The fail of NES hardware/gaming video from UK outlook

[empsolo]

The instructions for Amiga version look OK to me, but I only finished the IBM version with a 2 button stick.

I think you just had to be a better player playing C64/Amiga games (1: quick tap for whip 2: press and hold down for other options....sounds good to me)

 

Meanwhile in Japan at the same time, Both the Sharp X68000 and MSX had games that were compatible with more modern game pads and fighting sticks. This included Castlevania.

 

 

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Edited March 23, 2017 by empsolo

[empsolo]

Playing The Eidolon on A8 we put the XE on the floor, controlling the Space Bar with your toes.

That's just extremely poor game mechanics and QOL.

 

 

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[Mayhem]

Many games used space bar as a second fire button. With the C64 though, space bar mapped to fire on the joystick in port 1, so you could just do that instead heh.

[Lost Dragon]

In the interests of balance..

 

If you look back at publishers etc talking about difficulties encountered bringing coin ops of the era to the Amiga, the single button joystick issue does rear it's head.

 

Adrian Curry, assistant producer on Amiga Mortal Kombat mentioned it early on in the games development and how, whilst he personally didn't like using the keyboard at the same time as the joystick, some Amiga owners might have like that option.

 

Not an arcade conversion,just a game very much inspired by likes of M.K and Street Fighter 2, but coders of Elfmania also noted there was always the issue of working things out for a 1 button joystick and how Street Fighter 2 treated 1 button joysticks as a burden..

[BassGuitari]

C64 games like Castlevania and TMNT should have just used the keyboard and ditched the joystick entirely. Wouldn't have been perfect but at least everything's in one place and there's none of that "press button to X, hold button to Y" nonsense. #hindsight

[Mayhem]

The games that were keyboard controlled on the C64 had that interface usually for good reasons. I'd really not want to play an action game like that most of the time.

[high voltage]

That was for Spectrum users

[atarilovesyou]

Y'all talking about keyboards and whatnot...whatever. You need at least two buttons to play games from 85 and later, so why it wasn't done for the Amiga or C-64, who knows. They're computers, not consoles, and that's the point: why bother bringing up computers when you talk about video game CONSOLES?

 

Of course people didn't just stop playing games during the crash. I played more computer games during that time (well, throughout it all in fact) than I ever did afterwards. The Commodore was loved for what it was, but it was nothing in terms of popularity when the new wave of consoles ushered in by Nintendo.

 

How people get this idea that there wasn't a crash...Crash Deniers, I say It did in fact happen. It spelled the doom for every major player in the console game in NA! Sure you could play computer games during the drought before the NES brought everything back out in to the open, but the fact is that you were stuck playing whatever system you had before it all went down.

 

Let it be clear, nobody actually stopped playing video games: arcades were still king, and of course computers (really only the C64 offered what we were looking for in my neck of the woods, although plenty of Apple II stuff was going on. Atari didn't seem to make much of an impact in my town, and after the VCS died off nobody was willing to put money into that company they associated with the game machine). But everyone was just waiting for the 'next big thing'...and that was the NES.

 

I actually played a SMS before I ever touched an NES. I thought it was great, and I always thought it was fun until I had a chance to play them both at length to compare in the late 80s. Then it was clear. No wonder the Brits liked the SMS, it was much more of a computer experience overall. But much like the VHS vs BETA wars, you couldn't compete with the NES scope of games. What that was doesn't matter, it was what it was. It wouldn't have been any different had Nintendo marketed their 3rd party support differently, IMO, because Sega had a head start in the NA market by like a year. It just didn't catch on, and Alex Kidd certainly wasn't going to do it. Sega meant arcade games, and that's what most people associated the Master System with. And while I loved arcade games, folks out there wanted something different: Super Mario Bros and Zelda and Metroid and Castlevania and the list goes on and on...

 

This retarded video implies that the reason the NES 'failed' in the UK was due to the NES not being good enough. What a load of bollocks, as they say. "It was too expensive!" What? So the reason why the NES failed was because the pirating of video games was so great in the UK that people weren't willing to pay for their entertainment? Pirating was rampant over here as well, so I guess it didn't matter to North Americans...I don't think I ever saw ONE 'real' C64 game bar a couple cartridges (Blue Print, I believe it was). To me, it sounds like sour grapes. You can't afford it, so of course it was shit. Listen, I'm sure the Master System was expensive too in the UK, so how that factors into it, I don't see it.

