The fail of NES hardware/gaming video from UK outlook

[enoofu]

The lockout chip stopped being a barrier for competition once Nintendo's monopoly was resolved. You can thank the Sega Genesis for that. Nintendo like Atari was slow to introduce an improved replacement system, holding back the industry, like Atari. Now developers have a choice on who's closed system they can develop on and are less likely to face illegal anticompetitve policies.

 

In the late 1980s some developers were making huge profits as they were complicit in Nintendo's illegal monopoly. But they weren't necessarily making the games they wanted to. The ones who were hurt were the developers who were illegally shut out and the consumers.

 

Atari 7800 had a lockout chip and some Sega Genesis

 

Also never forgot Sega decisions to make it's Arcade board Suicide easily

[mbd30]

 

Atari 7800 had a lockout chip

 

As if it needed one...

[empsolo]

Exactly and Nintendo's policies and terms makes it worse.

 

There's nothing wrong with exclusive agreements but under a monopoly Nintendo's restrictive anti-competitive policies violate antitrust laws and are illegal. A developer can only make five titles but Nintendo can makes as many as they want, is not fair.

Nintendo never made more than 5 games a year for the NES outside the early launch titles. Nintendo generally focused on a few big hits to sell the system and spent most of the dev time working on the next big hit. It's why you never saw yearly installments of Zelda or Mario or even Metroid for that matter. Hell, Nintendo as a first party doesn't make or release a whole lot of games for it's newer systems either outside the marquee franchises like Fire Emblem, Zelda, Smash, Mario and handful of others.

 

Also you aren't looking at this from the perspective of a post-crash industry. You need to have a 5 game a year limit otherwise you will crowd out smaller publishers from the bigger publishers who can afford to crowd out their competition by churning out shovelware. Which by the way happened to a lot of Famicom developers in Japan because Nintendo had no such restrictions in Japan.

 

 

The developer pays all the costs and takes the risks. If a developer can't afford the terms they could go elsewhere but not in 1988 in the US.

 

https://books.google.ca/books?id=N_OkBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA188&lpg=PA188

In 1988, there was the Master System and the 7800. Both of which were non-starters due to how badly Sega mismanaged the Master System's launch in 1986-87 and then had Tonka's idiocy in 1988 which turned off a lot of devs from localizing games for that system. And then you had the ancient hardware which powered the 7800 which was a non starter for the big japanese third parties.

Edited March 29, 2017 by empsolo

[Tanooki]

I never got attacking Nintendo in the NES era for the yearly game limit either. They were a little flexible, if you founded another sub-name to do more like Konami-Ultra, so it was a choice. They were on shaky ground in the US, came off what those morons did with the earlier 80s systems to wreck the retail space and didn't want it taking them down as the final blow. Sure looking back it appears rotten, but it allowed for a good bit more quality over quantity.

[high voltage]

NES ...a good bit more quality over quantity.

Doubt that very much, NES huge lot of average/bad games, just like every system

[high voltage]

 

[empsolo]

Then again it was the computer that ended up killing Commodore. Heh.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited March 29, 2017 by empsolo

[zzip]

I never got attacking Nintendo in the NES era for the yearly game limit either. They were a little flexible, if you founded another sub-name to do more like Konami-Ultra, so it was a choice. They were on shaky ground in the US, came off what those morons did with the earlier 80s systems to wreck the retail space and didn't want it taking them down as the final blow. Sure looking back it appears rotten, but it allowed for a good bit more quality over quantity.

 

I think it was an overreaction to a non-issue. You never saw DVD/Bluray players fail because there are "too many bad movies on the market" (and there are) or music players fail because of too many crappy albums. Most successful game consoles have a much larger software library than the 2600, including more bad games than the 2600 had games in total. Retailers generally know which titles to stock, which are titles are budget titles, which titles are niche, etc. And stock, price and place them (or not) appropriately.

 

So the idea that the 2600 got killed by poor quality third party releases I don't think is quite accurate. This problem isn't unique to the 2600 and doesn't kill other systems, so what gives?

 

I think the real problem around 81-82, the VCS was so hot, retail believed they could sell any game in that format. They took on unknown titles from unknown companies and mixed them with the proven publishers. They made a bad bet, and lost. So they marked down the games that couldn't sell. Again, bargain-bin media was nothing new, it existed in music before this. But other publishers weren't prepared to suddenly compete with bargain-bin games and they suffered as consumers were all of a sudden spending money on several $5 games instead of a single $30-game. But that's a problem that would sort itself out too as consumers found they had all the games in the bargain bin they wanted or realized they were $5 for a reason.

