Posted by
CmdrTaco
on from the well-kinda-sorta dept.
LinuxBand sent in linkage to a nice story talking about the NES as it now is celebrating its 15th year. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had a nintendo, I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA.
The apostrophe shortage is long-since over
by
Sneakums
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· Score: 2
In the context of this headline, it's "NES's", not "NESs".
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:The apostrophe shortage is long-since over
by
Sneakums
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· Score: 2
Normally yes, but since NES is an abbreviation for Nintendo Enterainment System, perhaps NES's is better?
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:The apostrophe shortage is long-since over
by
Sneakums
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· Score: 2
Actually, this is Slashdot. The Internet is just over there; exit the alley and turn left.
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
g_mcbay
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· Score: 2
Yes, the Genesis had a similar setup. I forget the exact details, but it was Acclaim who was sued for eventually releasing a non-official game that included Sega's trademarked text (which needed to be in the ROM's header for the Genesis to run the ROM).
Acclaim won the suit, but eventually became a registered Sega developer anyway.
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
b0z
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· Score: 2
Actually the ability to float like that was pretty important to me. Even though I am a big somewhat macho guy, I always used the princess as my character in SMB2 because it was just so damn easy to fly past all the obstacles in my way. Luigi was probably the worst character in SMB2 but I'll leave that game alone as it was just generally bad.
I have read the above posts about Metroid. Now, that may or may not count because you didn't know it was a woman until the end. She did kick butt though.
There is another thing to take into consideration. The NES was meant for a younger audience than a lot of the games that are out now. Most boys that are 5 years old or so don't really like girls, and the NES was mostly meant for pre-pubescent boys I think. The Super Nintendo eventually came out, with games for older audiences, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. These games featured women characters that kicked ass. This has continued today, even in the computer gaming arena. Even though Lara Croft looks like a ho, guys love to play her game, and you can't say that a woman running around playing Indiana Jones and shooting everything in sight is not a woman kicking butt.
As far as physical strength in real life, generally men are stronger than woman in how much we can pick up or lift. Women seem to have greater endurance though, and we are just made differently.
In any case, it is true that there were a lot more games with guys running around being macho, but I don't think it was necessarily because of a problem of the adults making this game, but that the audience was for little kids, who at that age the majority don't associate with the opposite sex all that much.
Yeah - it's funny turning the framerate "meter" o in REND386 on any moderately powerful machine (like, on my P200) - framerates go over the top (>100+). I would love to see how well it works on anything recent (1 GHz Athalon, etc).
Still, it probably can't beat out a good 3D card, since it is only software. I would love to see a hibrid of REND386 or AVRIL on the front end, with OpenGL or GLIDE on the back end for rendering. Then maybe the spinning bananna could be textured, and we could see the amusement park rides the way they should look.
Pity not many care about homebrew VR anymore (my site rarely gets any hits, though that could be because of my lack of attention to it - I am thinking about replacing it with something else)...
It has features like the 20 worst NES games of all time and the 10 worst things to base a game on. Lots of other funny stuff on there for any child of the 80s.
I'm quite sure. My certainty comes from having been there to see them when they were new. I've owned both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 65XE and they were not the same system. I personally liked the Atari systems better, especially the original 800 model. It had the best keyboard of any of them. The 800 and its descendents were based off the 6502 processor. This cpu was used in many different systems back then including the Commodore Pet, Vic20, Apple II+/IIe/IIc, BBC Acorn, OSI Challenger I/II/III, etc. etc. The Commodore 64 used the 6510 which was a derivative of the 6502. I don't really know what exactly the difference were architecture wise. I don't know of any other system which used the 6510.
Lee
-- Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
dark_panda
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· Score: 4
I, like every single NES owner in the world, also had this problem. Even this past summer, I could barely get one of those 42-in-one Asian carts. You know, the ones with 4 versions of Super Mario Bros., 2 versions of Tennis and at least 3 Galaxians on them. The screen would always flash green and black until I applied The Method.
Insert cart.
Press down on poorly conceived "VCR like" cartridge bay.
Turn on NES.
Watch green and black screens alternate.
Wiggle cartridge around a bit while NES is still on.
Watch as green and black screens become blue and white screens.
Remove cartridge.
Throw caution to the wind and disregard warning on back of cartridge by blowing on the connectors.
Re-insert cartridge and turn on power again.
Watch as scrambled sprites and backgrounds flash on the screen.
Wiggle cartridge some more.
Remove cartridge and blow on the connectors even harder. Wave cartridge around a bit just to be sure.