 

The crash happened, it was real and it sucked ass. It meant was that we couldn't buy new cartridges for our game systems, but we all still played and traded our old games. That was the ONLY way. Which is why it was such a relief and fun time when the NES came out and became a force much like the VCS did. Arcades weren't places to take your kids back then in my town unless you wanted them to start drugs or maybe join a gang, so again, Nintendo made it possible for us to have a lot of fun just like we did with the Coleco and Atari, just with a lot more advanced games. It was a great time to be gaming, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. Nothing for me has been more fun than that period of time...well, other than those awesome few years before the crash itself. I'd say for me it was 81 to 84. And again from 87 to 91, around the time arcades were dying a second death.

[high voltage]

 

 

 

Actually USA was COMPUTER GAMING up to the release of the dreaded NES. So what, you guys used a JOYSTICK or KEYBOARD or a combination of BOTH during that timespan? People in the USA used ATARI joysticks on C64, A8, as many US game instructions can reveal. IBM players used KEYBOARD. You guys had PROBLEMS using an CX40 on COMPUTERS? I don't thinks so.

Edited March 26, 2017 by high voltage

[empsolo]

 

 

 

Actually after the 84 crash USA was COMPUTER GAMING up to the release of the dreaded NES. So what, you guys used a JOYSTICK or KEYBOARD or a combination of BOTH during that timespan? People in the USA used ATARI joysticks on C64, A8, as many US game instructions can reveal. You guys had PROBLEMS using an CX40 on COMPUTERS? I don't thinks so.

Except by 1985/86, the single button joystick was all but a dead letter here in the USA. The Atari 7800, the NES and the Master System all had two or more fire buttons.

 

Plus it seems that the NES ended up obliterating C64 sales as the C64 suffered from a sharp decline in sales each year the NES was available.

 

 

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[high voltage]

Y'all talking about keyboards and whatnot...whatever. You need at least two buttons to play games from 85 and later, so why it wasn't done for the Amiga or C-64, who knows. They're computers, not consoles, and that's the point: why bother bringing up computers when you talk about video game CONSOLES?

 

Of course people didn't just stop playing games during the crash. I played more computer games during that time (well, throughout it all in fact) than I ever did afterwards. The Commodore was loved for what it was, but it was nothing in terms of popularity when the new wave of consoles ushered in by Nintendo.

 

How people get this idea that there wasn't a crash...Crash Deniers, I say It did in fact happen. It spelled the doom for every major player in the console game in NA! Sure you could play computer games during the drought before the NES brought everything back out in to the open, but the fact is that you were stuck playing whatever system you had before it all went down.

 

Let it be clear, nobody actually stopped playing video games: arcades were still king, and of course computers (really only the C64 offered what we were looking for in my neck of the woods, although plenty of Apple II stuff was going on. Atari didn't seem to make much of an impact in my town, and after the VCS died off nobody was willing to put money into that company they associated with the game machine). But everyone was just waiting for the 'next big thing'...and that was the NES.

 

I actually played a SMS before I ever touched an NES. I thought it was great, and I always thought it was fun until I had a chance to play them both at length to compare in the late 80s. Then it was clear. No wonder the Brits liked the SMS, it was much more of a computer experience overall. But much like the VHS vs BETA wars, you couldn't compete with the NES scope of games. What that was doesn't matter, it was what it was. It wouldn't have been any different had Nintendo marketed their 3rd party support differently, IMO, because Sega had a head start in the NA market by like a year. It just didn't catch on, and Alex Kidd certainly wasn't going to do it. Sega meant arcade games, and that's what most people associated the Master System with. And while I loved arcade games, folks out there wanted something different: Super Mario Bros and Zelda and Metroid and Castlevania and the list goes on and on...

 

This retarded video implies that the reason the NES 'failed' in the UK was due to the NES not being good enough. What a load of bollocks, as they say. "It was too expensive!" What? So the reason why the NES failed was because the pirating of video games was so great in the UK that people weren't willing to pay for their entertainment? Pirating was rampant over here as well, so I guess it didn't matter to North Americans...I don't think I ever saw ONE 'real' C64 game bar a couple cartridges (Blue Print, I believe it was). To me, it sounds like sour grapes. You can't afford it, so of course it was shit. Listen, I'm sure the Master System was expensive too in the UK, so how that factors into it, I don't see it.

