When did you notice a division in sides in gaming.

[johnlucas]

The stuff we see nowadays between console loyalists is way beyond the stuff I noticed growing up.

But I noticed the difference in the Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo/and all johnny-come-latelies of the early 90's phase.

But even then at least in my area it wasn't all that hostile. Some people liked Sega more than Nintendo, some liked Nintendo more than Sega, some liked TurboGrafx-16 better than both, and then there were those poor Jaguar souls (Lord help 'em).

I used to live in an apartment complex in my teens. Upstairs I had NES and later a SNES. Downstairs my friend had a Genesis and later a Sega CD. We played often. He came up and played my Nintendos and I went down and played his Segas. He brought his Genesis upstairs to me at one time. I might have brought my Nintendo down to him at one time. There was no ego involved and all this hate. We enjoyed each other's systems.

I loved playing some baseball game I think it was 'Sports Talk Baseball' and stayed long hours playing it. Loved playing Flashback on his Genesis too. And I absolutely loved Sonic CD, the music and cartoon cutscenes were excellent. I felt some games may have been more suited controlwise for Genesis like Street Fighter II while some were controlwise better on SNES like Mortal Kombat.

He used to come up and play SMB3 & SMW along with other games of the NES/SNES like Double Dragon & Pro Wrestling. And man all the kids in the neighborhood came over to have endless SFII faceoffs at my house! For hours on end.

We just played what we enjoyed and let people like what they liked. That's how it was in my neighborhood anyway. I was 15 in 1991 when SNES & Genesis were out so maybe that had something to do with it. I didn't take it so seriously. It's just games.

Even when PS1 was out when I was an adult I went over to my friend across town's house and played Bushido Blade (LOVE that damn game) and the original GTA (totally dug that concept) along with other PS1 games of the day. I used to bring my N64 over every week and we'd play the hell out of Goldeneye and those THQ/Asmik/AKI wrestling games from World Tour to Revenge to WM2000 to No Mercy. A friend even brought over a Dreamcast and we played his system. Ahhh Shenmue...None of this hate going on.

I guess I didn't see the rift for real until I started talking about games online in 2005. It was strange to me how personal people took this thing and how much they'd fight about it. As far as I was concerned the word "fanboy" came from that old Freakazoid show from the 90's. I never understood how that got so commonplace.

As a matter of fact I'm STILL stranged out by some of the discussions people have about this gaming thing. They take it way too far.

John Lucas