Insert, power on, pray, play.
Repeat procedure as necessary.
Many a times have I applied The Method to great results.
As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
They don't make 'em like they used to I guess.
J
Anyone remember the Power Glove?
by
micahjd
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· Score: 3
The Power Glove was basically just a cheapo VR
device for the NES. It has little resistive sensors for detecting finger position, and a sort
of 3D sonar to detect the position of the hand
relative to the TV. AFAIK they only released one
game for it on the NES (Glove ball?) and it was
pretty much a flop. But interestingly enough they started sort of a cult following among the 1337 DOS programmers of the day.
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port
adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool.
I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
It's amazing what some sites will do to increase banner hits.
What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?
15 years already?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 2
Man, it's hard to believe how time flies. I still remember first getting my hands on games like the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda. They seem so laughable now (especially the plots), but it's easy to forget that at the time, these games were state of the art! When you talked about Sniffits and Digdoggers, every knew exactly what you meant. Mario Brothers 3 is still the most anticipated game in history... remember its infamous debut in the movie The Wizard? Every kid on the block couldn't wait to get his hands on the new Raccoon Mario and map screen!
Those NES games always seemed to have something today's big-budget... I guess it was just the innocence of a fresh new industry, so eager to try out new ideas (some of those NES were pretty damned weird). There was a true creative spirit then, and what the consoles couldn't do, the programmers made up for. I still love to leave my NES on and walk around my office with the Zelda overworld theme playing...
I totally remember how awesome Nintendo was (is). The realization hit me when my friend invited me over to play Super Mario Brothers. I thought it was JustAnotherAtari-LikeConsole with maybe a slight variation on the original Mario Brothers game (remember that one? POW.)
But it wasn't just one screen of action. I was totally floored when I saw the screen actually scrolling by, with all the colors and backgrounds and many sprites on the screen. Damn, I was hooked from then onwards.
That seemed like the big, hate to say it, but Paradigm Shift. Since then, IMHO, games have gotten far more gee-whiz with graphics/sound effects, but this one step of going from simple atari-like games to super-mario-like stuff was totally HUGE for me.
Just my reminisces back towards junior high/high days. Most others will probably disagree...
--
make world, not war
Re:U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
h_jurvanen
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· Score: 2
Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.
When my friend got an NES for Christmas his cat promptly peed all over the robot.
Herbie J.
more emulation for profit
by
donglekey
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· Score: 2
I think it would be cool if nintendo would take all of their games and license as many of the third party ones as possible and create a cartridge for N64 or a CD for the gamecube to pack tons of old nintendo games into one game for a newer system. They could make some money off of it I am sure, especially if they put some antialiasing in the games and some more color depth, and jazzed up the sound a little. That would be great. I would buy it, and they sure aren't making any money selling those games anymore (not the companies themselves anyway).
These days, when you buy a console, you get the system and a controller. That's it. Back when I got the Nintendo, it came with:
The system
Two controllers
A light-gun
Robbie the Robot (or whatever his name was)
Super Mario Brothers
Duck Hunt
Maybe Gyromite, I can't remember...
Now those were the good old days. Happy birthday NES!
--
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
Re:Nintendo Marketing Practices
by
micahjd
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· Score: 3
Video game manufacturers have always had quite
evil marketing and legal practices. All of the
console systems I've programmed for or investigated have proprietary APIs, but that's not the real problem- at least on the simpler 2D systems these are quickly reverse engineered. The game companies made it illegal to write games without their special licence. I don't know the technical details of most systems, but I'll use the Gameboy as an example:
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course:)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
--
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
Re:The Three Best Games EVER!
by
fiziko
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· Score: 2
IMHO, I think that "Crystalis" is one of the best NES games I've ever played. Maybe it doesn't belong in the top three ever list, but I think it should be in the best Action/RPG list. I found it far more fun and original than Castlevania 2, and it actually had a decent story to go along with gameplay!
The blinking is in fact not the processor, what happens is after repeated use the pins that the game comes in contact with with bend or rust to the point that no contact is made. Where did the rust come from? Well remember the days when you used to blow into the game or machine to "get the dust out"? Well you were also depositing your spit, which caused rust. The top loading released NES's dont have the bending problem but dont blow in those either (If you can find them, pretty rare and they dont work with all NES accesories IE game action replan and game genie). So what can you do? There are 2 ways to fix this and I have done them both many times. First is to open up the NES, pull off the cart reader, and using a paper-clip bend the pins that contact the game up a bit, but not too much. There are web sites out there describing the "paper-clip method" in more detail. Or you can go to http://www.matelectronics.com and get a catalog or call them and get a replacement cart reader. I bought some last year and assume they still sell them. They werent very expensive and they will illimiante your blinking woes. Good luck. The NES will live forever:)
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
And like I said, I'm not entirely convinced the stereotyping has stopped. Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
Well, I've seen quite a few ROBs in thrift store junk piles, so I suppose it depends on the condition and all the parts being there. (I'm more into pre-crash stuff myself.)
