The Sega Mega Drive Gaming Console

The Mega Drive was supported until 1998 in Europe, when Sega announced they were dropping support for it. It was discontinued along with its predecessor, the successful and long-lived Sega Master System, to allow Sega to concentrate on their newer console, the Saturn . The Mega Drive was much more popular in the US, on par and occasionally surpassing the popularity of the SNES. If they had a quality game, they'd definitely want to bring it out in the market where the system was seeing the greatest success. The Mega Drive was originally sold with a three button controller. It had a round digital directional pad, a start button and three buttons; A, B and C, which were arranged in a row.

The Mega Drive was basically the first 16 bit console I laid my hands on, the Saturn was underrated and suffered from poor outside support, but that didn't make it a bad console. Then there was the Dreamcast, which was . The Mega Drive was slow to catch on in Japan, as the installed user base of PC Engine was so large. Although the Mega Drive boasted superior graphics and sound, the absence of a CD-ROM drive was a definite minus in most gamers' minds. The Mega Drive was slow to catch on in Japan, as the installed user base of PC Engine was so large. Although the Mega Drive boasted superior graphics and sound, the absence of a CD-ROM drive was a definite minus in most gamers' minds.

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The Neo Geo was a 24-bit game system that played the same set of games at home and at the arcade. Owning a Neo Geo was like having an arcade in your house, so getting a new Neo Geo game had this special magic to it that you couldn't get from the Genesis or SNES. The Neo Geo was mainly famous for its state-of-the-art, one-on-one fighters, which were hugely popular in the early 90's. The system also made its mark with its intense shooters and over-the-top sports titles. The Neo Geo was the greatest 2D videogame console ever, despite the lack of titles and variety. Too bad the development community didn’t hop on the Neo Geo bandwagon, because there is no reason why the system couldn’t have delivered superiority in platform and role playing the way it dominated fighting.

The Neo Geo never became very popular because of it's incredibly high price at the time it was released, something like $700 for the system and $200 for games (each!). The Neo Geo was always a play-thing of the rich. The home console (known as the AES in Neo lingo) ran the same games as the arcade machines (usually called MVS), just in a different casing.

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From The First Console Through To The Nintendo Wii

The breakthroughs we have had in technology, has enabled us to evolve our entertainment environment. Today the majority of people rarely get time to entertain themselves. They suffer from the stress and strain of everyday life and hardly get time for recreational activities. Outdoor games are becoming less popular, especially during bad weather or thecolder seasons, and people tend to engage themselves in their mobile phones or other personal electronic devices for fun and entertainment. As such the electronic gaming market has come to drive all our gaming needs, enabling us to have a permanent entertainment system within the comfort of our own home. There are various game consoles that keep hitting the market at regular intervals. These consoles are affordable and have various user friendly features which are taking video gaming forward, towards a new era.

Gaming consoles were first introduced in the late 1960’s and have developed gradually. At around 1985 the "console game" market hit a low point as desktop computers along with hand held devices took over the popular market. This was of course until 8-bit machines and a company called Nintendo Entertainment System ,also known as NES burst on the scene with some Italian guys called Mario and Lugi Mario. Mario first appeared in the 1982 video arcade hit Donkey Kong, and became an overnight success and is still to this day a well known and iconic gaming character. He appeared again two years later in Mario Bros, his first title role. This game also introduced Lugi to the gaming world. Mario first came home on the Nintendo Entertainment System in Super Mario Bros, which is without doubt, of the biggest selling games to this day. This game introduced Mario into millions of homes around the world and made him a cultural icon equal to well known movie stars such as Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, and Tom Cruise. Besides, as well as all the games, he has been the star of three cartoon series and one major Hollywood film. In a 1991 poll, it was found more kids could identify a picture of Mario than Mickey Mouse.

The Xbox 360 is the most recent console from Microsoft. It is their high definition gaming console, and is extremely popular with serious gamers due to its online community. The console makes use of the IBM PowerPC chip. It has three processing chips which increases it's computational speed and allows the system to put HD video onto a HDTV. In terms of sound, it supports 5.1 Dolby digital so you can get crisp full surround sound when playing a games. The Xbox 360 has a HD DVD player that can be used as a DVD player for conventional DVD and HD DVD movies.

All of today’s gaming consoles have spurred a sequence of developed gaming accessory add-ons, with the majority of them manufacturered for the Nintendo Wii. The Nintendo Wii has a set of wii products built to provide more capabilities when playing games. Some of the accessories are as follows:

The Nunchuk is a product that can be plugged into the Wii remote. The unit has an analogue stick as well as two buttons and can be used in games such as Red Steel and Twilight Princess. Just like the Wii-mote, the Nunchuk also has motion sensors and allows gamers to perform specific character actions, by using their natural movement, such as a spinning slash attack. The Nunchuck is fast becoming one of the most popular Nintendo Wii Accessories available on the market.The Nintendo Classic Controller is an old skool style expansion controller that can be used with the Wii remote slotted in to play games by using a traditional game pad. It is to be used to play all kinds of games that are available on the Nintendo Wii platform. The controller basically fits around the Wii-mote in order to offer a control pad interface.

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