Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island??

I won't disagree that 16-bit Sonic was good...  but god awful transition to 3D.  Adventure is terrible compared to Mario 64 and Sunshine.  

Sure, but that is a very small list of arcade 'like' games compared to Elden, Zelda, Mario, Souls, God of War, Uncharted, Halo, Gears, Horizon, Tsushima, Final Fantasy, Tomb Raiber, etc, etc, etc.  

Yeah, I agree that Sega was only real competition for Nintendo for one generation.  I've never played a 3D Sonic game, but it's obvious that they weren't received nearly as well as their 2D counterparts.  However, the main point I was making is that, in terms of first party output, Sonic was the closest competitor that Nintendo ever had.  The Sonic games were the best games of the 16-bit generation, but I do think the SNES had more S-tier and A-tier games than the Genesis did.  This is mostly because I think the SNES had better third party support.  I mean, what does Phantasy Star 4 get compared to?  Final Fantasy 6.  I personally think Final Fantasy 6 is a better game, but Nintendo wasn't making RPGs that were as good as either one.  If you strip away all games made by third party companies (including things like Super Mario RPG), then I think Sega and Nintendo are really close in the 16-bit era.  They both made their share of great games, and sometimes I would give the win to Sega (e.g. Sonic, Shining Force) and sometimes I would give the win to Nintendo (e.g. Zelda), and there are other games that don't have a good first party counterpart on the other system (e.g. Metroid, Punch Out, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, etc...).

We also had Bernie Stolar who didn't do much in Sega of America, he said the Sega Saturn is not the future. If we had a better american running the Sega Saturn we would of gotten probably several japanese ports being made into NTSC america. He was another reason that massively hurt Sega.

Bernie Stolar rejected all the capcom great fighting games in america.he's worser than Chris Chan only Ken Penders is hated most.

You know, I really think that Sony prematurely disrupted the contest between Sega and Nintendo.  I am not certain that the Dreamcast would have been beaten so easily by Nintendo if Sony was not in the picture.  I think that Nintendo would have won, but the Gamecube would have lost market share compared to previous generations and Sega would have still been in the race.

Nintendo was so weak in the latter N64 and Gamecube eras.  Really, from about 1999 to 2006, Nintendo's home console market was facing the darkest period since the NES other than the Wii U era.  Honestly, in a lot of ways the Gamecube painted an even darker picture for Nintendo's home console market than the Wii U because the Wii U basically only failed because of poor hardware, the Nintendo brand was still strong and popular.  That said, during the Gamecube era, Nintendo had great hardware and games but gamers were rejecting the brand.  Millennial gamer kids were growing up and were looking for something more mature than what Nintendo could offer and third parties were just done with Nintendo.  Sega has always been a bit edgier than Nintendo and western third parties definitely had a better relationship with Sega back then compared to Nintendo.  Also, while the GCN had decent RPG's, some of the best ones were from Sega (Skies of Arcadia, Phantasy Star Online).  I am sure that if was the GCN vs. Dreamcast, the DC would have been the RPG console and likely would have rocked the market with its versions of GTA3, Grand Tourismo 3, Final Fantasy X while the GCN would have still been struggling with it's "kiddie" image.

Maybe this should be it's own thread, but in my opinion if Sony was not in the picture, the 6th generation would have looked something like:

- Gamecube: 50 million

- Dreamcast: 40 million

-XBox: 70 million

I personally cannot see any situation where the DC would have been successful. My bother, as an example, was a huge Sega fan... but after the CD, 32x and Saturn he was just done with Sega. Sega really killed themselves with too much hardware with too little support. It was poor corporate management for their brand.

I'm reiterating a comment my first and only copy and paste from another read number 1 also $200 price tag in america made Sega in the red read the rest of the numbered comment

1. Price - The system was supposed to be sold at $249.99. At the last minute, Bernard Stolar announced the price as $199.99. This is a considerable drop, meaning SEGA would take a bigger hit per every Dreamcast sold, pushing them further into the red.

