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Why do people actively hate "pre-NES" consoles?


zetastrike

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It's all about personal experience. I'm not going to argue bits and bytes, or mappers vs. CPUs or any of that stuff, because you're right - it's a waste of time.

 

I was a kid of the 2600 era. It was my first system. Loved it for many years, but when Arcade games got better and better, it got boring. Always wanted a 5200 or a CV but couldn't afford one, and in those days kids didn't get more than one game system unless they were rich - and I wasn't. So it wasn't until I had my first jobs as a young teen that I could afford another system. The NES era came along and most of my friends got one, so I had plenty of exposure to the NES. I was about 14-15 at this point, so I was old enough to recognize what I didn't like about gaming. I didn't like the lineup of games. I didn't like the way they looked. To me, the graphics weren't this giant leap forward everyone lauds them with. I didn't like the color palette. Lots of browns and dark greens and fuscias. Looked like someone made the games with vomit pixels. I REALLY didn't like all the flicker, and also didn't like the fact that they all seemed to konk out and require blowing on them after every use. I had never experienced that kind of malfunctioning with the 2600, or even the 7800 I bought with paper route money. Not once. Not even to this day.

 

Then I got an SMS, and loved it. I liked the lineup of games, because it had all the Sega arcade games that were the dominant arcade games of that era. The graphics were noticeably better on most/all games it shared with the NES. It had a trackball! Then it had those awesome LCD shutter 3D glasses & games. I always laughed my ass off when Nintendo tried to do the same and made that shit version of Rad Racer that came with the stupid Red/Blue paper glasses and it didn't really even work for the 3D effect. Then the NES had that dumb robot toy thing, and a few kids I knew got one, and it SUCKED, and broke really easy.

 

That was the thing that always stood out to me about the NES - it was cheap. cheaply made. It looked stupid. it broke too easily. the graphics weren't as good as the SMS. (and in some cases not even as good as the 7800)

It was the first era of gaming in my personal experience where you could tell they were cutting every corner they could to squeeze out profit - whereas the SMS in my opinion was all quality - even if the game library was much, much smaller. But the NES was the most popular system of it's day because the marketing was overwhelming. They were everywhere.

 

Everyone has a different personal experience. This was mine. I realize it's not the consensus opinion. I'm not part of the NES-borg. But I assure you, it's not trolling. It's just what saw and felt and did. Not everyone likes the NES, just like not everyone likes Coca-Cola, or McDonalds, or Disney, or other generic mass-marketed "everybody loves this" stuff.

 

 

It's nice to know that I was not the only one that choose the SMS back in the day. I understand the love for the NES people have. For a lot of people it was the only thing there was. Especially when you are under the age of 10 and that's what your parents brought home for you. It would be mind blowing. Like you I was an early teen when I got my SMS and I tried all three at the store in Oct of 1986. I got my SMS for X-mas that same year as I choose it over the NES (yes, after playing on all three consoles 7800, SMS, NES). I already had a buddy that had the NES, but I too thought the colors and graphics looked better on the SMS. Plus I figured he already has the NES, I want something different.

 

Again, BITD most only had money for one system and I'm glad I choose the SMS. Cutting grass helped pay for many of my games and I really liked Sega Scope 3-D. As time went on most of my friends would end up at my house because SMS was something different to play and their NES (which they all liked a lot) still didn't offer some of the same game experiences that I had on my SMS.

 

I like the NES, I just like the SMS better. Heck, the SMS was just a gateway to the Genesis I bought in X-mas of '89. ;)

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But the 2600 objectively has not aged as well as NES. Its not even close. Your post is the very definition of moving goal posts.

 

No, it's not "moving goalposts", instead it's just showing your fallacious logic for what it is. "The 2600 has not aged as well as NES" is your subjective - not objective - opinion. And anybody else is equally entitled to saying that NES (or X system of their choice) has not aged well and playing it is a waste of time, because later system Y is where it's at.

