Is it fact that Nintendo Saved Gaming?

[Jakandsig]

I noticed in one of the below thread that there seems to be conflicting opinions on what is factually true. A lot of people say that gaming was fie and a lot of people say gaming would be done (U.S. or other) without the NES.

 

Now while I questions the sources, I have found a few posts from both sides.

 

The No side talks about gaming being fine before the NES came out and the Industry was already out of the gutter as well as equal excitement for all 3 1986 systems (mostly the 7800 and NES though) and that the NES never really blew a huge lead until 1988.

 

Then the yes side of course goes with games that we never would have been able to play on consoles, games like SMB were some kind of new thing that never existed, and it revolutionized gaming in some ways.

 

Now, a popular list from mainstream sites for the people who say yes like IGN, GR, etc. can be found here:

1. Nintendo fixed the Industry that Atari had ruined.
2. Video games were completely dead until the NES released in 1985 and brought the industry back by 1986
3. SMB single-handedly changed the types of games we played and also inspired PC gaming somehow and games with scrolling
4. NES was the first left hand to move console
5. NES was the first to also become a computer
6. NES was the first to have lock-out options
7. NES single-handedly brought video game consoles back into existence, and without them there would be no consoles.
8. People were not still buying video games until the NES
9. The NES test launch was responsible for the new intellivisions, the Atari 7800, and for the Atari 2600 jr. As well as Coleco still supporting CV in 1085.
10. NES setting up the third-party game publisher system as we know it

 

 

[BassGuitari]

1. Nintendo fixed the Industry that Atari had ruined.
2. Video games were completely dead until the NES released in 1985 and brought the industry back by 1986
3. SMB single-handedly changed the types of games we played and also inspired PC gaming somehow and games with scrolling
4. NES was the first left hand to move console
5. NES was the first to also become a computer
6. NES was the first to have lock-out options
7. NES single-handedly brought video game consoles back into existence, and without them there would be no consoles.
8. People were not still buying video games until the NES
9. The NES test launch was responsible for the new intellivisions, the Atari 7800, and for the Atari 2600 jr. As well as Coleco still supporting CV in 1085.
10. NES setting up the third-party game publisher system as we know it

Well, if the question is "are these points accurate?" then I'm gonna go with "No." I think it's reasonable to say that the NES made substantial contributions to the "resurrection" of video game consoles in the U.S., but most of those statements are patently untrue. I'll do a point-by-point here:

 

1. This only holds true if Atari alone was solely responsible for the destruction of the console market; it wasn't. It didn't do itself a whole lot of favors, but to blame the crash entirely on Atari is absurd.

 

2. False. The Atari 2600 sold something like a million units even in 1985. And people were still buying games for it and other consoles at bargain bin prices. The crash was a great time to get games...they were dirt cheap! Also, computer games were as popular as ever. Gaming didn't just stop because there was no real console juggernaut for a year or two...it just moved to the Commodore 64 and Apple II for a little while.

 

3. An argument could be made for the first thing, but scrolling existed years before SMB. Take Zaxxon, Zevious, River Raid, Blue Max, Defender and a host of other games scrolled long before Super Mario Bros. To claim SMB invented scrolling is to declare idiocy. It can't be denied, though, that it was a watershed title which had a profound influence on gamers and designers alike.

 

4. False. The Vectrex immediately comes to mind. Plenty of systems had ambidextrous controllers (Fairchild, Bally, APF M1000, Intellivision, Atari 5200...); you could "move with the left hand" if you wanted. Getting a bit more arcane, the vertical control dials on the various analog Odyssey systems in the '70s were left-handed. As far as I can tell, though, the NES (actually, the Famicom) was the first console with a "modern" D-pad controller.

 

5. False. The Astrocade offered external BASIC programmability and storage/retrieval from its inception in 1977/78. It also had some computer expansions (Z-Grass, Viper) in the late '70s and early '80s, which never saw wide release. The APF M/P1000 and Intellivision were designed with computer expansion in mind from the get-go (Imagination Machine and Keyboard Component, respectively).

