Back in 1994, Sega and Nintendo were very much at war. The two companies were battling for dominance of the living room, with the Genesis and Super Nintendo firmly ensconced in millions of households all over the world. Keen to push its rival to the limit, Sega took part in a wide range of promotional activities - one of which was placing a massive exhibit of hardware and games in the Epcot "Innoventions" section at Disney World, Florida.
Very little footage or imagery exists of the installation, but iRetrogamer's Tyler Esposito has just uploaded some videos taken by his gaming-mad father which shows exactly what it was like.
Esposito first visited with his family in '94, encountering plenty of Sonic, Lion King on the Genesis, Virtua Fighter in arcade form and even some Sega Channel goodness. He returned two years later to witness Fighting Vipers and the 32X title Darxide, which only ever saw release in Europe.
Fast forward to the present day and Sega is no longer competing with Nintendo, but creates games for Nintendo systems as a third-party publisher. It's amazing how much has changed over the decades, and this footage is made even more fascinating by the fact that it arguably marks Sega's zenith in the west; after the mid-'90s the company would slowly but surely fade out of contention before exiting the hardware arena for good at the dawn of the new millennium. That makes it even more important to preserve footage such as this; it's a snapshot of a period which has now long passed.
Comments 27
Ah.... so 90's vibes.
Too bad, I was raised in Nintendo vibes during my childhood, PS1 & PS2 during my Teenhood.
I wasn't raised in SEGA Hype.
Secccgaa
I'm soon going to be getting a Mega Drive and 32X along with the Everdrive flashcart for them, so I can experience the best SEGA had to offer in the early 90's. I grew up with a Master System and briefly had a Mega Drive, but once I got a SNES I was a Nintendo fanboy and never went back to SEGA. Shame really as I missed out on some great games. Why did we have to pick sides? So many casualties in the console wars....
@Anti-Matter
i was more with Sega than Nintendo or Sony in my childhood .
When I was in primary school there were no arguments over which console was better. Both SNES and Mega Drive were great consoles and it was ideal to have both. With kids who had siblings if one had the Mega Drive then the other had the SNES. It was good to grow up with both. The 90s were all about Sonic and Mario.
@UK-Nintendo
Now SEGA pronounced by Hatsune Miku.
@gb_nes_gamer
those days in my country (Iran) , sega md was more popular than snes .
i like those days
Too bad I had an Anti-Sega mentality growing up... I still do...
I grew up on Sega, loved it from Master system all the way to Dreamcast, shame Microsoft destroyed them by stealing all their ideas (Compare the original xbox controller to Dreamcast, exactly the same).
Loved fighting vipers!
Grew up in South Africa and was a Sega boy! When I moved to Australia I made sure we visited Sega World in Sydney as soon as possible! That footage reminded me of those times. Awesome.
That guys dad is the the OG of youtubers btw! 😝
@Anti-Matter too bad. You missed a lot of great gamss
Sweet Genesis nostalgia. Boot up Ecco the Dolphin on a Genesis and that's the very core of my video game sentimentality
OMG! I remember going there in 94! The 5min limit was annoying but ho hum. I remember playing that Power Rangers fighting game a lot as that was all the rage back then.
Wish I had looked around more games though, then again I was only 10.
@gp993 that's interesting. I think what made them on par with one another is that they were both 16-bit cartridge consoles where multi format titles were more or less the same. Some titles shone more on one than on the other. E.g. It was the Mega Drive for Mortal Kombat and the SNES for Street Fighter.
@Neon_Blues That's unfortunate as you missed out on quite a lot of great games.
My best friend was the same until I gave him my Genesis (original model with the clearer soundchip) along with all of the Sonic (I let him borrow all of the good games I had as well) games in 1995. He finally gave up Nintendo with the N64 game dry spells in the late 90s and got a PSX in 1998. We both got a Gamecube on launch in 2001 though and a Nintendo DS and Wii as well.
Its unfortunate that he cannot stand Nintendo anymore due to their asinine youtube rules and supply issues and only uses his PC now. He still might get a Switch to play some multiplayer (we still play together with certain PC games mind you) with me though.
Its just funny how that worked out as I used to own both Nintendo and Sega but always favored Sega while he was the Mega Nintendo Nerd and hated Sega. Now I'm the Super Nintendo Freak and he plays a lot of Sega games on Steam.
@TurboTEF Haha! That is ironic with the role reversals!
