Did any one from the UK grow up with Nintendo?

Were Nintendo ever really big here? I just remember everyone having the Sega Megadrive and then moving to the Playstation. I do remember people getting the N64 for Goldeneye and then a Gameboy for Pokemon, but that's it. After that it was PS2 and then everyone moved to the 360...

I just don't remember much Nintendo love here in the UK when growing up. Like Mario 64 came out here it was 1997 and Tomb Raider already came out in 1996. I see lots of Americans say that Mario 64 was their first experience with a game of that type, however over here Tomb Raider was a much bigger deal because it came out sooner.

A lot of the gamer content online is from the US and they hold a lot of love for Nintendo, I just never grew up with it and don't understand it. From my point of view I just seem them as a failing company who are a one trick pony of throwing out Mario again and again, it never interested me as a kid and it still doesn't today.

Just interested to see if Nintendo were actually popular over here and it's just my circle of friends and up bringing that was different?

Absolutely. After my hand-me-down Atari 2600, my next gaming platform was a Gameboy. After playing Link's Awakening on it, I had to get an N64 for Ocarina of Time when that came out, and I pretty much stuck with Nintendo ever since. Plenty of my friends dabbled in Nintendo equipment while owning Playstations as well, certainly in each console's twilight years as the price of games dropped.

And I think calling them a one-trick pony throwing out Mario again and again is an opinion that's par for the course when you never actually owned a Nintendo console. :)

We had a NES when I was a kid, though aside from Super Mario Bros 3 & The Legend of Zelda (& some bad Addams Family movie tie-in game) I don't remember playing much on it, as I had the Master System for primary gaming system. But I had a friend who had the NES as their primary system, sure. And several who had the SNES (probably a 50/50 split with Megadrives, though i was still in the Sega "camp"). But in hindsight the SNES has more games that I love than the Megadrive.

And yeah, suggesting that the SNES had nothing but Mario is like saying the Megadrive had nowt but Sonic & sports games. Very silly.

A couple of my friends grew up with Nintendo consoles. I personally didn't. My first Nintendo console was the N64, which I got very late in its cycle (2001 or 2). My first gaming device was an Amiga, and I went straight from that to a PS1 (well, technically I went via the Philips CD-i, but the less said about that the better).

I think it depends on which part of the UK you grew up in. I've talked to people that were completely into Sega, but I had a really mixed childhood where I went from the NES to the Mega Drive and then swapped that with someone's SNES and then onto the PS1 (via the Amiga) I'd say it was 40/60 in favour of the Mega Drive amongst my friends.

First console I ever played was an Atari 2600, first console I owned was a Sega Megadrive. I had played games on the NES, SNES and Saturn from time to time but not enough to really care about them.

Although the N64 was the first console to wow me. I got a Playstation about a year or so later for MGS. But aside from that game and a few others there werent that many games I cared about on the PS1. Whereas everything from Nintendo and Rare on the N64 was great.

So yeah, i'm more bias towards Nintendo than any other console manufacturer. But at this point it's all about the games, brand loyalty means nothing when there isnt anything to play on a certain system.

I was given an N64 as a kid, but I only had 2 games. Since then I've had a Gameboy Advance, a Gamecube, a Wii, a DS and a 3DS.

I'm English, but we moved to the Middle East when I was 1 years old and it was all Sega there until the Playstation

I was all megadrive til PS as well.

Donkey Kong on Game & Watch was one of the first things I ever played. When Super Mario Kart was released I was a student with not so much money to spend, and I would've spent money on it but I was lucky enough to share a house which had a SNES and the game. And later Super Monkey Ball on Gamecube. I think I like those games when I want to collapse in a chair because they're easy to get in to and don't require a lot of upfront practice to be fun (especially co-op for SMK). So no, I've never really bought much Nintendo stuff, but my friends did.

Think it depends on your age aswell. I was given a NES when I was about 6 with a few games, then that was swapped for a Megadrive with a few more games. At 8 that was given away and it wasn't till I was 9 that I got a PS1 and kinda took charge of my gaming life choices. Before that it had all been my parents decisions, so to be honest I grew up with Sony.

I had all of them and didn't know there was such a thing as being a fan of only one. It wasn't until I was 17 that I realized there was such a thing as people preferring one console over another. The thought had never even crossed my mind before meeting a guy who told me Xbox was more powerful than PS2 and so it was better. I just saw every console as a separate thing, not even cognizant of the fact they were competing in the same market. I was very naive about the world.

I had a NES and a SNES but have to say throughout a lot of this period I much MUCH preferred my Commodore 64 and Commodore Amiga.

I know what you mean though, I feel like most people I can think of back then had MegaDrives instead.

Getting a Sega system over a Nintendo system, pre-Playstation era, seems crazy to me. Back then Nintendo wasn't a one trick pony, they had all the tricks. The difference in catalogues was enormous. By never getting a NES or SNES you really missed the majority of what console gaming had to offer at the time.

Yeh mine was an Amiga too.

I just remember Zool lol.

