Super Mario - Jeff Ryan [76]
ONE OF NINTENDO’S SECRET WEAPONS OVER THE YEARS was trepidation. Gamers were scared they’d plunk down money for Console X, only to see their friends all buy Console Y games so they could trade with each other. Only diehards had the discretionary income to buy both. Most bought one new game every few months, the exact rate Nintendo released big first-party titles.
Sega had experienced a one-two punch of this hesitancy. First, people stopped buying 1996’s Saturn, which upon release had cut the legs out from all of Sega’s various other Genesis-based consoles. Sega had foolishly announced a new console (what would be the Dreamcast) right when it should have been hyping the brand-new Saturn. People passed by the Saturn, the way bakery customers will wait for fresh bread and ignore the loaf sitting in front of them.
The Dreamcast, hot out of the oven, arrived in Japan on November 27, 1998. It sold out in the United States when it arrived a year later, with more than three hundred thousand preorders, and quickly hit a million units sold worldwide. Sega designed a fleet of exemplary “2K” Sega Sports titles, to make up for EA wanting nothing to do with Sega. It brought out a strong Sonic game, Sonic Adventure. It included a modem with every Dreamcast, which let gamers play RPGs like Phantasy Star Online with friends from around the world. It easily had the best graphics of any system so far.
The second-part of Sega’s one-two punch was a clock-cleaning haymaker, not from Nintendo but Sony. Sony announced the PlayStation’s successor, the PlayStation 2, would be available in spring 2000 in Japan, and six months later in America. The PS2 would have a DVD player built in: this alone went for three hundred dollars, so buying a PS2 practically gave away a video game system for free. Developers working on Dreamcast games put their fingers up, felt the wind, and decided to make PS2 games instead.
There was a theory among video game intelligensia that three video game consoles might not be sustainable. One certainly was sustainable: the 2600 and the NES had their unchallenged heydays. Two, yes: the SNES and Genesis both did well. But three might be pushing it. Like brands of soda, like political parties, like nuclear superpowers, you could have two working to spur each other on to greatness, but a third was the odd man out. Sega looked to be this third wheel, neither the family favorite (clearly Nintendo) nor the cool kids’ choice (PlayStation).
This would have been fine for Nintendo, save for Nintendo being uncomfortably close to Sega’s position. Both had lost third-party developers to Sony, and relied heavily (if not almost exclusively) on first-party content. Both had more powerful machines than Sony. Both had quickly followed up Sony’s great idea of re-releasing top-selling games for a reduced price in a Greatest Hits brand: Nintendo’s was called Player’s Choice and Sega’s was All Stars. Both had been around the block long enough, like Marvel and DC, to feel comfy in their rivalry. Mario and Sonic were opposites joined at the hip.
Sega’s Dreamcast had beaten Nintendo’s new console to market. Nintendo’s new console, nicknamed the Dolphin (later Gamecube), would be out in 2001. It was still cranking out above-average games for the N64 until just a few months before launch. An upside to Nintendo’s when-it’s-done philosophy was that it released games all the time, not just in October when they’d sell best. A downside? Some games’ graphics stunk, because they were so behind the times.
Paper Mario was an interesting example of both: it was a sequel to Super Mario RPG, yet it couldn’t use that title (or any new characters in it, or its isometric look)