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."

Comments

Almost nostalgic

[DarthMAD]

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.

Re:Almost nostalgic

[hunterx11]

Yes, but NES games lack immersion. I mean, how many times have I shot that fucking dog, only to leave him unscathed?

Re:Almost nostalgic

[WaterBreath]

Obviously you weren't a dedicated player insistent on perfection. In those later rounds, every bullet is precious, and not to be wasted on hopelessly firing at the dog. Of course, beyond round 18 (or maybe 20?) if the dog has opportunity laugh, the game is over.

Round 62, baby! Three times, the score rolled over back to zero. Then my mom shut it off. I'd never been so angry. I was gonna take a photo and send it to Nintendo Power and everything. But that dream was crushed.

Total Immersion

[Anusien]

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.

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.

There are so many inaccuracies in this article

[Dwedit]

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.

Re:There are so many inaccuracies in this article

[droberge]

I've fixed the inaccuracies you've mentioned. The 4K figure came from a previous writer who added the CPU RAM and the PPU RAM to get 4K and a bad mental hex-decimal conversion ($0800 = 2048 not 4096). As for the 16x16 thing, I'm so used to square sprites that I saw the 16 and assumed 16x16.

DW4 was the largest ROM I'd ever seen; checking again it seems I was mistaken. That's fixed.

Thanks for the corrections.

droberge (a.k.a. RPGeek)

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:The NES never died.

[MagicDude]

And just try to find someone to fix a busted ps2 or xbox. The support isnt the same.

That's because it was really easy to service a NES. Fixing any problem on the Nintendo went something like this:

Pick up cartrige
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (inhale)
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (inhale)

Pick up Nintendo
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (inhale)
FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF (inhale)

Repeat until disired results are accomplished.

The NES is alive and well in Japan.

[wheresdrew]

It's just not made by Nintendo anymore.

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.

Re:The NES never died.

[Zorilla]

Everybody I know came up with special magic smacking-the-side-of-the-case patterns that got the NES to read the cartridge. Smack left-left-right-blow-smack top-play....*red* *red* FUCK!

I've inherited my late Grandpa's old NES with low mileage, so I don't have to deal with that anymore.