THE LAUNCH SEASON BEGINS
One of the problems with launching Virtual Boy, along with the general lack of interest most consumers had in the product, was that the only way to see its 3D images was to place your face against it. This meant that shoppers would not see the 3D images as they walked past them in stores. Also, the system could not be effectively demonstrated on television.

Virtual Boy was released on August 14 to generally lackluster reviews. Although reviewers at Entertainment Weekly and Popular Science gave it glowing reviews, game magazines panned it. When the editors at Next Generation opened the box in which their Virtual Boy was packed, they began playing volleyball with the inflated bags Nintendo had used as packing material. "It was the most fun we were ever going to have with anything in that box," editor-in-chief Neil West explained when asked about it.

By mid-August, the industry had already lost interest in Virtual Boy as Microsoft became the focus of worldwide attention. On August 24, 1995, Microsoft launched Windows 95 (Win95), a major upgrade from previous Windows operating systems that included technology for running games smoothly. Though Microsoft published a few games to accompany the launch of Win 95, it would take months before people realized the deep impact the new operating system would eventually have on gaming. By the end of the year, people would even be able to play first-person shooters without leaving the Windows environment, making computer game installation suddenly easier.

Though it did not make computers as simple to use as consoles, Win 95 went a long way toward closing the gap. Computer games did not catch up to console games in overall sales, and the top console games still sold at two to three times the rate of the top PC titles; but video game publishers began eyeing PCs as a viable new platform.

The next big event was the September release of PlayStation. One person who was not going to see this release, however, was Steve Race. On August 7, Race resigned as president of Sony Computer Entertainment of America and resurfaced quickly at Spectrum HoloByte. Few people were surprised by Race's departure; his on-going battles with his employers in Japan were well-known.

"We had celebrated differences of opinion as to where the product should be and how it should be priced and positioned. I wouldn't say we had screaming matches, but we just had long pregnant pauses, and I questioned their heritage, from whence they came...something about female dogs".
Steve Race

Sony shipped 100,000 PlayStation consoles for release on September 9, almost all of which had been pre-reserved. The entire shipment sold out. Two days after the release, Sony had already sold more PlayStations than Sega had sold Saturns in the five months since the surprise announcement at E3. By the end of the year, Sony boasted of having shipped 800,000 PlayStations into North America while Sega claimed to have sold 400,000 Saturns.

"We told people we would ship on September 9th. We shipped on September 9th. We told them we'd have 10 to 15 titles in the first 30 days, and we had 15 titles in the first 30 days. We said we'd have 50 new titles out by the end of the calendar year. We had 55 out by the end of the calendar year. We built credibility not only with the consumer, but with the trade.

"When you have two competitors as firmly entrenched as Sega and Nintendo, which are both great companies, make no mistake about it, you have to differentiate yourself. I think we did that."
Jim Whims

In the meantime, things unraveled for 3DO and Atari. As far as the public was concerned, Nintendo had blown a hole in 3DO's claims of technological superiority with Donkey Kong Country. In 1995, Crystal Dynamics released a game about a wise-cracking Hawaiian lizard called Gex which brought the same highly polished graphical look to 3DO and supplemented it with the voice files that would never have fit in a Super NES cartridge. Standup comedian Dana Gould performed the voice-over for Gex, the main character in the game, giving the game a certain charismatic wit. Realizing that Gex was the most sure-fire game in the 3DO line-up, Panasonic bundled it with their version of the console. [1]

[1] Once while visiting a game store, Gould asked a clerk if they had they had Gex. "It's pronounced Jex," the clerk replied. "It's about a dinosaur."

