anybody else who wasn't a fan of the nes?

[xg4bx]

i ask because it struck me the other day that i never really cared for the nes. i always kinda found the library to be lackluster, even as a kid. sure there were a few titles i swore by (pretty much anything from capcom and konami) but i never understood the "magic" of nintendo.

 

being a somewhat spoiled child, i also owned a sega master system. to me, the sms was far superior. the graphics were exponentially better, it had neater accessories like the 3d glasses and i simply enjoyed the games more.

 

anybody else out there who never really got into the nes?

[nathanallan]

I really tried, but also never got into the NES. Mainly because I only got to play it at my friend's house and never owned one personally. I was die-hard 2600 for years and years.

 

These days, I like the NES even less because of the cart connector and lockout chip. I much prefer playing on my Master System and swear it has better graphics and pretty much everything about it. I would compare release titles and to me the SMS wins hands down, imho. The things are awesome. The only thing I have had to do to them is replace a couple of power regulators and clean the switch contacts and presto, work perfectly so far (fixed 3 of them).

 

Dealing with NES cart slots is a pain. Lockout chip, pain. SMS is a much friendlier system tech-wise.

Edited June 16, 2009 by nathanallan

[roland p]

Here you can find an almost similar thread.

[Ze_ro]

When I was a kid, I had a ColecoVision... when the NES came out, it never seemed quite right to me. In my opinion, it managed to kill "proper" gaming and replace it with something I wasn't sure I liked (like, you played to "win", not to get the most points... no more joysticks... etc). For about 20 years, I always held that against it... which is somewhat ironic since in reality it saved the industry.

 

Lately, I've been getting into NES though. The library is absolutely enormous, with a wide variety of games. There are so many true classics for the system that they overshadow tons of hidden gems that no one ever talks about... games like Journey to Silius get lost in the flood of Contras, Mario Bros, Zeldas, etc. It's also nice that 99% of the library is very obtainable.

 

--Zero

[BSA Starfire]

Here in the UK the NES was a failiure, everyone hung onto there 8-bits like spectrum or C64(both of which soldiered on until the early nineties) etc or had ST or Amiga. The Sega master did pretty well however, due to clever marketing here by Matertronic(a popular British budget software house).

Both the Sega & NES paled in comparison to the ST/Amiga stuff graphically however, the Nintendo looking the weakest of the bunch & £40+ per game pretty much did it for me when ST games were £15 & 8-bit £7.99 for often the same titles.

I think the NES was the right product at the right time in the USA but that was not the case here in the UK, there was no "NES generation" here most Brit's when onto 16-bit micros instead.

I've never owned a working NES(had two busted ones that went in the bin years ago), my only exposure to 8-bit Nintendo technology is the recent purchase of a Famiclone(that looks like an N64 for £2) with one of those 99-1 carts, after playing games like Arkanoid, Galaga & 1942 on it I'm glad I didn't bother getting one back in the day.....

[famicommander]

I grew up on the NES (born in 1990). I inherited my parents' and brothers' systems as they stopped gaming. So, by the time I was five I owned an NES, Atari 2600, Game Boy, SEGA Genesis, Game Gear, and Super Nintendo.

 

The NES holds a special place in my heart because Super Mario Bros was the first game I ever completed on my own. And it's definitely a great console.

[Trooper]

Well I have absolutely no love for the NES, never had and never will have. I hate everything about that piece of junk, the ugly ass design, the controllers that can only be comfortably played by 4 year old japanese children, the games that are either crappy arcadeports, me too platformers or just generally unplayable, the stupid ass design of the cartridge connector. Last but not least Nintendos businesspractices during the NES' glory days makes me throw up a little in my mouth.

 

Nope, not a big NES or Nintendofan

[KIWASABI]

Here in the UK the NES was a failiure, everyone hung onto there 8-bits like spectrum or C64(both of which soldiered on until the early nineties) etc or had ST or Amiga. The Sega master did pretty well however, due to clever marketing here by Matertronic(a popular British budget software house).

Both the Sega & NES paled in comparison to the ST/Amiga stuff graphically however, the Nintendo looking the weakest of the bunch & £40+ per game pretty much did it for me when ST games were £15 & 8-bit £7.99 for often the same titles.

I think the NES was the right product at the right time in the USA but that was not the case here in the UK, there was no "NES generation" here most Brit's when onto 16-bit micros instead.

I've never owned a working NES(had two busted ones that went in the bin years ago), my only exposure to 8-bit Nintendo technology is the recent purchase of a Famiclone(that looks like an N64 for £2) with one of those 99-1 carts, after playing games like Arkanoid, Galaga & 1942 on it I'm glad I didn't bother getting one back in the day.....

 

Very interesting alternate perspective on the NES; thanks for sharing! Could you go into a little bit more detail about the "clever marketing by Matertronic"? I've always wondered how the SMS managed to prosper in Europe while the NES failed.