 

Funnily enough, I've just read precisely that earlier on today :)

 

Switch Online proves, once again, that NES games aren’t that good

I always screamed from the rooftops that NES was a great console. After all, it’s what got me into gaming in the first place. Now, I’m not too sure. All I see are terrible games that haven’t aged well.

 

 

And some comments below on n4g:

 

-Yeah.... there are a few gems out there. But games don'r really start holding up until the 16 bit era

-Start putting up some N64 & GCN titles, then i’ll pay

-Sony gave away free PS1 games monthly when PS+ started out but they never made as big a deal about it and those games are more fleshed out than the basic experiences most NES games provide

 

 

Sounds familiar? But okay, I'm sure these people are just some irrelevant guys from the internet, and it's your opinion that really matters :)

 

With that, I'll say my good-bys, I see where this thread is going and it's about as much fun as playing a pre-chess game (whatever that was).

Edited by youxia
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I often hear that you have to be at least 50 years old today to even like "pre-NES" games

 

Not true...I'm 49.

 

Anyway, I'm just now playing NES games due to the NES Classic and Switch Online. After being heavily into gaming from around 79-83...I lost interest by the time NES was on the market. I can't recall even knowing anyone who had one. Didn't start paying attention again until a friend of mine showed me the Sega Genesis. I enjoy games no matter when they came out. I still dig Pong. Back in the PS2 days....I went hardcore retro and was only playing VCS, Colecovision, O2 and Intellivision. Let my kids use the PS2 as a DVD player. I play everything now.

 

 

 

 

Funnily enough, I've just read precisely that earlier on today :)

 

Switch Online proves, once again, that NES games aren’t that good

 

And some comments below on n4g:

 

 

Sounds familiar? But okay, I'm sure these people are just some irrelevant guys from the internet, and it's your opinion that really matters :)

 

Indeed, I love these "new to me" NES games!! Solomon's Key :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Edited by Recycled
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The original SMB3 on the other hand is far too long to not have a save feature.

 

For real. Normally I enjoy playing games on their original systems, but I make an exception here. I'd MUCH rather play the Super Mario All-Stars version. SMB2 is another. Both games are WAY too long to play in one sitting without warping. I have done it on the NES but it took me like 4 hours to 100% clear (no stage unplayed) on original hardware on a rainy summer day. I got like 50 or 60 extra lives early in world 1-2 where the never-ending Goombas come out of the pipe, and then it was relatively easy. But it's way more time than I'll dedicate in one sitting today.

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Do I actively "hate" pre-NES consoles? Absolutely not.

 

Is the NES my personal threshold for old games that are still legitimately fun to play? Yes.

 

The earlier generation of consoles simply didn't have the hardware capabilities to have the complexity that NES/SMS games could offer. I still appreciate pre-NES systems, but I don't play them because the games have generally aged out of playability to me.

 

Some examples of the complexity and why it matters:

  • Player abilities and the game world change in reaction to the player's actions. Mega Man slowly grows in abilities, in an order of your choosing.
  • Stages are both complex and unique enough to be identifiable. Super Mario Bros. epitomized this vs say, Pitfall or even Pitfall 2.
  • Storage space was enough that games intended to be completed over multiple sessions (Zelda and RPGs) were feasible.
  • Sound hardware was robust enough to provide sound tracks. And some of them were actually good.

It was a paradigm shift in how games could be designed. And for me, games before that shift just aren't worth revisiting. But it's fine if other people want to.

 

And I'm not saying that no pre-NES games pushed the limits of complexity. A lot of them did, but at a certain point you hit the limits of processing and memory, no matter how clever your programmers are.

Edited by deepthaw
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For real. Normally I enjoy playing games on their original systems, but I make an exception here. I'd MUCH rather play the Super Mario All-Stars version. SMB2 is another. Both games are WAY too long to play in one sitting without warping. I have done it on the NES but it took me like 4 hours to 100% clear (no stage unplayed) on original hardware on a rainy summer day. I got like 50 or 60 extra lives early in world 1-2 where the never-ending Goombas come out of the pipe, and then it was relatively easy. But it's way more time than I'll dedicate in one sitting today.

