So the NES did all these to save gaming?

[Jakandsig]

I was looking at a wikipedia article that seems to be considered true by many people in the gaming industry and I wanted to know that if these accomplishments were indeed 100% true as many of you seem to not realize in earlier thread how the NES is the reason why video games in general still exist:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(third_generation)

 

and this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System

 

and this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

 

Now here is the list:

 

1.The NES introduced tile-based graphics. Introduced a leap in game design seen by neither console or computer.

 

2.The NES introduced game suthorization.

 

3.IGN says that Atari killed the industry and the NES saved it.

 

4.There was no video game market at the time according to sources like EGM.

 

5.NES is the longest running console and it's not the 2600, even though people still say it's the 2600, so something is missing here.

 

6.Invented the D-pad

 

7.Created the Modern gameing industry.

 

8.SMB single-handedly for the most part revived the industry.

 

9.Games did not scroll until the NES.

 

Now, these 9 points are often considered true, but many people here had said these are not true before but provided no evidence. Systems like the 7800 were commercial failures and were forgotten as the NES saved the industry day one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[The Usotsuki]

I was looking at a wikipedia article that seems to be considered true by many people in the gaming industry and I wanted to know that if these accomplishments were indeed 100% true as many of you seem to not realize in earlier thread how the NES is the reason why video games in general still exist:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_(third_generation)

 

and this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System

 

and this:

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Bros.

 

Now here is the list:

 

1.The NES introduced tile-based graphics. Introduced a leap in game design seen by neither console or computer.

Norp. Colecovision had that - hell, the TI-99 had it, since it was the same video chip.

 

ETA: Didn't the VIC-20 have tile graphics?

 

2.The NES introduced game suthorization.

Arguably wouldn't that be the Atari 7800?

 

3.IGN says that Atari killed the industry and the NES saved it.

ROFL

 

4.There was no video game market at the time according to sources like EGM.

LOL WUT?

 

5.NES is the longest running console and it's not the 2600, even though people still say it's the 2600, so something is missing here.

Pretty sure the 2600 lasted 1977-1992? NES was 1985-1994, not? That would definitely give the win to the 2600 over the NES.

 

6.Invented the D-pad

Hm. Possible.

 

7.Created the Modern gameing industry.

 

8.SMB single-handedly for the most part revived the industry.

 

9.Games did not scroll until the NES.

 

Now, these 9 points are often considered true, but many people here had said these are not true before but provided no evidence. Systems like the 7800 were commercial failures and were forgotten as the NES saved the industry day one.

...I think those points were written by a NES fanboy.

Edited November 1, 2013 by The Usotsuki

[Seob]

6.Invented the D-pad

 

 

 

Not the NES, but it was first introduced on the Game & Watch "Donkey Kong".

[+SmittyB]

1: Home computers have been using tile-based graphics for games since somebody realised they could change the character graphics to look like UFOs

2: No idea on this one

3: The games industry never died in the UK and by the time the NES came out we already had the C64 and CBM Amiga. (The people who had neither of those bought the superior Master System)

4: See 3

5: The master system released in 1986 was still supported in Brazil up until very recently (possibly still is)

6: The D-Pad as a single peice of plastic was first used on the Donkey Kong game & watch game. Before that plenty of games had buttons arranged in a cross but were seperate

7: Nonsense, see 3

8: It certainly set a higher standard for games but again see 3

9: Games scrolled, some even scrolled smoothly, but the difficulty of doing this in software made it rare.

 

[+save2600]

 

 

Not the NES, but it was first introduced on the Game & Watch "Donkey Kong".

 

Don't people consider the Intellivision controller a d-pad? It's a pad that allows for directional movement, so...

[+Gemintronic]

 

Don't people consider the Intellivision controller a d-pad? It's a pad that allows for directional movement, so...

 

No. It's a miniature Ouija board that sometimes predicts when your car will crash causing a game over.

 

On topic: most of those true facts are wrong. Did Nintendo popularize some of those talk points? Sure. Invent? No.