 

 

There was no video game crash in Europe.

 

I don't think the video is retarded.

 

I went to a game shop in UK witnessing the NES was reduced to GBP49,99, and the games were still GBP60,00. NES games were always stupidly expensive in UK, god knows why. SMS games were usually GBP29,99

Edited March 26, 2017 by high voltage

[high voltage]

Except by 1985/86, the single button joystick was all but a dead letter here in the USA. The Atari 7800, the NES and the Master System all had two or more fire buttons.

 

Plus it seems that the NES ended up obliterating C64 sales as the C64 suffered from a sharp decline in sales each year the NES was available.

 

 

 

All those consoles arrived nationwide in 1986 in the USA, so guys, stop using 1985 as timeline.

 

With NES monopolization had arrived in the USA.

 

In US antitrust law, monopolization is an offense and the main categories of prohibited behavior include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing. Monopolization is an offense under Section 2 of the American Sherman Antitrust Act 1890. It has a specific legal meaning, which is parallel to the "abuse" of a dominant position in EU competition law, under TFEU article 102. The Sherman Act 1890 §2 states that any person "who shall monopolize . . . any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations shall be deemed guilty of a felony." Section 2 also forbids "attempts to monopolize" and "conspiracies to monopolize." Generally this means that corporations may not act in ways that have been identified as contrary to precedent cases.

 

USA = Turning a blind eye

Edited March 26, 2017 by high voltage

[high voltage]

And very popular were the Competition Pro and the Spectravideo (1982) Joysticks anyway, those controllers had 2 buttons, that was nothing new.

[empsolo]

All those consoles arrived nationwide in 1986 in the USA, so guys, stop using 1985 as timeline.

 

With NES monopolization had arrived in the USA.

Except, the only console to breach 1 million in sales of hard ware units by end of fiscal year 1986 was the NES. Sega never even approached thier target of 500,000 units sold and the 7800 less so.

Mind you, Nintendo acchieved this on the strength of it's first party sales alone with third party games barely making a dent until well after 1987.

 

 

In US antitrust law, monopolization is an offense and the main categories of prohibited behavior include exclusive dealing, price discrimination, refusing to supply an essential facility, product tying and predatory pricing. Monopolization is an offense under Section 2 of the American Sherman Antitrust Act 1890. It has a specific legal meaning, which is parallel to the "abuse" of a dominant position in EU competition law, under TFEU article 102. The Sherman Act 1890 §2 states that any person "who shall monopolize . . . any part of the trade or commerce among the several states, or with foreign nations shall be deemed guilty of a felony." Section 2 also forbids "attempts to monopolize" and "conspiracies to monopolize." Generally this means that corporations may not act in ways that have been identified as contrary to precedent cases.

 

USA = Turning a blind eye

The Federal government had no case here. The federal government ended up dropping it's case and settling out of court because it had no evidence to bring any sort of formal charges against Nintendo. Even Congress was forced to drop it's investigation and basically all but admit that's it's investigation was part of the anti-japanese sentiment that had started in reaction to the arrival of japanese companies like Mitsubishi and Honda here in the US.

[high voltage]

Yep, with Howard Lincoln Nintendo had a good liar onboard.

[empsolo]

Yep, with Howard Lincoln Nintendo had a good liar onboard.

Except for the fact that isn't how law works. But then you probably ignore the fact the Sam Tremiel had done Atari no favors during his time on the witness stand during Atari Corp's lawsuit against Nintendo. You know, the trial where Sam basically admitted that Atari had been pathetically slow in trying to sign on western third party's that had not signed with Nintendo.

 

 

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[veelk55]

Nice butthurt video from a butthurt who wasn't fortunate enough to live in North America (don't forget, Nintendo ruled in Canada as well) in the glorious period when the NES ruled and ruled supreme.

Looooooooooool.

Sadly, all those other systems / micro computers are um... far inferior to the NES.

I want JRPGs!

Europe didn't even have Dragon Quest until the PS2 era.

Europe has really had a very unfortunate history with the NES... except for Ufouria and Mr. Gimmick.

 

[enoofu]

 

 

There was no video game crash in Europe.

Europe gaming market when the NES launched in Japan was only around 5% of the American Video Game Market Size

and they still went though the crash especially the UK with quite a few microcomputers companies collapsing.

 

 

With NES monopolization had arrived in the USA.

