For a brief moment in the 1990s, Sega was the king of the gaming world. The Genesis was the epitome of cool, and knocked Nintendo off the perch. Eventually, Sega’s mismanagement and hubris would come to haunt them, debilitating the company with a blow that they would never recover from, leading to them bowing out of the hardware race. But for a while, Sega beat Nintendo, before Nintendo pulled back in the lead.

And that was ultimately the whole point of the legendary Mega Drive/Genesis 16-bit console. That’s why it was made: with the single minded drive to beat Nintendo. That’s what Hideki Sato, a former President at Sega, who led the development of their consoles, mentioned in an interview with Japanese magazine Famitsu (translated by Siliconera).

The launch of the SG-1000 next to the Famicom was extremely rough. Eventually, the Famicom would go on to monopolize the Japanese market, and Sega would be left with nothing. With the Mega Drive, Sega specifically sought to break Nintendo’s iron grip hold over the industry, and beat them.

“We just wanted to make a game console that could beat Nintendo,” Sato said. “We released our very first video game console, the SG-1000, and it sold 160,000 units. Those were huge numbers, considering Sega has only made arcade games that sold no more than several thousand units up until then. However, it stood no chance against the Family Computer, which released on the same day…

“Back then, we had some Sega employees check out department stores to see the product packaging and customer reaction, but instead what we saw were Family Computers flying off the shelves, right before our eyes. They said that it was about ten for every one who purchased the SG-1000.”

Sato did admit that Nintendo’s victory was well earned, and that the key to their success, and to Sega’s eventual success as well, was in the software.

“I thought the difference was in software,” he said. “Honestly, the software quality wasn’t that great. The reason was because the company saw video game consoles as as an extra or bonus, in a sense. We couldn’t get our in-house development team to budge. We had no choice but to outsource the software, but against Nintendo’s fine software, it just wasn’t meant to be.”

In the end, of course, Sega’s efforts bore fruit, and they managed to break Nintendo’s monopoly—which they would never regain from that moment on, battling on two fronts against Sega and Sony first, and then Sony and Microsoft. If the Genesis/Mega Drive was specifically made to end Nintendo’s monopoly, at the very least, Sega can rest assured knowing that the system managed to do just that.

The legendary system will be available as a reissued Mega Drive Classic some time next year, if you are a fan and want to relive those glory days.

While console gaming existed before Nintendo and their Nintendo Entertainment System (née Famicom), it was the Famicom that truly defined the medium as we know it today. I’m not even going to get into all the influential games, franchises, and gameplay concepts that were pioneered on the console. I’m not even getting into how the modern game controller is still built on what Nintendo managed with the Famicom all those years ago.

Even the basic concept of a platform with gated access for third parties, and licensing- something that goes well beyond gaming, and is emulated in all other computing markets, from smartphones, tablets, smart speakers, and beyond- comes from the Famicom, and Nintendo’s licensing model.

The Famicom was a revolutionary system. And now, it has turned 35 years old, because 35 years ago, it was launched in Japan. The initial launch of the system was a failure, and it would take a few years before it would dominate. It would also be a few years before it would come to the United States as the NES (the US market having been ravaged by the video game crash of 1983 the same year the Famicom launched in Japan).

So, happy anniversary to the progenitor of the modern console gaming market. If you want to pay tribute to it, NES Classics are now available to buy in stores again, and will be through to the end of the year.

Earlier this year, Nintendo announced the NES Classic Mini for North America and Europe, a miniature replica of Nintendo’s classic 8-bit console that revitalized the console gaming industry, and which emulates 30 classic NES games, outputting them in HD resolutions. However, an equivalent for Japan had not been announced- yet.

That changed today, as Nintendo announced the Famicom Mini, a similar miniature replica of the Famicom, which was the Japanese NES, for the country. The Famicom Mini will have similar functionality to the NES Mini, albeit some of the games it will have will be different- instead of Bubble Bobble, Castlevania 2, Donkey Kong Jr, Final Fantasy, Kid Icarus, Punch Out, Startropics, and Tecmo Bowl, the Famicom Mini will have Yie Ar Kung-Fu, Atlantis no Nazo, Solomon’s Key, Tsuppari Sumo, River City Ransom, Final Fantasy 3, Mario Club Golf, and Downtown Street Challenge. 

