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Flashback NES
Gamespot has a piece in their Flashback series up, looking at the significance of the NES, Nintendo's original console offering in the United States. Last year the console celebrated its 20th year. Gamespot has a talk with Nintendo and reflects on the games that made the system great. From the article: "There was no denying that the NES was a phenomenon. By the 1990's one in every three American homes had an NES and video games had become a billion-dollar industry. Nintendo had taken over Saturday morning cartoons, cereal boxes, and the surface of commercial merchandise the world over. Through several different iterations, from the Japanese-exclusive Famicom Disk System to the 90's released top-loading NES, the NES dominated video game sales for nearly a decade."
I still remember when my parents bought my NES. Super Mario Bros. and Jackal. Great games! I would spend countless hours in front of the TV playing those games, and others that followed.
Not much differnet from today, when I spend hours in front of a computer at work and a TV at home, playing games!
Starmen.net
Back in the day, it seemed like everyone who was really serious about gaming was playing on PCs, typically Amigas or Ataris since they were far ahead of x86s through the 80s and early 90s, but also on x86 PCs once they pulled ahead in the 90's. At the time, PC tech was just quite far ahead of game consoles. Kids gamed on consoles, and adults gamed on home computers.
Now, it seems like consoles have finally reached technological parity with PCs (never mind ease of use). The only remaining problem is input methods for some types of complex games.
I hope Nintendo's Revolution system is successful in their goals of providing a universally accessible, cheap gaming machine, the way the NES was 21 years ago. Each year, gaming has become more and more targeted toward the "hardcore" gamers, so that you need more buttons, longer FMVs, more licensed rap songs, and much more expensive consoles. All that so you can ooh and awe over seeing glistening sweat shaders on the polygons of a basketball player. It's pretty sad.
I remember my dad playing Super Mario Bros. with me. Rad Racer and a few others, too. There's no way he'd pick up Halo or Final Fantasy today. Not only do these games require an extended commitment (which means only hardcore gamers with lives can truly enjoy them instead of the pick-up-and-play nature of older games), they've abandoned their simplicity and uniqueness in exchange for more shaders and polys.
Immersion is supposed to draw you in, yes; but when you're immersed, the game should be fun to play. A good example is Legend of Zelda, which still remains reasonably simple to play, though Windwaker did add some complexities. But perhaps the greatest example of a "modern" game that was as simple as the old games yet had the depth people demand today is Super Mario 64. Controlling that game is such a piece of cake, and I think Nintendo wants all their games to be that easy to control through their new controller (which an EA rep leaked will have touch sensitivity as well!).
"Sufferin' succotash."
That's what the gaming world needs. What made the NES such a hit? To me it was the wide variety of games, the availability of sports games (Double Dribble was awesome) and the actually interesting gameplay. The secret to Nintendo's success over the years was that even though their games were often too "cutesy" for the "hardcore" gamer the gameplay was fun, immediately accessable and intuitive. The new controller might be the ticket, but I also think they need a way to attract the puzzle gaming crowd to the new system and they'd have another round of amazing success. (Disclaimer, I hate puzzle games, I only have the patience for FPS games and RTS if it doesn't take too long to grasp and build, do all my "grinding" in real life)
20 years of broken cartridge loader springs, flashing power lights, blowing into cartridges, games wigging out while you're playing, and...
JUSTIN BAILEY
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hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
I am old enough to remember the NES, Genesis, and SNES, but I even as a child I never understood the desire to sit in front of a television playing a video game or watching a show. For me, the Apple II was more revolutionary. The ability to spend hours of time making your own hardware, writing little programs in BASIC (before I started with C on an old 386) has much more entertainment value for me. If you look at today's video gaming consoles, you will see that a lot of items that were originally in laptop and desktop-form factor computers have been adopted by video game consoles. Originally, the media games were stored had a lot of overhead. There was no ROM on the NES, it was all in the game. IIRC, even RAM could be found on the expansion cards. These days, the media only stores the game itself, and is much less complex (more affordable to the game manufacturers). Just like floppy disks in the first IBM mainframes. Even today, I don't really care for gaming (gaming doesn't really satisfy my interests), but modern video consoles are so similar to desktop and laptop form factor computers, that they can even run the same operating systems (Linux and NetBSD run on a Playstation 2, just like they run on my ibook and powerbook).