Really the only reason that the NES was so strong in the US was because the NES was already in 22% of Japanese households which funded the strong game development, Atari Corp at the time was totally a new company with few of the old employees and a Warehouse, with the Tramiel's focusing on PC hardware development.

 

 

 

C64 suffered from a sharp decline in sales each year the NES was available.

Had to do more with IBM based Computer development in the US as they quickly outpaced C64 in gaming at the same time

[mr_me]

According to Wikipedia C64 sales were consistent 1 to 1.5 million every year. IBM compatibles didn't become popular for homes until the 1990s but there were other 16-bit home computers competing with the c64. Even commodore was trying to push newer computers over the c64 and threatened to discontinue it according to Wikipedia. Sure NES took its share, but people that wanted a computer would not buy an NES. I know in the late 1980s I wanted a computer. Was there a home computer crash in the 1980s?

 

There were tons of developers programming Atari 2600 games and waiting for the next generation Atari system; but it came too late when retailers started to bail. The good ones survived and moved on to home computers. Nintendo shut many of them out for whatever reason and the ones they included were limited in what they could do. http://web.archive.org/web/20080320090353/http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index23.shtml

 

Regardless of the Nintendo FTC settlements Nintendo violated antitrust laws and had an illegal monopoly. They changed some of their business practices because of this. Developers had the right to bypass the NES lockout chip but were still hand tied by other Nintendo policies. You can debate if it was good or bad for consumers. Developers had to take fewer risks when releasing their games because of tight restrictions and didn't necessarily release the NES games they wanted to.

[zzip]

Let it be clear, nobody actually stopped playing video games: arcades were still king, and of course computers (really only the C64 offered what we were looking for in my neck of the woods, although plenty of Apple II stuff was going on. Atari didn't seem to make much of an impact in my town, and after the VCS died off nobody was willing to put money into that company they associated with the game machine). But everyone was just waiting for the 'next big thing'...and that was the NES.

 

Except my recollection was that many people actually did stop playing videogames, or played much less. After Pac Man hit, videogames were a constant topic of conversation at school, day in and day out. Arcades sprung up everywhere, and even every retail business seemed to have an arcade machine or two. Then suddenly kids at school were talking about different things, rarely games anymore. Sure there were still some gamers, but they were much fewer. Many of those arcades closed down, even when they had steady traffic before.

 

It seemed like it wasn't until NES got a foothold in the late 80s that it was cool to play games again.

[empsolo]

According to Wikipedia C64 sales were consistent 1 to 1.5 million every year. IBM compatibles didn't become popular for homes until the 1990s but there were other 16-bit home computers competing with the c64. Even commodore was trying to push newer computers over the c64 and threatened to discontinue it according to Wikipedia. Sure NES took its share, but people that wanted a computer would not buy an NES. I know in the late 1980s I wanted a computer. Was there a home computer crash in the 1980s?

Apparently, there was an 8-bit home computer crash that was caused as a result of the Texas Instruments-Commodore Price war. People ended up rushing out to buy a C64 because Jack Tremiel said they were the wave of the future. Then people took them home and found out they weren't compatible with work in the office and didn't really fulfill all the functions that the industry said they would fulfill in the home and plus they were really expensive games machines to boot. This would lead to a slump in sales in the years immediately proceeding the c64's zenith.

Edited March 27, 2017 by empsolo

[Mayhem]

Europe gaming market when the NES launched in Japan was only around 5% of the American Video Game Market Size

and they still went though the crash especially the UK with quite a few microcomputers companies collapsing.

 

More a case of survival of the fittest here. It wasn't due to the market declining, just pure market saturation with too many formats and not enough money to go around.

[enoofu]

According to Wikipedia C64 sales were consistent 1 to 1.5 million every year. IBM compatibles didn't become popular for homes until the 1990s but there were other 16-bit home computers competing with the c64. Even commodore was trying to push newer computers over the c64 and threatened to discontinue it according to Wikipedia. Sure NES took its share, but people that wanted a computer would not buy an NES. I know in the late 1980s I wanted a computer. Was there a home computer crash in the 1980s?