 

As for my opinion on the NES, I love it just for the sheer number of quality games. I was very annoyed to learn about Nintendo's policy of forcing third-party companies to make all of their games NES exclusive, however (a policy that was quickly made illegal). But really what a system all comes down to is the amount of quality games, and, in my opinion, the NES has more quality games than almost any other system.

 

-Adam

[crunchysuperman]

I was never able to get my head around those controllers.

[mcjakeqcool]

The NES was cool, but I was more of a 7800 man myself, I always liked a good game of Doom on the specky myself, aswell.

[Ross PK]

In the UK the NES was pretty unheard of, and when I did see one there didn't really seem to be anything that special about it.

 

I still don't care about it now, I've played a lot of the games on a NES emulator and they just seemed boring. I too don't understand the 'magic' of Nintendo.

[108 Stars]

The SMS beat the NES here in Germany as well, thanks to a few factors. First of all the SMS was available earlier, thus making the NES look like a step back when it was released because of the obviously inferior graphics. The SMS had some support from European developers as well, resulting in some nice ports of computer-games.

 

Another factor is supposedly that neither Sega nor Nintendo did have their own departments in Europe, leaving the business to third parties for quite a while; and it seems that Sega just got the better partners.

 

Later on, the NES did gain some momentum, I believe mostly due to the huge success of the GameBoy; so kids could play similar games to those on GB on their TVs with the NES. But this did not work for too long, Nintendo pretty much dropped most of the NES support after the SNES arrived in 1992, while the SMS was supported until 1996 with grade A titles. The biggest Sega franchises usually got SMS-counterparts when a new Genesis-game arrived. There are 4 traditional Sonic-games on SMS in Europe, all rivaling the 16bit incarnations in gameplay and featuring graphics and speed far veyond anything the NES could do. Not just ports, but specifically developed to make use of the SMS´ capabilities. The Disney-games from Sega were spectacular and outclassing Capcom´s Disney-titles for Nintendo most of the time, and again the SMS got it´s fair share; the awesome Land of Illusion for example outright topped it´s Genesis-counterpart World of Illusion.

 

While Nintendo did not bother to bring more complex games like RPGs or Koei´s stuff to Europe, Sega did; Final Fantasy first appeared in Europe on the PS1, Dragon Quest on the PS2. Those were very innovative and addictive hits in the USA and Japan, and not releasing them here left much to be desired. Sega neither had Square nor Enix sadly, but what they did have they released here; Phantasy Star was damn impressive, probably the best RPG of the 8bit-era, and Ultima IV was a popular computer game already, and both got EU-releases.

 

It is true however that consoles were just a small portion of the gaming market in Europe; there was no NES- or even SMS-craze, in the systems´ heyday the homecomputers ruled. C64, Amiga 500...those were the game machines that became a cult here. When you ask for nostalgic memories of gaming here, it is not Mario & co, but Turrican, Giana Sisters, Speedball, International Karate and the likes. It was not until the time SNES and Genesis were battling it out that the Amiga died and the focus shifted to consoles.

 

The superiority of the NES in the States was mostly because of good marketing; sure, it also had great games for the time, but not good enough to explain the kind of monopoly Nintendo got. And after the first successes with the NES they could tighten their iron grip because of their restrictive third-party-policy.

 

Looking back today I must agree that from a worldwide point of view the NES had a huge selection of (gameplay-wise) excellent games. Super Mario Brothers, Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, Zelda, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Kid Icarus and many more cult classics were born on that system and basically destroyed everything seen on pre-crash-systems imho. The NES just had so many games overall that among the countless stinkers still a big number of top hits were made, games that influence gaming to this very day. The SMS has fewer really aweful games, but they are more in the spotlight because the software library overall is just much smaller.

 

I never had an NES as a kid, I only played it at friends places; but still I have to say it was a system that lead to the biggest jump forward in game-quality ever. NOTHING from previous generations comes even close to the classics of the NES (and also SMS). So it is right that it has a special place in gamers´ hearts; it is just not right that it has this place alone.

[mos6507]

IMHO, the NES succeeded because of the videogame crash opening up the market to any and all competitors and the generational transition between Gen X and Gen Y. Gen X moved on to home computers and didn't look back. Gen Y cut their teeth on the NES because that's all that was out there. The actual NES hardware was nothing special by mid 80s standards. The only reason it looked like a big upgrade vs. earlier systems was the lower cost of ROM at the time, enabling bigger banked ROM games.

[Dauber]

I wasn't a fan of the NES. Don't get me wrong, I thought it was a good video game system, but -- right around when the NES came out, I got a Commodore 64 as an 8th-grade graduation present. The graphics and sound were just as good as on the NES, and I figured hey, it's a computer -- it's a lot easier to make games for a computer than it is to make games for a cartridge-based video game console (then again, I never learned how to program games), so I figured a computer was the way to go. Also, it used my Atari joysticks, so that was a plus. (And sorry, but you can't play Crossroads on a Nintendo. )

[godslabrat]

Cast out the heathens! The streets shall flow with the blood of the non-believers!!!

