Sega was bigger on your continent as I understand it. Nintendo didn't really like Europe, I assume because of the french.Originally Posted by Mister Adequate
Anyway, if we're going to talk about who won the console war, we might as well look at each generations best systems.
NES vs. Master System: NES is kind of the obvious winner here. Massive library of games, kicked off the game industry not being dead anymore, and sold more. A lot more.
SNES vs. Genesis: Much closer in terms of sales. Genesis had strong support in Europe and a nice library of it's own. I barely give the SNES the edge though because Nintendo was putting out some amazing first party stuff, and a lot of real classics were released for it, but if someone were to tell me they thought the Genesis was better I wouldn't blame them. Sadly it's peripheralitis kind of screwed Sega later on.
N64 vs. Saturn: The N64 is the obvious choice. As a console for 3D games it was just better. As in it wasn't even a competition. The Saturn was also mired by a surprise early launch and high price that meant early support sucked. It did have an excellent controller for 2D games though, and some excellent, arcade perfect, game ports. It had a lot more potential than I think most companies got out of it, but Sega really misjudged the market quite a bit and suffered from it, while the N64, which didn't do that well either to be honest, did have an excellent 3D console with some great games.
Gamecube vs. Dreamcast: The Dreamcast is basically the greatest console ever made and the Gamecube... well... it's not even close. Third party support for the Gamecube basically disappeared, while their first party games were largely worse rehashes of N64 games. Meanwhile the Dreamcast, while it lasted, had the single greatest launch library in history, and some of the best games ever made came out later. Hell, it's launch library isn't even just good for a launch library. Most launch games kind of suck or are decent games but more tech demo's than anything. But the games released on Dreamcast were just plain amazing games.
So Sega had some closely fought battles going on, but was mostly on the losing side every generation. But since they're the only ones who can lay claim to the title of best console of all time, I'm inclined to give them the nod overall.
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