 

There were tons of developers programming Atari 2600 games and waiting for the next generation Atari system; but it came too late when retailers started to bail. The good ones survived and moved on to home computers. Nintendo shut many of them out for whatever reason and the ones they included were limited in what they could do. http://web.archive.org/web/20080320090353/http://archive.gamespy.com/articles/june03/dumbestmoments/index23.shtml

 

Regardless of the Nintendo FTC settlements Nintendo violated antitrust laws and had an illegal monopoly. They changed some of their business practices because of this. Developers had the right to bypass the NES lockout chip but were still hand tied by other Nintendo policies. You can debate if it was good or bad for consumers. Developers had to take fewer risks when releasing their games because of tight restrictions and didn't necessarily release the NES games they wanted to.

A lot of Tandy and Others was IBM Clone so IBM compatible computers controlled around 25% of the home market in 1986

This was before IBM started its home computer line in 1987 with PS/2 Standard and before the SVGA's came out

[CatPix]

Yep. Some computer companies sent bankrupt even before starting sales.

So many computer companies were spitting CP/M Machines for professionnal use, and other made "BASIC machines" for the home market.

In this regard, for example, the British then French Oric 1 and oric Atmos that sold 200 000 machines... Were considered SUCCESSFUL.

Machines like the HBN "computeur" Le Guépard sold 200 units. Squale computer made about 12 machines and went bankrupt.

It's not really a crash, but the result of too much people jumping in the bandwagon and hoping to grab quick cash.

This retarded video implies that the reason the NES 'failed' in the UK was due to the NES not being good enough. What a load of bollocks, as they say. "It was too expensive!" What? So the reason why the NES failed was because the pirating of video games was so great in the UK that people weren't willing to pay for their entertainment?

 

Were you raped by a ZX Spectrum during your childhood?

What a load of bollocks yo're saying. You have NO idea of what the UK market was looking (looking like and looking for) at the time, and yet you're ready to assume things.

The NES was expensive, and as pointed already in the thread, NES carts were sold for 60£, and Sega Master System carts were sold holf 30£

And now if you wanna compare further, even the big names games sold by serious companies were sold between 20 and 30£ on floppy, and for tapes, depending on the quality of the game, anwhere between 3 and 20£.

For ONE Nes cart you had 3 Amiga or ST games.

 

Also, releases of games on the PAL nes were delayed between 1 to 2 years between the Japanese release and the European one.

So before 1990, the line-up on the NES was mostly filled with arcade ports that everyone had been playing on computers for several years.

For example, for it's national release in France, in 1987, the NES had 27 games available.

Yes, 27.

Super Mario Bros was released in 1987 in Europe. Super Mario Bros 3 in 1991, the first Castlevania in 1988.

At the same time, the Amiga and Atari ST were boasting 16 bits graphisms, the ZX Spetrum, C64 and CPc had strong, well-established game line-up. The NES didn't looked like the thing you'd like to buy.

In France most people consider the NEs was a raging success, and it's indedd a popular system for collector.

Yet, in 1993, Nintendo had sold 1.3 millions Nes in France.

 

According to the figures on Wikipedia, the NES sold 34 millions in the US, 19 million in Japan, and 8 millions in Europe.

So yeah, Nintendo sold more console in the US than in it's home country. And yes, for you, the NES is as memorable and has a status comparable to the Atari 2600. But because it sold well by you doesn't mean it was the best thing with the best games. Being successful isn't about beign the best. It's even rarely about that. It's offering what people want or think they want.

In the US, Nintendo found the perfect formula. In Europe, not so much.

Edited March 27, 2017 by CatPix

[Lost Dragon]

As stated back on page 2, it was claimed the reason the deal Ariolasoft had for distribution of the Sega Master System in the UK fell through, was they felt Sega wanted to charge too much for 8 bit cartridge software..

 

It wasn't a case of UK gamers not wanting to buy software, we would much rather pirate it, it was the fact you saw 16 bit titles on ST for £19.95, Amiga for £24.95 and these were games either written for hardware or latest coin op conversions etc and here were NES titles finally appearing in UK,many of which we had enjoyed on C64 etc a long time before and NES just didn't seem to offer good VFM, software wise.

 

8 bit software shouldn't cost more than 16 bit software was line of thought to many of us.

 

Plus UK mags like Zzap64 etc weren't that impressed by inital look at NES and were busy filling our heads with talk of the Amiga and ST..

 

NES was simply too dated by time it arrived here to make an impact.

 

It wasn't a case of cannot afford, but 1 of why buy another 8 bit system, when the 16 bit market is really starting to dawn and the ST price point alone made it the more attractive option than the NES.

Edited March 27, 2017 by Lost Dragon