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


zetastrike

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I've been seeing this for years. People all over seem to say things like Atari-era games and consoles are "objectively bad" or worthless and that Nintendo invented good games or other garbage. I often hear that you have to be at least 50 years old today to even like "pre-NES" games which is bogus because I'm 27 and have loved that stuff for over a decade. It's frustrating because the time before the NES was such a vibrant, fascinating era that was chock full of variety and interesting stories. The games are still fun today, I love golden era arcade style game design. It's sad that that whole part of gaming history is being slowly erased by Nintendo kids.

 

I don't really like Top Hat Gaming Man, but he has a point that the average joe would rather watch 2,000 videos about the same Nintendo games he's been playing his whole life than learn about something new. I guess I'm lucky that I'm not an idiot like that and I appreciate the hobby.

 

I can understand simply not being interested in "pre-NES" gaming, but to actively hate and discredit it or just being angry that it exists is bizarre.

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I am 50/50 on Top Hat Gaming Man but that's not the topic

 

I have lead myself to believe when this topic comes up that the NES is seen as having the first "modern" video games ... as in story driven, high detail graphics, a kick ass soundtrack and over all an experience like a book or a movie

 

Pre NES tends to be mostly arcade style type games, simple yet fun things that don't offer much outside of increased difficulty ... of course that's not entirely true, but when you think 2600 maybe the first game comes to mind is pac-man, where as NES its SMB or Metroid for example

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Not only the 30-something YouTubers but also gaming jounralists who grew up playing nothing but Nintendo and reading magazines that dumped on non-NES/SNES systems. And we all know that Big N had swayed over their opinions just to be able to get games to review...

 

As far as current 20-somethings crapping on anything made before PS2? Good, cause now those same fanboi jounralists know exactly how we here felt for the last 20 years...

 

(These are just opnions of a bitter & twisted person...)

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I don’t think it makes sense to hate on pre nes consoles. Their is clearly a huge love for them now days. I like this statement made by Nolan Bushnell in response to this question:

 

Atari has continued to be hip throughout decades — it's cool to be retro. Is this a reaction to our current technology or merely nostalgia?

 

There are two things going on. The first is nostalgia, of course. But what is really happening now is many games have gratuitous complexity. Technology didn't allow this in those days… and the essence of gameplay in many instances is simply no ambiguity.

 

If you ever play chess, you play with black and white pieces that are the same as they were in the 1680s. The Atari games were very well-tuned for timing... it was sort of essential gameplay — gameplay with essence. And that's attractive in its own right.

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I was well into my late 20's before thinking the vcs could be enjoyable ... as a kid who's only system was a colecovision until the sega genesis

 

one looks at the chunk block systems and think "my god"

 

but then my 3yr old thinks a leaf and a stick are the greatest things ever ... I think we all can still find some form of amusement out of a leaf and a stick, problem is the majority of the world think that's a NES

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I'd like to say those "anything pre-NES is crap" people deserve a good slap behind the head, but I'm guilty of the same kind of thing: Anything that pre-dates the ColecoVision and Atari 2600 (like the Channel F, the Bally Astrocade, all the Pong clones, etc.) are completely unappealing to me.

 

But you don't see me going on the internet and trying to make my opinion heard by as many people as possible. :roll:

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Agree that it's a straw man argument. At worst, people ignore pre-NES consoles because the NES is the thing they grew up with and it's all they know and/or feel nostalgia for. That's not the same as "hatred". That's something you write to get video views and shares, and it seems to have worked here.

 

Someday there will be people making videos asking "do YouTube viewers HATE consoles before the Xbox 360?" There will always be a group of people who grew up with a particular console and don't know anything earlier. The NES just had a large fan base at the time and was a lot of kids' first console, and given that Nintendo is the only remaining console maker from that time period, it's still building new fans today. Atari fans generally knew them at the time, but very few people are spontaneously discovering them today if they didn't know them before.

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The Nintendo generation is becoming vocal now. They will fade with time, and then the next group will pipe up. And so on..

 

2008 called; it wants its headline back.

 

:P

 

To address the question, I don't think it's anything new. Even in the '90s there was a lot of "Why the @#$%--with a capital 'F'--would you want to play those old fossils when we have textured polygons and CD-quality music now with the PlayStation and Saturn and Nintendo 64?" It even extended to the NES to a degree.

 

I think we're just at the point where the difference between the beginning of gaming and today is so great that past a certain point--in this case the NES (for future generations, it will be stuff like PSX or N64)--it's too abstract or primitive or foreign to relate to. When the difference between Alpha and Omega was only, like, 20 years, it wasn't as drastic--people playing SNES or 3DO in their early '90s salad days could still look back at an Atari or Odyssey or Intellivision and say, "Okay, I can see what's going on there. It's a lot blockier, and all these functions and options I'm used to seeing in software are tethered to switches and dials so I have to sit right next to the console, but I get it." Or maybe they were old enough to remember the old arcade games, or saw them still hanging around at bowling alleys, restaurants, and bars. Those frames of reference are gone now.

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I watched some of the video (not all of it, because it's tedious, twee and repetitive). Top Hat's complaint is that he gets fewer views when he talks about pre-NES topics. That says more about him and his audience than anything else, is that not obvious? It's certainly not worth 15 minutes of anyone's time, whether or not it puts a few quid in his pockets.

 

I'm feeling very grumpy about "new media" people who do things for audience (meaning money) rather than interest in or passion for the material. I wish Top Hat success and happiness, but I'm going to steer clear of him now that I've seen his schtick.

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Top Hat's complaint is that he gets fewer views when he talks about pre-NES topics. That says more about him and his audience than anything else, is that not obvious?

 

When I read this, my mind snapped to the stereotypical pre-crash old man trying to get his compuserve to connect so he can check out the "livejournals" that all the kids are on about.

 

"Ethel, I think those you-tubes are broken! They aren't coming up right in the netscape. Why don't they just put this stuff on the TV, where you don't have to be some kinda computer genius to enjoy it?"

 

I know it's not at all what you meant, but it made me smile.

Edited by Reaperman
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I think it's kinda normal for people, young people especially, to dislike things that were before their time. For the kids that grew up with an NES you'll notice that Atari often seems old and uninteresting to them, as the NES seems old and uninteresting to the kids who grew up with a SNES or Genesis, and those systems aren't so attractive to the kids who grew up with a PlayStation or what have you.

 

There are occasional outliers who do get into systems before their time, but for the most part it seems people are generally only go back as far as their cherished childhood systems.

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