Is it fact that Nintendo Saved Gaming?

[108 Stars]

the 'punch' and 'jump' buttons are backwards from most games. It's just overall not as polished/refined as Super Mario Bros. Plus, Mario is just a more memorable character than Alex Kidd. Seems to me Sega was trying to play "catch up" with Alex Kidd to compete with SMB, but it just falls a little short, imo. Still a good game, though.

The punch and jump buttons aren't backward. Whe n Alex Kidd came out they simply weren't standarized yet.

 

Otherwise I mostly agree with you.

SMB had slightly better controls and more music. Alex Kidd had much better graphics and variety though, with the vehicles. In the end SMB wins for me because of the slightly better controls and level design, but it's a close call imo.

 

Both tried to re fine and improve on the concepts of earlier hits like Pitfall, Smurfs and Montezuma's Revenge though, it was not a revolution out of nowhere.

[fiddlepaddle]

Scrolling was being incorporated into many games around 1981-82 (ex: Tutankham, Scramble); it was the natural next-step as hardware was available. Platform games as well. Combining the two was inevitable. Competition would eventually result in satisfying the market demand, whether it was Mario or something else.

[godslabrat]

Alex Kidd in Miracle World on the SMS was released a full year after Super Mario Bros. on the NES. The thing is, Nintendo got it "right" with SMB: good graphics, good animation, good music/sound, good gameplay, good controls/hit detection, etc.

Sega's Alex Kidd game is good, but I feel doesn't quite measure up to SMB. Alex Kidd in Miracle World has good graphics, good animation, decent music/sound, and good gameplay. But I find the controls too "slippery", the character hit detection questionable and the 'punch' and 'jump' buttons are backwards from most games. It's just overall not as polished/refined as Super Mario Bros. Plus, Mario is just a more memorable character than Alex Kidd. Seems to me Sega was trying to play "catch up" with Alex Kidd to compete with SMB, but it just falls a little short, imo. Still a good game, though.

 

Indeed. And here is my point: if Sega couldn't make their own SMB, already having SMB as a template from which to work... how the HECK would they have done so WITHOUT SMB to use as inspiration?

[+wood_jl]

 

For the Love of God, how many times is this shit going to be rehashed? Who knows if it "saved" gaming, as the meaning of that can be broken down and rehashed and redefined millions of times. What it did was re-popularize gaming in certain precincts (NOT EUROPE) and everybody with 2 brain cells knows it. The games kicked ass, and were fun. As an Atari fanboy (at the time) I didn't want to admit it. Then I played SMB and Punch Out and had a blast. Not everybody is ever going to agree with it, so just look at the numbers of NES worldwide sales (even if your particular region of the world didn't give a shit), draw your own conclusion, and DONE. Why does this keep coming up again? Bored newbies with nothing new to bring to the discussion?

[MaximRecoil]

There is a lot more to SMB being such a watershed game than it simply being a scrolling platform game. For starters, the controls aren't just good, they are phenomenal. There are a lot of subtle aspects to the excellent control that people take for granted these days too, like being able to stand beneath and mostly to the left or right of a block and jump and be automatically pushed to the side and continue to the jump's full height. Lesser controls would bounce you back down if even one pixel of the far right or left of your character's head contacted a barrier. Whoever programmed the controls thought about physics, and actually bothered to program some of the more subtle aspects of it in there. Another example is that you are able to run over small gaps that you fall through if you are walking at normal speed. That's another nice subtle touch with the controls. Know of any previous games with such attention to that sort of detail?

 

Then there is the very memorable music and sound effects (I'll bet most anyone here can hum the main tune off the top of their head at any given time). The overall look of the game is visually appealing; very clean, neat, well-drawn and thought out, like a good cartoon. The enemies are unusual, interesting, memorable, and in most cases, stompable, which is satisfying. You can climb up into the sky or get sucked down into pipes to find new worlds, or jump up into areas that it doesn't look like you should be able to access and find "warp zones". When you are new to the game you get the feeling that there are secrets everywhere just waiting to be discovered.