For those that might not remember when the NES was introduced, ROB was the big sell -- Every NES advert prominently featured it. (As the article pointed out, the NES was originally pushed as some sort of educational/entertainment system, not as a pure video game box. The early games were very cartoony -- not at all the outer space shootemup Atari-style games.)
--
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
While not trying to start a flamewar, why exactly did so many of you ask your parents for an NES? A home computer, while being somewhat more expensive, would have been so much more useful, as well as being able to play more sophisticated games...
Actually, I did like text adventures, and in addition I was a fan of strategy games like "King's Bounty" and "Reach for the Stars" -- the forerunners of games like "Heroes of Might and Magic" and "Master of Orion" -- all of which weren't available for the NES.
In addition, programming (even on 8-bit machines with pitiful amounts of memory and bad implementations of BASIC) was a blast.
I remember the music it would play when you put it on pause...
bu-chck-bu-chck-bu-chckchckchck-bamph-bamph-bamph- chckchckchck
You know, all the playstation games and such still can have never had such a cool beat as the pause music on battletoads. I remember when I figured out how to connect my NES to the stereo (I used the RCA cables to connect everything to a Commodore monitor I had with my C=64) and played that up really loud. I also had a dad that was a big music fan, so he always got me fairly expensive stereo equipment for xmas and birthdays...man did my mom get mad about the bass...
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
On the one hand I want to agree with you, but my brain says otherwise. If the target market for video games are overwhelmingly teenage boys, you're not only going to see an overwhelmingly large number of games targeted to teenage boys, but an overwhelmingly large number of good game developers are going to develop for teenage boys. Athena didn't suck because the industry has it out for women; it sucked because all of the good game developers were writing the latest Legend of Zelda sequel.
It's not sexist, just the naked pursuit of profit. Not that the one is any better than the other, though.
One question I'd rather see answered, rather than "why/how is it the gaming industry has these stereotypes, and how can they be changed?" is... "why is it the gaming industry has so critically few women engineers, and how can this be changed?"
The only engineer I can think of offhand who's seriously involved in game design is Bungie's Quin Denki (I may be misspelling her name). I'm excluding Stevie Case here, because I don't think an engineer needs to be famous for spanking someone in an FPS and posing nude for Playboy... I think an engineer needs to be respected for technical ability, which Denki definitely gets. Roberta Williams would make the list, but she's been Management for some time now and not Engineering.
There was a really good interview with Denki on the Bungie website a while ago; it may still be there for all I know. Had a lot of technical detail in it, but some very interesting opinions on the role of women in engineering and as women as gamers.
Insofar as Metroid goes, I prefer option 3--like a Stanley Kubrick film, they wanted to save the biggest head-twist for the last scene.:) I mean, I sat up and took notice when I discovered Samus Aran was a woman. I wasn't expecting that at all.
Considering that you don't discover the secret of The Crying Game until close to the end, does that prove either 1) that transvestism would negatively affect the movie sales, 2) it was a mere afterthought, or 3) they thought it would get people talking?
Are you sure about that? I am almost certain that the machine's even had the same BIOS! I'll have to find an XE, crack it open, and get the model #'s off of the chips (then I'll repost here:).
Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
Anne+Marie
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· Score: 3
I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena, that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
-- -- Anne Marie
Re:Gender bias was rampant on the NES
by
be-fan
·
· Score: 2
A) Like the other poster said, women (in general) ARE weaker.
The point you miss is that women may be just as good or better than men, but it does not mean that they are the SAME as men. The Princess thing is a perfect example. She wasn't a strong character. However, she was probably one of the best because of her other talents. PC (political correctness) throws me for a loop once in awhile. I just realized: It's wrong to say that women can use their particular talents to be successful, but its encouraged that teachers push their right-brained students to use their special talents to be sucessful. Weird.
