Those classic 90's SEGA commercials

 By Mark Rodriguez

I miss the days of videogame commercials. Nowadays you see the occasional one on actual TV but most of the game trailers are on YouTube or online in general. To be honest I was surprised to run across Street Fighter 5 TV ads back then. I usually see more commercials for phone app games rather than actual video games. Or maybe I just don't watch as much live TV anymore.

Those classic game commercials were epic though. I still remember the ones for the NES Double Dragon games and the Street Fighter ones. The Mortal Kombat commercials popularized the screaming out of the game's name that carried over into the live action movie's soundtrack. But probably the ones that were the most entertaining were the ones that took potshots at each other. And none were the masters of the potshot than 90s SEGA.

SEGA pulled no punches when it came to competing against Nintendo in their ads. Other commercials usually just say they're better than 'the other guys' or 'the leading brands' without actually naming them. Taco Bell says 'think outside the bun' but they never flat out say 'Burger King and McDonald's suck, eat our tacos instead'. SEGA wouldn't hesitate to say Nintendo outright instead of just saying 'that other guy' or something like that.

Of course in the 90s, SEGA couldn't say 'the leading brands' without meaning Nintendo anyways. There just wasn't anybody else. Atari was dead and the Turbo Graphx 16, while epic in its own right, was like that Independent Third Party in a Presidential election that no one really votes for.

SEGA started off strong with having the first 16-bit console out there. I mean, Nintendo was great and had epic and unforgettable classics like the Mario, Megaman and Castlevania series, but they could only do so much with 8-bit graphics and sound. SEGA would blow Nintendo out of the water with epic 16-bit graphics and sounds with games that looked and sounded closer to actual arcade games like Golden Axe, Moonwalker, and Altered Beast, as well as sports games with more realistic graphics. 

Their motto was 'Genesis does what Nintendon't'. I always thought that was weird and would always say 'what Nintendo don't' instead of Nintendon't. Even as kids, Johnny and I still laughed whenever the ads would sing 'you can't do this on Nintendo' at just how blatant SEGA was with their potshots. And to be honest... they were right. I mean whether or not Nintendo had better games than the Genesis, at least in terms of graphics and sounds, you really can't do this on Nintendo. I can only imagine how super simplistic Golden Axe would have looked in 8-bit with all the sounds being bleeps and bloops. 

Now that I think about it, I wonder if Nintendo ever tried to do something about those ads back in the day. I've never really heard of any cases of Nintendo trying to take SEGA to court or put a cease or desist or anything like that. 

Then came the Super Nintendo, the 16-bit answer to any advantage the Genesis had over the NES. How did SEGA counter? By being cool... and being fast. Enter Sonic the Hedgehog, the cool teenage game mascot with attitude. Everything cool in the 90s needed attitude. Even Zordon knew he needed teenagers with attitude to save the day. Then again... the Rangers were probably the most squeaky clean teenagers in existence so maybe Zordon didn't quite understand the meaning of attitude. If they really had attitude they would have just told Zordon that they wouldn't help cause he was lame and they didn't feel like it.

Now Mario had fun games full of secrets and challenging platforming levels, but Sonic was flat out cool. Even as a kid I had to look back and remember that Mario was just some chubby plumber in his 30s who was too much of a goody goody and didn't have an ounce of attitude in him. And when you were a kid, all you cared about was whether or not a character was cool. In the era before voice acting and cut scenes, all it took was Sonic's arrogant smart-ass smirk and waving 'no' with his finger to show us that this blue dude was too cool for school and Mario was a wholesome lame-o.

Even the T1000 knew how to show off 90's attitude

Not only that but Sonic's game was actually fun. And fast. And that's another point SEGA used to their advantage. The infamous 'Blast Processing'. What exactly is it? Is it real? Who knows. I'm not the expert when it comes to console specs, but apparently Blast Processing is what helped make the Sonic games so blazing fast... though I only remember seeing it used in the Sonic games. Admittedly, the Genesis was the faster system when compared to the SNES, and they used that marketing buzzword whenever they could. Ironically sometime after that buzzword died down, Nintendo in a rare case of actually fighting back, complete with mentioning SEGA by name, had this 2 page advertisement that almost looked like a legit magazine article ripping apart the Blast Processing myth.