 

Additionally, the game is extremely accessible, resulting in pretty much everyone loving it, young, old, even females. That's not the case with some other great games, e.g., Metroid, Castlevania, Ghosts 'n Goblins, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, which are very difficult and/or confusing, and require a large investment in frustration-filled time before you can get much enjoyment out of them. These types of games have a far more specialized appeal than SMB, which anyone can pick up and immediately have fun with.

 

The idea that such a lightning strike born of a "perfect storm" was inevitable even if Nintendo never existed, is without basis. I have no doubt that some good or even great side-scrolling platform games would have come out even if Nintendo had never existed, but a game with the same cultural and industry impact of SMB? Not likely.

Edited December 10, 2013 by MaximRecoil

[Seob]

I think some people seem to forget that smb is a platformgame. Thus it belongs to the platform genre. Let's put it this way did the platform genre saved gaming: No.

It was time for a change in genre and platfom games where filling the gap. Did gaming die when we changed from platfom gaming to 3d shooter gaming, or into sandbox gaming? No.

So the answer remains No. Did SMB set a standard in the platfom genre yes. Saved gaming NO.

Edited December 10, 2013 by Seob

[AtariLeaf]

Whether SMB would have happened this way or that way is speculation both on my part and others and it's kind of gotten off the main topic of "Nintendo saved gaming". I think what bothers me the most are the blanket statements

 

"Nintendo saved gaming"

 

"Atari caused the crash"

 

Neither statement is true. They are soundbites. Little compact "facts" that people regurgitate to one another. The internet has made this much more problematic.

 

The truth lies in a more convoluted middle on both counts.

Edited December 10, 2013 by AtariLeaf

[Reaperman]

I didn't want to say this before, because I was afraid you'd all treat me differently because of how cool I am, but now seems to be the time to own up to it and confess--

I did it. I saved gaming. It was me.

 

It was 1985, I was in an antiques store, and when I backed into a shelf, I accidentally rescued a genie trapped in a bottle for over 1500 years.

He talked a lot like Robin Williams, so I could kind of see why they stuck him in there.

 

In any case, you're welcome.

[+wood_jl]

I think some people seem to forget that smb is a platformgame. Thus it belongs to the platform genre. Let's put it this way did the platform genre saved gaming: No.

It was time for a change in genre and platfom games where filling the gap. Did gaming die when we changed from platfom gaming to 3d shooter gaming, or into sandbox gaming? No.

So the answer remains No. Did SMB set a standard in the platfom genre yes. Saved gaming NO.

 

Yes! IT is a platform game! Nobody forgot that! It's a kick-ass platform game. NES probably didn't amount to SHIT in your region of the world. NES and Super Mario Brothers (and sequels) were BIG SHIT on other regions of the world. I didn't make it that way. I don't even give a shit. IT JUST WAS. Now can we just move on - acknowledging that it was - even if YOU in particular think it sucked? How many people (Worldwide) are going to give a shit to the fact that you think NES sucked, and why should they? You mean all this time, Super Mario Brothers and Mike Tyson's Punch Out sucked, but the gamers who bought it (25+ years ago) were completely fucking cluless? You mean the people who enjoy it to this day (raising hand!) are completely fucking clueless? You mean it turns out that everybody who likes the NES is a completely-clueless dipshit, and should have turned to you for advise before they advocated for the system? HA HA HA HA HA!!! Tell me another one! Should I buy a SAAB for my next automobile? HA HA!

[desiv]

How many people (Worldwide) are going to give a shit to the fact that you think NES sucked,

Did I miss something somewhere?

When did he say it sucked?

He might have earlier or elsewhere, I didn't go back very far, but his last post, he said:

 

Did SMB set a standard in the platfom genre yes.

That seems kind of positive really....

 

desiv

Isn't one of the definitions of a FanBoi, someone who gets WAY to upset when someone else disagrees about said topic?

