Kiwi Gaming Part Two

By Liam O'Connor

In a followup piece to our previous Kiwi Gaming feature, Liam offers up his own experiences of 90s gaming in NZ.

It's ironic that working for NZGamer, I am not actually a Kiwi. Well, I kind of am: I hold a New Zealand passport and I've lived here for a while. I even like Watties sauce. I am, however, actually English originally. Tally ho, and whatnot. But I digress; although I had experienced a strong Sega love in the UK, especially with the Mega Drive (although the Master System did have some good success up until about 1993), nothing prepared me for when I moved to New Zealand.

You see, I moved to this country from a brief stint in the United States. I didn't even know where New Zealand was -- I thought it was Tasmania -- and I had no idea what I was getting myself in for. I had just come from a country where the SNES was king (although the Genesis was putting up a good fight), the epic failures 3D0, Jaguar, and CD-i were available, and the country was getting geared up for the PlayStation and the Saturn, and I come to a place where the Master System - of all things - is the console of choice.

I couldn't believe it. You couldn't even find a Master System in the States and they were definitely old hat in the UK. Yet here, in New Zealand, they were giving them away on What Now? like they were some kind of desirable prize. In 1994. I thought I had stepped back in time. Worse, you all pronounced Sega wrong by calling it "See-Gah." Don't people listen to the start-up chant?

Fortunately, the country caught up pretty quick. It wasn't long until the status quo of PlayStation then Nintendo 64 then (waaaaaaay down the line) the Sega Saturn was established. Don't get me wrong, I love the Sega and I love the Saturn, but I don't like living in some kind of crazy backwards land.

Unfortunately, it seems that after two generations of normal, we are slipping back into some kind of crazy dimension. While the Wii seems to be carving up the competition overseas, it's only doing 'okay' here. The same could be said for the DS -- it's not unusual to see people with PSPs, but I hardly ever see a DS in the wild. Meanwhile, the Xbox 360 is outselling the PS3 and Wii combined! To be fair, it's had a year's headstart and is an excellent console with a fantastic range of games, but it's still very bizarre, especially when it's seeminly impossible to find a Wii overseas.

Still, Kiwis always have had their own unique tastes and followed their own path, which was obvious with the stoneaged Master System's popularity in 1994. Yeah, you also obsess about rugby and, until recently, shunned football. I guess that uniqueness is what makes you all so darned loveable.

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