Console Wars
Explaining the joke. by Vaughn Smith
In this strip, we join the NES and Genesis in mid-argument, who are now living in a retirement home called the “Binary Oasis: Home For Emulated Hardware”. This simply means that they’re totally obsolete – their insides have been emulated and their dusty, old, cracked outershells are basically worthless – and if you want to feel really bad, it’s gamers like you who out them there, by using system emulators and downloading ROMS, thereby relinquishing the need for them.
For those gamers around long enough, you’ll recognize all of the old gen marketing tags such as “Nintendo is what Genesisn’t” and “Genesis does what Nintendon’t” etc. Those were real pissing matches back then and it was fun to watch these two giants fight out it in print. Of course like any good argument, it starts off clever and then just disintegrates into adolescent name-calling.
The Power Glove, perhaps the most inane gaming peripheral ever, overhears the argument and makes an idle threat in their general direction – which of course, backfires in his face with the ultimate put down delivered by the NES. This comment allows the Genesis to pause and reflect on how much he actually still respects the NES and he stops the argument to say “Ha! You’ve still got it.” Back then it was these two giants against the world and since they both altered the history of videogaming as we know it, you can’t help and respect the two of them.