Maybe, in the end, people might realize that a generalization is just that: A generalization. People do it all the time, that's how people are designed. When you treat a specific person according to a generalization, that wrong, that's prejudice. When you make a generalization that you can support with fact, and use that generalization when talking about the group in general, that's fine.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
but this weekend I was re-hooking up my old NES...
after opening the original box and styraphone, i noticed that I still had the original register receipt from when I bought the machine. 1988... $98.06 from CompUSA... oh, those were the days.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
A) Can anyone verify exactly WHY the blowing thing worked? I think it's a universal part of the NES experience. Strangely, my Sega machines never needed blowing. (Okay, I know I'm asking for a bunch of blowjob jokes)
B) If only blowing on Linux would make it work!
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Wow I've gotten old. I can't believe fifteen years has gone by since the days of treating calloused thumbs and being constantly out of breath from blowing on those cool little gray cartriges.
A GPA is a "grade point average". In the US, this generally is a number between 1 and 4, with 4 being perfect. A half point is what it sounds like: 0.5
yeah... I really miss mine--now all it does is flash black and white on the screen... sometimes if i clean the hell out of it, it will actually play a game, but i think its processor has seen better days, because the screen gets all corrupted--its kind of amusing sometimes.
mov ax, 13h int 10h
--
mov ax, 13h int 10h
Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF--
by
Alternity
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· Score: 2
Not so indestructable I fear. I have 3 NES controllers (2 standard and the good old NES Max) and only one is still working properly:o(
Now the main problem is that it's hard to find one to buy these days. But you are right... they were indeed much more resilient than everything currently on the market. The closest would be IMHO the gravis gamepads.
No matter how old that thing is, I still get the kicks from going through the 2 first Megaman. The megaman are among the best games ever.
"When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
--
"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"
And next year will be Sonic's 10th birthday...
by
ChaosEmerald
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· Score: 5
(1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog was released in the US)
When you think of all the video games that just go right by its amazing. Sure, the NES was great, but there were some pieces of crap too. I honestly can't say that I've played more than 500 games in the past ten years. And how many were released, 10000?
Think of all the consoles, NES, SMS, TurboGraphix16 (awwwwwwwwwww yeah!), Genesis (+ SegaCD + 32X), SNES, NeoGeo (Metal Slug!), Saturn, PSX, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and soon to come out PS2.
There have been many series, from Mega Man to Mario to Sonic to Zelda to Phantasy Star to Street Fighter to Double Dragon to Battle Toads to... But when was the last time you saw a Double Dragon game or a Battle Toads game? I'm just amazed at the amount of games I've never played, and the amount that will keep on coming.
--
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
Re:And next year will be Sonic's 10th birthday...
by
British
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· Score: 2
And I think 90% of them were SMB clones to some extent(run n jump)
My roommate and I have got an NES a few months back... Didn't really play much til he got Super Mario Bros off of eBay... Well, that cartridge had some difect or something, so it took a whole lot of blowing on the contacts to get it working.
I have to say we didn't turn the machine off ever since for the fear that the cart would go dead. It's pretty much been on for the past two months. (How's that for an uptime?)
I wish they still made 2-D games like that. I mean there's nothing wrong with today's crop of 3-D stuff, but one does yearn for a bit of hand-drawn cartoonish animation from time to time...
the contacts on the cartridge AND the nintendo are probably dirty. Either get a nintendo cleaning kit, or take the whole thing anpart and use rubbing alcohol.
The Nintendo Entertainment System helped make me the geek I am today. Without it, I probably would never have gained such a strong interest in technology. (Well, that and my Atari XE, a Comedore 64 clone.:-)
It's good to see that people still appreciate this very important piece of legacy hardware! Long live the NES!:-)
I never throw away anything, and a couple of years ago I dug my old NES out of the storage bin, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Not only did it still work, but my Legend of Zelda game still had my original games saved. (ISTR that the Zelda booklet warned that the internal battery would only function for 3-5 years... mine has made it ~14 years and counting!)
I've moved twice since then, and the NES has come with me. I suppose I could pluck down the couple-hundred needed for one of the much newer and better console systems, but why? Most of the games I would be interested in playing on a new system are also available for my computer -- and I already have the hardware. No, I enjoy playing my old Nintendo half for nostalgia and half for the "mind-numbingly simple" plot lines that most follow. (Which is a good thing, 'cause with few exceptions -- like Zelda -- you can't save your session.)
And even after all these years, I can still navigate the first level of Contra without looking at the screen -- with the help of up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-s tart. 8^)
-- "I came here to kick ass and chew
bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum."
MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
One word refutation: Metroid (if you look past the fact that you can't tell for most of the game)
For the most part, you're right. I think the system couldn't support many of the things that appeal to women today in video games, such as deep character development and graphics. The stereotyping and such is bad, but for the most part it's stopped.