 

The NES had a disturbing number of games that were too long for a single play session but had no way to save your data between sessions. I suspect that's why warp zones were in so many games.

Edited by deepthaw
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I think the concept of actually hating pre-NES is a joke, but what it is, is that you had this threshhold that kind of broke through after so long starting with the Colecovision that ate it, and really with the NES/Famicom. Before that time your idea of a fun game if it was at home was a few colors and some fairly decent sized squares slapped together to kind of look like what you were hoping to show off. Before that you're into the Pong and crap load of obvious Pong ripoff devices by anyone who could contract someone out there to rebrand it with your name on it. The stuff has little going for it other than some very rudimentary basic game audio and really the visuals, let alone styles too. At that point it just was basically pretty bad, didn't have the detailing to approach even what the arcade did back in 1980 and continued to improve on too for all of just twenty five cents. The NES, even the black box games did more than what was on the market at that time in 1985 and 1986 too at home. It finally started to look and feel like the earlier arcade games and you had quite a few of those early conversions, not that we got all of them from Japan, and they were pretty solid. I think that's where the non-hate thing is, it's a pain threshold which would be considered palatable, approachable, and just nice enough looking, sounding, and play wise to bother without feeling too crusty. The older systems real. I know this is an atari centric site, but beyond some big nostalgia for what you have there, the 2600 and 5200 are just too old for most people to put up with because of that. The NES at least, you have a breakthrough into the next level, and it also allowed in hardware to do more stuff like scrolling of the screen, better audio, more gameplay options, more genres. There was this new level of versatility beyond just trying to copy the basic arcade style of games of the early 80s and late 70s.

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The other thing about the NES that I saw as a big shift in gaming was what I like to refer to as the "cartoonization" of video games, and how Nintendo had a tendency to gear things toward a much younger audience. While young kids were certainly part of the landscape during the Atari era, most games were shooters or racers or platform games that were targeted at 10-15 year olds, but in the arcade and on home consoles, it was Nintendo who really put a focus on the 6-10 year old crowd with very cartoony looking graphics and characters, and kidsy game concepts/themes. I think this was a significant part of why I lost interest in them, I aged out of their target demographic.

Edited by John Stamos Mullet
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The other thing about the NES that I saw as a big shift in gaming was what I like to refer to as the "cartoonization" of video games, and how Nintendo had a tendency to gear things toward a much younger audience.

 

Which is an exaggeration. Of course there were games for a younger or more general audience and then you had the Castlevanias, Ninja Gaidens, Contra, Metroid, etc. that weren't kiddie at all.

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I think the concept of actually hating pre-NES is a joke, but what it is, is that you had this threshhold that kind of broke through after so long starting with the Colecovision that ate it, and really with the NES/Famicom. Before that time your idea of a fun game if it was at home was a few colors and some fairly decent sized squares slapped together to kind of look like what you were hoping to show off. Before that you're into the Pong and crap load of obvious Pong ripoff devices by anyone who could contract someone out there to rebrand it with your name on it. The stuff has little going for it other than some very rudimentary basic game audio and really the visuals, let alone styles too. At that point it just was basically pretty bad, didn't have the detailing to approach even what the arcade did back in 1980 and continued to improve on too for all of just twenty five cents. The NES, even the black box games did more than what was on the market at that time in 1985 and 1986 too at home. It finally started to look and feel like the earlier arcade games and you had quite a few of those early conversions, not that we got all of them from Japan, and they were pretty solid. I think that's where the non-hate thing is, it's a pain threshold which would be considered palatable, approachable, and just nice enough looking, sounding, and play wise to bother without feeling too crusty. The older systems real. I know this is an atari centric site, but beyond some big nostalgia for what you have there, the 2600 and 5200 are just too old for most people to put up with because of that. The NES at least, you have a breakthrough into the next level, and it also allowed in hardware to do more stuff like scrolling of the screen, better audio, more gameplay options, more genres. There was this new level of versatility beyond just trying to copy the basic arcade style of games of the early 80s and late 70s.

