List of Sonic Team games
In addition to the "Sonic" series, the company has developed other games for Sega, such as "Nights into Dreams" (1996) and "Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg" (2003). The 1991 release of "Sonic the Hedgehog" is considered significant in video game history, as it increased the Sega Genesis's sales and Sega displaced Nintendo as the leading video game company. Some of Sonic Team's games, such as the Genesis-era "Sonic" games and "Nights", are considered by critics to be among the greatest video games ever released.
1993 congressional hearings on video games
During this period, two key players were Nintendo and Sega. Nintendo had been instrumental in helping to recover the North American market after the crash with the introduction of the Nintendo Entertainment System; in 1990, with its release of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), Nintendo sales accounted for 90% of the US market. However, to avoid repeating one of the issues that caused the crash, Nintendo took care to limit and review what third-party games could be made for its platforms to avoid a glut of poor games. Sega, which had already released its Mega Drive in Japan, found their sales to be lagging behind Nintendo. In a aggressive campaign aimed at the United States market, the Mega Drive was renamed the Sega Genesis, and heavily pushed the game "Sonic the Hedgehog", with its titular character aimed to become Sega's mascot and rival that of Nintendo's Mario. Sega was less selective about what titles it wanted for the platform, allowing many more third-party games onto the system to increase its library in contrast to Nintendo's. Further, Sega used marketing language purposely aimed at Nintendo, such as "Sega does what Nintendon't". By 1992, Sega had obtained 65% of the US gaming market, overtaking Nintendo's dominant position. Subsequently a strong rivalry between Nintendo and Sega was formed, referred as the "Console Wars", which continued through the next decade and into the fifth generation of consoles, after which Sega dropped out of the hardware market and became principally a game developer and publisher, and at times working collaborative with Nintendo.