Also, remember that many of the games were made by japanese developers, whose only experience with minorities is in foreign movies and TV (Japan being 98% racially pure and all). So what you're seeing is the way the rest of the world represents minorities in the media through the eyes of japanese game developers.
I think you're thinking of the Atari 2600, not the Nintendo. The C64 was a much more limited gaming platform than the Nintendo (the lack of tiled backgrounds, scrollable buffers, per scanline interrupts, and multi-window modes made the C64 much more limited than a Nintendo). Of course it has been so long since I fired up a C64 that I may be talking out of my ass.
That music sounds almost exactly like the original unless you have a wavetabele soundcard like me:D
Try the NSF version at this link here and get a player from zophar's domain. You can also find a lot more NES music there: this is one of the most comprehensive archives of NSF's i've found.
Just realized that offsite linking to the vgmusic.com archives doesn't work, so click here and naviagte to NES music section. Journey to Silius is in the list.
Hey, does anyone know what kind of proc the NES used? I know it was around 1.7-something megahertz, but what type?
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Re:Sure it wasn't a full grade LEVEL you missed?
by
be-fan
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· Score: 2
Ahh, the subtlties of the English langague. In this case, "full" isn't used to denote a fraction, but as an emphasis to mean an entire fractional point. For example, you can have a whole half-pie, or you can have a fraction of a half-pie. It's still correct.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Woo-woo! Fun train coming through!!!
by
BilldaCat
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· Score: 2
(sits down at NES, inserts cartridge)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
me: (turns off NES, pulls cartridge out)
me: (sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFTTTTTTTTTHHHHH"
me: (another sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F F F FF FFFFFFFF FFFF"
me: (puts cartridge back in NES, turns on power)
Distributed Computing Power and NES
by
1nt3lx
·
· Score: 4
Yes! It has a processor and a way to accept user input. Someone should port LINUX to it! Once someone found a way to network them the possibilities would be endless...
Imagine a pile of NES's running linux in some sort of a cluster. Wow, I can just hear the tech's now. "Quick! Number 342-32 is down! Get over there and exhale into the cartridge!"
Most of the time breathing on the contacts would work, too. I can't say anything ever beat a good swift punch, though.
...by Bernie Roehl and Dave Stampe - go to my site for more PG/homebrew VR action.
It really was something the first time I hooked my glove up to my 486. I was worried the timing wouldn't be right (the parallel port polling used hard coded timing loops), but it worked OK. I even toyed around with hooking the thing to my Amiga 2000.
Someone should try to make a hybrid of Quake and Rend386 (or Avril), with the glove for a controller. With a strong hand (those gloves sucked for flexability), one could form a "gun" with the hand, then motion to fire in some manner - could be interesting...
U-Force, ROB, and other useless accessories
by
ActMatrix
·
· Score: 2
Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.
I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.
Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.
Slashdot Mirror
In the context of this headline, it's "NES's", not "NESs".
--
"Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
Acclaim won the suit, but eventually became a registered Sega developer anyway.
I have read the above posts about Metroid. Now, that may or may not count because you didn't know it was a woman until the end. She did kick butt though.
There is another thing to take into consideration. The NES was meant for a younger audience than a lot of the games that are out now. Most boys that are 5 years old or so don't really like girls, and the NES was mostly meant for pre-pubescent boys I think. The Super Nintendo eventually came out, with games for older audiences, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. These games featured women characters that kicked ass. This has continued today, even in the computer gaming arena. Even though Lara Croft looks like a ho, guys love to play her game, and you can't say that a woman running around playing Indiana Jones and shooting everything in sight is not a woman kicking butt.
As far as physical strength in real life, generally men are stronger than woman in how much we can pick up or lift. Women seem to have greater endurance though, and we are just made differently.
In any case, it is true that there were a lot more games with guys running around being macho, but I don't think it was necessarily because of a problem of the adults making this game, but that the audience was for little kids, who at that age the majority don't associate with the opposite sex all that much.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Yeah - it's funny turning the framerate "meter" o in REND386 on any moderately powerful machine (like, on my P200) - framerates go over the top (>100+). I would love to see how well it works on anything recent (1 GHz Athalon, etc).
Still, it probably can't beat out a good 3D card, since it is only software. I would love to see a hibrid of REND386 or AVRIL on the front end, with OpenGL or GLIDE on the back end for rendering. Then maybe the spinning bananna could be textured, and we could see the amusement park rides the way they should look.