(OK, I just made that up, but it sounds good to me...) :-)

Edited December 11, 2013 by desiv

[AtariLeaf]

 

Yes! IT is a platform game! Nobody forgot that! It's a kick-ass platform game. NES probably didn't amount to SHIT in your region of the world. NES and Super Mario Brothers (and sequels) were BIG SHIT on other regions of the world. I didn't make it that way. I don't even give a shit. IT JUST WAS. Now can we just move on - acknowledging that it was - even if YOU in particular think it sucked? How many people (Worldwide) are going to give a shit to the fact that you think NES sucked, and why should they? You mean all this time, Super Mario Brothers and Mike Tyson's Punch Out sucked, but the gamers who bought it (25+ years ago) were completely fucking cluless? You mean the people who enjoy it to this day (raising hand!) are completely fucking clueless? You mean it turns out that everybody who likes the NES is a completely-clueless dipshit, and should have turned to you for advise before they advocated for the system? HA HA HA HA HA!!! Tell me another one! Should I buy a SAAB for my next automobile? HA HA!

 

Wow, someone's getting a lot of exercise jumping to conclusions.

[Jakandsig]

The next time this topic comes up (AND IT WILL), I'll just respond with "THERE. ARE. FOUR. LIGHTS!" Because it's not so much a question as an interrogation. You're just going to keep asking this until the response is "Nintendo contributed nothing to the video game industry and Atari farts rainbows and sunshine!"

This is why you are a fanboy. Because you make random assumptions without doing research. Half of Ataris mainstream contributions are crap as well, but it's almost always you guys that spread the magic dust which is why you guys get attacked more.

 

I want the trith in gaming history for all systems (examples of BS, CD-I, 3DO, Colecovision, etc.) since the mainstream has it engraved in millions of people heads comeplete BS that will be remembered 40 years from now unless we change it.

[Jakandsig]

So you're a 40 year old virgin?

Reading through this thread,it's funny what some people are so passionate about and how it consumes their time. (And then some people wonder why they are still virgins at the age of 40 years old?)


This thread question is about on the same level as asking "Did Nirvana/Grunge Rock Kill Hair Metal and Save Rock Music?" (I guess that is less nerdy than this question but a good example.)


It's funny to see how all the hair metal fans get up in arms and react to that one. Like.."ohhh no Nirvana didn't save anything!!! Nirvana was not #1 in so and so country."


Anyways I still stand by how I feel and could care less if anybody here is biased towards me,tries to belittle me with their pretentiousness and doesn't agree,simply because I am a woman or just because I don't agree with people who deny NES did not have any influence.

And Zelda and Mario appearing on another company if Nintendo didn't exist? Well it didn't happen that way now did it?


A videogame world without the innovations of Nintendo during the late 80's would be the same if Jimi Hendrix didn't exist for the guitar/rock world imo. The feeling I get from some people here is that gaming would be the same today worldwide if Nintendo did not ever exist. Wrong! You can't change history. NES ruled the world in the late 80's/early 90's and for better or worse changed the landscape of gaming worldwide whether people deny that or not. And I don't care if alot of people don't agree with that because most people are ignorant anyways.

[Jakandsig]

Scrolling was being incorporated into many games around 1981-82 (ex: Tutankham, Scramble); it was the natural next-step as hardware was available. Platform games as well. Combining the two was inevitable. Competition would eventually result in satisfying the market demand, whether it was Mario or something else.

There were platform games that scrolled horizontally and vertically even on consoles before SMB. Not sure why people think scrolling was a new thing.

[Seob]

Yes! IT is a platform game! Nobody forgot that! It's a kick-ass platform game. NES probably didn't amount to SHIT in your region of the world. NES and Super Mario Brothers (and sequels) were BIG SHIT on other regions of the world. I didn't make it that way. I don't even give a shit. IT JUST WAS. Now can we just move on - acknowledging that it was - even if YOU in particular think it sucked? How many people (Worldwide) are going to give a shit to the fact that you think NES sucked, and why should they? You mean all this time, Super Mario Brothers and Mike Tyson's Punch Out sucked, but the gamers who bought it (25+ years ago) were completely fucking cluless? You mean the people who enjoy it to this day (raising hand!) are completely fucking clueless? You mean it turns out that everybody who likes the NES is a completely-clueless dipshit, and should have turned to you for advise before they advocated for the system? HA HA HA HA HA!!! Tell me another one! Should I buy a SAAB for my next automobile? HA HA!