 

So it wasn't that the existence of those games themselves that were a problem. It was retailers overestimating how many games from untested publishers they could sell simply because they were VCS games. These were just speed bumps for a young, developing market. And those problems would have sorted themselves out and struck a balance in another year or two if everyone hadn't panicked and written off consoles as dead in response.

[Mayhem]

This is patently and blatantly false. Sega had nothing to do with the SNES or it's development.

 

No, that's not what he's saying. He was saying that Nintendo stopped ("resolved") having a supposed monopoly in the US once the Genesis released because it was successful enough to noticeably cut into Nintendo's overall market share. That's what the "you can thank the Genesis" line was about.

[Great Hierophant]

When the home console market crashed and the home computer market shrunk at the same time (bye bye TI-99/4A, Coleco Adam, Mattel Aquarius, Timex Spectrum and Spectravideo), what was left? The C64 was strong, but the base system cost $300 and the disk drive, increasingly necessary for most games, also cost about that much. The Atari machines were going through tough times but were about as costly. The A2 was not often seen outside the classroom and computer lab and was very expensive for aging hardware. The PC-compatibles were just starting to come down to the $1,000 mark as well.

 

When the NES came to market across the US and Canada in 1986, you could buy one for around $100. The reasonable price made it accessible to everyone. Sure, the cartridges were expensive, but so were the disk based games for the home computers. A similar situation began even earlier in Japan, where the computers were very expensive and not very impressive from a gaming perspective. Even the MSX was more expensive than a Famicom.

 

The Famicom dominated video game sales in Japan from the mid 80s through the late 80s and the NES dominated video game sales in the U.S. and Canada from the late 80s into the early 90s. The Famicom was also extremely popular in pirated form in the rest of the Pacific Coast of Asia and in Russia as the Dendy.

 

We get that things were different in the U.K., because home computers were so cheap that they displaced the consoles. But the consoles that were released in the U.K. were gutted by the video game crash. If you bought a 2600 in the U.K. in 1982, you may have been surprised that there were no more games for it in 1985 and what games there had already been released were becoming harder to find. These consoles were not being replaced except by Japanese companies like Nintendo and Sega.

 

The U.K. really embraced cheap during the 1980s. Their most popular home-grown computer of the 1980s was the ZX Spectrum. The Spectrum had mushy rubber keys that were impossible to program without a keyboard replacement, had poor 2-color per tile graphics, no dedicated sound hardware at first, no standard joystick interface and used cassette tapes that took 10 minutes to load a game. While the games were plentiful and cheap, that is about all it had going for it. The C64 was more competitive in the graphics and sound department and had a real keyboard, but that was about it. Amstrad's CPC machines had lower-resolution graphics with garish palettes.

 

One may find it petty, but I would point out that some of the most popular home computers in the U.K., the C64, the Amiga and the Atari ST, were developed by American companies. The MSX computers, more popular on the mainland, were developed by a Japanese-U.S. consortium. No really successful home video game consoles were developed in Europe, nor did Europe have a real arcade manufacturing industry.

 

While the Top Hat does have a legitimate issue with Johnny-come-lately professing false nostalgia for a system they never owned or played back in the day, Nintendo's success has made Europeans much more interested in seeing what they missed out on back in the day. Nintendo's prices and distribution policies in Europe during the NES era stunk to be sure. The strength of the games for the NES and their ease of playability have attracted many Europeans, British and otherwise, to play and talk about them. I can't say the same for most of the European games released for computers popular in the U.K.

 

How many U.K. series of this time period can you name off the top of your head? Elite, Turrican, Dizzy are about it for me. Successful home computers have more games than home consoles of the time (considering type-in BASIC games), but comparatively speaking how many are remembered today?

Edited March 30, 2017 by Great Hierophant

[high voltage]

Not quite true, we (EU) had VCS games up to 1992. The last Atari-made cart wasn't even released in US (Klax).

 

The red boxed VCS games from the Tramiel era sold cheap during the 80s and those games were available in computer shops, retail and wholesale stores like Makro, very easy to find.

