Nintendo lack the marketing nous of their biggest rival but do tend to charm the pants off gamers around the globe. With all the qualities of a brilliant genius (notoriously difficult to work with, a stubborn refusal to assuage the public's thirst for more games at the expense of quality) and a true visionary in Shigeru Miyamoto, they stand now on the brink of the 128bit era. Future Gamer looks at the chequered history of a company that must top PlayStation 2 to stay in the game.
Jonathan Davies

At the turn of the last decade, the Nintendo empire covered most of the Earth's crust. Its 60 million-strong army of Nintendo Entertainment Systems had free reign over America and the Far East. No-one dared argue with great games like Super Mario Bros, Zelda and Final Fantasy, which between them had sold half a billion cartridges.

Only one continent held out. Europeans had traditionally shunned games consoles, preferring home computers like the Amiga and the Atari ST. They were unimpressed by the NES. The only console they reserved an eccentric affection for was the Master System, a clunky device with virtually no decent games made by an obscure company called Sega.

Sega took heart from this as, back home, they put the finishing touches to the Master System's successor: the Mega Drive. Launched in Japan in 1989, and the following year in America and Europe, the futuristic, black Mega Drive wowed the world with its 16bit processor and... its 16bit processor and... well, some of the first games were okay. (Ish). The NES initially held firm, with Super Mario Bros 3 racking up record sales, but then Sega began to gain ground.

For the first time in five years, Nintendo looked ruffled. This wasn't in the plan. 16bit consoles weren't meant to happen yet.

Finally, on November 21, 1990, as Sega engineers chewed their nails nervously, Nintendo unveiled the machine with which they planned to blow the Mega Drive out of the water...