 

6. False. The Intellivision II was designed to lock out third-party cartridges -specifically Coleco's- although third-party developers quickly figured out how to get around it.

 

7. The way things played out it kind of looks that way, but Atari Corp. was always going to release the 7800 anyway, regardless of whatever Nintendo was doing. The reason for the 7800's late release was that GCC wasn't going to give Jack Tramiel any games for it until he paid them the money they got stiffed out of when Atari Inc. went kaput in '83-'84. Also, I'm pretty sure Sega already had plans to bring the Mark III (Master System) over here.

 

8. False. There wasn't a whole lot of new development for consoles, sure, but people were still buying old games. They were cheap as hell; there had never been a better time to buy games!

 

9. Mmmm....no. I can't speak for INTV Corp.'s plans regarding the INTV System III (which I believe beat the NES to market), but the 2600jr. and 7800 were in the works long before the NES hit. Thousands of units had already been built, in fact. My personal Atari 7800 was made in 1984. And Coleco was in the process of getting out of the business in 1985, not gearing up to compete with Nintendo. If anything, the impeding arrival of the NES only chased Coleco away faster.

 

10. I guess I don't know enough about this to comment.

 

 

In a nutshell, I don't think the NES "saved" gaming; the Atari 7800 and Sega Master System were on the way, people were still buying older titles for next to nothing, and they were playing games on computer systems. There would have been video games with or without the NES. But I do think the NES gave the console market a jump-start, and that it helped point games in a new direction.

[fiddlepaddle]

Saved Gaming from what... existence? No.

 

The "crash" was not a complete stop of the game market, it was merely a reduction in size...it continued, just at a smaller level.

 

Would gaming have disappeared without the NES? No, by that time, the market was finally ready again and Nintendo took advantage of that before someone else could. Did Nintendo boost the gaming industry? Without a doubt.

 

This question seems a lot like your last one; I guess you want a definite yes or no answer. So,

 

===> No.

[JamesD]

Isn't this poll like saying "Are you a rabid Nintendo fanboy?"

[Osgeld]

1. NES setting up the third-party game publisher system as we know it

 

As far as I am aware no one is extorting 3rd part publishers to console exclusivity like nintendo did with the NES

[Seob]

No, but why start a topic again with the same stupid list you started in several other topics.

And no for the same reasons other already gave you in the other topics.

Are you a accountant? You seem to be migthy impressed with numbers.

Edited December 5, 2013 by Seob

[Rhomaios]

I swear this is the fourth or fifth thread I've seen discuss this in the past month.

[PFL]

Fact: Nintendo didn't 'save' gaming in Europe or the USSR. It didn't need saving even with all the rampant pirating in the 80s. Both Europe and the USSR were fine thank you. It's true that the 8 bit hardware market reached saturation point and a lot of companies went bust but all in all the software just kept coming and, indeed, still does (have you seen the speccy and C64 scenes?!).

 

The 8 bit computer is dead! Long live the 8 bit computer!

[+Random Terrain]

Some people act like everyone stopped playing games until Nintendo saved us all with the NES. Although I continued to buy marked down games for my Atari 2600, a lot of my attention was pulled away by computer games and trying to make my own computer games. I bet a lot of other people were computer-crazy for a while and spent less time playing console games, but played a boatload of computer games. When the NES popped up with arcade-like graphics that were better than what most people were seeing on their computers, it seemed like their attention was pulled toward consoles again.

 

We also can't forget the fresh horde of children who seemed to have a faint acquaintance with "tari tapes." They could see that "intendo tapes" were closer to arcade quality than anything that came before and these "intendo tapes" could be just as advanced as computer games, so kids had the best of both gaming worlds all in one console.

 

The NES brought back the same kind of excitement that people had for the Atari 2600 in the early 1980s, but people were still playing games before the NES saved the world and cured cancer (even if they were just playing computer games that were illegally copied).