[Bill Loguidice]

While the hyperbole is excessive, at a basic level it's absolutely true that Nintendo and the NES revived videogames in the biggest market in the world, North America. What's also true is that other videogames never stopped selling in North America, but many companies did pull out of the market and there was excessive product dumping for a few years as a result. The NES was the right product, right approach, etc., at the right time to reignite excitement in videogames. While those of us who were fans of the pre-Crash systems lament the NES's rise, the fact of the matter remains that none of the pre-crash competitors were in a position to move the industry forward the way it needed to be. In other words, we probably needed the proverbial house to be cleaned to bring the industry to the heights that it was. Eventually the same thing happened on the computer side, where dozens of competitors eventually pared down to just a few competitors. Choice is good, but excessive choice does present a great deal of market confusion and retards growth until the market expands enough to support more competitors again.

[+RevEng]

As a baseline for discussion, The NES/Famicom was released in Japan in 1983.

 

 

1The NES introduced tile-based graphics. Introduced a leap in game design seen by neither console or computer.

 

The Atari 8-bit line, released in 1979, had redefinable characters, which are tiles by any definition I can think of. Depending on which character mode was used, these could be monochromatic or multi-color, and varied in size. They were regularly used for game terrain and moving game objects.

 

 

2.The NES introduced game suthorization.

 

The previously mentioned Atari 7800 was released in 1984, so it doesn't qualify here. I can't think of a counter example, so I think this one probably belongs to the NES.

 

 

3.IGN says that Atari killed the industry and the NES saved it.

 

I believe it's true that IGN says that, but it's not an unqualified fact. A statement closer to the truth may be that it saved the North American console gaming. Computer gaming in NA didn't crash as such; during the crash the C64 was selling like hotcakes. As previously stated, UK and other parts of the world didn't see a crash.

 

 

4.There was no video game market at the time according to sources like EGM.

 

See the previous answer.

 

 

5.NES is the longest running console and it's not the 2600, even though people still say it's the 2600, so something is missing here.

 

I'll take "longest running" to mean being sold by the OEM. NES ran from 1983-2003. (20 years) The Atari 2600 ran from 1977-1992. (15 years)

 

On the other hand, "Atari" sold versions of the Atari Flashback 2, a 2600 compatible, as late as 2010. So this one really depends on how you look at it.

 

 

6.Invented the D-pad

 

As others have pointed out, it was first in the Game & Watch or Intellivision. As to which one, it depends on how strictly you define "game pad".

 

 

7.Created the Modern gameing industry.

 

That's just silly. The gaming industry existed before the NES and never stopped existing, with the exception of a subset of the industry in North America.

 

 

8.SMB single-handedly for the most part revived the industry.

 

See above. You need to greatly qualify the above statement for it to even come close to being true.

 

 

9.Games did not scroll until the NES.

 

There were a ton of scrolling games before the NES was released. Here's a few that came to mind...

 

Skiing, 1980 Activision Inc, 2600

Eastern Front, 1981 Atari Inc, 8-bit computer line

Haunted House, 1982 Atari Inc, 2600

Choplifter, 1982 Brøderbund, Apple II

[+Gemintronic]

What the big N had was the smarts to invest heavily in retail so the stores had nothing to lose. The rest is iffy.

[mkiker2089]

People forget about the top load NES. The NES didn't stop when the SNES came out.

[high voltage]

Scrolling games?

Let's see: Jump Bug (1981) first scrolling platform game with jumping (hence Jump Bug), and scrolling vertically and horizontal

Consoles: Defender, Grand Prix, Barnstorming, Super Cobra and many more just on VCS.

 

D-Pad: Blockade (arcade) 1976.

console: Intellivision and Entex Select a Game console (pre game and watch).

 

Nintendo (NES) is responsible for fucking up the control method, that's true for starters.

 

 

NES saving the industry?, hello, A8, Apple ][ and C64 and IBM (PCs) had a flourishing gaming industry between 1983 and 1992 (in IBMs case, still going strong, the IBM is the most sold gaming machine in the world, earning the most revenue).

