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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."
It lives on to this day.
Oh, and first post.
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!!
This article reminded me of how no matter how advanced video games get in terms of graphics and plot, there's something to be said for the simple pleasure of shooting simulated ducks on the NES... Sometimes you just can't beat the classics.
I don't know, I think Duck Hunt was pretty real. Don't tell me I'm the only one that used a treadmill as a trench and ducked behind it, shooting the ducks from behind cover.
Both my classic NES and my Super Nintendo basically stopped working after about 4 years. I mean, WTF? There aren't even any moving parts! And the Super Nintendo even had some kind of tamper-proof screws that stymied my efforts to even TRY and fix it. After that, I gave up on the consoles and went to something more user-serviceable: a PC.
If you don't know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.
I couldn't wait for better video games, I knew they had a long way ahead of them. JUST LIKE NOW MMOG haven't hit fast paced action yet. This statistic war MMOPRGS is dull. Once a game come out that blends action with RPG, it will rule supreme like nintendo 8 bit did over atari2600, its the same gap.
:P
That said, the next big thing after that will be video cameras tracking your motions. Buy a camera array and set it up in your home(or arcade), hold a lightsabre, wear vr goggles, and dodge/move/slash enemies. Its not as far off as you think. I have it slated on my todo list after my action MMOG due out in 15 years
Hey anyone know where I can have free filehosting? I have a 10 meg file which is a demo of my game, but I have no place to share it. My game isn't fun yet, but it demonstrates Tekken meets MMOG.
God spoke to me.
What a great article. Technical details of the NES, as well as a good overview of the history of the system, and well written to boot. It brought me back to the Christmas 1987, when I first got my Nintendo. That was the most exciting Christmas I've ever had.
owlofcreamcheese.com a new art community
Slashdot is filled with Nintentrolls (at least, the editors)
There are so many inaccuracies in this article! Let's see...
* The NES has 2k bytes of ram built in, not 4k. Cartridges can contain an 8k RAM expansion to expand the total RAM to 10k, the expansion can also be battery backed to save games.
* The NES is not capable of rendering 16x16 sprites, only 8x8 or 8x16 sprites. Those of course can be combined to form larger sprites.
Then some nitpicks:
* I've heard from other articles that Nintendo never tried selling the Famicom directly in America before redesigning it, but I have nothing to back this up with.
* Kirby's Adventure, weighing in at 768 kilobytes, is far larger than Dragon Warrior 4.
* The article fails to mention the bootleg joysticks being sold today which contain illegal NES multicarts built in, these display directly on a TV and have no cartridge slot. No problem, this is probably beyond the scope of the article.
is useless without pictures!
Hello again, My son. I recommend 50megs.com
I can't give you FTP access, but if you were to email me that demo I could host it for you for a while at fred.wackiness.org. My friend owns the site, but I could show it to him, he might give you a subdomain of your own.
SAILING MISHAP
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.
The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
Wikipedia has their article on the NES on the main page today. It also provides plenty of info on the system.
This must be the first article that came, out of the box, pre-slashdotted....
VR goggles are the "next big thing" or a future "next big thing" in video gaming. As soon as they are mass marketted to coincide with some popular new MMOG and they are combined with gyroscopes to correspond head movement to camera movement, they are going to take off. The tech is there, but prices just keep it from becoming mainstream.
LCD technology is ready. 3D gaming is ready. Immersive MMOG's are ready.
Put it on and you may never take it off.
"the factors that led to the console's eventual decline"
Speak for yourself buddy, I'm still trying to beat Spy Hunter!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
That's the reason why the last console I purchased was a N64. Either there was a shortage of games, or a glut of mediocre games on the market, or they were all of the same 2-3 varieties, which is the way I think the industry is now. I suspect unless game developers get more creative, the console industry will experience another decline.
Cyber Gadget makes a unit called the Famulator which is a re-designed (or re-re-designed depending on how you look at it) NES toploader that sells for just under 3,000 yen. You can use your US NES carts on it, but you'll need an adapter like the one sold by Lik-Sang.
The original Deluxe set did not come with Super Mario Bros - Just Duck Hunt and Gyromite. I had to pick between Wrecking Crew and Super Mario Bros for my 7th birthday, and I had no clue which one to get.