[+Charlie Cat]

Hi guys,

 

My answers is no. Because in the book "Phoenix: The Fall & Rise of Video Games" by Leonard Herman, video games sales were actually up in 1983. He reports that Atari, Coleco and other competitors sold a combined 7 million consoles and 75 million game cartridges during that time period and 15 million more cartridges than they sold in 1982. Herman also claims that only 27% of those games were purchased from clearance bins.

 

Anthony...

[AtariLeaf]

Isn't this poll like saying "Are you a rabid Nintendo fanboy?"

I don't understand the obsession. It's like he's looking for a particular answer that he's not getting.

 

Everyone I knew who was gaming back then either kept gaming on their current consoles or moved to computers. The C64 was hugely popular with kids in school in early and mid 80's. Everyone, and when I say everyone, I mean everyone, had one version of a computer that you could game on back then. To say that people would have stopped playing video games without Nintendo coming along is patently stupid.

[karokoenig]

If you think console only, there might be a bit of a point - but not a very strong one. As many people in this thread have already pointed out: computers were the shit, and gaming as a whole thrived stronger than ever. I remember back in the day, I thought the NES was for lazy kids who were too dumb to type LOAD"*",8,1 on a keyboard.

 

Also, I honestly thought that console was utterly useless. How, for example, was I supposed to play text adventures and more complex simulations on that thing? The C64 even could speak as early as '83. Yes, I know the INTV could, too, but I mean recognizable speech. "Hey Taxi" - "Pad 6 please".

[godslabrat]

This whole discussion really reminds me of a historical controversy over the "Dark Ages", the period of time between the collapse of the Roman Empire and the early signs of the Renaissance. It was once taught that scientific progress essentially stopped and regressed for several hundred years.

 

This teaching is unpopular today, for three reasons:

• It really only looks at European history as a whole. This same period of time was actually a high point in the development of other cultures.
• It doesn't really provide a fair look at the number of scientific and artistic accomplishments which WHERE being done, despite the setbacks.
• There is an inherent "present bias" in the view, possible only with the advantage of centuries of hindsight.

The "Crash" is like our version of the "Dark Ages" for almost the exact same reasons. It's true that games didn't just stop like a faucet being turned off, nor did they only begin again with the NES. It's also true that the NES' impact seems a bit more significant from a US console gamer's perspective. However... I'm going to suggest that the core concept behind the Crash (and, for that matter, the Dark Ages) IS correct. Up until that point, there was a long chain of progress and accomplishments, followed by an immediate disruption that lasted a significant period of time. When progress started again, it had to be done by different people, because circumstances prevented the original pioneers from ever repeating their past accomplishments.

 

So no, I don't think the NES "saved" gaming in that gaming would have disappeared otherwise. However, when I ask myself if the industry would have bounced back as fast or as well as it did at the time, if it were under the helm of Atari or Sega... I'm really not that confident. Nor am I confident that PC gaming would have filled the void as handily. Nintendo's entry into the industry was a bit like kick-starting the Renaissance by giving Europe access to classical Greek and Arabic works: you suddenly give people the tools accelerate their own progress.

[jhd]

 

Now, a popular list from mainstream sites for the people who say yes like IGN, GR, etc. can be found here:

 

NES was the first to also become a computer

 

When did the NES ever get a computer expansion? There was Family BASIC for the Famicom, that was never released outside of Japan.

 

As others have correctly noted, several other pre-NES vdeo game consoles had computer expansions, even if none were very widely sold.

[PFL]

So, computers that play games don't count but game machines that turn into computers do? That's kinda like having you cake and eating it, isn't it?

 

 

 

Again, this is off topic but I thought I'd share as it just popped in my head. I've never really got the NES. I love other Nintendo consoles but just not the NES. I've tried, I've really tried. I bought one, bought lots of games, played emulators and played lots of 'import' ROMs. I've watched lots of YT videos and read lots of books, fansites and blogs. I've seen all the nostalic fan art and heard all the songs but I just don't feel anything for the system. I don't know why. Maybe it's the iconoclast (it's so bloody 'cool' at the minute) in me, as I have and love plenty of other old systems I didn't have as a child...

