I'm reading a book on Sega's rise and fall these days; Service Games: The Rise and Fall of Sega. A very interesting read, but it had me thinking: It says time and again that Sega was all conquering, so to speak, in Europe until the coming of Playstation, except in Switzerland and "some" Scandinavian countries. We're not that many Scandinavian countires up here, so I don't know what the author mean with that. But in Norway at least, Sega was all but non existing.
I was very surprised to read that Nintendo had little market penetration back then. I'm born in 1986 and got my first console, a NES, in 1990/1991 and a GameBoy a couple years later. All my friends had a NES, later a SNES. I knew of one, single kid that had a MegaDrive, none that had a Master System. This kid lived on the other side of the country and was a distant relative. I played at his place once.
As for the Game Gear, I remember some adverts and I think a friend of a friend might have had one. Saturn, I hadn't even heard about before I read about it sometime early in the 2000s. Until I read an article on it some time later in RetroGamer mag, I didn't know it had even come to Europe at all. I thought it was some failed experiment in North America.
Needless to say, Mega CD, 32X and so on, I never heard about before reading about them in RetroGamer. I remember Dreamcast was advertized when it came, but I can't remember ever seeing one in real life. My friends after the NES/SNES era all had N64 or Playstations.
I guess what I mean to say is that I am really, really surprised that Sega had a good market penetration. They didn't exist in kid-me's world. It was all Nintendo. No school yard console wars here, nossir.
I was very surprised to read that Nintendo had little market penetration back then. I'm born in 1986 and got my first console, a NES, in 1990/1991 and a GameBoy a couple years later. All my friends had a NES, later a SNES. I knew of one, single kid that had a MegaDrive, none that had a Master System. This kid lived on the other side of the country and was a distant relative. I played at his place once.
As for the Game Gear, I remember some adverts and I think a friend of a friend might have had one. Saturn, I hadn't even heard about before I read about it sometime early in the 2000s. Until I read an article on it some time later in RetroGamer mag, I didn't know it had even come to Europe at all. I thought it was some failed experiment in North America.
Needless to say, Mega CD, 32X and so on, I never heard about before reading about them in RetroGamer. I remember Dreamcast was advertized when it came, but I can't remember ever seeing one in real life. My friends after the NES/SNES era all had N64 or Playstations.
I guess what I mean to say is that I am really, really surprised that Sega had a good market penetration. They didn't exist in kid-me's world. It was all Nintendo. No school yard console wars here, nossir.