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Nintendo Ruined Video Games


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Around the time in the late 80s to early 90s when IBM first won the format war and dominated the market (specifically DOS era PCs prior to Win3.x) the games available for the platform sucked compared to the Nintendos and Segas of the console race.

 

As someone who had the DOS version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I can attest to this. :lol: :ponder: :| :skull:

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I gamed before the crash and even during. I switched to hanging in the arcades when everything was steamrolled and died for a few years. Then saw how Nintendo came along and created an excitement for games again. Was cool to see but its not some revolution like some make it out to be,was perfect timing in a market that wanted a spark and Nintendo was right there at the right time.

Nintendo took full advantage with the great games. My neighbors all playing Mike Tyson Punchout, the Super Mario games, and classics like Ms PacMan and PaperBoy,everyone was happy gaming full time again.

They deserve allot of credit for getting things back on track but no more than Atari did in the 70's or Sega,Nintendo,Sony, and Microsoft of today.

Nintendo played their part, but there would still be games today even if they hadn't. Just as there would be games if it wasn't Atari who made the home market explode i the 70's. Can't hedge all your bets into any one savior,that tunnel vision. Every decade there seems to be a new player that innovates, but the next decade over that momentum switches(no pun intended) to another player. Its a domino effect,they all have their rolls,can't just pat one on the back and say we'd be playing jacks and marbles if so and so company hadn't created the big boom effect. It doesn't work that way. Ofcourse people still were gaming overseas in Europe despite the crash in North America,I'm not discounting the PC scene over there. Just giving my views on what went on in small town America in '83-'85.

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For some reason the 8 bit Nes never impressed me as a kid and not even that much today. The commodore Amiga came out around the same time and just blew it away graphically even though it was incredibly expensive. I was much more into the Cinemaware titles then playing Mike Tyson's Punch Out which didn't even look as good as the arcade Punch Out. The SNES version was the first one that looked like the Arcade.

When the Sega Genesis finally came out in 89 which was a close to Amiga experience I definitely was impressed.

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For some reason the 8 bit Nes never impressed me as a kid and not even that much today. The commodore Amiga came out around the same time and just blew it away graphically even though it was incredibly expensive. ...

When the Sega Genesis finally came out in 89 which was a close to Amiga experience I definitely was impressed.

The Amiga was designed as a games machine. Could they have packaged a $300 Amiga console in 1985/86 and would people have bought it?

Edited by mr_me
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The Amiga was designed as a games machine. Could they have packaged a $300 Amiga console in 1985/86 and would people have bought it?

 

How about when some of its games were ported to this obscure American cartridge system in 1993?

 

Ugh the more I think about late 80s and early 90s gaming (especially the price-performance ratio), the happier I am about our current situation.

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Another thing to consider, and this is just me hating the Nintendo revisionism that has happened over the last few years, is that the biggest and best developers were making games for the PC, Amiga and Atari St (throw in C64 and spectrum etc) and pretty much ignoring the Nes or doing very late ports to it.

 

Besides the japanese developers like Konami and Capcom, you had alot of third rate (LJN) type developers making shovelware for the Nes. The quickie movie licensed stuff like Back to the Future or even Fester's Quest.

 

Whats even more interesting is that you have youtube channels that look at the shovelware games on the Nes as serious games that need to be considered simply because they are part of the Nes library. Most of those games were very quickly made and done to turn a quick buck and don't deserve 30 minute retrospective videos.

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PCI was up to 64-bit. couple that with soundblaster cards, and suddenly the PC was a compelling game platform.

Surely I'm just nitpicking, and you didn't mean it this way, but PCI sound cards + DOS programs = sad panda.

 

The NES versions of Ultima were acceptable enough in that they got me curious for the computer versions, so they're a win in that respect!

Sounds like me with the XBox 360's Games for Gold :)

 

The quickie movie licensed stuff like Back to the Future or even Fester's Quest.

Fester's Quest is a great* game, though. I'm sure they had originally planned for it to be a Blaster Master sequel, but at some point decided to throw a license on it. Sort of the opposite of what they had done with Journey to Silius and SunMan.

 

*the PAL version and derived rom patch fixes a lot of annoyances of the USA release

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Another thing to consider, and this is just me hating the Nintendo revisionism that has happened over the last few years, is that the biggest and best developers were making games for the PC, Amiga and Atari St (throw in C64 and spectrum etc) and pretty much ignoring the Nes or doing very late ports to it.