This clever magazine ad almost looked like a legit article... until you saw the same 'article' in other videogame magazines.

Overall, the Genesis just seemed cooler and more hardcore. Mario and Link were cute games with cute characters and cute catchy tunes. Sonic, Shinobi and Altered Beast just seemed more serious and gritty, and even though Sonic was technically a cute cartoon animal character, his game was full of totally hardcore jamming tracks compared to Super Mario World's typical cute Mario music. They even had a commercial where this salesman was trying to sell the SNES by showing off Super Mario World, but the potential customer was so impressed by Sonic, that he decided to take the Genesis instead. SEGA just didn't pull any punches.

The final thing that I saw (I was in Mexico where SEGA was kinda nonexistent, at least where I was, so I missed out on the Saturn and Dreamcast commercials) was when SEGA came out with their SEGA CD. Now technically, the Turbo Graphx-16 was the first to bring a CD system to the market... but again, they just weren't as popular as SEGA was, so I wouldn't be surprised if many people thought the SEGA CD was the first. It's kinda funny, cause I remember a 2-page or so comic ad about this guy named Johnny Turbo, trying to stop the evil game company FEKA from misleading kids into thinking that the SEGA... um I mean FEKA.... CD was the first CD system out there.

You tell 'em Johnny Turbo! Though telling everyone the Turbo Duo was the first to have the Sherlock Holmes game is as much of a flex as Nintendo bragging that Superman 64 was a N64 exclusive

Well, the Super NES was trying to make their own CD add-on system and after game expo after game expo of being a no-show, it seemed it was never going to happen. SEGA poked fun at this too when they made their SEGA CD commercial. Some random dude appears on a kid's tv screen and asks him why he hasn't bought a SEGA CD yet. When the guy asks 'you waiting for Nintendo to make one?' the kid responds with kind of a chuckle as if to say 'shyeah right'. And after that, more ads would come to show off the new FMV games and to constantly remind us that there is no Nintendo CD.

Ironically that failed Super Nintendo CD would eventually become the first Sony Playstation that seriously wrecked both the Nintendo and SEGA consoles when it came out.... but anyways, let's get back to the past... or rather the 16-bit era.

Now if this article makes me sound SEGA biased, trust me, I owned the NES, and eventually both the SNES and Genesis, so I liked both companies. I actually bought the Genesis since it had TMNT Hyperstone Heist, which I just HAD to have, big TMNT fan that I was. The Genesis came with one controller and Sonic, and the game plan between my bro and I was to 'suffer' with Sonic for a week until we could buy Hyperstone Heist with a second controller. I found myself enjoying Sonic a lot more than I expected. And of course there was Streets of Rage... and once Sonic 2 and Streets of Rage 2 came out, man, we loved our Genesis just as much as we loved our SNES.

Basically speaking, both systems were great, and they both have their own unique library of games ranging from stuff like the Final Fight series, the Streets of Rage series, the Final Fantasy series and the Phantasy Star series, and of course, the Mario and Sonic games. Both systems fought it out for our money, but regardless, we won either way because we reaped in the awesome games they both released.

Sadly, no matter what SEGA did in the 90's, it's hard nowadays to consider them such strong competition since they stopped making game consoles and are now making games for Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft. Mario and Sonic characters crossing over in Olympic games? Sonic cameo in a Super Smash Brothers game? Totally unheard of even in the most wildest dreams of anyone back in the 90's. But yeah, those were the days, and those commercials were just too much fun. Just writing this article brings back fond memories of a simpler time when the only thing that mattered was if the Genesis was better than the Super Nintendo and vice versa. Even with the console wars we have now, unless we start seeing PS4 commercials saying 'We got Street Fighter 5 as an exclusive game, so if all you have is the X Box One.. then you're been X-Boned' and similar name calling and whatnot, it'll just never be the same like those old Nintendo VS SEGA days. Long live the 16-bit era.

Of course what's an article without proper context so you can form an opinion of your own? Here are the three most memorable commercials for me, and the ones with the most Nintendon'ts. What was your favorite commercial?

Genesis Does What Nintendon't

Sonic VS Super Mario World commercial

SEGA CD (you waiting for Nintendo to make one??) commercial