Development
In 1984, Nintendo Japan launched the Famicom (known in the West as the NES) and a year later in the U.S. to great success, much of it due to the release of the video game Super Mario Bros., the first game created specifically for a home console.
Since Sega had failed to take 5% of the Japanese market, it was decided to rename and sell the "Mark III" in the West as the "Master System". More technically advanced than Nintendo's NES, the Master System never reached the same level of popularity in places like the U.S (selling only 125,000 MS consoles in four months compared to two million NES consoles), but in other markets such as Europe and Australia, the Master System's sales fared better. This was the situation when Alex Kidd in Miracle World was released. This game (along with Wonder Boy) was meant to be Sega's answer to Super Mario Bros., but until Naoto Ōshima created Sonic the Hedgehog (Yuji Naka and others), Sega was unable to compete with Shigeru Miyamoto's creation. Eventually Alex Kidd was dropped as the company's mascot, in favor of Sonic the Hedgehog.
Read more about this topic: Alex Kidd In Miracle World
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“I’ve always been impressed by the different paths babies take in their physical development on the way to walking. It’s rare to see a behavior that starts out with such wide natural variation, yet becomes so uniform after only a few months.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“Men are only as good as their technical development allows them to be.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“I can see ... only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.”
—H.A.L. (Herbert Albert Laurens)