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In 1993, Panasonic released the 3DO Interactive game console and multimedia player. Panasonic had a good product and a good game plan by licensing the manufacturing and development of the console and software to third parties for royalties.

The console scored many wins including the several multimedia functions:

1) Ability to play video games
2) Ability to play audio CDs
3) Ability to play CD+G
4) Ability to play photo CDs
5) Ability to play video CDs

However, the market was not ready for such a device. In fact, Commodore had been trying for years to get the Amiga systems noticed for their multimedia capabilities by launching multimedia specific devices. While both the Amigas and the 3DO Interactive offered great products, they cost too much to be a sales hit in the market place. The 3DO interactive sold for US$750.00

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In 1990, SNK made a gamble in releasing the Neo Geo at a price around US$650. Moreover, most of the games cost close to US$200.00 each. Granted, the graphics and sound were incredible and literally brought arcade quality gaming to the home.

However, SNK based this home system off the Arcade system. While each looked different in size, the insides were the same. Both systems had a Motorola 68000 and Z80 processors. Porting games from one system to the other was simple. But SNk did not promote the Neo Geo much, feeling that they had enough of a presence in the arcade.

In fact, the popularity of Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and the Art of Fighting did boost sales of the units. Still, the arcade was losing its influence as the place for top new games.

While in production for 14-years, it never sold more than one million units. SNK stopped producing games for the unit in 2004.

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In 1989, Nintendo released the Game Boy handheld game console, and at a price of US$79.95, the device helped to further Nintendo?s dominance in the market. By 2004, Nintendo had sold close to 70 million units worldwide.

Part of the reason for its first good start was that is was bundled with the highly addictive and popular Tetris. More over, the unit was easy to control and easy to carry around due to its compact size.

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Phillips and Sony partnered up to create a new CD multimedia system with interactive sound, images and computer instructions. However, as the Amiga found out, people were not ready for multimedia and the Phillips CD-I 210 failed to achieve any sort of success.

Instead of letting their technology go to waste, Phillips made some modification to the device and re-released the device as a videogame console in 1991.

However, with a price of around US$400.00, the unit never took off with sales around 500,000.

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In 1994, Sega released the 32X. The 32X was not an actual console, it was and add on to the Sega Genesis that permitted user to play 32-bit games on a 16-bit console.

The design was to allow backward compatibility with existing 16-bit games while allowing users to take advantage of the 32-bit power. However, Sega goofed on several fronts:

1) There were no 32-bit games released for the unit.

2) The device was rushed to out to meet the Christmas 1994 market and suffered from many issues with compatibility.

The device is largely considered a failure. BY the release of Sega Saturn in 1996, there was only about 40 games produced for the console.

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In 1992, Sega release the Sega CD add on. The device was intended to retake lost market share from the release of the SuperNES game console released by Nintendo in 1991.

However, the Sega CD cost US$299.99 with very few games available to make use of the device. As a result sales suffered.

In 1994, Sega rereleased the Sega Genesis with the CD unit built in. The unit was names the Sega CDX and retailed at US$399.99.

While, the Sega CD/ Sega CDX faired better than the Sega 32X, with about 150 titles being released, the units were terminated in 1996 after the release of the Sega Saturn..

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In 1989, Sega released the Game Gear colour handheld device, competing directly with the Atari Lynz, the only other colour handheld.

Sega implemented a similar architecture in the Game Gear as they in their Sega Master System to facilitate easy porting of games. However, despite being superior to the Game Boy Mono, it?s battery life was woefully inadequate at only three hours.

The unit achieve a moderate level of success having sold almost nine million units worldwide before being retired in 1997. It sold about one-tenth the number of units as Game Boy.

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In 1989, Sega Genesis was released in the US. The unit was a powerful machine sporting two processors and a multitude of other co-processors or supporting chips.

The added complexity, coupled with a lack of useful development tools, got the unit off to slow sales. The initial games were not impressive.

However, the Sega Genesis did well, selling over 10 million units before being cancelled. Attributing to the success of the unit was the release of Sonic the Hedgehog. Sonic the Hedgehog pushed the graphics, animation and sound of the unit while delivering great speed and an excellent user experience.

As a result of the game?s success, Sega used Sonic as its mascot and icon.

Sega modified the console over the years making minor changes like offering a sleeker design. Moreover, in 1998, Majesco rereleased the Sega Genesis as Genesis 3 for$50.

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In 1991, the SuperNES was release to the North American market, some two years after it was released in Japan with the name Super Famicom. It was released in Europe one year after the North American market. More importantly, the SuperNES came to the important North American market two-years after Sega released their Sega Genesis.

The SuperNES very quickly took over the Japanese markets. Competition in North America was a little more even with each console battling it out with software restrictions and their own in house game series. In fact, the SuperNES soon had a huge library of games in its inventory due to its ease to program and its impressive graphics abilities.

What made the SuperNES impressive were its scaling, rotational and rendering effects. Scaling and rotational effects were possible with its 8 different pallet modes: know to the community as layer-7. 3D rendering came later through the enhancement chip allowing the SuperNES to compete with the 32-bit consoles.

The SuperNES sold 50 million units before production ceased. The successor to the SuperNES was the Nintendo 64.

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In 1988, NEC released the TurboGrafx-16. Upon release, the console outsold the SuperNES by a significant margin due to its amazing graphics and sound capabilities.

NEC was to release a CD add-on, which cost US$399.99.

While the console sold over 10 million units in it's lifetime, most of those sales come from the Japanese market. In fact, few people in North America actually even heard of this console several reasons:

1) NEC failed to market the console.
2) Popular software titles released in Japan did not appeal to the North American market.
3) Software restrictions prevented the console from getting access to popular titles.
4) The primary producer of game titles, Hudson Soft, also produced software for Nintendo not allowing the TurboGrafx-16 to develop any killer games.
5) Rumours surfaced stating that the TurboGrafx-16 was actually not 16-bits, but was made up of two 8-bit processors.

So why was there only one game producer? The TurboGrafx-16 was actually a partnership between Hudson Soft and NEC. Hudson Soft came up with the idea for the game console, but needed someone to finance and build the unit, which is where NEC comes in.

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In 1988, NEC released the TurboGrafx-CD add on for its 16-bit game console, the TurboGrafx-16. However, at a price of US$399.99, the unit was highly over priced and did not sell well. In fact, there were only two games released for the TurboGrafx-CD in the first six months of production.

The TurboGrafx-16 was the first game console in North America to have a CD-ROM. This was a significant change to the console market as CD permitted a density of 650MB of storage per disk.