As I write this I am 30 years old I have been a gamer for 26 of these years going way back to the Atari 2600 and ZX Spectrum in the 80's. While I loved playing on these machines it was not until I got my very first NES in the late 80's that I became a gaming addict. As much as I loved my NES and have some great treasured memories of it, for me when I think of the golden years of gaming I think of the war between the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive (or Genesis to my American pals) to be a gamer at this time was simply amazing and it is a time that I have felt was very special and have never been duplicated. This is an article about what started the console war between the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive for me and my brother.
As a NES guy I passed on the Mega Drive and decided to wait it out for the Super Nintendo. I didn't totally miss out as my younger brother got a Mega Drive for Christmas in 1990 with Altered Beast, Thunder Blade, Golden Axe and best of all a second controller. I have to admit that first time I saw Golden Axe playing on our living room TV I nearly ditched the NES and pledged my allegiance to the mighty Sega, however I resisted as cool as the Mega Drive was I was a Nintendo guy and back in the 90's very few people loved both you were either Nintendo or Sega. While I got to play my brothers Mega Drive it would never replace my beloved NES even though the Mega Drive games looked way better.
My brother and I are both huge wrestling fans and this was the one area in which the Mega Drive was lacking for us. On the NES we had Wrestlemania and our game of choice and one of my favourites from my childhood Wrestlemania Challenge. For my brothers birthday in 1991 he got the very first 16 bit wrestling game we had ever played and that was Wrestle War. While it was not a WWF game you could clearly see that they had ripped off a few WWF wrestlers including Hulk Hogan and Hawk. Wrestle War looked amazing there is no other way to say it other than it made my beloved Wrestlemania Challenge look like crap. The quality of Wrestle War is debatable and it really does not hold up to well today but back then we were amazed by it not juts the graphics but the amount of moves you could do compared to Wrestlemania Challenge was also amazing.
Something happened in 1992 my birthday was in November and I could not wait the reason for this was because I was getting my very first 16 bit machine the Super Nintendo. No longer would I have my little 8 bit NES sitting next to my brother's mighty Mega Drive, no now I would also have some 16 bit power. Funny thing is what most excited me about the Super Nintendo was not Mario World (which I was still looking forward to) it was Super Wrestlemania. This would be the very first 16 bit WWF game that my brother and I would get to play. So it happened November 19th 1992 I got my Super Nintendo with Super Mario World and Super Wrestlemania I hade been looking at advertisements for Super Wrestlemania for months in the WWF magazine blown away by the "actual game selection screens" Funny thing is for most gamers when you look at Super Nintendo v/s Mega Drive it in most cases is Mario v/s Sonic or perhaps the first Mortal Kombat game, not for me and my brother for us it was Super Wrestlemania that started the console war.
My brother absolutely hated the fact that there was no WWF game for his beloved Mega Drive I mean he really hated it; it ate him up in side this however would not last to long as one day in our local game shop the guy behind the counter told us and our dad that there was a Super Wrestlemania about to be released for the Mega Drive. Now let me explain something to you guys back then there was no internet where you would know about a game 3 years before it was released, no all your info came from magazines. Now magazines for whatever reason were not something we got all of the time we would on occasion get a WWF magazine or a random gaming one but we would go months without getting one. Sure enough a few weeks later we were in the same gaming store and there it was sitting on the shelf WWF Super Wrestlemania for the Sega Mega Drive, if that was not exciting enough our favourite wrestler The Ultimate Warrior was on the box. Ultimate Warrior was not in the Super Nintendo version so this absolutely amazed us. Our dad was kind enough to buy the game for us and this is where the console war in our house started.
Now I would argue that the Super Nintendo version looked much better had better graphics and overall presentation and had much better sound than the Mega Drive version. At the same time my brother would point out how he could play as The Ultimate Warrior and the British Bulldog when I could not on my Super Nintendo. We would get into pretty big arguments about it even refusing to let each other play on our own systems. From here the console war just grew and grew in our house while he had the better Mortal Kombat I had the better Jurassic Park. While I had the much better StreetFighter 2 he had the amazing Streets of Rage 2. There was just so many great trade offs that both of these systems were really amazing and both had a huge library of fantastic games.
In closing I now realise that while we did have a console war in my house I was lucky enough that most of the time we did share our systems but we would always argue as to which one is best. I think our story is kind of unique that it was a wrestling game that really kicked of the Sega and Nintendo rivalry and not Mario and Sonic. Still to this day I will argue till I am blue in the face that the Super Nintendo was the real king of the 16 bit era but at the same time I have to admit I have some great memories of playing on the Sega Mega Drive also. This was a time in gaming that I can never see happening again, I love gaming just as much today as I did back then but I will always look back to the Super Nintendo v/s Mega Drive battle and smile.
