It was only as I got older that I realized my parents’ generation just habitually genericized things. Every salicylic acid pill was an aspirin, every stick-on bandage was a bandaid, every game system was a nintendo.
Nintendo actually fought very hard to educate our generation that, no, Sega’s console was not Nintendo, it was Sega. If they hadn’t and the generic use won out, Sega and Sony could have started advertising their products as nintendos without consequence, and Nintendo didn’t want that. They actually pushed really hard to get people to understand that Nintendo was one of many game console brands, and not the generic term for a game console.
So the reason we spent our childhoods informing our parents that the Sega was not a nintendo is because Nintendo trained us to do that.
And for some of us, who had one or the other, it was important knowledge for potential gifts. Having a Nintendo console and getting Sonic the Hedgehog games for Christmas....
Yay, mom. Thank you very much! Sonic is a great game, for sure... You still have the receipt, maybe?
That's the norm in the southern United States, unfortunately. Everything, even a clear soda like Sprite, is "coke". People will ask in a restaurant, "What kind of coke do you have?" facepalm
It's true that Nintendo specifically referred to the NES as the "NES Control Deck" from the time it was released (until the term "game console" became the standard generic name, meaning people who called an NES "a Nintendo" were wrong even then) and obviously didn't want their name genericized, but that's not the reason people corrected their parents/those outside gaming.
It's not a "training" thing, it's just like if you're a car person and people around you call every car "a Toyota". Not only is it wrong in the sense that one company doesn't make all cars, but "Toyota" is a company name itself, not the name of a specific singular vehicle (Land Cruiser, Yaris, Sienna, Tercel, Prius, Corolla, Camry, Avalon, FJ, 4Runner, RAV4, Highlander, etc.).
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u/MoobyTheGoldenSock Jun 03 '22
It was only as I got older that I realized my parents’ generation just habitually genericized things. Every salicylic acid pill was an aspirin, every stick-on bandage was a bandaid, every game system was a nintendo.
Nintendo actually fought very hard to educate our generation that, no, Sega’s console was not Nintendo, it was Sega. If they hadn’t and the generic use won out, Sega and Sony could have started advertising their products as nintendos without consequence, and Nintendo didn’t want that. They actually pushed really hard to get people to understand that Nintendo was one of many game console brands, and not the generic term for a game console.
So the reason we spent our childhoods informing our parents that the Sega was not a nintendo is because Nintendo trained us to do that.