They were the most important tech spec of any console. They were the weapons with which Nintendo and Sega fought the Console Wars. They were the very foundation of the video game market during the renaissance of computer entertainment. And yet, despite their role in building gaming into what it is today, nobody has cared about bits in nearly 25 years.

Bits, short for “binary digits,” describes how many 1’s and 0’s a processor can read in one instance. So when the TurboGrafx 16 advertises itself as a 16-bit console, that means the console’s processor can read 16 binary digits in one instance. The measurement is strictly tied to the console’s speed and has very little to do with the console’s graphical capacity.

Sega is the reason we ever cared about bits at all. When the Genesis was preparing to hit the market, Sega marketing executives wanted to find a way to convey the technical superiority of their console over the NES in a way that consumers could easily understand. The concept of bits was easy to explain: more bits equals more “power.” What does power mean in the context of consoles? Why, whatever the consumer wanted it to mean of course!

Bits made Sega’s marketing simple yet effective: The NES has 8 bits, the Genesis has 16 bits, therefore the Genesis is better. Sega even emblazoned “16-BIT” in silver letters on the top of the console, solidifying the tech spec as a core part of the Genesis’ identity. And for a brief period, the Genesis outsold Nintendo’s 8-bit console, forcing the seemingly-untouchable juggernaut to develop an updated console, kicking off the bitter Console Wars between the two rivals.

The true testament to the power of bits as a marketing tool was that Nintendo felt the need to play Sega’s game. The prominent feature of the SNES’s marketing was it’s 16-bit capabilities, looking to even the playing field with the Genesis. Bits had become consumer jargon, the choice unit of measurement for customers looking to choose a system. Rather than defy bits, Nintendo chose to embrace them.

Bits dominated the fourth generation of video games, and much of the fifth generation as well. Atari threw their now-tattered hat into the ring with the Atari Jaguar, flaunting the console’s 64-bit capabilities with the tagline “Do the math.” Nintendo took it a step further and named their next console after the number of bits it could process. It would take a truly powerful force to kill off the bits craze, and it was just that which made the bits marketing fall silent.

Unlike Nintendo, Sony had no choice but to defy the marketing jargon of bits. Because the PlayStation was the result of a failed partnership with Nintendo for a SNES disc add-on, the PlayStation’s processor was only 32 bits. Focusing on that part of the console would play right into Nintendo’s hand, so Sony simply omitted bits from their marketing materials. It just so happened that all three major players in the video game market had left the door wide open for Sony to come in and dominate: Nintendo’s N64 was taking a very long time to release, Sega was about to completely botch the Saturn’s release and Atari was flailing about as a company. Sony found a foothold in a bit-dominated market by selling the merits of their games rather than their console.

As the PlayStation grew in popularity, the truth was laid out for the consumer populace to see: bits did not mean that much. They did not allow a console to run bigger games, because the games on PlayStation were orders of magnitude larger than the ones on the N64. They did not lead to better graphics, because a lot of PlayStation games looked better than those on the N64. The PlayStation had so many advantages over the N64 out of the box that bits just seemed like an afterthought.

Immediately in the following generation, console bits completely vanished from marketing efforts. For Sony, the focus shifted to console features, namely DVD playback ability. Rather than naming off tech specs, console manufacturers opted to show extended gameplay footage in commercials. To this day, bits have become a relic of the past, but they undeniably hold an important place in video game history.