JRPGs vs. WRPGs.
Japanese RPGs tend to have a character who goes on their journey and you as the player get pretend to be them for a while. So if you play Final Fantasy IV, you are Cecil, or if you play Octopath Traveler you are Olberic (or whoever you chose). In Western RPGs, you craft a character that you choose and, in a sense, insert yourself into the game. So in Fallout, you're you in New Vegas. Personally that doesn't appeal to me as much. I'd rather pretend to be Link or Wedge Antilles for some escapism rather than be, well, just me. I know it's a personal choice and other people prefer the WRPGs, so to each his own.
One reason I didn't really like regular tabletop DnD is because of all the stat-keeping that's required (at least, I'm assuming it's still this way - I've never actually played it). I'd much rather leave the program to handle all of that for me for simplicity's sake. But even with the computer taking care of it, I don't like opening up a menu and seeing pages and pages of numbers for each item and character. I think it works much better when it's simplified down to one or two numbers per item.
Future Proofing
The topic came up a few months ago when it was announced that the NSO would be receiving Nintendo 64 games. That’s all fine and dandy, but the N64 has a very specific problem - the controller is weird by modern standards. Hell, it was weird by contemporary standards when it came out, despite it being a trailblazer for certain conventions still used today.
While the most obvious thing that stands out is the 3 lobed approach Nintendo took, the other problem is the handling of the C-buttons. They're usually assigned to the right stick of a more modern controller, which does kinda work, but also doesn't because they're not actual digital buttons, and modern right sticks are below the face buttons. While pretty much all other controllers can be mapped onto a modern Pro Controller pretty easily, the N64 remains an odd duck.
Other past features that are hard to work around currently are things like the fact that the original Famicom had a microphone built into controller 2 (which was used to kill Pol's Voices in The Legend of Zelda), which the DS and 3DS could handle, but a Switch cannot. The touchpad controls of DS games could be handled by a WiiU Gamepad, but I'm not sure how well a Switch could do with it. And speaking of the DS, a specific puzzle in Phantom Hourglass required the player to close the DS so as to transfer something from the top screen to the bottom screen. This can't be emulated on a 2DS or WiiU Gamepad, so the solution is to put the game in sleep mode and the wake it up.
A few early NES games had things that could only be done by controller 2, which required the NES emulator of the 3DS to put in a feature to switch between virtual controllers. The GameCube's L and R buttons had pressure sensitivity that hasn't carried forward to controllers made ever since, and a half-ass work-around had to be implemented for the Switch version of Super Mario Sunshine. Motion controls are their own ball of wax. And nothing will really be able to emulate the 3-D effect of the 3DS on modern hardware. All of this is to say that it's going to take some work to make sure to keep consoles and accessories in good working order because it won't show up perfectly in future hardware.
The new innovation also can discourage 3rd party developers from releasing ports or original games on the new system because it would entail completely re-working the controls. Alternatively, first party developers are probably railroaded into finding a way to awkwardly implement the new control scheme into the game to justify its existence, like in Star Fox Zero.
The flip side of this is that by choosing to basically keep the same control scheme for 20 years (like Microsoft and Sony), it's much easier to have modern controllers emulate older hardware, but you also don't get certain creative innovations as a result.
Nintendo vs. Sega Advertisements in the 16-Bit Era
While it's normal for two rival companies to promote their product over the competitor's, it seemed like Sega’s commercials were more often a direct dig at Nintendo than the other way around. I didn't mind when it was just straight product promotion, or when they featured celebrity endorsement from sports figures like Tommy LaSorda or Joe Montana. Sega had the advantage in sports games and they pushed that, and I had no problem with it. But what I'm talking about is more like the following examples:
- Famously, the Genesis launch commercial's tagline was, "Genesis does what Nintendon't."
- A Game Gear ad starring Ethan Suplee implied that Game Boy users weren't very bright
- An ad showing Sonic's speed as compared to Super Mario Kart
- The salesman who can't sell a SNES when it's side-by-side with a Genesis
- There is no Nintendo CD, thank the goddess.
As I recall, only Donkey Kong Country had direct pushback (NOT on Sega), and StarFox only did if you recognized what they were alluding to (Why go to the next level when you can go lightyears behond?). Sega’s tactics felt like playing dirty to me.
I pretty much agree with James Rolf’s assessment of the two systems. But in my mind the graphics, sound, and controls are the 3 most important things, and the SNES won all of those. The look of the system and game boxes are nice additions/features, but even if the system looked like a V-Tech toy but played Metroid 3, I wouldn’t care so much. What it shows is that with a 1½ year head start, a star-studded ad campaign promoting speed and how much cooler a new system is, it can compete with a system that is heads-and-tails better.
As a side bonus, here's a couple of pages from Nintendo Power issue 49 from June of 1993 where they tried to educate the public about some of Sega's claims.
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