Yesterday I went into the fifth-generation of videogame consoles, Sega's ill-fated Saturn, the epoch-defining Sony PlayStation, and Nintendo's wonderful, if under-supported, Nintendo 64.
Well the next console cycle would again be dominated by Sony. Their PlayStation 2, bolstered by another huge and classic games library, the popularity of titles such as Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and the machine's DVD video playback feature, would end up as the best selling console of all time, shifting a ludicrous 150 million units.
Nintendo, Sega, and newcomers Microsoft, were left with only scraps to fight over.
Purple blocks
Nintendo's new console the Gamecube saw the company finally moving to disc format - although, scared of potential piracy, Nintendo went with smaller proprietary discs, once again more expensive than the competition, once again appearing overly idiosyncratic. And the machine was a cheap-looking purple box, like a Fisher Price toy, next to Sony's sleek black multimedia device.
The Gamecube was, however, more powerful than the PS2, and though third-party support was predictably lacking, the system was home to excellent games like Metroid Prime and Pikmin, and the now obligatory Mario Kart, Mario Party, and Super Smash Bros.
The main-series Mario game was Super Mario Sunshine, a romp across a tropical island idyll with a new mechanic involving cleaning up oily globs of graffiti with a water gun, its world filled with steel drums and sunset beaches and tranquil coral reefs, although fiddling with the gun, and transforming it into a hover pack with which to glide over gaps and correct mistimed jumps, negated some of the precision and elegance that had been Mario's hallmark for so long.
Water was also the theme of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker, a sumptuous adventure set on the high seas, told through a stylised, cartoony aesthetic that was a breath of fresh air at the time, and has ensured its look has aged favourably compared to many of its contemporaries.
Bad dreams
Sega's bet was on its Dreamcast, released earlier than competing consoles, desperate as they were to get back into the fight after the failure of the Saturn. But this made the machine an awkward halfway house, not sufficiently more powerful than older consoles to warrant an upgrade, and underpowered next to the hotly anticipated PlayStation 2.
The Dreamcast struggled to build momentum, and come the launch of the PS2 was swept away, despite featuring a snug collection of beloved titles such as Jet Set Radio, Phantasy Star Online, and Crazy Taxi. With the commercial failure of this console, directly after the Saturn, Sega admitted defeat and bowed out of hardware manufacture, recasting themselves as a game studio who would release future titles on consoles belonging to companies that had once been Sega's rivals.
Testing the waters
The gap left by Sega was stepped into enthusiastically by Microsoft. Desperate to break into the lucrative gaming market, and with the essentially bottomless pockets of Bill Gates to fund them, they set about releasing a console that would utilise their programming interface DirectX. The console would thus initially be known as their "DirectX box", before being shortened to the slightly less egregious Xbox.
It was a gargantuan machine, basically a mini PC, strides ahead technologically than the PS2 and even Gamecube. It had a wildly ungainly controller, it was not pretty, and Microsoft lacked Sony's urbane sense of style, or Nintendo's established line of exclusive games.
But the Xbox had too much money and might behind it to fail. And it did have some great games. Halo was the best first-person shooter on console since Goldeneye (the genre had thrived much more on PC, where keyboard and mouse afforded greater control). Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory put the capabilities of the machine to the test with advanced lighting and shadow techniques. PC ports like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, were well received. And Project Gotham Racing was one of the most stylish racing games of its time.
So while the crown for market share went decidedly to Sony, by the end of the generation Xbox sales had nudged ahead of the Gamecube's, and Microsoft were left with a solid foothold from which to stride into the next cycle.
A close race
The seventh generation would see Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 (yes, nomenclature) trading blows, staying neck-and-neck, while Nintendo removed themselves from the arena and went to find a completely different fight.
In terms of sales, the PS3 and Xbox 360 carved up the traditional gamer market fairly equally between them. The PS3 made early mistakes, coming out too late, costing too much, and making it difficult for studios to develop for it. The 360 had stellar exclusives in Gears of War and Halo 3, it had a more robust online service, better support for indie devs, and it came with the best joypad yet made for 3D games, with superior thumbsticks and trigger buttons compared to Sony's design.
But then on the other hand the PS3 played Blu-ray films out of the box, whereas the 360 required an adaptor to allow it to play HD DVDs, which format within a year or two was dead in the water. And the PS3 still had those big-hitting exclusives like Metal Gear Solid, Gran Turismo, Uncharted, Little Big Planet, and The Last of Us. And it had the established brand, and consumer good-will built up over a decade.
In the end, which console you bought often came down to which console most of your friends were playing. And for a lot of the biggest games out there - Grand Theft Auto 4 and 5, Red Dead Redemption, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, Fallout 3, all the Call of Duties, all the FIFA footballs - there were versions for each system, and the versions were nigh-on identical.
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Aww maaan, it's almost 3am now, and I reaaaally need sleep. I've written the notes for the next stuff, but I just cannot go on. It's the problem with when I open my brain about gaming, all this knowledge that has been rattling around up there pointlessly for years comes spilling out.
I'll bring this story up to date tomorrow, and go into what I've been playing before I buy myself a Nintendo Switch on Thursday.
Ooosh, so late. Niiiiight x
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