 

What I mean to say is, hey, it takes all kinds...

[Reaperman]

I was lucky enough to have an 800xl from about the age of 3 on up, and while I eventually saw the general gaming improvements that NES's tiled graphics and large program size brought, I was entirely unimpressed with the idea of 'paying' for software. It meant that while I had hundreds of games, my schoolmates only had a dozen or so. That was how it started off, but eventually the peer pressure to buy the thing got to me and I saved my pennies and snagged a used one very late in its lifetime (~1992). It, and everything else, was destroyed in a house fire only a short time later so I never really bonded as much as I could have. when I came back to gaming, I was a PC user, so no, NES never really took off with me.

 

Now I just love the thing though. NES and SNES have become the easy way for me to play decent ports of my favorite computer games. On NES, I can quickly have a game of Pirates!, M.U.L.E. or even many of my arcade favorites without worrying about floppies, or where I'm going to stick my keyboard. If only they made a famiclone with a pal/ntsc switch, I could play NES elite...

 

I never got much into SMS though--think I only have a couple games and a powerbase converter. I really would like to try out the shutterglasses.

Edited June 16, 2009 by Reaperman

[bah]

I grew up with the 2600. Left thumb = fire, right thumb = direction. Never owned the NES so whenever I was at a friends house I found it hard to switch my thinking, and getting beaten at every game was not fun so I just never learned to like the system.

 

Years later, I can now beat my kids on either system (my kids are young yet) so now its more fun .

[shadow460]

We had a 2600 and a 5200 when the NES came out. I was nowhere even remotely interested in another system. SOme of the games looked cool, sure, and those are the ones I have on my shelf today.

 

As a whole, though, I don't have a lot of interest in the NES.

[JamesD]

I never cared for the NES. Too many games were for kiddies and too many with a ridiculous difficulty curve.

Not to mention almost all on screen objects were the same size no matter what the game. Perhaps the size of a tile?

Oh yeah... and the controllers are way too small for my hands.

Edited June 17, 2009 by JamesD

[Crazy Climber]

My Godfather hated Nintendo, he was also a SMS owner. As a kid I always wanted everything, I don't remember not liking any systems.

[ApolloBoy]

I never cared for the NES. Too many games were for kiddies and too many with a ridiculous difficulty curve.

Not to mention almost all on screen objects were the same size no matter what the game. Perhaps the size of a tile?

Doesn't sound like you've played a whole lot of NES games.

 

As a kid I always wanted everything, I don't remember not liking any systems.

Same here. In fact I'm still the same way to this day.

[mbd30]

I never cared for the NES. Too many games were for kiddies and too many with a ridiculous difficulty curve.

Not to mention almost all on screen objects were the same size no matter what the game. Perhaps the size of a tile?

Oh yeah... and the controllers are way too small for my hands.

 

I don't understand how that is possible. I had a Atari 7800 at the time, and I wanted a NES more than anything. But then I was around 12 years old when NES became popular. You may have been older and not cared as much about video games at that point.

[gamerz]

to all NES haters...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

its your choice

[NE146]

I had both an NES and an SMS during college.. so it was never an issue with me which one was better since I had the full choice of both their libraries.

 

That being said I'll never ever forget the magical feeling I got when I was in Japan, and I saw "Mario Bros" (not Super) running on a display from a Famicom. You gotta remember this was the mid 80's and developments in Japan were simply not well known in the U.S., So to see anything, you basically had to go there yourself and treasure hunt yourself by going to the stores. And there it was.. the most amazing home console version I ever saw. I said "It's exactly like the arcade!!!" Which of course it wasn't, but compared to anything we had in the states, it really was. So yeah, I can't knock the NES/Famicom as it was my very first glimpse into what a good home videogame version of the arcade games I loved could be.

[telengard]

i ask because it struck me the other day that i never really cared for the nes. i always kinda found the library to be lackluster, even as a kid. sure there were a few titles i swore by (pretty much anything from capcom and konami) but i never understood the "magic" of nintendo.

 

being a somewhat spoiled child, i also owned a sega master system. to me, the sms was far superior. the graphics were exponentially better, it had neater accessories like the 3d glasses and i simply enjoyed the games more.

 

anybody else out there who never really got into the nes?

 

Yeah, not a huge fan. I like Tetris, Dr Mario, Excitebike, RC Pro Am, and Solar Jetman. Those are pretty much the only NES games I play/like. But I can't say the SMS really did anything for me either. I tend to play the older games for some reason with exceptions like I mentioned for the NES.

 

~telengard