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Nintendo Ruined Video Games


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Should change the title to Sony/MS ruined gaming? Would that be better? :evil:

No but it would be a bit easier to troll up some responses that actually made a bit of sense, though you'd have to throw various third party companies and the media in there as enablers much like the seller is to the drug addict.

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I think if you name any trend, you could probably peg the thing that came after it as "ruining" its predecessor. As if the thing before could have just kept on keeping on ...

 

Atari "ruined" by Nintendo

Nintendo "ruined" by Sony

Tower Defense "ruined" by MOBA

maze games "ruined" by side scrollers

arcade games "ruined" by home games

consoles "ruined" by computers

handhelds "ruined" by mobile

premium "ruined" by free to play

side fighters "ruined" by 3D

3D fighters "ruined" by online

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If the glorious cornucopia of gaming options I have available to me nowadays is what "ruined" gaming looks like, I'm pretty ok with it.

 

In any case we're still better off with Nintendo ruining video games than if somehow Sega "saved" them....shudder....what a world that would be....

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I liked Nintendo back in the day because they made some arcade games I liked, like Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Popeye. Those guys want to make a console? Yeah, that sounds good to me. I had a lot of fun with the NES and didn't think it suffered too much from lazy side-scroller design (those 16-bit consoles, OTOH...). Something that always strikes me about Atari's post-2600 consoles is that they never evolved their games enough. I like the 7800 version of Asteroids, but it's just Asteroids again but with better graphics. Nintendo figured out that it was okay to change the formula a little.

 

I'm pretty happy with gaming right now because the indy/homebrew scene is big enough that I can always find something to play while comfortably ignoring most of the overhyped AAA releases, and thanks to all the sales and bundles out there, I don't even spend much money doing so.

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I think if you name any trend, you could probably peg the thing that came after it as "ruining" its predecessor. As if the thing before could have just kept on keeping on ...

 

Atari "ruined" by Nintendo

Nintendo "ruined" by Sony

Tower Defense "ruined" by MOBA

maze games "ruined" by side scrollers

arcade games "ruined" by home games ticket redemption machines

consoles "ruined" by computers

handhelds "ruined" by mobile

premium "ruined" by free to play

side fighters "ruined" by 3D

3D fighters "ruined" by online

Great list, but home games did not destroy the arcade, ticket redemption machines did. Or rather video arcade ruined pinball; ticket redemption ruined the video arcade. :P

 

Also to add to that list: SHMUPs ruined by first person shooters...

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hunh? yea no one is blaming commodore, apple, atari, acorn, sinclair, amstrad, or radio shack for having a monoploy in the 8 bit computer market, that's cause there was plenty of competition, you DO understand what a monopoly is right?

 

Not like the NES was any different as it is a 8 bit computer that connects to the TV, just that it used a Non standard Rom drive called a "Cart" instead of 3 1/2 (Only in japan), 5 1/2 Floppy or tape.

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Not like the NES was any different as it is a 8 bit computer that connects to the TV, just that it used a Non standard Rom drive called a "Cart" instead of 3 1/2 (Only in japan), 5 1/2 Floppy or tape.

 

you can see it that way, but back in the day there was a real difference between a computer and a video game console, which is probally why every console that tried to be a wanna be computer ultimately failed under its own weight and inability

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"Not like the NES was any different as it is a 8 bit computer that connects to the TV, just that it used a Non standard Rom drive called a "Cart" instead of 3 1/2 (Only in japan), 5 1/2 Floppy or tape."

 

I think that's the argument Tengen made when sued over Tetris; they had a license for computer versions, not game system versions. Didn't work.

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Nintendo gets a lot of undeserved credit for "saving" video games (which is not to say that Nintendo deserves no credit). Usually, it's from people who take the popular view that the entire pre-crash era was merely the time of the early failed experiments and evolutionary dead-ends of the video game industry, a time worth revisiting only for the purpose of considering the necessary mistakes which lead to the NES, the pinnacle of classic gaming. Nintendo made an important contribution, true enough, but it came at a price.

 

I've often wondered what video games would be like today if Nintendo had not dominated the market so completely after the crash (I'm specifically referring here to the American market). There was still plenty of demand for the kinds of video games that were being produced circa 1983; it was the glut of product that caused the crash. I can only speculate, but I think the market would eventually have corrected itself, and a new crop of companies—including the strongest of the pre-crash industry leaders—would have learned the lessons of the crash and recovered. But instead, companies like Nintendo and Sega swept in to fill the void, bringing with them a cultural shift from American consoles to Japanese. I'm sure that contributed in part to the game design aesthetic that the article discusses.

 

AtariAge user "mos6507" has also written about this:

 

I saw this transition, too, and the "generation gap" formulation was definitely applicable to my family. I was seven years old in late 1983, old enough to have been enjoying games in the pre-crash era for a few years, but my younger siblings ranged in age from four to newborn. By the time they were old enough to become gamers themselves, the NES had taken over everything, whereas I had made the transition to the Atari 800 (while also holding on to the 2600). I had fun with the NES, too, but I usually found the games that I was enjoying on the Atari side to be more diverse and interesting and nuanced than the typical NES fare. But, because that's what my siblings (and the majority of the market with them) had become accustomed to, "my" games just didn't interest them. I thought that "my" kinds of games still had a lot of potential, and I would have preferred to see more of them, but the market wasn't there for them anymore.

