Fourth generation of video game consoles
Sega's success in this era stemmed largely from its launch of its popular Sonic the Hedgehog franchise to compete with Nintendo's Super Mario series, as well as a very stylized marketing campaign aimed at American teenagers.
Nevertheless, there were other companies that started to take notice of the maturing video game industry and begin making plans to release consoles of their own in the future.
As with prior generations, game media still continued to be distributed primarily on ROM cartridges, though the first optical disc systems, such as the Philips CD-i, were released to limited success.
The platform was well received initially, especially in larger markets, but failed to make inroads into the smaller metropolitan areas where NEC did not have as many store representatives or as focused in-store promotion.
[2] The TurboGrafx-16 and its CD combination system, the Turbo Duo, ceased manufacturing in North America by 1994, though a small amount of software continued to trickle out for the platform.
[9] Sega concluded that the superior sales of their version of Mortal Kombat were outweighed by the resulting loss in consumer trust, and cancelled the game's release in Spain to avoid further controversy.
[10] With the new ESRB rating system in place, Nintendo reconsidered its position for the release of Mortal Kombat II, and this time became the preferred version among reviewers.
[11][12] The Toy Retail Sales Tracking Service reported that during the key shopping month of November 1994, 63% of all 16-bit video game consoles sold were Sega systems.
The CD-i was a commercial failure and was discontinued in 1998,[26] selling only 1 million units worldwide despite several partnerships and multiple versions of the device, some made by other manufacturers.
The smaller number of vertical lines in the NTSC signal would also lead to black bars appearing on the top and bottom of a PAL television.
[citation needed] Companies such as Konami, with large budgets and a healthy following in Europe and Australia, readily optimized several games (such as the International Superstar Soccer series) for this audience, while most smaller developers did not.
[citation needed] Also, few RPGs were released in Europe because the market for the genre was not as large as in Japan or North America, and the increasing amount of time and money required for translation as RPGs became more text-heavy, in addition to the usual need to convert the games to the PAL standard, often made localizing the games to Europe a high-cost venture with little potential payoff.
[28][29] As a result, RPG releases in Europe were largely limited to games which had previously been localized for North America, thus reducing the amount of translation required.
It went on to dominate handheld sales by an extremely large margin, despite featuring an 8-bit microprocessor and a low-contrast, unlit monochrome screen while all three of its leading competitors had color.
While it sold more than twenty times as many units as the Lynx, its bulky design – slightly larger than even the original Game Boy; relatively poor battery life – only a little better than the Lynx; and later arrival in the marketplace – competing for sales amongst the remaining buyers who did not already have a Game Boy – hampered its overall popularity despite being more closely competitive to the Nintendo in terms of price and breadth of software library.
