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

article lacks importance of famicom

[nsda's_deviant]

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). 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

Same choice, different answer

[Daetrin]

I remember my mom taking me to the store and letting me try out both systems, and trying to make the decision on which my parents would get me for christmas. (Funny, at the time i never realized there had been a crash in the video game market. I'd been happily playing games on my Colecovision which had an Atari 2600 adapter, and though the NES and Sega Master system were just the next step up instead of a revitalization of the entire industry)

The NES was demoing Super Mario Brothers, the Sega machine was demoing, um, a couple pieces of crap, there was maybe one of the games that interested me, but i forget which. The graphics seemed more impressive on the Sega, but Mario was more fun. I thought about it awhile, and got the NES, and didn't regret it.

A year or two later i got a Master System as well since they'd gotten cheap, and a few games for it as well. However every time i had the chance to get a new game, there was almost always something for the NES that outweighed anything i was contemplating for the Sega. The Master System ended up getting stuck in a corner and got pulled out for a brief period ever six months or so once it got moved into my bedroom.

I'm glad to say that for the most part i've managed to stick with making decisions based on the quality of the games (PS2, GameCube) rather than purportedly superior graphics but only one or two games worth playing (XBox, with Halo and Panzer Dragoon)

Although i wonder if i'd be any different today if i'd grown up with Phantasy Star and Sonic and um, wrestling games? rather than Mario, Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior.

Re:Same choice, different answer

[lidocaineus]

Well, no offense, but if you think the only two games worth playing on the Xbox are Halo and PD, you're not really making decisions based on quality only, are you? You'd be purchasing the Xbox as well, because most players that are quality-only types (like me) will get every system out there, especially when you can only get things like JSRF, Gunvalkyrie, and Toe Jam & Earl 3 on the Xbox. Maybe you should go back and pick up a Saturn too, as well as a PC-Engine and TurboDuo?

You wouldn't be any different if you had grown up with PS and Sonic; you'd still like quality. Well, supposedly quality, you seem to be more of the 'quality-with-blinders' type.

Re:Same choice, different answer

[Daetrin]

Maybe you should go back and pick up a Saturn too, as well as a PC-Engine and TurboDuo?

Toe Jam & Earl 3 just looks strange, not something i'd be inclined to pick up unless someone i knew recomended it to me and explained why. Gunvalkyrie looks potentially interesting. Something i'd possibly get if i bought the system, but not something that would make it worth buying the system on it's own. As for JSRF, i still haven't managed to find time to play JSR on my Dreamcast.

Which gets straight to the heart of the issue. I have limited resources that i can devote towards gaming. I've only got so much money, and i've only got so much time. As such, i need to make choices about which consoles i buy and which games i get for them. Ever since i got out of college i've been falling progressively farther and farther behind the point i'd like to be, and keep having to be more and more critical of which games i get.

I'll admit i have biases, especially where Microsoft is concerned. Back when i was a Nintendo fanboy (although you'll note that even then i had a Sega system, i just found about ten times as many Nintendo games as Sega games that interested me) i resisted getting a Playstation for quite awhile. Partly as a matter of loyalty, even more so as a matter of not having much spare cash. Eventually however Playstation started coming out with titles i couldn't resist, culminating in FF7, so i went ahead and found a used PSX and bought that.

Microsoft however is facing a tougher task. There are well defined and consistent reasons why i dislike them. For all that Sony and Nintendo have tried to form their own monopolies, Microsoft has been far more sucessful in doing so, and has affected my life far more negatively. Even so, if they came out with enough good games to justify an XBox purchase purely in terms of money and time investment, then i would face a moral quandry about whether my philisophical objections to Microsoft outweighed my desire to play good games, and if such an event occured, i'm not entirely sure what i would decide.

However i was talking to one of my coworkers yesterday about the XBox because he has one and has quite a collection of games, and he was having trouble coming up with any suggestions that would make buying an XBox worthwhile. He had a couple suggestions which i looked at the time, but they weren't that appealing. Not enough to force a moral quandry on me. The two that really stood out were Halo and Panzer Dragoon Sage.

My main interests are RPGs and strategy games, and adventure and puzzle games as they strike my interest. I'm really not enamoured of FPS games however. I picked up HalfLife beause of the SF theme but never finished it because i'm just not very into FPS games. Yes it's high quality, but as we've already established that there are more games than i have time to play, why not play the high quality games in the genre's that interest me most? And that is the biggest strike against Halo. Panzer Dragoon Orta along with a few other games i'm half interested in playing isn't going to make me compromise my morals.

Yes, the XBox has a few quality games on it, but not enough to make the purchase cost effective when you consider that i'd have to skip over an equal number of quality titles on GameCube and PS2 to play them and in doing so deal with a company whose buisness practices i disagree with.

You wouldn't be any different if you had grown up with PS and Sonic; you'd still like quality. Well, supposedly quality, you seem to be more of the 'quality-with-blinders' type.

I'm up to my ears in PS2 games, GameCube games, old PSX games i still need to finish (currently about halfway through FF_9_ for gods' sake) Gameboy Advance games, and i've got emulators for NES and SNES and roms of the better games from back in those days. (Most of which i own the original cartridges for or were never released in America, and the rest I'm buying as they get rereleased on GBA, so i don't feel particularly guilty about "pirating"

Sega

[Anonymous Coward]

Nintendo should go the way of Sega and focus on making great games. Never happen of course but they should.

M.D. Inc.

Re:ah... famicon

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

Here's the big question: what kid was the first to pioneer that technique? Every kid in America (and, I'd assume, Japan) somehow knew that blowing into the cartridge and shaking it around would magically make it work. Where did this knowledge come from? Or was it just instinct?

"Cartridge no work! Me shake now!"

My best friend's NES eventually deteriorated to the point that he had to cram a pencil into the deck to keep the cartridges from popping up. Can you imagine the consumer outrage if one of the modern consoles had these kinds of problems? I guess we were willing to tolerate a little more way back when.

DecafJedi

Re:ah... famicon

[theNote]

Ahh, the pre internet days.
If the internet had been, and people really knew how bad the problems were, there would have been an outcry.

Another interesting question is how did cheats make it around?
Things like the contra 30 lives cheat.
I remember the kid who showed me, but who showed it to him?

Those were the good old days.
Now all you have to do is log on and you can get a list of cheats usually even before the game hits the shelves.