The Lifespan of The Nintendo Entertainment System

Via Press the Buttons, a node over at Everything2 with an excellent synopsis of the lifespan of the Nintendo Entertainment System. It details the background of the video game industry at the time that the NES came onto the stage, the launch and the peak of its success, and the factors that led to the console's eventual decline. From the writeup: "In the aftermath of the home video game crash in 1983, nobody in North America seemed to want anything more to do with video games. Having been burned by the atrociously bad Atari 2600 games flooding the market and the rise of the home computer, both retailers and parents, and to a lesser degree gamers, were reluctant to risk their hard-earned money on another console. Analysts claimed that video games were yet another fad in an infamously faddish time that came and went and now are gone."

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[tesseract5d]

to this day, my friends and i still play complete seasons of TECMO super bowl. it is one of the greatest games of all time. i can't believe they speak of the NES in the past tense! IT LIVES!!

Re:The NES never died.

[SUBREW503]

My family still got the original hardware funtioning well. It had to be repaired twice, but for being the all consuming entertainment for four rough housing brothers thats's pretty good. And just try to find someone to fix a busted ps2 or xbox. The support isnt the same.

For More information...

[-kertrats-]

I would definitely recommed "The Ultimate History of Video Games", by Stephen Kent. It's about 600 pages long and is a comprehensive history of videogames from the 1920's pinball tables to 2001, with special emphasis on the activities of the 1980's. I read it in about a week, it's fascinating stuff for anyone interested in the field.

Wikipedia's article

[LGagnon]

Wikipedia has their article on the NES on the main page today. It also provides plenty of info on the system.

Re:Wikipedia's article

[badasscat]

Wikipedia has their article on the NES on the main page today.

No mention in that article of the failed Atari deal, one of the biggest and most important non-events in video game history.

I also don't agree with 1983 being listed as the year of the video game crash, as seems to be the current fashion (though Google still lists more hits for "video game crash 1984" than "video game crash 1983"), but I guess it's debateable. 1983 was really the start of trouble, though, not the end of it. It was the year of stock market declines and then a very bad Christmas, but 1984 was when the bottom really fell out, and when all current consoles were pulled from the US market.

Up until a few years ago, when history started being rewritten by those who are too young to even remember it, 1984 was always the year listed for the "great video game crash" - that's when the console gaming industry basically ceased to be. You could argue that the "crash" really came with the stock market declines and the poor 1983 Christmas sales, but it just strikes me as revisionist, and those types of events happen in the industry even today. We called it a "crash" in 1984 because of the cataclysmic events that occured as a result of what happened in 1983 and early 1984, not the events leading up to it.

Re:Wikipedia's article

[antifoidulus]

Until ironically it was nintendo who reneged on a deal w/ sony for cd support for the super famicom

Re:bad games

[Zorilla]

1) PoP - Frustrating puzzles that penalize you by making you watch long cutscenes over and over if you die and have to restore your last save...
2) ICO - Why do you have to skip the opening cutscene 7+ times just to get started? And I don't want to hear anything about it suggesting my attention span - FMVs are never that important.
3) Katamari Damacy - fantastic and hilarious game, but very, very short. Small issues like the Ursa Major level. A pixel is not a bear!
4) I don't have much bad to say about Tony Hawk games. Underground just got way too hard on the San Diego level - 160,000 point combos alone just doesn't cut it anymore (was good to see their portrayal of home, though!).

I suggest Metroid Prime (for long term single player gaming) and the Burnout series of games (for the crashes, of course). Sure the first appears to be another FPS, but it is much more. Burnout 2 and 3 may look like budget Wal-Mart racers, but it is also more more entertaining than that.