Edited November 1, 2013 by high voltage

[mkiker2089]

Console and computer gaming are different markets though and were more so in the 80s. Did the NES save gaming? Well I'm not saying that but it helped a lot. I think console gaming would have come back with Sega had the NES not existed though.

 

The odd thing is how many people beleived the market was done for. As a child I knew games were here to stay.

[+FujiSkunk]

Throwing my two cents in...

 

1.The NES introduced tile-based graphics. Introduced a leap in game design seen by neither console or computer.

Debatable, but essentially false. The Apple II, Commodore 64, and Atari 8-bits all have the ability to create graphics using customized character sets. Furthermore, the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bits particularly encouraged the use of character sets to create graphics by offering a set of preprogrammed "graphic characters." Where the debate comes in is whether these graphic characters should be called "tiles." I say it's a case of "to-may-to, to-mah-to."

 

2.The NES introduced game authorization.

Also debatable. The Famicom came out in Japan in 1983, before the Atari 7800's finalization in 1984. But the Famicom didn't have a lock-out chip. Lock-out chips didn't happen on a Nintendo console until the NES was release in 1985. But then the Atari 7800 didn't really get a major release until 1986.

 

Beyond that, while it wasn't exactly a case of hardware-enforced "authorization," Mattel did introduce a revision in their Intellivision II to intentionally break certain third-party cartridges, particularly those published by Coleco. The Intellivision II was released in 1982.

 

All things considered, I say the Atari 7800 wins by a technicality, though others will dispute that.

 

3.IGN says that Atari killed the industry and the NES saved it.

A gross oversimplification, but there is some truth to it. First, it depends on what you mean by "industry." If you mean the "North American home video game console industry," then yes, you could say Atari killed the industry, though you could also say the industry was doomed by the very things that had made it so big in the early '80s in the first place. And then yes, you could say Nintendo saved the industry by repeating what Atari did right and avoiding what Atari did wrong. This isn't to say Atari imploded under its own cancerous hubris (though that certainly played a factor), it's just more that Nintendo benefited greatly from 20/20 hindsight.

 

4.There was no video game market at the time according to sources like EGM.

False. The market was there, but limping along. As others have mentioned, home computers and video games for those computers were doing just fine, thank you. But even the console market still had a presence, even if it was a very small presence compared to a few years before. The Atari 2600 never completely ceased production, and even 1985, the lowest year of the crash, saw a handful of new cartridges released.

 

5.NES is the longest running console and it's not the 2600, even though people still say it's the 2600, so something is missing here.

The Atari 2600 was manufactured from late 1977 to the very beginning of 1992. The Famicom was manufactured from 1983 to 2003. The NES was manufactured from 1985 to 1995. So, the Atari 2600 beats the American NES, but not the Japanese Famicom.

 

6.Invented the D-pad

I would say this one is true, though only in the context of video game consoles. As others have mentioned the "D-pad" and controls like it existed on handheld games that predate the NES and even the Famicom. Credit Nintendo for knowing a good thing when they saw it.

 

7.Created the Modern gameing industry.

Arguable, but essentially true. A lot of popular game genres were either born or became popular on the NES, and Nintendo did start the practice of licensing and restricting third-party publishers.

 

8.SMB single-handedly for the most part revived the industry.

SMB indeed was the killer-app for the NES when it was released, no question about that. You can debate how much of the industry's revival was due to Nintendo in general and SMB in particular, but it's not far-fetched to say both put together helped create the unstoppable 8-bit juggernaut that Nintendo became.

 

9.Games did not scroll until the NES.

False. The Commodore 64 has intentional hardware support for horizontal and vertical scrolling, and is easily programmed to do diagonal scrolling as well. But even before the Commodore's release, Haunted House and Defender proved the Atari 2600 can do very good vertical scrolling and serviceable horizontal scrolling.

[+Gemintronic]

I'm pretty sure the other things percolating out of Japan would have taken the big Ns place had they not taken the strategy they did. Sega's Mark III (our SMS) would have gotten more limelight and computer gaming would've been there too.

 

The term "saving" is a little extreme.

