These days they are more likely to be palling around at the Olympic Games than coming to blows, but there was a time when Mario would have become physically sick if you mentioned Sonic the Hedgehog in his presence, so great was their mutual disgust. Mascots of two gaming empires and nobody crossed the boarders. You were Sega or you were Nintendo - or at least that's how it was for kids in the early 90s. These days they are forced to sit together awkwardly and pose for photos, like Jose Mourinho and Arsene Wenger at an LMA dinner. Ok, they may never have been "enemies", but you try telling that to a six year-old Sega fan in 1991! Back then you knew where you stood. You dare not look at the Nintendo section of the Argos catalogue for fear that Shinobi would kick you into next week. These days gamers are more likely to flitter between Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo like a cheap whore, going wherever the latest decent game might be. Portal 2 is marginally better on PS3, so 360 achievements be damned. A new Mario game is coming out? Meh, maybe it's time to dust the Wii off. Gamers now have very little brand loyalty (FIFA players aside), though this tribal rage still exists between fans of the different consoles, but also between fans of different types of games (or even different games in the same series).
A regular film and video games contributor for What Culture, Robert also writes reviews and features for The Daily Telegraph, GamesIndustry.biz and The Big Picture Magazine as well as his own Beames on Film blog. He also has essays and reviews in a number of upcoming books by Intellect.
