By Shawn Trommeshauser
(Dreaming in Digital)
As an 80s kid, I grew up right beside video games and have fond memories of every gaming system I’ve played from the Intellivision to the PlayStation 4. Whether you’re shooting ducks with a bright orange light gun to performing in a rock concert with a plastic drum set, video games have always tried to offer a safer and cheaper way to experience any thrills you could imagine. This is the thing I love most about gaming, the advancements and imagination put into using the technology to its fullest. There is always a new gimmick, a new way to play.
My favorite era for gaming was the 90s. The console wars were in full swing with Sega trying everything in their power to chip away at Nintendo’s market share in North America. Meanwhile, Sony was getting ready to take the gaming world by storm with a 3D revolution. It was a time of desperate innovation and cutthroat competition which made the 90s one of the most amazing times to be a gamer. Every new advance in technology was changing what could be done with game design more than ever before, and these advances were arriving faster with each year that passed.
From the mid-80’s to the mid-90’s Nintendo was king. Sega had their loyal fans, but their 8-bit console, the Master System, never took off in North America the way it did in Europe. Nintendo’s first venture into the video game Market revived an industry that had fallen apart under older companies such as Atari in the early 80’s and ended up giving them a virtual monopoly on console gaming in Canada and the US. The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) hit the market like a tidal wave and it wasn’t long before everyone was using the name ‘Nintendo’ interchangeably with the term ‘video game’.
Continue reading “Rev Up for Shawn’s Top 25 SNES Games (Part 1)”