????

When did i say something sucked? Never, you know why, i don' t care whatever system i can get my hands on, as long as i can play games i'm fine with whatever console i have.

It's just silly to believe that we wouldn't play games if nintendo wouldn't have released the nes.

[fiddlepaddle]

There were platform games that scrolled horizontally and vertically even on consoles before SMB. Not sure why people think scrolling was a new thing.

 

That's true, but the success of SMB was what really got the ball rolling, to coin a phrase, on the scrolling platformer as a genre. It's success directly lead to thousands of scrolling platformers, probably the most common formula for many years.

[lushgirl_80]

So you're a 40 year old virgin?

 

No but I know my current boyfriend isn't now I am not even 40 yet either.

[+wood_jl]

Heh heh! You guys are all correct. I was the one jumping to conclusions. I see a lot of fellas in this thread whose values I not only value but completely agree with. My apologies.

Please forgive, and proceed. You win this one!

 

edit: I missed the 40-year-old virgin-thing. Available?

[MaximRecoil]

It could be said that Nintendo saved console gaming in the United States of America. Home computer gaming didn't need saving in the U.S., but it was never very big to begin with, and it never got very big until the internet / World Wide Web / inexpensive x86 PCs in the late '90s / early 2000s combination became the "killer app" that pushed home computers into the mainstream.

 

Consoles on the other hand initially became huge with Atari's release of the home version of Pong in 1975, and had more or less died out by the late '70s, making them seem like a passing fad. The release of consoles featuring interchangeable ROM-based cartridges didn't immediately revive anything; it wasn't until a "killer app" came out for one of them (Space Invaders for the Atari VCS in 1980) that a console became huge again, and by extension, the market for consoles and their cartridges in general became huge.

 

Then consoles more or less died out again in 1983, which is what is commonly called "The Great Video Game Crash of 1983". This is what allowed me to buy a brand new Atari 2600 from a major department store in 1985 for $35, and buy new game cartridges for it from bins for $0.99 each, games such as Missile Command, Space Invaders, Defender, Yar's Revenge, and so on.

 

The NES was released nationwide in the U.S. in mid 1986, at a time when the console market had been dead for 2 or 3 years. It didn't immediately make consoles huge again. For example, my cousin Mike bought an NES in mid-1986 within a week after we saw the first TV commercials for them, but he was the only person I knew that had one for quite a while. When the sets that included Super Mario Bros. as a pack-in game came out, that's when it set the industry on fire, and by '88, it seems like every other person had an NES. NES consoles and game cartridges even became available at my local video store for rental in '87 or '88, something which was an entirely new thing in my small town (previous consoles and their games had never been available for rental at any place I'd ever been). The console industry hasn't had any notable deaths in the U.S. since.

 

Now, the question of whether someone else would have saved console gaming in lieu of Nintendo/NES/SMB is an interesting one to ponder, but it is ultimately irrelevant. The fact is that someone else didn't do it, Nintendo did. For example, if John saves Jane's life, it doesn't matter that Bob was also nearby that day and probably would have saved Jane's life had John not been there; John still saved Jane's life, regardless of any "what ifs".

Edited December 11, 2013 by MaximRecoil

[108 Stars]

For example, if John saves Jane's life, it doesn't matter that Bob was also nearby that day and probably would have saved Jane's life had John not been there; John still saved Jane's life, regardless of any "what ifs".

To use your analogy; it may very well be that since console gaming was not really dead, but just badly wounded it would have survived until someone else came along, or until it just gradually recovered.