 

I think this here is hyperbole. Maybe they were the best when it came to adventure games and Western and CRPGs. But outside of that? I don't know. When it came to platformers and Action-RPGs, it seems like many Western developers on computer platforms didn't have a clue as to what constituted good game design. Many companies seemed to ignore how Japanese designers designed their platformers and action games and as such aren't all that polished as a result. Compare Zool on the Amiga to some of the better designed action and platform games on the Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo or the PC Engine. It's night and day. Also Computer Companies outside of thee US also tended to be lazy when they were progaming the control schemes of these games. It was as if they didn't know that 2 or more button controllers were a thing. Especially when 2 Button Controllers had been standard in the US since at least 1986.

 

And let's not forget the utter abortion of a company that was U.S. Gold. A Publisher that wouldn't know quality if it bit them in the ass.

Edited by empsolo
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I always loved waiting for games to load on my buddies commodore. And having to know load commands to run a game made it feel like you were really in a special club. I mean what do you do with YOUR games? Just plug them in and turn them on and they're instantly there? Pfft.

And that was one huge advantage to console games. No farting around waiting for machine to boot. No endless waiting for loading screens. Just insert cartridge and press power and it loads instantly.

 

Even 5th generation era was all about n64 vs ps1. N64 (and later gamecube) had much better antialias than playstation. Also those imfamous loading screens on ps1 were non-existent on n64 or so short you'd miss it if you blinked. So what if the disc held an order of magnitude more data (650 mbytes) than the largest cartridge (64 mbytes). Damnit, I wanna play my game now and not wait until next wek staring at loding screens... :grin:

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I think this here is hyperbole. Maybe they were the best when it came to adventure games and Western and CRPGs. But outside of that? I don't know. When it came to platformers and Action-RPGs, it seems like many Western developers on computer platforms didn't have a clue as to what constituted good game design. Many companies seemed to ignore how Japanese designers designed their platformers and action games and as such aren't all that polished as a result. Compare Zool on the Amiga to some of the better designed action and platform games on the Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo or the PC Engine. It's night and day. Also Computer Companies outside of thee US also tended to be lazy when they were progaming the control schemes of these games. It was as if they didn't know that 2 or more button controllers were a thing. Especially when 2 Button Controllers had been standard in the US since at least 1986.

 

And let's not forget the utter abortion of a company that was U.S. Gold. A Publisher that wouldn't know quality if it bit them in the ass.

 

 

I'll definitely give you the platformers that were stronger on the Nes as compared to the computer gaming platforms.

 

Funny story, I have memories of going to the amiga gaming section and staring at the Rolling Thunder game that tiertex did. Those screenshots were so exact! I didn't have an amiga at the time and could only stare at the package. Years later I played it and it was a total rubbish almost unplayable port.

Edited by retrocore9
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(...) the biggest and best developers were making games for the PC, Amiga and Atari St (throw in C64 and spectrum etc) and pretty much ignoring the Nes or doing very late ports to it.

 

Besides the japanese developers like Konami and Capcom, you had alot of third rate (LJN) type developers making shovelware for the Nes. The quickie movie licensed stuff like Back to the Future or even Fester's Quest.

Western developers indeed published a lot of bad games on Japanese consoles. :P On the other hand, and I was at the time too young to realise it, but my favorite games on my brother's Atari ST were in fact ports of Japanese games (RoboCop, Operation Wolf, Time Scanner, Pengo, Toki, 1943, etc.). Like any successful system, NES had a lot of games, which means a lot of bad ones, but a lot of good ones as well.

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From my perspective, Nintendo didn't save or ruin gaming, but it did fill a gap. The NES didn't really happen here, the Master System was much more prevalent. But then so were home computers.

 

What Nintendo did from my perspective was when the Amiga started to die, and the PC came along to take it's place, the SNES kept that sort of game alive as the rest of the gaming market matured (for want of a better word) on the PC. Games became more expansive and complex because now they had the horsepower and space to do that. But when I wanted to play a shooter or a fighting game, the SNES was where I did it. For that reason it remains my favourite console of all time.

 

It complemented what was going on at the time. It also signifies the point I think that console games and computer games separated. To that point the types of games on computers and consoles were quite similar. There's a definite split there and it's indeed when I started having both computers and consoles for different types of games. It's probably why I don't like the current generation of consoles as they're too much like PCs and I prefer them to do their own thing (hence my liking for the Wii U).

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Another thing to consider, and this is just me hating the Nintendo revisionism that has happened over the last few years, is that the biggest and best developers were making games for the PC, Amiga and Atari St (throw in C64 and spectrum etc) and pretty much ignoring the Nes or doing very late ports to it.

 

Besides the japanese developers like Konami and Capcom, you had alot of third rate (LJN) type developers making shovelware for the Nes. The quickie movie licensed stuff like Back to the Future or even Fester's Quest.

That's true, there was like an entirely different game ecosystem in the computer space and the Nintendo space with relatively little cross-over.

 

Part of it was Nintendo's strict policies I'm sure.

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