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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Sega nomad was Nintendo Switch in the 90's

Doctor_MG on 17 March 2021
Leynos said:

Nintendo had Satiliview as well. Xband allowed Genesis and SNES to play online. Some games supported it like Street Fighter II. N64 and Dreamcast had DLC for games like Mario Artist and SEGA's Skies of Arcadia.  Famicom was online. Every Nintendo home console has had the ability to connect online. While not from SEGA themselves. The first dual analog controller came out in 1989 for the SEGA Genesis. https://segaretro.org/XE-1_AP

There are hundreds of examples of hardware or services in gaming well before their time.

You know, I think this is an important distinction. There will almost always be some remnant of technology that was produced before it became mainstream. I think that these are the trailblazers, but what is important to gaming history are the ones that took that concept and had it stick. 

 



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kazuyamishima on 17 March 2021

Oh yeah, Sega innovated way more than the other companies when they still made hardware.



AJNShelton on 17 March 2021
Doctor_MG said:

The Sega Nomad wasn't the Switch in 1995. There are some concepts that are similar (being able to play on the TV) it was a previous generation system in its entirety. The Genesis had already been established and it's hardware old. Suggesting that this makes it like the Switch is like saying the PSOne with the LCD screen attachment was also the Switch in the early 2000's.

The Switch isn't a home console that was converted for portable play, nor is it a portable console that was converted to the big screen. The Switch is it's own system in it's entirety.

Well you clearly didn't understand what the Nomad is. It's a Genesis put in a portable format, but can connect to the TV and have controllers attached to it.

Pretty much what the Switch do.



AJNShelton on 17 March 2021

We can also say that the PS Vita/PS TV is also the Switch



V-r0cK on 17 March 2021
SKMBlake said:

We can also say that the PS Vita/PS TV is also the Switch

If we're including those then I'd suggest the PSP/PSP Go was more in line with the Switch (PSP Go also had a docked then used a DS3 controller to play on TV)


I don't know how to embed vids, but here's an informative comparison between the PSP Go and Switch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOx16EvJ8jA



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The_Liquid_Laser on 17 March 2021
Salnax said:

I get what you're saying. The fact that the Nomad flopped whereas the Switch most certainly succeeded can probably be spun into a number of narratives.

Did the Nomad fail because

  • Sega had already moved on from the Genesis? (Absolutely)
  • A general lack of 16-bit game development? (Probably, since the Nomad was awkwardly stuck between the 32+ bit future and the 8 bit handheld markets)
  • The price was too high? (I doubt it, since the Nomad only cost $180, which is less than the Switch was in 2017 even adjusted for inflation)
  • The technology wasn't there yet? (Based on that 30 minutes per battery performance, yeah.)
  • The Game Boy renaissance brought by Pokemon? (Probably didn't help)
  • It was an American exclusive? (Why was it never brought to other countries with strong Genesis fandoms?)

Yep, in the end the execution matters.  The Wii Remote and the Power Glove also were using the same basic concept, but the Wii remote was obviously executed much better.  The Nomad had the concept right, but it was also an afterthought while Nintendo bet all of their chips on the Switch.

Last edited by The_Liquid_Laser - on 17 March 2021

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Soundwave on 17 March 2021

I do kinda wonder if Nintendo could've made a smaller N64 and sold a version like this in the late 1990s, maybe could've pushed sales back up to SNES levels (49 million or so).



Bofferbrauer2 on 17 March 2021

I'd say the Game Gear or the PC Engine GT would be better fits than the Nomad for a Switch predecessor



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Wman1996 on 17 March 2021

Sega Nomad played Sega Mega Drive/Genesis games. It didn't have its own library. It's much more like the TurboExpress/PC Engine GT.

The PlayStation Vita and Wii U are closer to the Switch in concept and execution than the Sega Nomad is.



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JWeinCom on 17 March 2021

Sega had a lot of ideas that were good, but the technology wasn't there yet. The Sega Channel was a primative version of Gamepass, Sonic and Knuckles was kind of the first version of DLC, they had the first online system (except maybe Nintendo with Satellaview or something), they had a dual screened system (Dreamcast/VMU), and so on. A lot of neat ideas, but the technology wasn't right to implement them.