Of course, the SNES wasn’t the only console in this strange little world. I’m not going to include the GameBoy as it’s still alive and kicking (just), I will however, mention the Virtual Boy, Nintendo’s biggest flop. Oh dear Nintendo, what where you all thinking when you designed this? Was it, “I know, let’s make a portable console that you have to look into, therefore making it completely un-portable AND let’s make it so that you get a splitting headache after five minutes!”. The Virtual Boy was a disaster and never made it to PAL countries, thank God. I bought one when I was in the States and although it was fun and quirky, I soon went off playing it when my eyeballs tried to escape my head due to the strange wireframe vectors of Red Alert. It was the first time I actually experienced pain through a game, like some kind of force-feedback gone mad, it actually hurts if you play too long (Nintendo warn you of this, but it’s a little silly to have a console that you aren’t supposed to play!). If you find one of these in a shop, by all means buy it if it’s cheap (£30 or under), as it’s a piece of history. Don’t buy it if you are looking for an in-depth gaming experience; go and buy something that doesn’t make you go cross-eyed.

Nintendo are not alone in this void. In fact there is a bigger beast lodged here…. It’s Sega. They launched so many consoles in such a short number of years, it’s difficult to keep track of them all! Let’s see, you have the Megadrive, Mega-CD, 32X, Game Gear, Saturn and the Nomad to keep you occupied here, that’s plenty to keep us going for the time being. Let’s start with the Mega Drive and Mega Drive II, after all they are identical, a little like a Playstation and a PSOne. The Mega Drive was a 16- Bit machine like the SNES, however, it was apparent that it’s power lay in different areas to that of the SNES. The Mega Drive seemed less powerful and in the case of many games that were released on both consoles, the SNES version was superior (3D sprite scaling sections added, etc.). This doesn’t, however, count against the console in any way; you aren’t buying these machines for their power, you are looking for some decent games. Sega’s machine doesn’t disappoint. The likes of the Hedgehog , Sonic 2 & 3 and Sonic & Knuckles still shine after all these years, as the best examples of 2D platformers, their mix of speed and originality (backwards compatible cartridges anyone?), make them sure winners. Not to mention all of the Coin-op conversions that released on the console, making it Sega’s finest hour (in terms of anyway) and a time for all Sega fans to remember, unlike the next lot...

Sega made many mistakes in the console market, most of their mistakes were not down to the console’s themselves, or indeed the technology. It was all down to Sega’s poor marketing, still evident today as we see the Dreamcast die on it’s feet… It’s a shame to see it happen so many times, maybe it’s for the best that they stick to development-only now… but back in Sega’s heyday, there was no stopping them. First came the Mega CD, an add-on for your Mega Drive, turning it into a CD capable console of unimaginable power. Or not. It was a slight disaster for Sega, as it only had a handful of decent games (although, I, yet again, owned one) one of which was Sonic CD. Sonic CD was a good little game but suffered from the same problem as all the other Mega CD titles, it was a Mega Drive game with some CD quality (Toot toot, Sonic Warrior!), a section and some FMV thrown in for luck. All the titles seemed a little uninspired and rushed and never quite filled the expected gap. However, the Mega CD was a triumph compared to Sega’s next little effort, the 32X. The 32X was a plastic monstrosity that plugged into the top of your Mega Drive, giving it the appearance of an alien mushroom and supposedly gave you 32 bit power. Well it did that all right…. It would be nice if it also had some games to go with it! Support was unbelievably poor, the console/add-on only had two decent games that I can recall, they were Virtua Racing (the first true 3D from Sega) and Doom! A game that had just been released on the SNES and was nigh-on exactly the same. You should be able to pick up a Mega Drive, Mega CD and 32X all for about £40, or £15 separately. You may have a hard time find a 32X though…