Console Wars: Videogaming in the 90s
Posted: Tue Mar 07, 2017 12:04 pm
As you probably know, this year's AB theme is retro. With that in mind, we have decided to present a brand new panel at this year's con: Console Wars: Videogaming in the 90s. Two of our three panelists were previously on the panel Most Obscure Videogame Consoles two years ago, where we covered some hilarious failures of the videogame industry. One thing we noticed during that panel was that many of those failures came from the 90s, a uniquely tumultuous period featuring a ton of consoles and a ton of competition. Before console videogaming eventually settled into the Sony console/Microsoft console/Nintendo console pattern that we've come to know and love (?) since the Dreamcast went by the wayside in the 6th generation, it went through a period where literally everyone thought they could get into the console business. You had the main players Nintendo and Sega, but then you also had everyone from the 3DO Company to Atari to Phillips to even, yes, Capcom and Apple! That really happened!
So this year at AB we have 90 minutes and we're gonna try to cover all things of the 4th and 5th generation of videogame consoles. We'll start with the 4th generation: the infamous SNES vs. Genesis war, the PC Engine's success in Japan (and failures in America), Sega's add-on fever, and the lesser-known players like the CD-i, the Neo-Geo, and even the LaserActive. Then we'll move on to the 5th generation: the two consoles that tried to get a jump on everyone, 3DO and Jaguar; the main three of Playstation, Saturn, and Nintendo 64; and finally the oddities like the Capcom CPS Changer, NEC PC-FX, and Bandai/Apple Pippin. We'll introduce each console and discuss the history and why it may have been a success or failure, we'll play some TV commercials, comparison game footage, and other historical video oddities, and finally we'll open up the floor to you on each console to state what your experiences were (or ask us any questions you might have).
Console Wars is currently scheduled to take place on Friday, March 31st at 6:30 pm in Hynes Panel Room 207. So please join us for a look back at, and ultimately a celebration of, one of gaming's greatest and most interesting time periods in history!
So this year at AB we have 90 minutes and we're gonna try to cover all things of the 4th and 5th generation of videogame consoles. We'll start with the 4th generation: the infamous SNES vs. Genesis war, the PC Engine's success in Japan (and failures in America), Sega's add-on fever, and the lesser-known players like the CD-i, the Neo-Geo, and even the LaserActive. Then we'll move on to the 5th generation: the two consoles that tried to get a jump on everyone, 3DO and Jaguar; the main three of Playstation, Saturn, and Nintendo 64; and finally the oddities like the Capcom CPS Changer, NEC PC-FX, and Bandai/Apple Pippin. We'll introduce each console and discuss the history and why it may have been a success or failure, we'll play some TV commercials, comparison game footage, and other historical video oddities, and finally we'll open up the floor to you on each console to state what your experiences were (or ask us any questions you might have).
Console Wars is currently scheduled to take place on Friday, March 31st at 6:30 pm in Hynes Panel Room 207. So please join us for a look back at, and ultimately a celebration of, one of gaming's greatest and most interesting time periods in history!