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
What are you talking about, Nintendo was nothing, SEGA was the bomb!!!11
No but really, the sega master system was a good console, and never really got the recognition it deserved. Sort of like how the Atari ST was actually better than the Amiga. Ah, the memories...
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You sound like a very good imitation of Jack Thompson talking out of his ass.
Because you never read for enjoyment, or play silly games like chess or scrabble or whatever, right? All you do ever is work and masturbate?
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I remember the NES quite well. Not because I played it when it first came out. When I was at Accolade/Infogrames/Atari (1998-2004), I was something of an "old timer" (one of a handful graybeards in the QA department) because I played Pong in the basement of the Sears store near downtown San Jose (now called "Midtown" with a Safeway and a McDonald) and the Atari 2600 when they both first came out. The reaction of the younger testers was usually, "You mean there were video games before the NES? Wow! You are old!"
Nintendo had taken over Saturday morning cartoons, cereal boxes, and the surface of commercial merchandise the world over.
If anybody is interested, there are numerous examples of this at Nintendo: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Personally, I think that the Super Mario Bros. ceiling fan best shows the complete grasp Nintendo had on many people's lives.
I'm the same way except that I'm even more productive, I skip out on working altogether!
--- Do you believe in the day?
In the 1986 I remember, PCs had more memory than consoles but pathetic video hardware with no accelerated blitting or pageflipping, making them unsuitable for any gaming that didn't involve a mostly static screen or vector graphics. Sure, the Amiga and the IIgs could do more, but a PC? Never.
At that time, hardware specifically designed for *gaming* allowed a number of gametypes that simply could not be done on the PC. When the original Commander Keen came out, in 1990, people were stunned that you could do a Mario-type full screen scroller on the PC.
Even the hardware details you're quoting are iffy. IBM PCs certainly didn't have 32 bit processors in 1986.
"1986: September - IBM announces the IBM PC-XT Model 286, with 640KB RAM, 1.2MB floppy drive, 20MB hard drive, serial/parallel ports, and keyboard for US$4000."
Action gaming on a 286 compared to an NES? No contest. NES wins. Particularly with that $4000 price tag on the 286. Yes, there were deeper and more complex games on the PC, but mostly because of the keyboard and mouse. Just like today. Not so much the mouse on the 286, but it was starting to pick up.
The balance shifted around Doom... The general purpose nature of PCs meant they could handle 3-D decently, where the SNES and Genesis hadn't been designed for this kind of thing and their lack of pure horsepower held them back. By Quake, PCs started to have hardware acceleration for gaming, and so the consoles couldn't pull that trick any more.
Don't get me wrong, I liked PC gaming back then a lot, but I also programmed games starting around 1994. Even with hand-coded ASM I could see I was never going to keep up with an SNES in 2-D, which was a three-year old system. Compare Jill of the Jungle or the later Keens, which ran on 1991 PCs, to Earthworm Jim. The disparity is ridiculous, even with the legendary Carmack writing the engine on Keen.
When I realizeed the Zelda series (and NES) was 20 years old, I was shocked realizing how quickly time has gone by.........
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
In my opinion, the NES was the best system ever made. It had games with better play control than what they make now, and it was just pure fun.
Don't forget about the NES.
NES hit 20 on Feb 21, 2006.
Because last night I got the sudden urge to play some original Zelda so I got out my dreamcast and also my NES emulation disc with like 1,000 games and played Zelda all night long. Those old games are still a lot of fun today and bring me back to when I was 7-8 and would play all night long with my friends trying to beat games. Good times!
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Actually there have been recent studies showing giving children video games wasn't all that irresponsible. Students who have "learned" how to play video games are more capable of performing multiple tasks at once and are also better at blocking out distractions while trying to concentrate on a singular task, like say a test at school.