Pity not many care about homebrew VR anymore (my site rarely gets any hits, though that could be because of my lack of attention to it - I am thinking about replacing it with something else)...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Every NES fan should take a look at Seanbaby's NES Page.
http://seanbaby.com/nes.htm
It has features like the 20 worst NES games of all time and the 10 worst things to base a game on. Lots of other funny stuff on there for any child of the 80s.
I'm quite sure. My certainty comes from having been there to see them when they were new. I've owned both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 65XE and they were not the same system. I personally liked the Atari systems better, especially the original 800 model. It had the best keyboard of any of them. The 800 and its descendents were based off the 6502 processor. This cpu was used in many different systems back then including the Commodore Pet, Vic20, Apple II+/IIe/IIc, BBC Acorn, OSI Challenger I/II/III, etc. etc. The Commodore 64 used the 6510 which was a derivative of the 6502. I don't really know what exactly the difference were architecture wise. I don't know of any other system which used the 6510.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
- Insert cart.
- Press down on poorly conceived "VCR like" cartridge bay.
- Turn on NES.
- Watch green and black screens alternate.
- Wiggle cartridge around a bit while NES is still on.
- Watch as green and black screens become blue and white screens.
- Remove cartridge.
- Throw caution to the wind and disregard warning on back of cartridge by blowing on the connectors.
- Re-insert cartridge and turn on power again.
- Watch as scrambled sprites and backgrounds flash on the screen.
- Wiggle cartridge some more.
- Remove cartridge and blow on the connectors even harder. Wave cartridge around a bit just to be sure.
- Insert, power on, pray, play.
- Repeat procedure as necessary.
Many a times have I applied The Method to great results.As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.
They don't make 'em like they used to I guess.
J
I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool. I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.
It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
It's amazing what some sites will do to increase banner hits.
What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?
Those NES games always seemed to have something today's big-budget ... I guess it was just the innocence of a fresh new industry, so eager to try out new ideas (some of those NES were pretty damned weird). There was a true creative spirit then, and what the consoles couldn't do, the programmers made up for. I still love to leave my NES on and walk around my office with the Zelda overworld theme playing...
When my friend got an NES for Christmas his cat promptly peed all over the robot.
Herbie J.
I think it would be cool if nintendo would take all of their games and license as many of the third party ones as possible and create a cartridge for N64 or a CD for the gamecube to pack tons of old nintendo games into one game for a newer system. They could make some money off of it I am sure, especially if they put some antialiasing in the games and some more color depth, and jazzed up the sound a little. That would be great. I would buy it, and they sure aren't making any money selling those games anymore (not the companies themselves anyway).
This Wiki Feeds You TV and Anime - vidwiki.org
The Atari 800 predates the Commodore 64. The 65 and 130 XE computers were simply the last in the series.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
it was originally .5
then he got his NES
just kidding, dammit!
"I hope I don't make a mistake and manage to remain a virgin." - Britney Spears
The system
Two controllers
A light-gun
Robbie the Robot (or whatever his name was)
Super Mario Brothers
Duck Hunt
Maybe Gyromite, I can't remember...
Now those were the good old days. Happy birthday NES!
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".
I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course :)
I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.
Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only ;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.
-- 2 + 2 = 5, for very large values of 2
IMHO, I think that "Crystalis" is one of the best NES games I've ever played. Maybe it doesn't belong in the top three ever list, but I think it should be in the best Action/RPG list. I found it far more fun and original than Castlevania 2, and it actually had a decent story to go along with gameplay!
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
The blinking is in fact not the processor, what happens is after repeated use the pins that the game comes in contact with with bend or rust to the point that no contact is made. Where did the rust come from? Well remember the days when you used to blow into the game or machine to "get the dust out"? Well you were also depositing your spit, which caused rust. The top loading released NES's dont have the bending problem but dont blow in those either (If you can find them, pretty rare and they dont work with all NES accesories IE game action replan and game genie). So what can you do? There are 2 ways to fix this and I have done them both many times. First is to open up the NES, pull off the cart reader, and using a paper-clip bend the pins that contact the game up a bit, but not too much. There are web sites out there describing the "paper-clip method" in more detail. Or you can go to http://www.matelectronics.com and get a catalog or call them and get a replacement cart reader. I bought some last year and assume they still sell them. They werent very expensive and they will illimiante your blinking woes. Good luck. The NES will live forever :)
Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.
And like I said, I'm not entirely convinced the stereotyping has stopped. Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
-- Anne Marie
Well, I've seen quite a few ROBs in thrift store junk piles, so I suppose it depends on the condition and all the parts being there. (I'm more into pre-crash stuff myself.)