"Sam had just finished riding a bicycle. He got off the bike, felt somewhat faint, felt a pain in his chest, drove himself to the Stanford Medical Center, and there he was informed that he had a mild heart attack.
"Jack came back in [to Atari while Sam was recovering]. Jack knew how bad it was. It wasn't that Jack didn't know, Jack knew. Jack knew all the numbers, all the time."
Bernie Stolar, President and COO, Sega of America

There were many theories about why Jack Tramiel purchased Atari. Some people said that he bought the company as a means for exacting revenge on Commodore, the company that he founded then left under unpleasant circumstances. Another theory was that he purchased Atari to make one last fortune, enough money to insure the future of his three sons, Sam, Leonard, and Gary. A third theory suggested that he bought Atari as a way of bringing his sons together. If any of these were his reasons, he succeeded. Atari outlasted Commodore, had a few enormously profitable years, and united his sons in common goal.

On February 13, 1996, Atari Corp. merged with JTS Corporation, a company that manufactured 3.5-inch disk drives, in an $80 million stock swap. Jack Tramiel was active on the JTS board after the merger. Two years later, Hasbro Interactive purchased the Atari library from JTS.

"We were trying to license four products including Centipede, Missile Command, Tempest, and Pong. During the licensing arrangement, we realized that JTS was in financial dire straits, so we decided to take it to a higher level. So we moved very quickly and very aggressively and turned this into an acquisition opportunity. We acquired all of the trademarks, patents, copyrights, and intellectual property for all of Atari. Jack Tramiel was involved in the discussions. He was a tough negotiator, as always, but they needed money. The acquisition cost us $5 million."
Tom Dusenberry, President,Hasbro Interactive

Time Warner put Atari Coin-op on the sales block in 1996 as well. In an interesting twist, one of the first people to bid on it was Nolan Bushnell, the man who originally founded the company. Time Warner turned down his offer, however, and sold Atari to a familiar competitor-Williams Manufacturing.

NINTENDO UNVEILED

In late November, 1995, Nintendo finally unveiled its 64-bit, cartridge-based game console at its Shoshinkai trade show, held that year in an cavernous warehouse-like convention center called the Makuhari Messe. As a proprietary show featuring only games for Nintendo systems, Shoshinkai was considerably smaller than E3 or the Tokyo Game Show. The entire show fit in one section of the Makuhari Messe and filled less than two-thirds of the floor.
Nintendo's next generation console underwent three name changes by the time it was unveiled. First known as Project Reality, then Ultra 64, the final name of the console was "Nintendo 64 (N64)." While Nintendo had released many details about the new console during the months leading up to the unveiling, no information was ever leaked about the system's controller. Created by Genyo Takeda and Nintendo Research and Development Team 3, N64 had a new and revolutionary three-handled controller that featured both a traditional digital directional pad and a new analog directional lever. The T-pad, which was especially good for fighting games, worked a lot like a light switch. It did not read how hard you pushed, it simply noted when you pushed down on it and from what direction you pushed, then moved you in that direction at a constant speed. The analog lever, on the other hand, responded to pressure. Push slightly to the right, and the character you were controlling would inch in that direction. Push the lever all the way over, and your character would run at full tilt.

"We tried a motion sensor wristwatch-style controller. We made a prototype and applied for a patent. Everything was good, but players didn't understand the internal mechanism and had trouble controlling it, so we abandoned it."
Genyo Takeda, Manager R and D Team 3, Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Hiroshi Yamauchi was clearly proud of the new controller. In a lengthy speech given the first day of the show, he said, "If you think this is just another game pad, than you know nothing about video games."

Most of the floor space was dedicated to Super Famicom (the Japanese name for Super NES), with a fairly large section for Game Boy and a much smaller corner of the floor for N64. Obviously most of the people at the show crammed in around the N64 area, taking turns playing the only two games on display--Super Mario 64 and Kirby's Air Ride. While the show ran smoothly, it was obvious that some decisions were not made until the morning of the show. When an American reporter emerged from the N64 area, Howard Lincoln approached him and asked what he thought of the game. "The Mario game was great, but that other game wasn't amazing."

"We're only showing one game," replied Lincoln, who had not been told about a last-minute decision to show Kirby's Air Ride.

Steven Kent's, The First Quarter: A 25-Year History of Video Games can be purchased at Amazon