[Hatta]

PC gamers never noticed a crash at all. If it weren't for the NES, PC gaming would have been even bigger than it is.

[mbd30]

It's true to a limited extent. The NES saved console gaming in the US.

[Jakandsig]

It's true to a limited extent. The NES saved console gaming in the US.

how?

[mbd30]

how?

After the crash, nobody wanted to have anything to do with video game consoles and home video games in the US. Nintendo had to make the NES not even seem like a home video game console in order to get people interested.

[Osgeld]

that's the broad paint brush picture of it, though reality is different.

 

In reality people did want to have something to do with video game consoles, just not every tom dick hary, their parents, grandparents, unborn child and its cousin. Games and systems were still selling, maybe not enough for another 400,000 Xmas party but selling.

 

What Nintendo brought to the party was a fresh take on a console with different styles of games out side of "upgraded pac man and space invaders" which of course brought people in to play, much like the 3d revolution after the side scrolling game had become boring.

 

I dont see anyone claiming that playstation saved the entire industry after sega's total screw up's and the entire industry was faltering cause every game was side scrolling or a fighter. But by the second (or 3rd if you count the arcade crash in the group) It wasnt as drastic, as companies were more prepared for it, and people who had video games were video gamers, not just anyone not wanting to miss out on the next VCR or color TV revolution.

Edited December 7, 2013 by Osgeld

[Jess Ragan]

It's like you guys keep asking this question until you get the answer you want to hear. Fact is, Atari screwed up big with E.T. and Pac-Man and an unregulated third party market, and Nintendo had to clean up the mess. MAYBE Atari could have revived the market on its own, but it was very much mired in the past, and gaming wouldn't have evolved much with Atari at the helm.

 

Beyond that, it's important to note that the Atari of the late 1980s is NOT the same as the Atari responsible for your fondest childhood memories. Warner-owned Atari died in 1984. Your loyalty is misplaced.

[GameGirl420]

I voted YES because a world without Nintendo would have really sucked in the late 80's. The Sega Master System was designed to compete against the Famicom,therefore without the NES there would be no SMS. Kids in the late 80's weren't interested in computers like the adults were either and tbh I wasn't interested in the Atari 7800 and knew nobody that was in those days.Gaming would have indeed continued but it would be very different today imo.

 

 

Also games like Legend of Zelda and Metroid started a whole gaming revolution that would not have been possible if it weren't for the NES existing.

 

 

This is coming from a huge Atari fangirl right here ....I was very young but I do remember the VG crash and how it affected everyone's interest in home gaming. No way would the industry be where it is today without the innovations of the NES. That's a fact. Anybody that denies Nintendo's influence is ignorant in history.

[PFL]

Maybe we should just change the title of the thread to "Is It Fact That Nintendo Saved Gaming in North America", declare the answer "yes" and then we can let THE REST OF THE WORLD get on with it...

 

Ataris crash meant NOTHING in the rest of the world. It caused a hiccup in gaming in North America. The NES meant VERY LITTLE to the rest of the world. It only really made a big impact in Japan and North America. The REST OF THE WORLD were getting on with gaming on 8 bit computers and, to a lesser extent, Sega systems. Do you know that where I come from until the PSX came about consoles were considered a bit of a joke in general and were only really for rich, stupid people who could afford the exhorbatant games prices and could'nt use a real computer?? The NES meant NOTHING.

 

And to say there would be no Master System without the NES is just such bollocks. Sega would just decide to stop producing new consoles after the SG1000? Why would a successful international company do that?! Nonsense...

 

Anyway, that's me said my piece again. Just go back to your little NES bubble land...

[GameGirl420]

LOL don't have to be so angry and pretentious. We all have opinions. I'm just saying from my own experience and it's not a generalization.

 

I love all consoles and not only the NES. Oh and as if the SMS contoller isn't a ripoff of the Famicom's? Which came first Famicom or SMS??

Edited December 7, 2013 by lushgirl_80

[PFL]

You know, I was going to respond to your points but why bother...