international differences in popular gaming platforms is fascinating, especially since i live with a relatively unique history. alot of my own tastes and directions were formed by NZ's near-reverse of american home console trends past our 70s isolation, having made our own 2600s due to licensing issues. we were dominated by Sega during the Mastersystem/Megadrive days, then quickly went team Playstation for every console generation up to the seventh. excluding handhelds (where even we couldn't escape Nintendo), it wasn't until the Wii that they shot up from "i saw a Gamecube once five years ago" to "holy fuck my grandparents own the thing."
from 165k Gamecube sales to over two million Wiis, combined with Australia. jesus christ. it's around here where NZ started falling in line with NA sales. switches as far as the eye can see.
it's why Nintendo in general was very foreign. outside of Pokemon, absolutely none of their flagship titles beloved in america saw a blip in my neck of the woods. it can be hilariously alienating, watching Youtube Game Video Essay #39834 praise something like Ocarina Of Time as world-renowned at release when 64s down here were rarer than unicorns.
there is a frustration to it? i've often felt underrepresented in conversations online regarding this history. quite a few vocal opponents have risen on social media, decrying a homogenization of retrospective gaming born of online american centralization, with the amount of broad strokes i've heard being innumerable lmao. remember, NESes and SNESes conquered the galaxy, computer gaming didn't exist until Doom and we've suddenly forgotten that several innovations during the 90s were first made by some guy in his basement developing Akalabeth in 1979.
still, the conversation itself is engaging and it's not like i've learned nothing in return, reading about opposite-land sales overseas. i just love finding out this stuff.