 

I don't know if I can agree with the (majority of) black box games. I don't think they did anything you couldn't do on previous consoles, except they had better graphics. It wasn't until SMB that I realized the NES could do more than the same games with prettier graphics.

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Which is an exaggeration. Of course there were games for a younger or more general audience and then you had the Castlevanias, Ninja Gaidens, Contra, Metroid, etc. that weren't kiddie at all.

It's not an exaggeration. It's personal experience/opinion. It was what I saw and understood at the time.

 

Also - all 4 of those games are pretty much the same game, with different sprites. Left to right side and (occasionally) vertical scrolling platform jumper/shooters with power ups.

Edited by John Stamos Mullet
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It's not an exaggeration. It's personal experience/opinion. It was what I saw and understood at the time.

 

Also - all 4 of those games are pretty much the same game, with different sprites. Left to right side and (occasionally) vertical scrolling platform jumper/shooters with power ups.

 

I don't agree with that at all. So any 2D game that scrolls is the same game? Also the SMS has its fair share of side scrollers. Now you're just looking for stupid reasons to hate the NES.

Edited by mbd30
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I don't agree with that at all. So any 2D game that scrolls is the same game? Also the SMS has its fair share of side scrollers. Now you're just looking for stupid reasons to hate the NES.

I didn't say any of those games are bad games. They are all good/great games. That type side scrolling platformer type of game is something NES excelled at.

 

But I think it's funny that you pulled out 4 similar games (as far as play mechanics/layout) as the primary examples of how great the NES is.

 

and you're right - those weren't kidsy. That doesn't invalidate the idea that NES definitely had a lot more games geared towards younger kids their than any of it's predecessors.

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I didn't say any of those games are bad games. They are all good/great games. That type side scrolling platformer type of game is something NES excelled at.

 

But I think it's funny that you pulled out 4 similar games (as far as play mechanics/layout) as the primary examples of how great the NES is.

 

and you're right - those weren't kidsy. That doesn't invalidate the idea that NES definitely had a lot more games geared towards younger kids their than any of it's predecessors.

 

I could have used other examples of non-kiddie games such as the point and click adventures e.g. Shadowgate, shooters such as 1943 and Life Force, and the Koei strategy games.

 

But still, Castlevania, Contra and Metroid are hardly "the same game with different sprites." They all play very differently. This is the kind of argument that I'd expect from a younger person who's had little experience with such games, not someone who grew up with them.

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I could have used other examples of non-kiddie games such as the point and click adventures e.g. Shadowgate, shooters such as 1943 and Life Force, and the Koei strategy games.

 

But still, Castlevania, Contra and Metroid are hardly "the same game with different sprites." They all play very differently. This is the kind of argument that I'd expect from a younger person who's had little experience with such games, not someone who grew up with them.

You seem pretty upset that I don't like this system. Mind you, you're not going to sway my opinion, and you're not going to "shame me" by trying to insult me either. Yes - NES had some legitimately good/great games. So did a lot of systems. But the overall to me wasn't worth it. There were more things about it I disliked than things I liked. and I'm not the only person who feels that way, though admittedly it is a minority opinion. But I'm perfectly OK with being in the minority.

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Why do people actively LOVE "Pre-NES" consoles? Why do people actively start ENTER CONSOLE HERE Vs ENTER CONSOLE HERE troll wars? Why does my 16 year old son give me jovial shit about my beloved 2600's simplicity & graphical abilities, yet on occasion, leaves his Gaming PC or PS4 to sit in the bean bag and try to beat my score on H.E.R.O marked up on the chalkboard? Why are Tacos better than Toast?

 

Exposure inducing Opinion!

 

The 'Vader' was my 1st love .. then C64 .. then MegaDrive .. then PS1 .. yadda yadda. Friends never had NES/SNES, hence no personal exposure. So, when I got older and arguably wiser, I gave up the hours of grinding on modern games and went backwards until I hit the 2600. I now have a modern opinion on an old era console that I had past personal exposure. Based on certain gaming personal elements and reasons, the 2600 is now my current gaming console.