Edited March 30, 2017 by high voltage

[high voltage]

 

 

While the Top Hat does have a legitimate issue with Johnny-come-lately professing false nostalgia for a system they never owned or played back in the day, Nintendo's success has made Europeans much more interested in seeing what they missed out on back in the day. Nintendo's prices and distribution policies in Europe during the NES era stunk to be sure. The strength of the games for the NES and their ease of playability have attracted many Europeans, British and otherwise, to play and talk about them.

No false nostalgia from Top Hats point of view at all. We didn't miss the NES, don't you get it?

As mentioned before, for us in Europe, the strength and the ease of playability was the SMS, and later the MegaDrive. Those were the consoles of the late 80s/early 90s we played and talked about.

In 95 came Sony with their juggernaut PlayStation and Nintendo looked even worse. PS ruled UK, hold on.....PS ruled the world.

Edited March 30, 2017 by high voltage

[high voltage]

SNES did ok in UK though, it spawned one of the most successful gaming magazines (Super Play) that even US gamers trying to collect nowadays. GB was also huge in Europe.

Edited March 30, 2017 by high voltage

[Lost Dragon]

It was due to the US crash that the aging VCS went on for so long here in the UK, it's often over looked but the Atari 5200 was due to be launched here as it's replacement, provisional launch planned for Late spring,early summer of 1983, Atari annouce it's delayed,then by Sept 1983 they annouce it's been abandoned due to the failure of it in the USA.

 

Then we are told to expect the 7800 to replace it, only that gets changed in favour of the XEGS..

 

By now VCS is sold as a cheap entry level console, Atari UK saying they aim it at the children's market.

 

Target age group 10 year olds..

 

A new VCS was £50, games put into 3 price ranges..

 

Oldest £6.99

 

Newer £9.99

 

Newest £12.99

 

You could find it in high Street stores, home shopping catalogues etc.

 

We seemed to be expecting a lot more from the Panther judging by UK press coverage..

 

The Konix Multisystem was always seen as the British great contender but that never happened.

 

Consoles like the C64 GS and Amstrad GX4000 were utter disasters, again 8 bit technology at a time focus was on the 16 bit scene.

 

Halfway house home micro technology like the Sam Coupe another causality from that era..

[toptenmaterial]

 

As if it needed one...

Lol

[atarilovesyou]

No false nostalgia from Top Hats point of view at all. We didn't miss the NES, don't you get it?

As mentioned before, for us in Europe, the strength and the ease of playability was the SMS, and later the MegaDrive. Those were the consoles of the late 80s/early 90s we played and talked about.

In 95 came Sony with their juggernaut PlayStation and Nintendo looked even worse. PS ruled UK, hold on.....PS ruled the world.

 

I'm glad to see you speak for an entire country.

 

Looks to me like the butthurt Top Hat simply doesn't get something that every other 'false nostalgic' hipster to lives in the UK that actually respects the NES for the massive, influential success it was DOES: that the NES is a GREAT system. Why can't you admit that to yourself after three miserable decades, HV? Had the prices been lower, the NES would have done just fine. Too bad everybody seems to have been too busy ripping off each other's games to notice. I get it, I get it: you hate the NES. But that's just your jaded, narrow-minded, prejudiced viewpoint. You're also in the extreme minority for thinking the NES wasn't a monumentally important machine, one that provided the revenues required for further Nintendo expansion globally. Which happened and is still happening...past the companies from yesteryear who didn't cut the mustard. And believe me, let's talk again in 20 more years...because when Microsoft and Sony get out of the console market in another generation or two, Nintendo will still be out there, making fun games for people to enjoy.

[zzip]

And believe me, let's talk again in 20 more years...because when Microsoft and Sony get out of the console market in another generation or two, Nintendo will still be out there, making fun games for people to enjoy.

 

..Still trying to sell Mario games to a generation who cut their teeth on Minecraft. Sorry, but I think Nintendo might be the first to go.

[Downland1983]

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.

 

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.

1987 US Population: 242.3 million

1987 Japan Population: 122.1 million

 

Of course it was going to sell more in the US than it's home country. With more than double the consumers available to sell to, that's a fact for nearly every major console released globally. If Japan outsells the US as a territory on a worldwide system, it's usually because the system itself failed like the Sega Saturn or Play Station Vita.

 

By the way, with a choice between this: (ZX Spectrum), and this: (NES)

or this: (Commodore 64), and this: (NES)

 

I really don't understand how "The NES didn't looked like the thing you'd like to buy." I realize that's how it went down, but I still don't get it. To each their own though, I guess.

