics maybe there's not all that much anything you can do, but compared to Mario and Zelda it was a little bit different. (Sonic music) - I also want to take a moment to talk about the controller that it ships with. This is the M30 controller from 8BitDo. We did do a video focused on this before. But this is actually, technically a different model, which is real easy to tell when you have them side-by-side. Yeah, not really. So this is the 2.4GHz model. The important difference here is that, unlike the Bluetooth model which can connect to a variety of different devices including 8BitDo's own receivers, this guy right here only connects to a dedicated receiver. So the downside of this is that it's not gonna be able to work with as many different things. It really just works on the Mega Sg or an actual Sega Genesis. But the upside of this is this model is going to give you way less input lag. Like the Bluetooth version of the M30, this is designed as kind of a crossover between the six button Sega Genesis controller and the Sega Saturn controller. And, honestly, I just love it. I think this might be my favorite retro-style controller I've used, which is insane because like I've said, I grew up with Nintendo. But this is, honestly, just so comfortable. The shaping of it is awesome, especially for a design that isn't a more kind of modern grippy one. It has the best D-pad I have ever used. And just all the buttons and everything feel really nice and snappy on it. Another really interesting aspect of the design for the Sg that actually separates it a bit from what analog's done before the Nt, is they're pushing this concept of also running more adapters into it. Now, again, this can play Sega Genesis and Sega Mega Drive games, which are basically just different region versions of the same system. And you can also get up to a Sega CD. Sadly, it will not work with a 32X. On top of that, however, when you buy one of these, it actually ships with an adapter so you can also use it with Sega Master System games. And while the option hasn't been made available just yet, the plan is that, to be sold separately, they're gonna have more adapters to allow you to play things like the SG-1000. One of the oldest things Sega has made. And Game Gear, adding a kind of Super Game Boy approach to it. The experience this ends up giving you is, honestly, beautiful. And something that's really interesting for me, personally, when dealing with this system, is that when I messed with the Nt and the Super Nt, I grew up in a Nintendo household, so it was a lot about re-experiencing games that I grew up with and being able to go, oh yeah, this looks beautiful, now, on an HDTV. Whereas with the Genesis, I played some of them a little bit growing up. But this has really become the opportunity for me to go back and actually explore this library that was always kind of out of reach for me. So having a system like this opens up that possibility to actually hunt down these old school games that I never played, pop 'em in, hook 'em up to a modern TV, and actually play them like it was some modern indie release that's just trying to pay tribute to retro games. Don't get me wrong, there's always going to be that soft, warm and fuzzy spot of being able to hook up an actual CRT and play games like they were designed back in the day. But it's just not always the most convenient. If I just wanna be able to hook it up to the main TV I had set up that I also use for Xbox, PlayStation, or the Switch, that's just a lot easier and just super fun. Something that really stood out to me as being super important, too, was this concept of Sega focusing more on bringing games to adults. It's not that there were no games that appealed to adults before, but a lot of them were older and predated when Nintendo started making their way to the West. Cuz when they did, they focused a lot on the concept of oh the Nintendo is a toy. It's a kids thing. Here are all these fun family friendly games. Whereas Sega didn't really want to pigeonhole the entire genre into that. They wanted to make sure that there was stuff where people who were older would find things that were fun to play, too. - [Blake Harris] So at this time, video games were just perceived as childish play things. They were sold in Toys "R" Us. They were sold in KB Toys. They were considered toys. And Sega, under Tom Kalinske, helped transform them into consumer electronics. I remember playing video games with my brother when we must have been eight and six years old, and we would play with our father. And my dad would play with us, cuz he's an awesome father. But he would play with us the same way a parent would play with a child having a fake tea party, like there was something kind of offending about it. He's like video games are this kid thing. And that changed with Sega. So the marketing was important in expanding what video games were all about. - Despite the fact that Sega's followup systems didn't do that great and eventually caused them to stop making consoles entirely in favor of just focusing on games, I think it's really important to focus on this concept of how the Genesis really opened the door for all the other companies that started getting into gaming. You can even see it in today's landscape where Nintendo is still associated as being the sort of family friendly, more kid-aimed games. Even though they have a little more mix going on. But because of that, we have Sony and Microsoft bringing a lot more attention to video games is something that's for everyone, especially focused on more adult themes. And that really might just be because Sega did it first. - [Blake Harris] I think that without Tom Kalinske, Sega would have just been a blip on the radar. And there's so much that came from that battle between Sega and Nintendo. I think that the most important lasting legacy is video games becoming more of a mainstream form of entertainment and skewing older. Took one of Tom Kalinske's primary strategies was to try to succeed where Nintendo was not dominating, which was kids or adults older than 14 years old. So going after teenagers, going after adults, and turning video games much more into what they are today, with a little more mature content, a little bit of blood, as we know from the Mortal Kombat stuff. And, so, without Tom Kalinske, I think that Sega would have been more successful than these also-rans in the past, and Sonic the Hedgehog would have been a good game. But Pac-Man was a good game. Frogger was a good game. Crash Bandicoot was a good game. Didn't spawn an iconic character that, 25 years later, lives on. And, so, I think that without Tom Kalinske, we don't have the industry that we have today. And that also includes the fact that just the idea that Sega was able to compete against Nintendo, for a certain amount of time able to surpass Nintendo. They proved that the console market was bigger than just one player. There was room for more than one company at a time. So I don't know if we'd have Sony. I don't know if we'd have Microsoft. We'd definitely have a very different landscape without Tom Kalinske. - [Ad Narrator] Genesis does what Nintendon't.