I developed my mentality from Sonic the Hedgehog. My friend (at the time) had a Sega Genesis whilst I had Super Nintendo. He never had many games for it, but the few he did have were on the Super Nintendo as well(Street Fighter, Battletoads & Double Dragon). One day, he invites me over to play Sonic the Hedgehog... And I hated it! I couldn't stand the game! I hated Sonic before it was cool... A few years on, everyone kept saying how great Sonic was, and even now, many people say how Sonic is one of if not the greatest game on the Genesis.
So I got the mentality that if Sonic is the best Sega game, then the other games on the Genesis must not be that great...
I know that sounds arrogant, and closed minded, but that's how I grew up... And Sonic games getting high regards on the other Sega consoles doesn't help any...
Still a Nintendo exclusive gamer to this day. No regrets.
Wow, this video makes it all look so old and retro.....and yet to me everything contained in there is just yesterday and completely current.....
@Anti-Matter YOU had a PS1 and PS2?!? Why is the room spinning?
@NEStalgia
Yep.
I got PS2 Slim White Japan scph-77000 last month, though I haven't got the games yet (Used to be played pirated copies of PS2 games long time ago, but not anymore. I removed completely all those pirated copies, start from Zero again). Btw, i'm still waiting my First Original PS2 games order delivered from Ebay by help of my friend.
Eh... I am no longer owned PS1 machines and games anymore (Due to pirated copies and modded ps1, but I had removed them completely, use my PS2 Slim to play PS1 games so 1 machine can play both PS2 & PS1. Hooray ! ). I still consider PS1 games because it was my Teenhood games. I wanna Re-Play FF VIII, FF IX, DDR 3rd Mix, Harvest Moon Back to Nature, Street Fighter Alpha 3, X-Men vs Street Fighter, etc. Last time I played PS1 back on 2006, before my modded PS1 started to unable to spin the Disc anymore.
Congratulations to all those who actually received something meaningful from the article's footage.
Man, that is great. I've owned them all in the 90's, from Nintendos to SEGA consoles to PlayStations. Nothing now a days compares to the 90's and games changing constantly. Makes me wish my family bought a camera back then. Didn't go anywhere like that, but still the memories captured is always nice to see like that.
I recently picked up a collection including Genesis model 2, with Sega CD and the 32x with several games. I'm impressed. I need to find a few more CD games as I only have Sonic CD which is excellent.
I was glad to find a complete set as I did so I don't have to go searching around.
@Neon_Blues same here. I never understood Sonic as I grew up playing Mario.
But now I okay the old-school Sonic's too. Funny huh.
@Danrenfroe2016 That's great. Which games do you have? In case you didn't know, although I suspect you do, there are a couple of games out there that got the special CD treatment, adding extra stuff exclusive to the silver disc version.
Batman Returns is one of those games, as well as Ecco the Dolphin, which is of course only interesting to know if you like those types of games.
There are also several exclusive Sega CD games, of the FMV kind, but unless you're really keen on getting them for collecting purposes, you should probably not get them for their great gameplay, because most of them are pretty bad...
Here's an entire list:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sega_CD_games
Oh, and in case you're not such a picky collector, but still want to have some of those more hard to find titles, then it might be of interest to you to know that the Sega CD has no copy protection, so it can also play burned discs, albeit region bound, but that's a given, obviously.
If you want to go that route, then there's more than enough info to be found on the Atari Ages and Sega-16 forums, and titles can be found on Emuparadise or TheIsoZone forums.
And for the startup Sega CD collector, this Sega CD beginners guide by RacketBoy might be an interesting read as well:
http://www.racketboy.com/retro/sega/segacd/sega-cd-101-a-beginners-guide
And a final interesting bit of useful information:
The combo of the Sega CD and 32X also provided a small number of games with upgraded visuals, due to the extra hardware:
http://segaretro.org/Sega_Mega-CD_32X
http://www.sega-16.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-17736.html
Wow, that video takes me back. I was lucky enough to visit that exhibit as well although I don't remember when. I know I played Wacky Worlds and Mega Man: The Wily Wars so I'm guessing it was around 1994 or 1995? I recall being amazed at the opportunity to play something that had not been released yet.
@ThanosReXXX Thanks for all the info. I'll have to post my list.
@Danrenfroe2016 You're welcome man, hope you have a lot of fun with it.
Nice.
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