For those that might not remember when the NES was introduced, ROB was the big sell -- Every NES advert prominently featured it. (As the article pointed out, the NES was originally pushed as some sort of educational/entertainment system, not as a pure video game box. The early games were very cartoony -- not at all the outer space shootemup Atari-style games.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
While not trying to start a flamewar, why exactly did so many of you ask your parents for an NES? A home computer, while being somewhat more expensive, would have been so much more useful, as well as being able to play more sophisticated games...
bu-chck-bu-chck-bu-chckchckchck-bamph-bamph-bamph
You know, all the playstation games and such still can have never had such a cool beat as the pause music on battletoads. I remember when I figured out how to connect my NES to the stereo (I used the RCA cables to connect everything to a Commodore monitor I had with my C=64) and played that up really loud. I also had a dad that was a big music fan, so he always got me fairly expensive stereo equipment for xmas and birthdays...man did my mom get mad about the bass...
Thanks battletoads!
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.
Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).
Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.
I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
At great risk of sounding like a complete idiot--
:) I mean, I sat up and took notice when I discovered Samus Aran was a woman. I wasn't expecting that at all.
On the one hand I want to agree with you, but my brain says otherwise. If the target market for video games are overwhelmingly teenage boys, you're not only going to see an overwhelmingly large number of games targeted to teenage boys, but an overwhelmingly large number of good game developers are going to develop for teenage boys. Athena didn't suck because the industry has it out for women; it sucked because all of the good game developers were writing the latest Legend of Zelda sequel.
It's not sexist, just the naked pursuit of profit. Not that the one is any better than the other, though.
One question I'd rather see answered, rather than "why/how is it the gaming industry has these stereotypes, and how can they be changed?" is... "why is it the gaming industry has so critically few women engineers, and how can this be changed?"
The only engineer I can think of offhand who's seriously involved in game design is Bungie's Quin Denki (I may be misspelling her name). I'm excluding Stevie Case here, because I don't think an engineer needs to be famous for spanking someone in an FPS and posing nude for Playboy... I think an engineer needs to be respected for technical ability, which Denki definitely gets. Roberta Williams would make the list, but she's been Management for some time now and not Engineering.
There was a really good interview with Denki on the Bungie website a while ago; it may still be there for all I know. Had a lot of technical detail in it, but some very interesting opinions on the role of women in engineering and as women as gamers.
Insofar as Metroid goes, I prefer option 3--like a Stanley Kubrick film, they wanted to save the biggest head-twist for the last scene.
Considering that you don't discover the secret of The Crying Game until close to the end, does that prove either 1) that transvestism would negatively affect the movie sales, 2) it was a mere afterthought, or 3) they thought it would get people talking?
Are you sure about that? I am almost certain that the machine's even had the same BIOS! I'll have to find an XE, crack it open, and get the model #'s off of the chips (then I'll repost here :).
I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).
And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).
What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.
For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena , that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.
I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
-- Anne Marie
but this weekend I was re-hooking up my old NES...
after opening the original box and styraphone, i noticed that I still had the original register receipt from when I bought the machine. 1988... $98.06 from CompUSA... oh, those were the days.
of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
oh, the memories...
Got Rhinos?
A GPA is a "grade point average". In the US, this generally is a number between 1 and 4, with 4 being perfect. A half point is what it sounds like: 0.5
yeah... I really miss mine--now all it does is flash black and white on the screen... sometimes if i clean the hell out of it, it will actually play a game, but i think its processor has seen better days, because the screen gets all corrupted--its kind of amusing sometimes.
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
mov ax, 13h
int 10h
When you think of all the video games that just go right by its amazing. Sure, the NES was great, but there were some pieces of crap too. I honestly can't say that I've played more than 500 games in the past ten years. And how many were released, 10000?
Think of all the consoles, NES, SMS, TurboGraphix16 (awwwwwwwwwww yeah!), Genesis (+ SegaCD + 32X), SNES, NeoGeo (Metal Slug!), Saturn, PSX, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and soon to come out PS2. There have been many series, from Mega Man to Mario to Sonic to Zelda to Phantasy Star to Street Fighter to Double Dragon to Battle Toads to ... But when was the last time you saw a Double Dragon game or a Battle Toads game? I'm just amazed at the amount of games I've never played, and the amount that will keep on coming.
I am a bad speler. Please ignore speling meestakes in me poast.