Blah, I can't find any articles to this study. "video games concentration" just simply spits out too many results for the game concentration and adding in "study" to the search easily comes up with an old study from 2002 stating the opposite., but the one I'd seen on TV news is only 1-2 months old.
I remember getting my NES. Got the gun AND R.O.B. in fact. (Although I found playing Gyromyte with my feet much easier than using ROB)
I spent nearly every day playing on that thing. Or over at a friends house playing a 2-player simo game. There were a ton of great titles on that system.
Hey anyone remember that article in Nintendo Power? The one which said something like "Some games might slow down and flicker. This is because the game is SO powerful!!!"
Man talk about a biased magazine. I mean it is Nintendo who owns it after all. At the time though I ate it all up with gusto! Plus by subscribing during a promotion: I got a copy of Dragon Warrior.
Last night my firend had a house-warming party. After the BBQ, many of the attending 20-somethings hit the living room for some NES/Mario Bros/Duck Hunt action.
-bZj
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I just beat Super Mario Bros 3 two days ago, this makes me feel great to know it took me 20 years!
Is it just me, or is Nintendo the only company that doesn't cater only to mature audiences? Does Gen Y (or Z or whatever) really demand such over-the-top nightmarish games? Am I so old that only us NES veterans enjoy games that even my young kids can play?
I went to the toy store to buy my son a birthday present. While I was there, I walked down the aisle, taking note of the rough percentage of games for each platform were rated anything below teen or mature. I noticed that only Nintendo had any games I'd want my kids to play.
I don't mind a little violence, but why does every game have to simulate a nightmare or a crime to be worth playing? I just don't understand. I'd appreciate it if someone explained it to me.
Older gamers (such as myself, 33) have other demands on their time yet still want to get a quick game in now and then.
I've gotten hooked on Desert Combat, a mod for Battlefield 1942. (I'm aware of Battlefield 2, but I'm on a Mac so this is what I get, I console myself with reports that Battlefield 2 gameplay is not so great hehe) I can hop in, play a map or 2, a couple rounds, and be out in 20-30 minutes. Extremely fun gaming for the time investment, and it naturally ends after each round, during which you have about 2 minutes during level-load/respawn time to reality-check yourself and quit, instead of playing another round.
I do love roleplaying games too (my faves ever are Angband, Fallout 2, Neverwinter and WoW) but I stay away from them lately, as you fire up an RPG and suddenly it's 15 hours later, and I can't afford to have that much time taken away from other stuff.
FPS's are easy-in, easy-out.
Why does a game have to simulate a nightmare or a crime for you to like it?
I saw the Nintendo R.O.B. downtown saying "need input" over and over again the other day.
Jazz also ran choppy on all but the fastest hardware, and as you say, it was limited to 256 colours without transparency.
The SNES had been out for three years and PC action games were only beginning to approach SNES performance. That's pretty bad.
20 years old!! I can't belive it, It seems like less than 10 years ago I had my Intellivision and Coleco Vision going!
In my 1986, the 80386 processor was available for use in PCs.
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
The 386 was a 32-bit processor and was out in 1986 if memory serves. The SX version had a 16-bit bus connection but was still 32-bits internally.
occultae nullus est respectus musicae - originally a Greek proverb
Fuck the haters. Say it with me now: up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-B-A-sele ct-start
How many times can you and your buddy (or modified ROB) blow up em dem aliens? Hurry up man! Reagan is counting on you, you brave Contra warriors!
Ya know, looking back, sometimes I'm amazed I'm not more insane than I am.
Math is math. Regular expression is regular expression. The tools are there. The future is now.
No, I read, play scrabble, chess, work, AND masterbate... how dfo you like them apples?
/end semi serious humor
On a serious note though, I do get exercise, AND play video games... its called working with a fitness trainer, and playing DDR. ^_^
If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
I agree. Video games suck. I have no problems with other people playing them, and I'll admit that as a kid I desperately wanted an NES because the neighbor kid had one and it seemed like so much fun, but now, looking back, it's one of those decisions that I admit was the right one. My parents didn't let me watch commercial television, either, and that's another draconian restriction that I hated at the time but that has left me far less psychologically manipulated by marketers and their ilk.
