When we were growing up in the 80's and 90's, it was far more uncommon to have multiple game consoles than it is today. Which is funny, because for the most part the libraries of the Playstation and Xbox consoles is mostly comprised of multiplatform ports, with each console having a much smaller number of console exclusives. There's not a lot of reasons to own both a PS4 and an XBox One unless you're a pretty dedicated gamer.
But up until the PS2 era, most consoles had libraries that were mostly comprised of exclusives. There were very few games that appeared on both the Sega Master System and the NES or the Playstation and the Nintendo 64. As we entered the PS2 generation, development costs and three home consoles with comparable hardware made porting their games to all consoles much easier. There was less of a reason to own multiple consoles than there was in the previous generations.
So what's a "Sega Friend?"
That's brings us to what I refer to as the "Sega friend." That doesn't explicitly mean someone who has a Sega console that you're friends with. It refers to someone you knew that had a console that you, nor any of your other friends owned. One of my best friends from high school was also my "Sega friend." While everyone else had Super Nintendos, he had a Genesis. I was able to play games like Sonic the Hedgehog, Starflight and Taz-Mania when I went over to his house.
I was a "Sega friend" too. In the early 90's, I got pretty deep into console gaming and I ended up with both a Turbografx 16 and an Atari Lynx, when all of my friends were playing Super Nintendo and Game Boy games. I was definitely the odd one out, as most people had no idea what a TG16 was, or that it even existed in the first place. There was one other kid in my school who had a TG16, so luckily I was able to broaden my available 'library' by borrowing games liek Bonk's Adventure and Ninja Spirit from him.
Exclusives are dead
E3 2018 was both exciting and disappointing, as both Sony and Microsoft showed quite a few interesting games. The problem is that the rest of 2018 will be a drought for exclusives. Sony has their new Spider-man title and Microsoft has a new Forza title. That is practically it for console exclusives for the big guys. Nintendo fares better, as the always do, thanks to their first-party exclusives, with games like Super Mario Party, Toad's Treasure Tracker, Mario Tennis Aces and Octopath Traveller coming to the Switch later this year.
At most, it seems like PS4/XBox/PC + Switch is the most common multiconsole setup these days. A main console for the AAA games and a Nintendo machine for their exclusives. The era of the "Sega friend" is a relic of a different era in gaming, when developers didn't have to play it safe with reliable genres and franchises and porting their games to several platforms was both technically and legally difficult. Thankfully, the indie scene fills that void nicely, but its disappointing to see the companies with the resources to create some boundry-pushing games that have to settle for the next slightly different Halo or Madden game.
What do you think? Did you have a "Sega friend" when you were a kid? Lets discuss!
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Cover image: Gamasutra
I never had that Sega friend, all my friends started with the NES (like me) and had all the other ones too (SNES, GC, N64, ...). I guess that´s why i don´t like the old Sega consoles and love the old Nintendo consoles - because i had no one showing me some games :)
But then again, i played Sonic with an emulator and i did not like the controls. So i guess for me it was good to stick to Nintendo.
I loved everything Sega. I wish they still made consoles.
I hear that sentiment too, and we basically did get the Dreamcast 2 in the form of the XBox. Sega unleashed a bunch of exclusive games on the XBox (Shenmue II, Crazy Taxi III, Toejam and Earl III, Panzer Dragoon Orta, etc.) Sega of America President Peter Moore oversaw the Dreamcast era and eventually was hired by Microsoft to oversee the XBox division.
I think I am the "Sega friend". Growing up we , my brothers and I diverged from the neighborhood by buying a turbo gfx 16 (PC engine) when other's were still on nes or Sega master systems. Then we were the crazy kids that owned a first gen PlayStation, and now as an adult I run SteamOS on a gaming PC as my sole console. I'm not sure how many friends I had just because of our exclusive games, but this post rings true in so many ways.
I needed a TG16 for one reason. Splatterhouse. But I ended up finding a ton of games that I absolutely loved on that console. Sadly, I sold all my TG16 games about 15 years ago. I really regret that decision.
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