The early-to-mid 1990’s were an amazing time if you were a video gamer. For starters, there were a LOT of options for your gaming dollar. At the turn of the decade, the market was bombarded by a flood
of companies, all eager to take a slice of the freshly baked and flaky crusted video game pie that Nintendo help make yummy again.
Speaking of the Big “N”, they and Sega, the late 80’s downtrodden 2nd placer in the console race, were at each other’s throats fighting for the top spot of the game world. They had their newest 16-bit consoles filling up space on store shelves while their 8-bit offerings were slowly being phased out. They also squared off in the new portable game system arena with the Game Boy and the Game Gear. Then there was washed up punch-drunk-but-swears-they’re-going-to-make-a-come-back boxer named Atari. With broken fingers they threw their battered hat into the portables ring with the Lynx color hand-held system while trying to hype up their next console that touted having many more bits than the competition.
Off whimpering in the corner licking its skinned knees (which is
impressive no matter who you talk to) was NEC/TTI and their TurboGra..er…TurboDuo system along with their entry into portables buffet: the TurboExpress, which played the same cards the home console did. The arcade company SNK introduced a home version of their multi-game cabinet system the Neo Geo, which set gamers back a few hundred dollars for the base model and around a couple Benjamins per cartridge. Thankfully, no hand-held came from them as it probably would have cost more than a Ford Probe. The market was so crowded with consoles and stuff that all pretty much had games that played pretty similar to each other, it was a wonder how one could even compete.
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