I have to say we didn't turn the machine off ever since for the fear that the cart would go dead. It's pretty much been on for the past two months. (How's that for an uptime?)
I wish they still made 2-D games like that. I mean there's nothing wrong with today's crop of 3-D stuff, but one does yearn for a bit of hand-drawn cartoonish animation from time to time...
Ñ'
It's good to see that people still appreciate this very important piece of legacy hardware! Long live the NES! :-)
I never throw away anything, and a couple of years ago I dug my old NES out of the storage bin, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Not only did it still work, but my Legend of Zelda game still had my original games saved. (ISTR that the Zelda booklet warned that the internal battery would only function for 3-5 years... mine has made it ~14 years and counting!)
I've moved twice since then, and the NES has come with me. I suppose I could pluck down the couple-hundred needed for one of the much newer and better console systems, but why? Most of the games I would be interested in playing on a new system are also available for my computer -- and I already have the hardware. No, I enjoy playing my old Nintendo half for nostalgia and half for the "mind-numbingly simple" plot lines that most follow. (Which is a good thing, 'cause with few exceptions -- like Zelda -- you can't save your session.)
And even after all these years, I can still navigate the first level of Contra without looking at the screen -- with the help of up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-s tart. 8^)
"I came here to kick ass and chew bubblegum. I'm all out of bubblegum." MSE USC APX AIA CSI CASp
------
One word refutation: Metroid (if you look past the fact that you can't tell for most of the game)
For the most part, you're right. I think the system couldn't support many of the things that appeal to women today in video games, such as deep character development and graphics. The stereotyping and such is bad, but for the most part it's stopped.
Also, remember that many of the games were made by japanese developers, whose only experience with minorities is in foreign movies and TV (Japan being 98% racially pure and all). So what you're seeing is the way the rest of the world represents minorities in the media through the eyes of japanese game developers.
BBK
I think you're thinking of the Atari 2600, not the Nintendo. The C64 was a much more limited gaming platform than the Nintendo (the lack of tiled backgrounds, scrollable buffers, per scanline interrupts, and multi-window modes made the C64 much more limited than a Nintendo). Of course it has been so long since I fired up a C64 that I may be talking out of my ass.
I read the internet for the articles.
I think they missed one game for the Best Music category:
:D
:D
Journey to Silius.
Hold on while I find some links...
Stage 1
Stage 2
Stage 3
That music sounds almost exactly like the original unless you have a wavetabele soundcard like me
Try the NSF version at this link here and get a player from zophar's domain. You can also find a lot more NES music there: this is one of the most comprehensive archives of NSF's i've found.
Listen, and remember!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Hey, does anyone know what kind of proc the NES used? I know it was around 1.7-something megahertz, but what type?
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Ahh, the subtlties of the English langague. In this case, "full" isn't used to denote a fraction, but as an emphasis to mean an entire fractional point. For example, you can have a whole half-pie, or you can have a fraction of a half-pie. It's still correct.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
(sits down at NES, inserts cartridge)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
me: (turns off NES, pulls cartridge out)
me: (sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFTTTTTTTTTHHHHH"
me: (another sharp intake of breath)
me: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F F F FF FFFFFFFF FFFF"
me: (puts cartridge back in NES, turns on power)
TV: (flash)
TV: (flash)
GODDAMMIT.
:\
BilldaCat
If you haven't seen it, you should take a loot at seanbaby's NES page. I'd recommend the this page to, be sure to watch the video. Pretty hilarious.
You can find a prototype ROM image of GNOME vs. KDE along with the rest of the NES development effort.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Yes! It has a processor and a way to accept user input. Someone should port LINUX to it! Once someone found a way to network them the possibilities would be endless...
Imagine a pile of NES's running linux in some sort of a cluster. Wow, I can just hear the tech's now.
"Quick! Number 342-32 is down! Get over there and exhale into the cartridge!"
Most of the time breathing on the contacts would work, too. I can't say anything ever beat a good swift punch, though.
The List of Grievances with Slashdot.
...by Bernie Roehl and Dave Stampe - go to my site for more PG/homebrew VR action.
It really was something the first time I hooked my glove up to my 486. I was worried the timing wouldn't be right (the parallel port polling used hard coded timing loops), but it worked OK. I even toyed around with hooking the thing to my Amiga 2000.
Someone should try to make a hybrid of Quake and Rend386 (or Avril), with the glove for a controller. With a strong hand (those gloves sucked for flexability), one could form a "gun" with the hand, then motion to fire in some manner - could be interesting...
I support the EFF - do you?
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.
Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.
Ah...such fond memories...
---