Wow... I knew it was useless responding to this thread Ryu... oh well. I\'ll go on for a bit longer...
Oh, AlteredBeast, I don\'t need to "defend those rebuttals" but attack them. Either way, I am not here to amuse you so much as to educate you.
You keep on bringing up graphics and business as your key arguments, when it is the games that matter most... here we go.
I will respond in general, without using quotes. About all those Sega games you listed, they are not innovations so much as they are improvements over pre-existing genres. I was speaking of the 80\'s generally, about the beginning of the modern gaming era. Yeah, I have
some experience in gaming before the crash of the industry, but admittedly, not a lot. The NES was not my first system. The Commodore Vic-20 was. And about Sega in general, admittedly, they did push the envelope in many things, and quite successfully (I am, after all, a Sega fan, especially of the Genesis, when they were at their peak, IMHO.) But while Sega successfully pioneered and even helped to redefine some of gaming in new and exciting ways, Nintendo changed gaming in its entirety. They pretty much affected all aspects of the early gaming era, and even today continue to change the way we play games.
I only have nominal interest in the "business" behind the industry. It is the games that I care about. I don\'t care how or why Nintendo pulled out the best games consistently in the 8 bit era. Be it monopoly or whatever. They had the ingenuity and ability to charm the world with their games. Sega did not, for whatever reason. You say they had a stranglehold over the 3rd parties? So what, I am focusing more on the
1st party efforts. And Sega\'s titles simply could not, and still cannot, compare with Nintendo\'s.
Castlevania vs Metroid. Not too sure they can be compared side-by-side, except for Symphony of the Night and Circle of the Moon of course, but Metroid definitely precluded those. Anywho, Metroid 1 was released in 1986, and Castlevania in 87.
Donkey Kong
was never a Rare property. The Donkey Kong figure was an invention of Shigeru Miyamoto, for an arcade game called Donkey Kong (later released on Atari or Coleco [don\'t remember], Commodore, NES, etc.) way before RareWare was even around. The DK property was
licensed out to Rare in the 16 bit era for the DK Country series, and remained with them throughout the 64 bit era as well, but not exclusively. Nintendo still has 100% ownership of DK, otherwise they would not be putting him in Super Smash Brothers Melee (you don\'t see any other Rare characters there, hmmmm?)
Zelda redefined the way we all play adventure, action/rpg games. I have actually played Adventure and Temple of Doom, on various Commodore systems. If I remember correctly, Adventure was a text-based game? Please... And ToD (if I am thinking of the right game) was more of a never-ending arcade game. Before Zelda, there simply was nothing else quite like it. Same with Metroid, Kid Icarus, Super Mario Brothers, etc.
Zaxxon was great, as was Panzer Dragoon. But Zaxxon was only quasi-3D, isometric in fact, a 3/4 view. Whether you enjoyed Star Fox or Panzer Dragoon more is moot, because I am not here to argue that my opinion is any "better or worse" than your opinion, only on the facts involved. Either way, Star Fox preceeded Panzer Dragoon, and in fact, Silpheed on the Sega CD preceeded PD as well (although I do not remember who created that game.)
And then you go on about various 3D Sega games, all good points, but not really related to what I was talking about initially. My point was that Nintendo changed the way we played games, from the beginning. Over the past 2 decades, various development houses have also risen to high success, on the heels of Nintendo\'s pioneering. Sega, is very much one of those companies. Debating how "original" a 3D racer is (with or without hills!! *rolls eyes*) is pointless. Games like Pole Racer and Rad Racer came way before that, and even Sega\'s Outrun for that matter.
As far as online gaming goes, it would be difficult to say that it is "innovative" since online gaming existing in various formats before that. And we have yet to see how "successful" it will be, since no one is actually making money off of online gaming. And there is no doubting console online play\'s inferiority over the already established PC variety. XBand may have been available on the Genesis before the SNES, but that did not prevent its failure on either system, and it was neither a Sega or a Nintendo technology.
