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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 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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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
Why do people keep propogating this myth? Consoles have reached or exceeded "parity" with PCs at just about every generation (maybe all of them, but I'm too lazy to look up sources to back that claim up), only to be surpassed as the PC platform upgrades and moves on and the consoles settle in to their far longer life cycle.
This isn't something new. And neither is claiming that consoles have "finally reach technological parity with PCs." So can we really hang this one up, at least until the next "Next Generation" of consoles?
The Farewell Tour II
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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Actually, PCs are far more technically advanced still. While consoles are as fast or faster, with prettier graphics and whatnot, a PC has many more components than just CPU/memory. A PC has a more complicated archetecture because it has to deal with more devices. There are harddrives of types, USB, Firewire, serial, parrallel, PCI, IDE and then there are the internet protocols and all sorts. A PC is expected to run an operating system and a bunch of programs. It's expected to have an environment that a user can interact with. A console runs one program at a time. This program uses up as much of the CPU and memory as it can to be as fast and pretty as possible. There is much more that goes into PCs so that a PC can function as it's expected to, than goes into a console. PCs are only slower because harddrives and other busses are slower. The archetecture and complexity of a computer is what makes it slower. After buying all those components, the CPU and memory look expensive. A top of the line computer goes for way more than a console, and is faster. A computer at the same cost is very slow, but has much more functionality.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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~
Santa brought me the Rob the Robot bundle instead of the SMB bundle. Santa is such a jerk.