2. EA dropping support - EA was (and still is) one of the largest 3rd party publishers, with a wealth of popular IP's. EA would not support the Dreamcast, meaning the console lost titles like FIFA, which are immensely popular. SEGA did provide alternatives but for some, they would just go where the IP is.

3. Lack of DVD - One of the driving factors for the PS2's immense popularity is that it was also a cost effective way of getting the then brand new DVD format. The PS2 was cheaper than pretty much all dedicated DVD players on the market, meaning it could attract consumers who were simply looking to purchase a DVD player as well. SEGA considered a DVD player for the Dreamcast but it would not be as cheap/easy to implement as Sony (who were actively involved in the formats development). SEGA instead went with the modem for the Dreamcast and created the GD-ROM format, which was inferior to DVD.

4. GD-ROM - The GD-ROM held less storage than the DVD format used by the PS2. GD-ROM discs typically could hold 1.2GB of data vs the DVD's 4-7GB. This meant that games had to be smaller to fit on the discs. The lack of disc storage also was an issue for the Gamecube's mini disc format, which saw entire game modes cut in some of its third party titles.

5. Piracy - The Dreamcast did not require any form of modification (at least for the majority of the models out there) in order to play burned discs. You could easily burn a game to a CD and play it on your Dreamcast. Whilst this has benefited the Dreamcast homebrew community in the long term, it is catastrophic for games developers/publishers. From their perspective, developing and selling a game on the Dreamcast was a huge risk since it likely would be pirated almost immediately, meaning lower ROI (Return on Investment).

6. Poor relations with retailers - SEGA burned a lot of relationships they had with a number of retailers with the surprise launch of the Saturn. One high profile example is KB Toys, infuriated by SEGA's surprise launch, they refused to stock any SEGA consoles again. This would mean less available stores for the Dreamcast to be seen/available for purchase.

7. Production issues - Early on in the Dreamcast's launch, SEGA were unable to supply enough consoles to meet the demand primarily due to lack of available parts to manufacture the console because of a supplier issue (I forget which part exactly). These early sales could have been crucial to the Dreamcast's success.

8. Lack of buttons/analog stick on controller - The Dreamcast lacked the number of available buttons (10 + 1 analog) that the original Dualanalog/Dualshock (14 + 2 analog sticks) controller had, which became the main controller of the original Playstation and later the PS2. This would make some games difficult to port to the Dreamcast due to the lack of available buttons/analog stick. It was also somewhat bulky compared to the competition.

9. PS2 Backwards compatibility - The PS2 would support the vast majority of original PlayStation titles, meaning for many consumers, you would not have to get rid of your old collection and could continue to play your old titles on the new console. For newcomers to the PS2, it meant they could also revisit the PS1's games library without having to buy a PS1. This was a huge advantage - the PS1 was the overwhelming winner of the 5th generation (Over 100 million sold), massively outselling the Saturn (9.26 million) and N64 (32.92 million), many consumers simply opted to wait for the PS2 instead of jumping in early with the Dreamcast. There was no viable way for the Dreamcast to support the Saturn's library.

10. Marketing - Sony's marketing was able to successfully convince people that the PS2 was some kind of 'super gaming' machine. Some of this was true but not entirely honest. For example, Sony advertised the PS2's ability to display 75 million Polygons vs the Dreamcast's 3-6 million. On the surface this is true, but when you dig deeper, the PS2's figure is flat, untextured polygons (basically not in a real game) whilst the Dreamcast figure was representative of in-game scenarios. The actual PS2 figure is closer to 10-25 million. Technically Sony was not lying but it cleverly doesn't tell the full story to maximise impact.

11. The Saturn's sudden discontinuation and disappearance from shelves worldwide - SEGA discontinued the Saturn worldwide in 1997, 1 whole year before the Japanese launch of the Dreamcast and 2 years before the worldwide launch in 1999. This left SEGA without a market presence for 1-2 years, which is a colossal mistake. To the general consumer purchasing video games at this time, having no SEGA presence on the store shelves (leaving only Sony and Nintendo) would lead to decreased brand awareness in the mass market. Sure, the dedicated gaming community would be aware of SEGA but don't forget, gaming wasn't as mainstream back then as it is today.