20 Years of NES

Twenty years ago, the NES changed the face of U.S. gaming. All this week, 1up.com has a series of features celebrating the anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System. From the site: "When the NES launched, America hated videogames. Well, sort of. The Atari 2600 had upset folks by flooding the market with bad software and, at first, retailers were reluctant to sell another system. But the NES was a hit, controlling a healthy 90 percent of the U.S. home videogame industry at the peak of its popularity."

Comments

Trip down memory lane

[AKAImBatman]

Ah yes, the good old days of gaming. Back when games had to be fun rather than bloody. I always found it nice that Nintendo took a solid stance about the family playability of games. It meant that the games had to be sold on the basis of something other than blood and gore. While there were quite a few Nintendo games that sold because they were either a) cheap or b) had a movie license (Karate Kid anyone?), a large number of the games for the old system were just good. Nintendo's "Seal of Quality" program came out, it helped keep the overall quality of games high, again because they had to be competitive on something other than shock factor. Not that the graphics of the time allowed much of that anyway...

When the SuperNES came out, it wasn't long before the issue of blood and gore came up, especially in the light of the SuperNES's new graphics capabilities. But Nintendo pushed back at game creators and kept that era of gaming fun. Even more so because Nintendo didn't approve games that didn't meet their playtester approval.

Then the Playstation came out, and despite its technical superiority, it sucked. But they had the Blood and Gore (and Loading...), and plenty of boring 3D games that only sold due to shock factor. But eventually Sony pushed long enough and hard enough, and now we have the games of today. Even Nintendo gets into the whole "adult" thing with their postively revolting Conq the Squirrel game. Thanks Sony. :-(

Re:Trip down memory lane

[Guppy06]

The seal wasn't used to stop pirates, it was the lock-out chip. Witness Tengen.

If you'd read Game Over, you know the seal was part of a program to keep publishers from flooding the market; it wasn't to keep bad games from getting through, it was to to keep a metric fuckload of crap games from getting through (ala 2600). The seal was Nintendo's PR way of telling potential consumers that it wasn't going to be the cause of another Dark Age of Video Games.

Nintendo also had a strict policy of limiting the number of titles a publisher could release in a year. They could still get away with crap games, but then they'd have to rely on that crap game for income before they're allowed to have another shot at finding player love.

Re:where's the article?

[op12]

The images below that last line link to the different articles. Try this: http://www.1up.com/do/feature?cId=3144996

Top 15 games as posted by 1up:

[Anonymous Coward]

Top 15 games as posted by 1up:
15. Dragon Warrior
14. Duck Hunt
13. StarTropics
12. Bionic Commando
11. Zelda II
10. Duck Tales
9. Super Mario Bros. 2
8. Final Fantasy
7. Mega Man 2
6. Contra
5. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!
4. River City Ransom
3. Super Mario Bros.
2. The Legend of Zelda
1. Super Mario Bros. 3

Super Mario Bros. Super Show

[antdude]

I noticed the article mentioned the cheesy lame cartoon series, Super Mario Bros. Super Show. You can watch that online on Yahooligans! TV for free. Even The Legend of Zelda cartoons are there.

Re:NES #1? Ignorance.

[nunchux]

It's foolish, revisionist history to say that Americans hated videogames. Does anyone remember Pac Man fever? The album? It was a phenomenon. There was a veritable ton of Pac Man schwag (cheesy merchandise like bubble gum dispensers, keychains, Rubik's cube knockoffs, etc.) showing strong evidence of video games' pre-Nintendo dominance in American culture.

I was 14 or 15 around the time and remember it well. A few years before, everyone loved games. Every family had an Atari. Every mall had an arcade. EVERYONE played games. Even parents. And girls. Then, there was a crash, for whatever reason-- most likely because even the best games were limited and got boring fast. In 1984-5, if you liked video games, you owned a Commodore 64. The days of families-- or really anyone but pasty-faced geeks-- buying consoles and games was very much over. That is, until Nintendo revolutionized the market. Their games were light years beyond previous generation because they weren't just three screens of action that repeated until you died, they were fun and interesting worlds that could be explored. And unlike the typical Atari game that just got faster and faster on the same screen until you inevitably died, Nintendo games could be beaten and won.

As for revisionism-- I don't think there's any shortage of Pac Man or Atari nostalgia, especially on the web. 32-in-1 Atari joysticks sell by the millions and I see 20-somethings in vintage game shirts all the time. Are you really trying to suggest that no one remembers that era?

I'm very weary of articles, especially on boingboing.net, that pitch Mario Bros. as the original videogame. You all should be making fan art of Yar's Revenge, Pitfall and River Raid.

I haven't seen many articles like that, but I'll believe you. But I think this is a key to why Nintendo is so beloved-- you don't give a shit about Yar and why he wants revenge, or what the River Raid plane's mission was. You don't really even care why Pac Man does whatever he does. Nintendo's games and characters-- Zelda, Mario, Metroid, etc.-- have a story and a soul. They may look primitive now, but at the time they felt like cartoons brought to life.