 

Personally, eventhough I am much more of a Sega fan there is no denying for me what huge impact the NES had on gaming. One part of that was through some excellent Nintendo-first-party-titles for sure. But the even bigger part looking at the sheer number of titles was through excellent 3rd parties. Beside Super Mario Bros and Metroid the gaming industry of Japan spawned countless other great games. Castlevania, Mega Man, Ninja Gaiden, Shinobi, Dragon Quest, Contra, Space Harrier, Double Dragon just to name a few. While SMB had a definite influence on the platformers, overall I believe that the creative evolution of video games would not have stopped if the NES hadn't been around. It would simply have been nurtured on a different platform, or on many. The moment these great games saw the light of day anywhere in the world, they would have surely found their way to North America as well and served as killer apps for other systems, whether those would have been home computers or consoles.

 

The NES I believe was in the right place, at the right time with the right concept. But I find it very hard to believe that had Nintendo missed that opportunity nobody else would have taken it and the games would have found their way to gamers on some other system.

[MaximRecoil]

To use your analogy; it may very well be that since console gaming was not really dead, but just badly wounded it would have survived until someone else came along, or until it just gradually recovered.

No one was producing consoles for the U.S. market, so it was in fact dead here. The major retailers were firmly in "once bitten, twice shy" mode, which is why Nintendo had to come up with a novel approach to convince them that they wouldn't get burned again.

 

But I find it very hard to believe that had Nintendo missed that opportunity nobody else would have taken it and the games would have found their way to gamers on some other system.

This may or may not be true (and it is irrelevant, as I mentioned in my previous post). Nintendo not only managed to package their console in a way that retailers would accept in the aftermath of being hung out to dry by the previous console fiasco, but they also came up with the ultimate "killer app" for it (SMB). The deck was highly stacked against anyone looking to introduce a console to the U.S. market in the mid 1980s, and it is far from inevitable that someone else would have pulled it off the way that Nintendo did. NES led to Genesis which led to SNES which led to PlayStation which led to N64, and so on. It had enough impact to kick off a lasting, long-term industry/market, as opposed to the more faddish nature of the console industry/market before it.

Edited December 11, 2013 by MaximRecoil

[AtariLeaf]

This is why you are a fanboy. Because you make random assumptions without doing research. Half of Ataris mainstream contributions are crap as well, but it's almost always you guys that spread the magic dust which is why you guys get attacked more.

 

I want the trith in gaming history for all systems (examples of BS, CD-I, 3DO, Colecovision, etc.) since the mainstream has it engraved in millions of people heads comeplete BS that will be remembered 40 years from now unless we change it.

On the Atari side there are books like Racing the Beam and Business is Fun which should be great reads that give you an inside look at the company, culture and people involved. Books that I want to read one day myself

[Andromeda Stardust]

There are also a couple of great books regarding Nintendo and Video Game History in general. I have the two above mentioned books. "Racing the Beam" is more an in depth look at VCS hardware rather than a general history, very useful as it gave me a better appreciation for the 2600, and "Business is Fun" is the most in depth Atari history I've ever read. My other books include "Game Over: How Nintendo Conquered the World" (1994, out of print) - it was kind of wierd reading their speculative last chapter knowing full well what happened next, "Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America" (2011), and "The Ultimate History of Video Games" (2001) which gives an overall unbiased history of all video game companies through the end of the 5th generation. Also in my collection is "History of Nintendo Volume 1" a pictorial history of the early pre-video game years of Nintendo by Pix-n-Love publishing, and I have on perpetual preorder their upcoming "History of Mario".

Edited December 11, 2013 by stardust4ever

[AtariLeaf]

"Super Mario: How Nintendo Conquered America" (2011)

 

Now this sounds more accurate than "nintendo saved gaming"

[high voltage]

NOA had to work very, very hard to make the NES a success, remember Nintendos AVS flopped twice, and retailers didn't want the NES either.

Then NOA came up with a trick to get the NES into stores, retailers didn.t have to pay anything for 90 days, and if nothing was sold it could be returned, also NOA set up the shop display for free.

Now, free is always good, of course retailers lapped it up, it was a failsafe deal.