[Jess Ragan]

Oh geez, not one of these topics again...

 

Look, there were a lot of innovations that arrived before the NES was released in the United States. However, they were very early, and had the rough edges to prove it. Moon Patrol had scrolling- even parallax scrolling!- but it was also forced scrolling in one direction, denying the player the opportunity to explore their surroundings. Raiders of the Lost Ark was remarkably deep for the time, with an inventory, multiple screens, and a final objective, but it was massively obtuse; a product of the 2600's limited memory and difficulty displaying text. Those steps forward were there in the Atari age (sorry), but they were baby steps.

 

What the NES did was smooth out the rough edges in these advances, and made them the rule rather than the exception. While you can certainly argue that the Atari 2600 had action-adventure games first, there's no debate that they're better executed on the NES. As terse and obtuse as it can be, the original Legend of Zelda seems like Skyrim next to Raiders, or Swordquest, or Adventure, which just plopped you into a world without any guidance. It was an evolution... still far from perfect, but far better than what had come before it.

 

I see people trying to downplay Nintendo's impact on the video game industry, but I ask you this: would the industry have evolved as much as it did under the leadership of Coleco or Atari? Possibly, but it's pretty clear that this was not the direction American designers wanted to go. The proof is as close as the Atari 7800, the "Pro System" with a library consisting almost entirely of dated arcade games. Sure, there were titles like Planet Smashers and Midnight Mutants, but they were designed late in the 7800's life, and clearly designed as a response to what Nintendo had offered its customers from day one. Without Nintendo, games on the 7800 probably wouldn't have evolved much beyond Asteroids and Centipede. (Hell, it's doubtful the 7800 would have even been released without Nintendo, but that's a debate for another day.)

[carlsson]

I have never studied the Famicom/NES graphics modes, but always imagined the tiles would consist of larger chunks of characters pasted together, something like you have a character generator of 256 characters and then you have a tile "foundry" where you put together 4x4 characters of your choice, and then order the tiles onto the screen. Those of you who have used SEUCK on the C64 etc know what I mean.

 

Alternatively each tile in the foundry would itself hold graphics definitions of 32x32 pixels, so something like a character generator with oversized characters. I don't know if that would gain anything though, it would require more tiles to be defined in a whole for small differences in the tile.

 

Regarding the VIC-20, it actually has two character modes: either 8x8 pixels or 8x16 pixels which obviously reduces the number of available rows by half. I suppose other video chips and systems may have similar hardware options, that you can print fewer characters on screen but each character consists of more pixels than usually. So yes, if "tile based" means using custom characters where each character takes more space than 8x8 pixels, there were other systems prior to the Famicom to support it.

Edited November 1, 2013 by carlsson

[Pixelboy]

Oh geez, not one of these topics again...

 

Look, there were a lot of innovations that arrived before the NES was released in the United States. However, they were very early, and had the rough edges to prove it. Moon Patrol had scrolling- even parallax scrolling!- but it was also forced scrolling in one direction, denying the player the opportunity to explore their surroundings. Raiders of the Lost Ark was remarkably deep for the time, with an inventory, multiple screens, and a final objective, but it was massively obtuse; a product of the 2600's limited memory and difficulty displaying text. Those steps forward were there in the Atari age (sorry), but they were baby steps.

 

What the NES did was smooth out the rough edges in these advances, and made them the rule rather than the exception. While you can certainly argue that the Atari 2600 had action-adventure games first, there's no debate that they're better executed on the NES. As terse and obtuse as it can be, the original Legend of Zelda seems like Skyrim next to Raiders, or Swordquest, or Adventure, which just plopped you into a world without any guidance. It was an evolution... still far from perfect, but far better than what had come before it.

 

I see people trying to downplay Nintendo's impact on the video game industry, but I ask you this: would the industry have evolved as much as it did under the leadership of Coleco or Atari? Possibly, but it's pretty clear that this was not the direction American designers wanted to go. The proof is as close as the Atari 7800, the "Pro System" with a library consisting almost entirely of dated arcade games. Sure, there were titles like Planet Smashers and Midnight Mutants, but they were designed late in the 7800's life, and clearly designed as a response to what Nintendo had offered its customers from day one. Without Nintendo, games on the 7800 probably wouldn't have evolved much beyond Asteroids and Centipede. (Hell, it's doubtful the 7800 would have even been released without Nintendo, but that's a debate for another day.)