 

He was on a roll until he started talking about "Generation Y." I'm assuming he means Millennials. The earliest ones were born in 1981. He gives too much credit to 4-7 year old's for the NES' success. Many 12 year old's (such as me at the time) who were Xers were also responsible. All of my friends at the time played a big role into the success of Nintendo. I was a little different. I didn't drop Atari like many of my friends did, but I didn't hate Nintendo like some of the older Xers did either. I loved both.

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I think so too ... but they may have the numbers. One of the defining characteristics of Generation X is that we're a "gap generation," that there aren't that many of us relative to boomers and millennial.

 

The "cultural shift from American to Japanese" is certainly overblown. We had Pong, Asteroids, Missile Command, and Defender, sure. But Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Galaxian, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Frogger, Dig-Dug, Pole Position, Xevious, and many many more games came from Japan.

 

A lot of the best "Atari" games were NAMCO licenses.

 

Perhaps it was inevitable the next wave of home consoles would come from the East?

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I think so too ... but they may have the numbers. One of the defining characteristics of Generation X is that we're a "gap generation," that there aren't that many of us relative to boomers and millennial.

 

We're definitely a split generation as well. The older Xers are quite a bit different than younger Xers. Being 12 in 1985, I'm right smack in the middle. I think this is why I see both sides of the NES argument. The older Xers resented the NES, while the younger ones adored it. Me? I really enjoyed it, but I never stopped playing with my Ataris.

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I'm assuming he means Millennials. The earliest ones were born in 1981.

 

 

 

We're definitely a split generation as well. The older Xers are quite a bit different than younger Xers. Being 12 in 1985, I'm right smack in the middle.

 

I was 9 in 1985 and my views about the NES are similar to Zap!

 

I think the problem is that there is an even smaller snapshot of a generation that is unique and exists between X and millennial. I've seen people struggle with the "first" year of millennials and the last year of X, pushing the start of Ms all the way back to 1976 in some cases.

 

I think the conversation is relevant though as what plays a big part in the discussion is the relationship to technology. Back when people were trying to characterize generation Y (which was a real thing) they talked about how Ys related to their parents differently than Xs and generally expressed positive sentiments to their parents and authority figures. This was a significant change from X, but that only lasted as the dominant characteristic until the smart phone was released and since then you have this split of children who are born into a world with constant interconnectivity and those who were born before it. They may have similar views of authority, but they consume information and commercial products a bit differently.

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And of course, generalizations about generations always have exceptions.

 

Speaking of generations, we have some folks here who can't stand the Wikipedia numbering of "video game generations," putting ColecoVision in the same bucket as Atari VCS ... and they're only a few years apart.

 

Instead of asking when someone was born, maybe we need to ask questions about their relationship with technology.

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I was 9 in 1985 and my views about the NES are similar to Zap!

 

I think the problem is that there is an even smaller snapshot of a generation that is unique and exists between X and millennial. I've seen people struggle with the "first" year of millennials and the last year of X, pushing the start of Ms all the way back to 1976 in some cases.

 

I think the conversation is relevant though as what plays a big part in the discussion is the relationship to technology. Back when people were trying to characterize generation Y (which was a real thing) they talked about how Ys related to their parents differently than Xs and generally expressed positive sentiments to their parents and authority figures. This was a significant change from X, but that only lasted as the dominant characteristic until the smart phone was released and since then you have this split of children who are born into a world with constant interconnectivity and those who were born before it. They may have similar views of authority, but they consume information and commercial products a bit differently.

Different sources will have different start dates to generations.

 

Almost everyone will agree that the Boomers started in 1946 after the soldiers returned home from WWII and had lots of babies.

 

But generations are supposed be 18 or 20 years. So the end of the Boomers/start of GenX is said to be around 1966 due to 20 years.

 

But then it seems many demographers were determined that the year 2000 must be a starting point of a generation because it's such a clean number. Therefore the previous generation must have begun around 1980.

 

But this thinking leaves Gen X short-changed at only being 14-years long

 

in reality, apart from the the WWII example, it's really hard to determine when exactly one generation begun and ended.

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There is a lot of variance among the people who assign traits to generations, but I've always understood a generation is normally marked by the significant departures in social norms, practices, technology, entertainment, etc. occurring when they come of age around 14-21 years old. So for these generations, the pivotal developments (read biggest impressions on them) are generally:

  • Baby Boomers 1954-74 (Fifties boom, protests, hippies, space race, end of Vietnam)
  • Gen X 1974-87 (Cold war, post disco, computer revolution, stock market boom, dot com crash)
  • Millennials 1988-2002ish (Internet, MTV, Gulf War, Smart Phones etc.)
  • GenZ or whatever 2003-2017 (Reality TV, social media, and some other crap that's poisoning their brains) :)

Of course nobody truly agrees completely. One interesting article I read a while back was about how different generations self identified. In particular, the Millennials were associating themselves as much more politically aware, an active force for change, and environmentally conscious. Legitimate research and analysis showed this was not the case at all, but they have a tendency to think more highly of themselves than they actually behave in those areas.

https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/05/millennials-the-greatest-generation-or-the-most-narcissistic/256638/

 

But to the point.....We can all agree the current version of Atari sucks.

Edited by JBerel
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