10 Times Sega Beat Nintendo At Their Own Game

Nintendo's bouts with Sega served as reminders not to take their spot for granted.

[Relientk77]

Sega does what nintendon't

[Sgt_Slaughter]

Bow out of the console business?

[jznrpg]

Nintendo was close a couple times too. I miss Sega consoles I would much rather to have them instead of xbox.

[septemberindecember]

@jznrpg

Nintendo has never been close at stopping making consoles. Heck the first time they reported a loss was in 2013. Sega reported losses all the way through Saturn and Dreamcast which is why they stopped making consoles.

[Sgt_Slaughter]

@jznrpg

That's untrue, Nintendo has NEVER been close to stopping making consoles/systems. No matter how off a console has been on sales, they rarely operate on a loss and make their money through accessories, licensing deals with toys, evergreen titles, etc.. They only really ever had a notable loss when the Wii U flopped, and even then the 3DS + Amiibo + mobile apps + Switch launch quickly fixed that.

[FallenAngel1984]

Have only one successful system while the rest were flops?

[BrainSyphoned]

Sega, the mirror image of Xbox
Good games, no system
No games, Good system

[Einhander1971]

In an ideal world it would be Nintendo, Sega, Sony in the hardware market. Forget Microsoft. Personally i wish Atari was still a main player.

[autobotdan]

Forget Sony

[FallenAngel1984]

Someone has some rose tinted glasses.

Sega’s own poor business decisions is why they had to exit the hardware market. Seeing how they’ve mishandled their flagship series for so long just further shows they weren’t cut out to sustain the it presence in consoles. Atari failed for similar reasons.

Why forget Microsoft? They’ve lasted over 20 years in the industry for a reason.

[autobotdan]

World Series Baseball, Joe Montana Sports Talk Football, Shinobi series, Phantasy Star, Original Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, House of the Dead trilogy, Columns, Shining Force, Virtua Fighter, Streets of Rage trilogy. Those are just some of the times Sega best Nintendo, Electronic Arts, Capcom and Squaresoft at their own game. At some points in time in past Sega was arguably making the best Japanese Role playing games, the best Sports games, best puzzle games, best arcade games etc. Sega was competing with Nintendo, Capcom, Squaresoft,Electronic Arts, Namco all at ounce before their fall

[LoveSpuds]

Gotta say, thier list seems pretty desperate to my mind. As a teenager in the 90s, I wouldn't say the UK was 'Sega territory'. I did have a mate who had a Sega and I did love playing it, but I knew far more people with Nintendo systems. Seems like some very subjective claims being made along with a healthy dose of revisionist history in this article.

I know many in the N4G community like to dunk on Nintendo, but as someone who experienced Nintendo since they began in the console business, as far as I am concerned they deserve a lot of credit and respect. I cannot imagine my childhood without that NES and Super Nintendo.

Having said all that, I will never forget my mate coming over to show me Revenge of Shinobi, I couldn't believe what I was seeing, and another game I was weirdly obsessed with was Rambo III :)

[After10Ben]

That's exactly how I feel. I remember opening a Christmas present and seeing Mega Man 2 for the first time. My brother and I mastered that game from start to finish. It was a little magical. But I liked Sega too. I used to visit my friend (who had moved away) and we played his Sega Genesis all night long.

[CosmicTurtle]

Statistically the UK was Sega territory. At least the Master System and MD were more popular than the Nintendo equivalents. Nintendo’s biggest hit was the Gameboy.

That Rambo game was rather excellent at the time. I am sure it has aged badly but I thought it was great. I rarely hear anyone mention it. I also liked the Megadrive E-Swat (my first 16 bit game) my brother had imported the console from Japan.

I simply preferred Nintendo stuff at the time, and many of their titles feel just as fresh today. But there are more than a few Sega based gems out there.

[LoveSpuds]

Yeah, that E-Swat game was another gem. I think that was where I definitely perceived that the MegaDrive had an edge, arcade beat em ups and shooters. They were all so much better on Sega's system, I recall I couldnt believe my eyes when I saw Strider on the MegaDrive.......the phrase 'arcade perfect' was never far from my mates lips (he owned the MD).

I should say, by the time the SNES and Megadrive came along I was all about my Amiga anyway, but I did love using the family NES/SNES.