[CatPix]

1987 US Population: 242.3 million

1987 Japan Population: 122.1 million

 

Of course it was going to sell more in the US than it's home country. With more than double the consumers available to sell to, that's a fact for nearly every major console released globally. If Japan outsells the US as a territory on a worldwide system, it's usually because the system itself failed like the Sega Saturn or Play Station Vita.

 

By the way, with a choice between this: (ZX Spectrum), and this: (NES)

or this: (Commodore 64), and this: (NES)

 

I really don't understand how "The NES didn't looked like the thing you'd like to buy." I realize that's how it went down, but I still don't get it. To each their own though, I guess.

 

True for Japan, but I always think that Japan is more populated that it really is. My fault on that part

 

For your screens, you forgot to take some things in account :

dates, other machines, and price.

The ZX Spectrum was released in 1983, the C64 in 83 or maybe 84 in the UK.

The NES was released in 1987.

As said again, on the ZX Spectrum, the average price for a game was 5 to 10£. A NES cart was 60£.

Piracy of course was also a reason, but if it had been the main reason then no major game programmers would have emerged from the European gaming industry. (DMA Designs-Rockstar North, Ubisoft, etc...).

Piracy in the 8 bits era was limited, because tapes, while being cheap, aren't a good media for duplicating. For example, most games after being copied from 5 tapes copies become unreadable. (that mean that you can't make more than a chain of 4 tapes. Of course, you can make dozens of copies of a tape from a source tape).

Tape protection was also a thing, believe it or not, and I do'nt only mean the "impossible to photocopy wheels" protection and other protection needing a manual, but for example, data scrambled in a way that would make the tapes impossible to copy on most home consumer recorders because the signal is too high or too low for them to reproduce them correctly. So yeah, most European gamers of the time would copy their games, but a lots of them would also buy them because they were cheap.

 

 

By the time the NES and most games were leased in the UK, compaison would have been more like this :

NES VS Atari ST VS Amiga 500

 

 

By the time the NES reached the UK, the 8 bits computer, and therefore the NES and Master System as well, were considered as "budget system", for kids.

Edited April 13, 2017 by CatPix

[Downland1983]

 

True for Japan, but I always think that Japan is more populated that it really is. My fault on that part

 

For your screens, you forgot to take some things in account :

dates, other machines, and price.

The ZX Spectrum was released in 1983, the C64 in 83 or maybe 84 in the UK.

The NES was released in 1987.

As said again, on the ZX Spectrum, the average price for a game was 5 to 10£. A NES cart was 60£.

 

By the time the NES and most games were leased in the UK, compaison would have been more like this :

NES VS Atari ST VS Amiga 500

 

 

By the time the NES reached the UK, the 8 bits computer, and therefore the NES and Master System as well, were considered as "budget system", for kids.

 

Oh, I didn't doubt that a higher end (at the time) 1987 computer would have better graphics than the NES, which itself was based on 1983 Famicom hardware. I can see your point regarding the cheapness of the ST/Amiga software compared to NES cart prices in the UK making up for the hardware price disparity though. I guess it would even out in the long run from that perspective.

[CatPix]

It's probably important to consider that the NES arriving in 1987 mean that gamers upgrading from their 8 bits systems to 16 bits computers would sell their old hardware for getting money for the new ones. SO even if the price of a brand new C64, Amstrad CPC, BB Micro, etc..; was higher than a NES, the price of used ones was probably lower (and let's not even mention used ZX Spectrums ).

On that point tho, I can't say much, but I imagine that for people wanting a cheap system, on one hand, they have a system that have been sold for several years, with a huge library of cheap games, and new games still coming for it, and a new console , with a line up of 27 games, expensive games? The choice was quickly made.

 

Also, remember that most European gaming magazines of the time commented about the American video game crash of 1983; in their eyes, it wasn't a crash, it was just "home consoles, computer toys serving as introduction to real gaming (computer gaming, for them) finally vanishing to make way for serious gaming." so any parent reading those magazines, or taking infos from gamers would see the NES as just another toy, an expensive fad about to go away again.

Edited April 13, 2017 by CatPix

[atarilovesyou]

If we're talking graphics here, it's a moot point: Sega Master System Double Dragon looks better than the above screenshots, plus Rampage was graphically miles above the NES.

