In the early days of the 80's, gaming was still in its youth. There were systems like the arcade systems, the Colecovision, and the mighty Atari. But, during the great gaming crash, they all slowly died. However, one system survived. One little system made by a company, which had made cards for the last 100 years. The company? Nintendo. The System? The Famicom, or the Family Computer. It was more well known as the Nintendo Entertainment System, or the NES for short.
The graphics were amazing for the time. Never had a console displayed such an amazing array of colors. While launch titles looked like Atari games, as little as a couple months later they started to take form. They evolved into gorgeous graphics from which no one had ever seen before on a console. Not only were some of them very well done on their own, but the NES even managed to have some arcade perfect ports! Now, taking into account that before 1999, Arcade games ALWAYS looked better than anything else, that was outstanding.
Its sound capabilities were also superior for the time. While most Atari games had one-instrument beeps, which didn’t, even sound very good, the NES was far ahead. Its quality was alot higher than anything else at the time. And, it could do many instruments at a time. If you don't believe me, play games like Simon's Quest,
Marble Madness,, or Wizard's and Warriors. Even today game tunes like these still manage to rival modern soundtracks. The Atari couldn't do great tracks like this.
The NES consists of one of the most amazing libraries of games you will ever find. Not only does it have the largest library of quality games, second only to the Super NES, but it still probably has the largest library period of any console game. Naming all of them would take an eternity.
No matter what category you chose, there were many games to suit your needs. Want a platformer? We've got
Super Mario Bros. for you. Shooters? Which one will that be, space or action?
Contra and
Gradius are there for you. Or maybe
Metroid if you're into more exploration. RPG's you say? Well, we've got
Dragon Warrior and the
Final Fantasy series for you. Action RPG? Try out The Legend of
Zelda, or Radia Senki. Strategy? Here's Fire Emblem. The list goes on forever. If you could think up a game genre, chances are there are at least 3 of its type on the NES.
And it is not only the quantity of the games that were on the NES, but the amazing quality. Even with all these new next-gen systems, there are still many
NES Games I find to be better.
Super Mario Bros. 3 still destroys any other plat-former besides its sequels. The
Final Fantasy's and
Dragon Warrior games still pack a punch. The Legend of
Zelda is still fun to play. Hell, some games I enjoy even more than some modern games. Give me a classic like
River City Ransom over a game like Blood Omen II any day.
But perhaps my favorite thing about the system is the sheer innovation that every game had. Because no genre typed had been invented yet, no one really had any idea of how to make a game. As a result, games were extremely innovative and unique. Take a game like
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for example. Instead of taking form of just a pure beat-em'-up, it had a bunch of different features. There was an overworld, you could change characters during battle, and get a variety of different weapons. Or take a game like Little Nemo. I doubt we'll ever see a game like that anymore. No formulas meant that the game designers could let their imaginations run wild. Now, very few games are completely original. To be totally new and innovative is a task. So far, only Pikmin seems to have succeeded. However, here, since there was nothing before, unless you just stole an engine from another game, your game would be fairly unique.
The add-ons are still fairly decent for a console. There was the joy-pad, which while good for some games, failed to sell well and sucked at others. There was the
POWer glove, introduced in ''The Wizard'', which could be used for games like Punch-out, but that too suffered from problems. The U-Force was a total failure, so I won't even get into it. Arguably its best add-on was the Light gun, which was used for over 20
NES Games. It could be used to do some
Duckhunting in
Super Mario Bros./
Duckhunt, or for the light gun portion of Bayou Billy. There was also that ROB thing, but the less said about that the better.
A fun fact that many people do not know, the Sega Master system was actually slightly more
POWerful than the NES. But, few owned it. How did Nintendo manage to edge out? Well, for one thing, they brought the videogame industry out of the depression. So, everyone had one. Nintendo had a
Monopoly. But also, it was the fact that the Master System had like 4 games for it, which anyone actually cared about.
Even with a two-button control, all of the games managed to work perfectly. The control, while not very smooth, still felt good. You could play for hours on end with this control and never have any problems. It later caused its offsprings to become more and more comfortable till we have the controls of today, which literally curve around your hands.
Overall, this is one of the best systems ever created. If you want a good selection of quality titles that are aged to perfection, pick this up. If you want a system with a library of games where each game was something new and unique, grab this. Or, if you just want some cheap games that will still supply you with hours of fun, GET THIS! It's the legendary Nintendo…you won't be disappointed.
That's not true, the NES brought the industry back from the crash, it was released after. it didn't survive it.
Arcade perfect ports of Nintendo arcade games running on the NES hardware, such as the Playchoice 10, or the Vs. system.
The US release set for the NES was only around 700 games. I'm certain that the Playstation is WELL beyond that, and the PS2 to an even greater degree.
I may be wrong, but I don't think Fire Emblem was released outside of Japan. and I don't even know what Radia Senki is, but judging by the name, it wasn't either.
Yep,
Megaman 6 sure was innovative, I'd be hard pressed to find 5 other games that I could confuse it with.
Fact is, the NES did have innovation and originality because there were still things that hadn't been done back then. that doesn't mean EVERY game was original and fantastic.
Last paragraph was all about innovation, and yet you completely dismis R.O.B? when has there been a more innovative... robotic buddy for a console? I think ROB could have been much more successful if he were used for more games that were actually fun.
I'm not sure what you mean about the "joy pad" generally the Joy Pad is the standard controller, and it sold very well. if you mean the Advantage, well, it couldn't have sold too poorly, I own two of them, and I see others all the time, and it's fantastic for some games.
The
POWer Glove though... that thing is just a disgrace.
How did Nintendo manage to edge out? by forbidding store owners from carrying anything else.
An example scenario:
Game store: Hey, this Sega Master System looks great! maybe we should sell that here!
Nintendo: Sure, but if you do that, we're not shipping any more NES consoles or games to you.
Game Store: Oh god no! the NES is what makes us our money. it'd be stupid to throw a sure bet away on some new console that may not sell well.
There was that, and the fact that if you developed for the NES, you developed ONLY for the NES. so the SMS was lacking any decent developers.
As for it being more
POWerful... Well, it could display more colours on screen at a time, and just looking at the numbers (NES = 1.79Mhz, SMS = 3.6 Mhz) it was more
POWerful, but the SMS used a Z80, history's most inefficient CPU.
this post wasn't meant to discount the effort involved in this write up, or the NES in any way, just some corrections.