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By Newsweek Editors
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OKAY, SO IT DOESN'T HAVE QUITE the aura of David vs. Goliath, Theseus vs. the Minotaur, Hector vs. Achilles and other classic faceoffs. But in shopping malls across America this holiday shopping season, the battle rages with equal ferocity: it just happens to pit two fat unemployed plumbers against a maniacally spinning blue hedgehog. If Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog are less than mythic, however, the booty from this battle eclipses even such prizes as the fair Helen: the hearts and minds (and thumbs) of your children, not to mention a hefty fraction of your credit-card limit.
Video games have already invaded half the households in the country, including an eye-popping 80 percent of those harboring 8-to 14-year-old boys. This year, judging from late-fall sales figures and factory orders from retailers, almost every one of those 39 million owners is clamoring for the latest souped-up game releases. The deprived 20 percent will account--over several dead parental bodies--for a hefty chunk of the 12 million video-game players expected to fly off store shelves between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve. The over-whelming majority of the players sold this season will be either the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), with an expected 5 million in sales. or Sega Inc.'s Genesis player, with projected sales of 7 million. Nintendo's Super Mario Brothers gave the video pioneer a head start in the games wars--there are 26 million regular or super Nintendo systems in American homes but only (only?) 13 million Genesis units--but Sega cartridges will still outsell Nintendo's this season. Upstart Sega also bests Nintendo on the buzz meter. From school corridors to playgrounds around the country, the word is that Genesis is the hot system. Says Sega president and CEO Tom Kalinske, "We're anticipating a blowout this Christmas."
Already this year Sega took over first place in the American market for top-of-the-line video games, capturing an estimated 45 percent to Nintendo's 44 percent. In Sega has pulled away faster F-Zero race car, claiming 66 the market. (Nintendo still Sega in Japan.) A big reason is that Nintendo settled for the 8- to 14-year-olds, Sega targeted high schoolers and twentysomethings. (This is the same reasoning behind naming a magazine for pubescent girls Seventeen.) The marketing worked: the average age of a Nintendo player is a cash-poor 13; of a Sega player, 20.
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Software makers took the hint. In the Sega version of "Mortal Kombat," released in September, your warrior draws blood and guts whenever he vanquishes an enemy, and he celebrates victory by ripping off his opponent's head, a la Salome with John the Baptist's, so brains and blood gush out. The Nintendo version merely lets your warrior stomp his opponent and do a victory dance about as violent as a tight end in the end zone. "Nintendo made a big mistake with 'Mortal Kombat,"' says industry analyst Lee Isgur of Volpe, Welty and Co. "They tried to censor it." Surprise: the Sega version outsells the SNES almost 2 to 1. With sales expected to reach 4 million, "Mortal Kombat" will be the bestselling video game this year. But it has an even stronger claim on notoriety: its extreme violence has spurred a congressional bill to require warning labels on games.
The two hardware offerings have slightly different appeals. Both Genesis and SNES ($49.95 each) have capacious memories and well-designed internal circuitries. But where Nintendo devotes more of its 16-bit processor to gizmos like fancier colors, better sound and scrolling screens, Sega offers speed: Genesis runs programs with a blinding efficiency, a big factor in the machine's popularity among video virgins and veterans alike. System architecture limits Nintendo's speed. It's not as bad as driving a Model T at Indy, but there's a noticeable (to 11-year-old video freaks) lethargy when you run the faster-paced sports games.
This season Nintendo and Sega have blitzed retailers with a rush of pre-Christmas game releases, all of them priced at $50 to $60 but widely discounted. Both capitalized on the phenomenal popularity of all things Aladdin, in a game that sends our harem-pantsed hero sprinting through Agrabah one step ahead of barrel-throwing, arrow-shooting palace guards...or not, if you're slow on the control pad. During Thanksgiving week Sega launched the latest riff on its whirling blue hedgehog with "Sonic Spinball," in which the furry hero ricochets through a pinball machine just one control-pad-misfire away from toxic ooze. The graphics are sharp and detailed and the action as fast-paced as kids have come to expect from the 16-bit wonder. Sega's "NFL Football '94 Starring Joe Montana" offers you a quarterback's view and lets running backs explode from scrimmage like Emmett Smith. Completing Sega's holiday lineup, "Eternal Champions" uses the Activator ($89.99), which translates the player's body motion into on-screen moves so you can match kicks and karate chops with "nine of eternity's greatest warriors." Now we're into Achilles and Hector territory.
Nintendo has countered with four holiday releases of its own. "NHL Stanley Cup" works on an intricately designed "Mode 7" graphics chip. It produces seamless 360-degree rotation around on-screen action, and a perspective that shifts from behind the goalie to above the midline and anywhere else the puck scoots. (Since there is no brawling, this is not really pro hockey.) "Secret of Mana" challenges you to find the seeds of the Mana tree by investigating boobytrapped treasure chests and imbibing potions that confer power. In "Yoshi's Safari," you ride the eponymous little dragonoid to vanquish the evil King of the Koopas and use the shoulder-mounted "Super Scope" to blast your way to victory.
Soon Sega will be as hard to avoid as TV. With The Sega Channel, a joint venture with Time/Warner and Telecommunications Inc., cable-TV customers in 12 test markets will soon be able to download any games into Genesis, for an as-yet undetermined monthly fee plus the price of a tuner/decoder. By next summer the system should be available nationwide.
But like Mario or Luigi prancing through a maze oblivious to the lurking danger, both Sega and Nintendo may get ambushed. Last month Atari, the videogame founder that went belly-up in the 1980s, rolled out Jaguar. At $249, the player offers 64-bit processing capacity that crunches data 100 times faster than SNES or Genesis. The result: color graphics of near videotape quality, smooth instead of jumpy movement, realistic sounds of screaming jets or human voices and a futuristic three-dimensional game platform. But in a classic chicken-and-egg problem, software developers have shied from creating games for Jaguar until more units are hooked up in America's rec rooms; shoppers are wary of a system for which there exist a mere four cartridges. Although Jaguar won't be for sale outside New York and San Francisco until next year, it has cybercritics gushing. The magazine Electronic Games called it "one powerful cat," and GAMEPRO Magazine predicted "Atari may well become king of the jungle once again." (Really, that's what they wrote.) If they're right, the battering that parental wallets take this year will be nothing compared to what's in store in '94.
Or, you could buy your kids a book.
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