As a NES guy I passed on the Mega Drive and decided to wait it out for the Super Nintendo. I didn't totally miss out as my younger brother got a Mega Drive for Christmas in 1990 with Altered Beast, Thunder Blade, Golden Axe and best of all a second controller. I have to admit that first time I saw Golden Axe playing on our living room TV I nearly ditched the NES and pledged my allegiance to the mighty Sega, however I resisted as cool as the Mega Drive was I was a Nintendo guy and back in the 90's very few people loved both you were either Nintendo or Sega. While I got to play my brothers Mega Drive it would never replace my beloved NES even though the Mega Drive games looked way better.
My brother and I are both huge wrestling fans and this was the one area in which the Mega Drive was lacking for us. On the NES we had Wrestlemania and our game of choice and one of my favourites from my childhood Wrestlemania Challenge. For my brothers birthday in 1991 he got the very first 16 bit wrestling game we had ever played and that was Wrestle War. While it was not a WWF game you could clearly see that they had ripped off a few WWF wrestlers including Hulk Hogan and Hawk. Wrestle War looked amazing there is no other way to say it other than it made my beloved Wrestlemania Challenge look like crap. The quality of Wrestle War is debatable and it really does not hold up to well today but back then we were amazed by it not juts the graphics but the amount of moves you could do compared to Wrestlemania Challenge was also amazing.
Something happened in 1992 my birthday was in November and I could not wait the reason for this was because I was getting my very first 16 bit machine the Super Nintendo. No longer would I have my little 8 bit NES sitting next to my brother's mighty Mega Drive, no now I would also have some 16 bit power. Funny thing is what most excited me about the Super Nintendo was not Mario World (which I was still looking forward to) it was Super Wrestlemania. This would be the very first 16 bit WWF game that my brother and I would get to play. So it happened November 19th 1992 I got my Super Nintendo with Super Mario World and Super Wrestlemania I hade been looking at advertisements for Super Wrestlemania for months in the WWF magazine blown away by the "actual game selection screens" Funny thing is for most gamers when you look at Super Nintendo v/s Mega Drive it in most cases is Mario v/s Sonic or perhaps the first Mortal Kombat game, not for me and my brother for us it was Super Wrestlemania that started the console war.
My brother absolutely hated the fact that there was no WWF game for his beloved Mega Drive I mean he really hated it; it ate him up in side this however would not last to long as one day in our local game shop the guy behind the counter told us and our dad that there was a Super Wrestlemania about to be released for the Mega Drive. Now let me explain something to you guys back then there was no internet where you would know about a game 3 years before it was released, no all your info came from magazines. Now magazines for whatever reason were not something we got all of the time we would on occasion get a WWF magazine or a random gaming one but we would go months without getting one. Sure enough a few weeks later we were in the same gaming store and there it was sitting on the shelf WWF Super Wrestlemania for the Sega Mega Drive, if that was not exciting enough our favourite wrestler The Ultimate Warrior was on the box. Ultimate Warrior was not in the Super Nintendo version so this absolutely amazed us. Our dad was kind enough to buy the game for us and this is where the console war in our house started.
Now I would argue that the Super Nintendo version looked much better had better graphics and overall presentation and had much better sound than the Mega Drive version. At the same time my brother would point out how he could play as The Ultimate Warrior and the British Bulldog when I could not on my Super Nintendo. We would get into pretty big arguments about it even refusing to let each other play on our own systems. From here the console war just grew and grew in our house while he had the better Mortal Kombat I had the better Jurassic Park. While I had the much better StreetFighter 2 he had the amazing Streets of Rage 2. There was just so many great trade offs that both of these systems were really amazing and both had a huge library of fantastic games.
In closing I now realise that while we did have a console war in my house I was lucky enough that most of the time we did share our systems but we would always argue as to which one is best. I think our story is kind of unique that it was a wrestling game that really kicked of the Sega and Nintendo rivalry and not Mario and Sonic. Still to this day I will argue till I am blue in the face that the Super Nintendo was the real king of the 16 bit era but at the same time I have to admit I have some great memories of playing on the Sega Mega Drive also. This was a time in gaming that I can never see happening again, I love gaming just as much today as I did back then but I will always look back to the Super Nintendo v/s Mega Drive battle and smile.
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