I'm tempted, from time to time, to play a video game, but I never seem to be able to do it for more than a minute or two without getting bored. I much prefer writing games than playing them.
It seems to me that most "nerds" these days (especially on Slashdot) are also "gamers". That's cool and all, but I'm glad there are others (like me) who just don't get the gamer thing.
Of course, you might just be a troll, in which case IHBT, HAND.
Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy certainly did not set the standard for computer role-playing games. I am not sure which came first, but the credit for that achievement would have to go to either Ultima or Wizardry (which was my personal fave back in the day).
My fist Atari was awsome, I thought it was the bomb when it first came out. But back in 1985 there was a new kid on the block, The Nintendo Entertainment system. Which I believe retailed for around $199.99 when they first hit the shelves. The first systems came with R.O.B. the robot, The lightgun and two games. (Super Mario brothers/duckhunt and Gyromite.) Then a couple years later they eliminated the robot and sold the system with a lightgun and the Super Mario brothers and Duckhunt game pack. Needless to say, by then everyone and their brother had one. (This was around 1987.) People were hooked, god help you if wanted to buy your kid one for Christmas. Around 1988 games were being released left and right, which were typically being sold for around $39.99 for a new release game. Zelda, Metroid, Mike Tysons Punchout, Contra, Double Dragon and Super Mario Bros. 2 were just a few of the Big time titles of between 87 and 89, then you had even bigger hits like Ninja Gaiden and Super Mario Bros. 3...which were hard to find when they first hit the stores. I remember one kid offering me 100 bucks for my Super Mario Bros. 3 cartridge.
:>
If you were part of that era, I'm sure you remember how crazy it was, it came to a point where kids started writing their names on the games to avoid having their game stolen or lost. I lost track of how many times my mom would have to call other kids parents to find games I had let them borrow, most of the time the kids would trade those games off to some other kid and you would have to track them down...or borrow one from the same kid and never return it. (had to break even somehow)
I will admit something though, and this is very low of me, but I was so hooked on NES at the time, I started renting games and swapped out the board inside with my games. I had made a special tool to do this, after many "swaps" I finally got caught and had to pay for the game. $39.99 (MegaMan 2)
As I went into the 1990's, I started to get more involved in newer system, my first 16 bit system was a turbo-grafx 16 (I couldn't afford a Genesis) but eventually I made it there and bought one. Next up was the Super-Nes, I was the first kid in my county to buy one, in fact I got it before the release date (thanks to a toys r' us worker) Mode 7 and Scaling was awsome.
Oh well, each system has their own story, which I could ramble on for hours and hours. But I will say one more thing, The NES was the best and most fun I ever had. Mainly because I had friends, who enjoyed the same thing....NES
up,up,down,down,left,right,left,right a,b,a,b select,start (30 guys on contra)
~Later~
I mean, Katamari Damacy is one of the best family-friendly games ever created, and it's a PS2 exclusive. (due to its controls, although one COULD port it to GC if one really wanted) I would go so far to say, in fact, I think the NUMBER of innovative / creative games on each platform is about the same. The difference is that the GC has a much higher ratio of these games due to less of the really violent ones coming out for it.
Bush: He's Liberal in all the wrong ways.
I'm not a troll. My last few serious comments have been modded as flamebait/troll though. I wish my parents didn't let me watch television, I know I won't let my children do that. I don't even watch television, so I won't miss anything. I don't understand why "nerds" are so into video games nowadays either...
really 867993
Karma schkarma
Even today, I don't really care for you. Whatever you like sucks.
Although the 386 itself was out, it was not in PCs. There were plenty of 32 bit processors. They just weren't being used widely because of cost. It was a different market than we have now. The newest technology took a long time to be widely sold.
On that same front, one could talk about the actual release of the NES in Japan, which was earlier.
Motherboards for the 386 were as dear as dragon's teeth in 1986. It had only just been released.
