okay

but I was thinking of the usa and home market

You are absolutely correct, Jon. I was born in 1980, grew up in Denmark and circa 1989-1993, the Amiga ruled the computer and games market. I distinctly remember booking 30 minutes to play Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 on the Amiga 2000 at our public library. The music and the graphics capabilities were impressive for a young kid, whose previous computer experience considered of hang-man, pc speaker sound, Spectrum & Commodore 64 games.

My best friend in school had a NES for birthday in 1991 (the first one I saw) and even though Super Mario was fun, I considered it a big step back from the Amiga games and sounds, I had experienced at that point.

Before Soundblaster cards and Doom I also considered PC games primitive, graphics- and soundwise.

So, I agree with you – in Northern Europe, the game consoles remained niche for a few years more. In reality, the breakthrough in Denmark only came with the PS1.

No, the SAM Coupe from Miles Gordon Technology (a successor to the Spectrum) was released in 1989 and Amstrad kept on producing new versions of the PCW into the mid 90s. And there were various 8-bit notebook computers, particularly in Japan, launched that decade.

Up until then mere mortals looking for a home computer could only really afford the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and C64. The Amiga was the unattainable object of desire finally made affordable by the technical work of Jeff Porter and the marketing savvy of David Pleasance.

The Amiga was never more than a niche product in the US but in the UK, Germany and Scandinavia it was an absolute cultural phenomenon from roughly 1989-92. There was a huge demo scene over here and big disk-swapping parties, which were essentially open piracy. Even then there was still life in the 8-bit market with Commodore mulling a release of the C65 as late as 1991!

Weirdly the NES and Sega Master System didn’t make much impact in Europe. You occasionally saw them in shops but I never knew anyone who actually owned one. Consoles only became prevalent over here with the 16-bit generation.

Actually, I remember the original EA release of “John Madden Football,” which I believe was 1989. The game ran so badly on the Apple II that I remember thinking this was probably the end for that machine.