Nintendo's Famicom Turns 20

Warrior-GS writes "GameSpy has been running a weeklong series of articles dedicated to the Famicom, which became the super-console Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States. The Famicom turned 20 on July 15th. The series covers everything from the birth of the console to the hardware to many of the classic games." This massive article is, indeed, both comprehensive and lovingly researched, and is well worth checking out.

Comments

Re:Why is it called Famicom?

[rylin]

IIRC, It's "Family Computer" or something like it. http://www.atarihq.com/tsr/odd/scans/famicom.html

Re:article lacks importance of famicom

[PainKilleR-CE]

the article lacks the details of how great nintendo became because of famicom and how the famicom reinvented the game marketplace forever. Atari crashed the industry, Nintendo brought it back, Sega dented the industry, Sony dominated the industry and Microsoft is making the industry better (more competition is better).

Actually, if you continue reading the series of articles, you get to that point. However, the Famicom really didn't do those things, because Atari didn't crash the industry in Japan. The NES did those things, because it was released in America and had to deal with these factors in the American market (and had some specific hardware to address that, such as the chip that prevented unlicensed games from playing, which didn't exist in the Famicom). The article on the US NES hardware does address this to some degree, though obviously doesn't go into the Sony and Microsoft portions because it's about the Famicom/NES, not the Super Famicom/SNES, N64, or GameCube.

wether nintendo ever becomes the titan again will be questionable, now only if gamespy did an article about celebrating Nintendo creations. I always hope Nintendo will be remembered for their devotion to creating exceptional games, and creative applicaitons to games that no one ever pieced together (Zelda, the original Mario, evolution of Mario: raccoon mario!, Metroid) ... just my thoughts

Umm, the second half of the series is about the games, including Mario, Zelda, Metroid, etc.