I just remember with Sega having games like Streets of Rage and as a kid I used to think Disney was for babies, I know that's weird as it was my target audience... I dunno I just always wanted mature stuff. I saw Nintendo as the Disney of games and I just never liked their characters, even with the N64 era, their lack of a mature story never appealed to me. I loved Metal Gear Solid, I could never get into Nintendo games as they never had a story and they still don't.

Didn't really care about sports games but still managed to follow the path of Mega Drive > PlayStation. I remember seeing quite a few commercials for Sega products on TV, could marketing be a reason?

@brendan: you're nuts! Sega Genesis was a great system with many many many good games!

I jumped between platforms quite a bit. My first console was a SNES, although a Master System showed up as well at some point. Most of my friends had Mega Drives, which of course meant going over theirs a lot to play Streets of Rage. I can't actually remember any of my friends having a SNES at the time, but maybe that's down to it just being normal to me? Then of course Playstation came along and swept everyone up. I did stick with Nintendo handhelds for a few generations though, had a Game Boy, a GBC and a GBA.

Me and all my friends I know had Sega Megadrives/Mastersystems. First Nintendo home console I owned was the 64.

Obviously I had the GameBoy though.

I'm from north London. In my family we started with the SNES and kept going right through to the Wii on the home console front. We were kind of the "multiplayer household", so Nintendo's party type games always went down well. My friends and cousins were the same up to the N64, but then most bought PS2s and eventually 360s. I remember when we all owned/played N64s and would confidently proclaim that the original playstation was hot garbage, for reasons I can't imagine. Everyone grew up with at least one Nintendo handheld, of course. Sega didn't mean anything to anyone I knew.

The pattern among my friends seems to be that anyone who started gaming as a kid, say around 1994-99 has some attachment to Nintendo, but any later and playstation is the brand that means something. All PC gamers right now though, really.

I'm from east London, and have pretty much been PlayStation my whole life. Started with the PS1 and by force of habit got the PS2 (still my favourite system of all-time). After that I did get the Wii and enjoyed myself, but I really use my PS3 for console games.

A lot of it is probably the controller. I know people give the DualShock a lot of shit for good reason, but I have so much experience with it that it just feels completely natural to me. Been using a 360 controller for PC gaming lately and I hate the very slight lag where I have to think about where each button is. Listen man, LB looks like it'd be the back of the controller when I see it pop up.

When I got to Uni basically every other person had a Snes and Mariokart. Before that I had known people with NES or Gameboy but they weren't that big a thing.

And then Sony blew everything out of the water with the Playstation.

I personally was a Spectrum/Amiga kid and didn't get a console until I bought a Snes and Megadrive off a student mate. The only time when drugs were of benefit to me (he wanted them, so wanted money, so I got his consoles).

Nope. Nintendo was still pretty huge, I had a Nes first and my cousins had a Master System. The Nes was clearly superior.

You may be onto something though, because after that I went with the Mega Drive. Got a SNES eventually but it never lived up to the Mega Drive for me. Never even considered getting a N64, my friend had Golden Eye, which was great but nothing else compared to the PS1.

But I do remember having friends that had Nintendo and Sega, all convinced theirs was the best.

Since then I've had a DS and got my little sister a 3DS. No regrets.

MegaDrive was the thing to have. (S)NES never interested me for some reason.

Grew up with a NES, then a SNES then all Gameboy iterations.

The SNES however is the last Nintendo console I have owned. We moved onto PS1 after that, but the rest of my family had Sega systems that we would use. I befriended somebody who had a N64, but I thought that thing was trash.

Nintendo need to stop making consoles and just focus on handhelds. It's all they're good at.

Yep.

I had nes then snes, never had a sega system until Dreamcast.

I'm from NorthEast London and when I was a kid all anyone was obsessed about was the MegaDrive. Never heard anyone get excited about anything Nintendo apart from the Gameboy which was really big at my school. There was this one kid who used to bring in his MasterSystem because he could complete Mario with the TV upside down, playing with his feet and everyone thought that was very cool, but that was about the only person I knew who had any Nintendo console.

I had a Spectrum and Amiga though, cos my mum thought that consoles were only for playing games and she wanted to get me something 'educational' like a computer. If only I could have taken exams in Lemmings, Worms, Cannon Fodder and Champ Manager.

Prior to this generation, we only ever had one console at a time. I was born in 1989, and I've lived in London my whole life. Our first console was the Mega Drive, but then we had to the Nintendo 64 and then the GameCube - in hindsight, entirely missing the PS1 & 2 was a bummer, but I was a very happy Nintendo fan. I also had pretty much every iteration of the Game Boy. I never had a Commodore 64 or an Amiga, but I did play a fair number of PC games when we got our first Windows PC in about 1994. Keen 4E, the Dizzy games, then SimCity, that sort of stuff.

In the past six years, I've gone from Nintendo fanboy, to mostly a 360/PS3 gamer, to a PC gamer. I didn't buy a Wii and have zero intentions of buying a Wii U any time soon. The 3DS, on the other hand, is a great portable machine.