In 1983, Nintendo launched its 8-bit system, the Famicom, and initiated the Japanese "Famicom boom"; the 1985 release of the American NES made it a worldwide phenomenon. "Raking in the cash" would be putting it lightly: Nintendo had basically created a videogame bubble, and the company allowed anyone willing to adhere to its strict licensing policies have a place in it. Yet for all the good times Nintendo was providing gamers, some companies wanted to have their own fun. So they tried to best Nintendo the only way they could -- with technology.

Hudson Soft, one of Nintendo's largest third-party publishers, developed its own console technology and joined with electronics giant NEC to help with production and distribution. The result was the TurboGrafx-16, known in Japan as the PC Engine. The system boasted 16-bit graphics, but its processor was still 8-bit, resulting in many early games that looked simply like more colorful NES titles.

Meanwhile, Nintendo's biggest competitor, Sega, was a powerhouse arcade developer but had never created NES games. In fact, Sega had released no less than five consoles between 1983 and 1985. Granted, they were all variations on the same base technology, and none of them had a chance of catching up with Nintendo's bullet train. That changed in 1988 when Sega released the Mega Drive, a 16-bit system meant to replicate the company's System 16 arcade board in a home setting. While the Japanese release fell flat and the Famicom continued to dominate the market, when the system was released in America the following year as the Genesis, Western audiences were far more appreciative of its advanced graphics and sound.

Suddenly, Nintendo was fighting a war on two fronts. The PC Engine earned a strong following in Japan while Americans ignored it; the Mega Drive, on the other hand, struggled in Japan while the Genesis sold briskly in America. The 8-bit era was drawing to a close, and the NES was on the wane -- but Nintendo had yet to join the fight.

By the end of the '80s, there was no doubt that Nintendo was producing a successor to the NES, though confirmation didn't arrive until a formal announcement in 1990. At one early event, the company showed off prototype hardware and software -- a revelation even more fascinating in retrospect due to the early system's differences from the final product. Nintendo had initially intended to include backward compatibility with its 8-bit games, as the "Famicom" switch on the early-model Super Famicom demonstrated. The feature was ultimately scrapped due to an apparent lack of feasibility, much to the chagrin of parents everywhere.

Early software demos included DragonFly, a flight game that later became Pilotwings; an early version of Super Mario World with different sprites and world maps, and most interestingly, a demo of Zelda II with enhanced 16-bit graphics. All were meant to demonstrate the power of the console's graphics and sounds.

Interminable months later -- November 1990 -- the Super Famicom hit stores in Japan with the same incredible commotion seen at the launch of the original Famicom (with the added drama of the yakuza interfering). Nintendo handily slapped down the Mega Drive and PC Engine and kept a majority market share. The system received an equally warm reception on August 13 of the following year, when the Super NES reached America. The design was new, but the hype was familiar. People loved the games, the graphics -- the whole "experience," as Microsoft might put it.

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