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Nintendo Pioneer Talks NES Phenomenon

Posted by simoniker on from the mario's-box-of-tricks dept.

Thanks to Video-fenky for his article translating a recent Famitsu interview with Hiroshi Imanishi, former executive director of Nintendo, about the original launch of the Famicom/NES console, which celebrated its 20th anniversary last week. The Famicom wasn't immediately well-received, according to Imanishi: "We were the new kid on the block, and a lot of places said to us 'We've already seen Donkey Kong in the arcades and on the Game & Watch! You're putting it out again?'" He also describes how the trademark NES controller almost never came to be: "...during development the majority of Nintendo wanted to include a regular joystick with the system. However, during that time, we made the first multi-screen Game & Watch, and we introduced the control pad so you wouldn't have to keep on glancing at your hands while you're playing the game"

4 of 18 comments (clear)

  1. Donkey Kong by sofakingl · · Score: 2, Informative

    As far as I can remember, Donkey Kong was better in the arcade. The NES version lost 2 of the original levels.

    1. Re:Donkey Kong by AndyBusch · · Score: 4, Informative

      Almost. The NES version only lost one level (the pie factory). The 2600, Intellivision, etc versions also lost the elevator level. In the earliest NES games, they hadn't figured out how to use memory mappers to access larger amounts of data, so the earliest games were incredibly small. All those early carts (even through Zelda and Metroid) dump to about 40 k.

      The NES was an incredible feat, though. Since it only used a bit of internal hardware, it then relied on large amounts of processor in the cart. That's why it's so hard to emulate the console. By contrast, only a handful of SNES games (Super FX games, and Mega Man X 2 and X 3) have any processing hardware in the cart.

    2. Re:Donkey Kong by Tuzanor · · Score: 1, Informative
      By contrast, only a handful of SNES games (Super FX games, and Mega Man X 2 and X 3) have any processing hardware in the cart.

      Most of the games that came out in the last 2 years of the SNES lifetime had procs in the carts, the FX chip is the most famous, but the most well done ones were the Donkey Kong Country games. It's still amazing they pulled those off on a 16 bit system, though they prolly had interesting processors in them. I wonder what the specs of them were and how much power a cartridge was allowed to draw...time to google!

    3. Re:Donkey Kong by edwdig · · Score: 3, Informative

      Zelda 1 and Metroid were both 128k roms. In Zelda, notice that when you're in the levels, only certain combinations of enemies are possible. You'll never see Stalfos and Wizrobes in the same level. That's because the enemies are stored in seperate memory banks.

      Remember the bug in Metroid that allowed you to access "hidden areas" ? Get caught in a door, mash up & down repeated on the control pad, and you'd work your way thru the wall into the room above or below you. It would look different, but it would really be nearby areas of the map, but the graphics data of the room you started in would still be mapped in.