The Famicom Mini will launch on November 10 for 5980 Yen, which actually puts it in direct competition against Sony’s PS4 Pro. It will be interesting to see whether Sony’s riff on the future of console gaming, or Nintendo’s blast from the past of console gaming, will do better- at least as far as Japan is concerned, at any rate.

Final Fantasy 3 drops players right into the action, without the faffing that the newer titles get railed for. A brief text introduction for main character Lunith later, and you’re left in a cave to figure out everything from the controls to the battle system. Depending on how spoiled you are by modern conventions, this will either be incredibly refreshing to not have your hand held for a tiptoe through tutorial tulips or irritatingly off-putting as the most basic of controls are left to be figured out. Lunith stumbles across a large crystal at the end of this cave, which unashamedly beats him with the trope stick and announces that he and three others are destined to save the world from darkness.

Lunith then shortly wakes up outside, and within an hour of gameplay, meets up with the conveniently destined children to join his quest. While a game can’t exactly be taken out of it’s time, in this day and age the story here just sounds so worn out that an onlooker might think the satire is going to rear it’s head at any moment, yet it doesn’t. How straight the game plays this old tale in and of itself makes it hard to maintain interest in the plot or empathy with the characters.

" Pacing is a problem throughout, as text boxes scroll at a snail pace at the highest setting and the simple act of moving around is rarely fast enough. "

The box standard story is complemented by an incredibly rudimentary battle system that unfortunately relies rather heavily on luck to prevail. Turn order is almost random, with nothing to visibly determine attack order besides the roll of a die. After cycling through your party and deciding between basic attacks, magic, defence, items or running away, you have to sit and watch the plodding pace of the characters beating each other with formally mentioned moves. Pacing is a problem throughout, as text boxes scroll at a snail pace at the highest setting and the simple act of moving around is rarely fast enough. This is only exacerbated by the erratic encounter rate, which will either trigger far to often, or wait just long enough for you to make you think you’ll get out of the area unmolested. An issue that can be paralleled in Pokemon, but without the benefit of repel.

Final Fantasy 3 introduced the “Job system” at the time, and is the only semblance of party customization in the game. you’ll earn different classes through the story, and can reclass  at any time. The classes more or less do what you expect, and change the abilities and possible equipment of the party members. If this sounds unenthusiastic, it’s because it’s yet another part of the package that’s hard to get excited about when so many games have done it better. The job system remains rather basic and non-engaging, especially when entries that the americas saw first did it far better.

" This inability to save is greatly cumbersome, demanding hours of replayed dungeon crawling should you end up falling in battle, or simply want to maintain your spoils from the first trek through. "

Stats are minimal and the level curve is entirely unbalanced, necessitating annoying grind sessions to survive. Basic items that many other RPGs of the time offered, such as the life restoring phoenix down, are at a premium and the scarcity almost necessitates reloading or death from fighting at a half strength party. Reloading is itself a problem thanks to the antiquated save system, which demands players be on a world map before saving a permanent file. This inability to save is greatly cumbersome, demanding hours of replayed dungeon crawling should you end up falling in battle, or simply want to maintain your spoils from the first trek through.

Visually, the game looks terrible on the PC. Graphics are directly ported from the Nintendo DS, and being blown up to even a laptop display turns the semi-chibi design of the characters into blocky, pixelated eyesores. backdrops look like paper cutouts, and unfortunately not in a charming way. Enemy design has suffered from even less care than the player and NPC characters. Music also comes off as underproduced since it was intended for the DS’s tiny speakers. Overall, the presentation simply comes off as what it is. Lazy.

" Square Enix went for a quick buck with this port and it clearly shows, making this hard to recommend to anybody but the most dedicated "

Final Fantasy 3 is not a journey one should take lightly. The by the numbers story and cookie cutter characters leave nothing to resonate with, the basic battle system is too heavily reliant on luck and the generally antiquated mechanics do nothing to ease in new players, nor are they convenient for vetrans. Square Enix went for a quick buck with this port and it clearly shows, making this hard to recommend to anybody but the most dedicated, and at sixteen dollars, it’s not getting points for being a historical piece. Let this world fall into darkness, there are far more worthy lands to be saved.

This game was reviewed on the PC.