I agree on all points. The NES may not have "saved" the video game industry when it launched, but it was indeed a game-changer, especially in the US, that much I think we can all agree on.

[fiddlepaddle]

Nintendo's true claim to fame for that era is primarily one of business success, coming from exceptional marketing.

 

They brought the polished NES to a depressed market with good, innovative games (Super Mario Bros), and focused on the relationship with their customers, RETAILERS, and DISTRIBUTORS in many ways (yes, including the lock out chip, but also by giving away a free magazine subscription, targeted advertising and promotions, contractual requirements and legal threats, etc), and also focused on and developed the hand-held market with the Game Boy and Tetris using the same D-pad.

 

They made the cartridges different looking, and BIGGER than Atari carts, and designed the console to physically look different, even promoting the robot game to set the NES apart from the perceived compeition.

 

It was a MARKETING triumph, and Nintendo should be recognized for their shrewd decisions, bold ambitions, and relentless perseverence, especially after Atari, and Coleco screwed up in such spectacular fashion. All the technical bravada is mostly revisionist history.

[high voltage]

Nintendo also threatened shops not to stock other systems or they pull out, they never heard 'land of the free' obviously

[Jess Ragan]

It was a MARKETING triumph, and Nintendo should be recognized for their shrewd decisions, bold ambitions, and relentless perseverence, especially after Atari, and Coleco screwed up in such spectacular fashion. All the technical bravada is mostly revisionist history.

Nintendo's marketing was terrific, yes, but let's not dismiss the hardware. Even the early NES titles demonstrated marked improvements over similar 5200 and ColecoVision games. Of course, Nintendo cheated and added extra hardware to the cartridges themselves in the system's later years, making it more powerful than its designers ever imagined (or intended). That happened with the 2600 as well, but by the end of its life, nearly EVERY NES game had extra tech in the cartridges.

[CatPix]

Nintendo didn't cheated. Or all main systems cheated. Even the Channel F had an ameliorated cart (European cart N°20 : Chess, added RAM) but the NES was designed from the start to get additionnal hardware. This isnt a first: the Colecovision expansion port is designed for additional hardware. Even the Intellivision is probably designed for hardware like the Keyboard Component to bypass some hardware restrictions.

[high voltage]

I wonder why Nintendo failed to miserably in Europe, I mean 2 million unites sold by 1992 (source: Game Over). That was some bad marketing.

Edited November 1, 2013 by high voltage

[Pixelboy]

I wonder why Nintendo failed to miserably in Europe, I mean 2 million unites sold by 1992 (source: Game Over). That was some bad marketing.

Europe had its own established gaming platforms, which were mostly computers (ZX Spectrum, Amiga, etc.) and what little space there was in the console gaming market in that region was taken up by Sega for the most part. Nintendo's timing was bad in that case.

[Jakandsig]

A lot of you people have made claims that these statements are not true, but have not posted any links or references whatsoever that back your statements up, while on wikipedia, there are sources to un sources sources from gaming journalists, and while that is quality debatable, this site has a habit of only posting links if someone continually says something that is deemed true over and over again.

 

If wikipedia is wrong, and all these uh, gaming people businesses are wrong, then it would help if you proved each of those claims wrong with something that shows you got it from somewhere.

[Gabriel]

A lot of you people have made claims that these statements are not true, but have not posted any links or references whatsoever that back your statements up, while on wikipedia, there are sources to un sources sources from gaming journalists, and while that is quality debatable, this site has a habit of only posting links if someone continually says something that is deemed true over and over again.

 

If wikipedia is wrong, and all these uh, gaming people businesses are wrong, then it would help if you proved each of those claims wrong with something that shows you got it from somewhere.

 

...

 

Ya know what? Nevermind.