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."

competition with PC games, then and now

[Anonymous Coward]

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 never understood gaming...

[Zweideutig]

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).

SEGA

[iogan]

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...

Re:competition with PC games, then and now

[peterfa]

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.

NES marketing

[Anonymous Coward]

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 [i-mockery.com]

Personally, I think that the Super Mario Bros. ceiling fan [i-mockery.com] best shows the complete grasp Nintendo had on many people's lives.

Re:competition with PC games, then and now

[Anonymous Coward]

This might be generally true of the 90s, but not the 80s. Even then, you have to consider the role of cost in the reason why adults had computers and kids had consoles.

In the 80s I had a C64, which was an agressively priced home computer. I had boxes full of games for it, but I prefered the NES due to the superior graphics and lack of load times. In the early 90s, I wanted an Amiga, but there was no way my parents were going to buy me one, so I had an SNES. By the mid/late 90s I switched to PC, because I was old enough to work and buy things for myself (and because the graphics of the original playstation looked like total crap compared what the original 3dfx Voodoo could produce). Now I've come full circle and I'm back to consoles, but that's another story.

Re:Are we remembering the same 1986?

[Mprx]

Jazz Jackrabbit was released in 1994, and it had near SNES quality graphics. 60fps smooth scrolling at higher than SNES resolution. It was only worse in being limited to 256 colors and lacking the SNES's transparency effects.

Nintendo, the greatest thing...ever.

[beast6228]

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)