 

Now, at any time during that timeline from '82 to the present, a single element change could change my exposure and hence my opinion. Make my 1st console the Colecovision. Maybe I would have regressed to that. Maybe my 2600 was a lemon and caused nothing but issues bitd. Would I have gone back to it? In relation to my boy. He was exposed to our pinball and arcade machines, older consoles like the aforementioned and obviously my 2600 obsession whilst growing up. He saw me playing Yars Revenge as a teenager and wanted a game, just to have a taste. Rough quote: "Now I know what you mean Dad when you say easy to learn hard to master. The graphics didn't bother me once I was in the zone." Exposure inducing Opinion. Maybe when he is older, he'll fall back to my collection for the same reasons.

 

With so many exposure and opinion variables at play, ... No answer is right or wrong!

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You seem pretty upset that I don't like this system.

 

Nobody has to like anything. But some of your arguments used in support of your dislike come off as either ill informed or hypocritical. People complain about the NES having so many side scrollers. What about all of the side scrollers on the Sega Master System and basically every post crash console until the 3D era?

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Why do people actively LOVE "Pre-NES" consoles? Why do people actively start ENTER CONSOLE HERE Vs ENTER CONSOLE HERE troll wars? Why does my 16 year old son give me jovial shit about my beloved 2600's simplicity & graphical abilities, yet on occasion, leaves his Gaming PC or PS4 to sit in the bean bag and try to beat my score on H.E.R.O marked up on the chalkboard? Why are Tacos better than Toast?

 

Yup. I remember the day when I noticed ALL the arcade games had turned into "run to the right, shoot all the things" and I was a little bummed. I learned to like them -- mainly because there wasn't much else from which to choose, as I NEEDED some video games -- but it wasn't easy. I had friends around my age who couldn't/wouldn't adapt to the thumbpads of the NES, saying things like, "this needs a joystick." And lots of the early NES games reflected the early 1980s single-screen arcade aesthetic. If there are people who "actively hate" the pre-NES stuff, they probably don't think much of the early NES stuff either.

 

I'll bet we can find this exact debate in the bowels of rec.games.video.classic archives, likely with many of the same people still posting today.

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Nobody has to like anything. But some of your arguments used in support of your dislike come off as either ill informed or hypocritical. People complain about the NES having so many side scrollers. What about all of the side scrollers on the Sega Master System and basically every post crash console until the 3D era?

I don't have a particular problem with side scrollers, but that was an era of gaming where everything started to have a very samey-sameness to it. The combination of tons of shovelware, and supposedly "great" games that were just graphical updates on a repeating theme did nothing for me. I've played all of those games you listed, and I still prefer SMS Shinobi over all of them, followed by Zillion (which is more strategy/action than pure platformer). But that's an era of gaming where I just got bored with it, and didn't really get sucked back in until the Genesis came out. The SMS, even with it's smaller library, had more unique games, in my opinion. And the Arcade ports on the 7800 were the kind of games I really loved.

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supposedly "great" games that were just graphical updates on a repeating theme did nothing for me. And the Arcade ports on the 7800 were the kind of games I really loved.

 

which were graphical updates on a repeating ... not only theme but the 3rd or 4th re release heh

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which were graphical updates on a repeating ... not only theme but the 3rd or 4th re release heh

yeah - but in many cases they were the best/closest to the arcade versions of of those games we had seen to that point.

 

The 2600 was weak, but it was also old at that point. The 5200 and CV arcade ports were just...weak. 7800 era arcade ports were pretty great (excluding the sound on some games).

 

and the 7800 was backwards compatible, so I didn't have to just toss all those old games aside.

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I still prefer SMS Shinobi over all of them

 

Have you ever finished SMS Shinobi by chance? I missed the rapid fire shurikens from the arcade, but I thought it was a fun game in its own right.. . However ALL good feelings about it went out the window when I finished it after slaving for months.. I'm still pissed about it decades later. :P

 

See THAT'S another thing that the NES got right.. good endings when "endings" were a cool, new & novel thing we were looking for! :lol:

 

(pssst.. SMS Shinobi had none).

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