 

It's playability. I dare you to play Double Dragon on the above computers, go ahead and try. It's not a fun experience, I tell you. Like many of the games for those systems, the controls were just off. At least NES Double Dragon, limited though it may be, is a fun game to play by comparison. Sure it's my opinion, but there's folks out there who will tell you that Pac Man on a 5200 using analog sticks is better than anything else. Those people are wrong. Just like anybody who throws up screen shots from the ST or Amiga and thinks those games were fun to play. They were not. And that's a true story. Much like that God-awful looking version on the ZX, I'm sure it was still more playable than the 16-bit computer versions. I'm so glad I never had to experience Double Dragon at home like that...yikes.

 

And the NES didn't come out in 87. Not sure where you got that from. It's dated tech and it's a wonder anything past 87 came out looking as good as it did, but it doesn't matter; the games were (are) fun a shit to play. The same can't be said about these computer versions. I shudder when I remember my experience playing DD on a PC...MY GAWD.

[mbd30]

If we're talking graphics here, it's a moot point: Sega Master System Double Dragon looks better than the above screenshots, plus Rampage was graphically miles above the NES.

 

It's playability. I dare you to play Double Dragon on the above computers, go ahead and try. It's not a fun experience, I tell you. Like many of the games for those systems, the controls were just off. At least NES Double Dragon, limited though it may be, is a fun game to play by comparison. Sure it's my opinion, but there's folks out there who will tell you that Pac Man on a 5200 using analog sticks is better than anything else. Those people are wrong. Just like anybody who throws up screen shots from the ST or Amiga and thinks those games were fun to play. They were not. And that's a true story. Much like that God-awful looking version on the ZX, I'm sure it was still more playable than the 16-bit computer versions. I'm so glad I never had to experience Double Dragon at home like that...yikes.

 

And the NES didn't come out in 87. Not sure where you got that from. It's dated tech and it's a wonder anything past 87 came out looking as good as it did, but it doesn't matter; the games were (are) fun a shit to play. The same can't be said about these computer versions. I shudder when I remember my experience playing DD on a PC...MY GAWD.

 

When you're a kid, you're probably going to be more superficial and care much more how close the games looks to the arcade than how they actually play.

 

I think he meant that the NES came out in the UK in 87.

[zzip]

If we're talking graphics here, it's a moot point: Sega Master System Double Dragon looks better than the above screenshots, plus Rampage was graphically miles above the NES.

 

It's playability. I dare you to play Double Dragon on the above computers, go ahead and try. It's not a fun experience, I tell you. Like many of the games for those systems, the controls were just off. At least NES Double Dragon, limited though it may be, is a fun game to play by comparison. Sure it's my opinion, but there's folks out there who will tell you that Pac Man on a 5200 using analog sticks is better than anything else. Those people are wrong. Just like anybody who throws up screen shots from the ST or Amiga and thinks those games were fun to play. They were not. And that's a true story. Much like that God-awful looking version on the ZX, I'm sure it was still more playable than the 16-bit computer versions. I'm so glad I never had to experience Double Dragon at home like that...yikes.

 

And the NES didn't come out in 87. Not sure where you got that from. It's dated tech and it's a wonder anything past 87 came out looking as good as it did, but it doesn't matter; the games were (are) fun a shit to play. The same can't be said about these computer versions. I shudder when I remember my experience playing DD on a PC...MY GAWD.

 

By the time I got my ST, I was mostly into RPGs and god games. I was never that big into the fighting games and side-scrollers that were popular in the NES era, Yes the ST did get some crap action game ports though.

[mr_me]

 

And the NES didn't come out in 87. Not sure where you got that from. It's dated tech and it's a wonder anything past 87 came out looking as good as it did, but it doesn't matter; the games were (are) fun a shit to play. The same can't be said about these computer versions. I shudder when I remember my experience playing DD on a PC...MY GAWD.

Didn't have Double Dragon on PC but Double Dragon II on PC was very good. Even with one button it played very well. Don't know why they didnt use more buttons. The old PCs supported upto four buttons (only two buttons when two controllers are used)

 

And 4-way games with a good analog controller shouldnt be a problem. However, 8-way games are probably better on a good 8-way controller.

 

And some later NES games had processors on the cartridge. So that dated tech in the NES had some advanced tech in the cartridge.

Edited April 14, 2017 by mr_me