I talked about a 286 selling for $4,000. Adjusted for inflation, this is something like $7,000. A 386 would have been significantly more. Let's say $8,000 of today's dollars. That's conservative.
Obviously if you're willing to spend that much money on what is essentially development hardware you're going to get more power than is in a mass-market console worth a couple of hundred bucks. That's not a reasonable comparison. Twenty years from now will you talk about quad-processor Opteron systems with 8 gigabytes of RAM and whatever nVidia spits out by Christmas, and say that was the condition of the PC gaming market in 2006?
I do think this is a big part of the issue at hand. Some of the people in 1986 were lucky enough to have many thousands of dollars available to spend on this, or parents who had the money. These people were, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, tasting the future. The 1986 Amiga was in many ways a little slice of everyone else's 1993.
What's important to note is that the content was not being written for these bleeding edge systems. There were a few games, but mostly not. It's probably instructive to look at something like Space Quest 3, a big PC seller in 1989, but with graphics that certainly didn't compare on an aesthetic basis to Super Mario 2 or 3. That was the state of the PC gaming market in the late 80s. Blurry, unreliable graphics written for EGA long after VGA had come out. Even if you had the newest hardware, IRQ conflicts and DOS memory limitations meant you probably couldn't write for it and game companies sure weren't going to bet on it. Don't forget how long it took for sound cards to be widely available. I knew people who didn't have them even in 1992.
If you want to define PC gaming in a restricted way, I'm there too. I had a IIgs. I was enveloped in the beautiful strains of Ancient Land of Ys coming out of my custom Ensoniq DSP chip while high-resolution graphics whizzed by. The version of Wolfenstein for my IIgs was nicer than the one for PCs, even though the PCs it was running on were five years newer. I just don't think my $9,000 setup defined the market. I wish it had.
I love my PS2, but the PS2 and XBox did nothing to make gaming mainstream compared to what the Atari and NES did, considering that most any gaming was done on kit ordered PCs
You can't make a blanket statement like 'video games suck' or 'tv sucks' without being just as ignorant as those that were allowed unabashed access to them. It's like everything else - all things should be enjoyed responsibly and in moderation. That's what my parents did and I'm no 'slave to advertisers'. In fact, my parents constantly told (and showed, much more important) the importance of seeing all sides of a picture and making a decision based on all the facts presented.
Sorry, but the NES was crap. Sure, it had some great games like Life Force and a few others, but the first party titles sucked. Sega is the ONLY company who knows how to make good first party titles - I mean, just look at Panzer Dragoon Saga for the Sega Saturn. My god, it's easily the best RPG in existence, and is precisely how all RPGs should be; it amazes me to this day that the battle engine and gameplay mechanics of PDS have not been copied by other developers...they're either stupid, or just too ignorant. Sega is, and always will be, the only ones who know how to make great games (though I wish they would pull their head out of their ass as of late and show off their true potential again like they did in the past. I want Panzer Dragoon Saga 2, damnit!)
I had an NES, a Genesis, and then bought a PS1 when they first came out in 1995. These systems were excellent in their own right, and you could chart a real progression in the gaming experience with each new generation (Sonic at 16-bit really *was* better than 8-bit Mario, and the Madden/FIFA games on PS1 finally developed the sort of realism that you really need for a sports game and that the Genesis/SNES couldn't provide).
But something happened after PS1...the game companies stopped innovating, and the games stopped getting better, they just got more detailed, and more complicated. And I lost interest (and from this thread, I can tell I'm not the only one)...part of the allure of gaming for me was as an escape, but who wants to escape to a world more impossible to control than the one you're escaping from?
I finally broke down a bought a GBA SP two weeks ago, but only so I could go back and play all those great gameboy games from the early 90s that were just *fun*, not maddening, to play.
Nes is 'still a hit' Thanks to ROMS and emulation software.There alot of them
on the interwebs(or BT)
Its much more fun then crappy flash games
and modern 3d crap.When i want entertainment i can always take a rom and play right away from my 25GB rom collection.I prefer Genesis games though
for the polished look,but Nes is where the gameplay is(and where your know to play on the first game).