Famicom Turns 30 Years Old Today (07/15/83)

[Vector2013]

And monopoly game contracts and tactics that assured their competition like sms and 7800 would stay in the shadows.

[Zz Badnusty]

I believe it was the MSX which "saved" the videogame industry.
MaxWar summarizes the North American situation quite well. Nintendo's quality control was a huge factor in winning over casual US gamers who had faded from the hobby. But where did the talent come from to produce those quality games? Many of the top programmers and designers of the Famicom/NES era honed their skills with the MSX.
Without the MSX would we have had the triple-A titles which moved NES units off the shelves through the later half of the 80's?

[Furnessly]

So I'm guessing correctly that in the early/mid 80s in terms of popularity after the "crash", it was Japan = MSX [home computer], Famicom [console], US = C64 [home computer], NES [console] or Atari 2600, UK/Spain = Sinclair Spectrum, Germany = C64? Of course apart from the US, the rest of the world didn't have a crash since they just started (Japan had the arcades already so for them it is home development).

If I have to be honest, I don't think the NES saved the gaming industry, it just made it more popular [as in back towards the Atari 2600 days in the US] and more grounded (no Quaker Oats making games), plus for many countries it was their first console that's if we also count the various Famiclones and the Dendy, even then that was late 80s/early 90s. Besides I just can't see people queueing up in 1985 for the new NES ready to play games like Soccer/10 Yard Fight/Wrecking Crew or to play with ROB, didn't it took a few years before it got popular (at least by late 87-88)? Even in Japan, I imagine that it would take a few years as well. In England it took us to 1987 for our NES, the same time as the Master System and people mainly went for the latter due to the price and "better graphics", that's if they even went for a console. Plus European NES systems were region locked within Europe proof that Nintendo loved them even as far back as then (that meant a cartridge from Germany wouldn't work on an Italian system or a cartridge from the UK wouldn't work in France). The main excuse was that two different companies handling it even though different companies handled the Master System and there was no region lock for that [well there is in terms of cartridges between JP/Korea and US/Europe/Brazil but in terms of US/Europe systems, there isn't] but I think they did sort that out much later on.

I also think a lot of this Nintendo saved the day that you hear online is due to that people from America had emotional attachments towards the console thanks to some marketing (such as Captain N, Nintendo Power and the various Nintendo merchandise), this also causes some people to be Nintendo fans even though for the younger people [as in ones that were born in the mid 90s with the Gamecube as their first console], they believe on what they want to believe and retrospectively being that Nintendo is the best and the others ignored unless they were an RPG fan. Also bearing in mind much of the NES love online started in around the late 90s as well, some of the earliest websites that I can recall looking at in 2000 were Nintendo based like Kevtris or The Mushroom Kingdom [the only Sega site I remember was Sonic HQ I believe that was biased towards SatAM?]. Also I was confused regarding popularity regarding Capcom [Mega Man], Square [Final Fantasy] and Konami [Castlevania] as well since people usually mention those with the NES while I was used to the popularity of Sega, Taito and later Namco.

The Famicom/NES has some good games no doubt about that, even if most of the library even the underlooked gems are known, it's just that I didn't have that attachment, probably due to the culture. Oh that seal of quality that was from the last page is the PAL one that is still used to this day, I swear the American one was an oval and before that a round one in a different colour. Besides even with the "quality control" Nintendo had, how come there were so much Acclaim rubbish?

Also today, the SG-1000 is also 30 years old so give a happy birthday to Sega's first console [even if it is sort of a Colecovision clone].

[Bloodreign]

Happy 30th Famicom. The NES returned me back into console gaming after years of playing the Atari 2600 stuff, and those games weren't doing it for me anymore. The NES came along and had games I liked (mind you I still loved arcade games, still do love them), and the games felt like an arcade experience at home without the need for quarters. The only thing, the NES couldn't quite match the arcade games in looks, but could in fun. It was a fresh and new system that resparked my love for home gaming. This, long story short, kept me going on the road to bigger and more powerful consoles, now I've gone backwards back to the NES and the 16 bit hard hitters (and the SMS & Gameboy for other 8 bit gaming needs).

Thank you Famicom, and in a couple years thank you NES for bringing console gaming back into my life.

[Zebbe]

Atari built it.
Nintendo restored it.
Sega unmonopolized it.
Sony spread it.
Microsoft... I don't know how the hell they have changed the industry.

[Vector2013]

Atari built it.
Nintendo restored it.
Sega unmonopolized it.
Sony spread it.
Microsoft... I don't know how the hell they have changed the industry.

They almost restricted games while letting big brother watch you.

[Drakon]

The famicom is brilliant. It's the perfect balance of hardware. Using powerful video and decent audio hardware you could get a lot out of very tiny assembly language rom images which kept the cartridges cheap enough to produce. The idea of plug'n'play system upgrades built into the carts was a smart move too. Buying something that plugs into your console expansion ports is cheaper, but if it's built right into the cart the consumer loves it. Consumers don't care about what makes sense, they just want something simple that they can plug in, turn on, and play, and have it work every time. Running primarily on maskroms is great, those things don't have loading times and almost never die.

Before the NES I didn't really care about gaming. The famicom to me really is the system that said "hey look people computers can be fun and not in a way that's completely based around points and score". My famicom is my second most constantly played on system today, after my super famicom.

What I often see is people complaining about the shortcomings of the famicom. People really seem to forget how fresh a lot of the ideas used in the famicom were back in 1983. I think the d-pad is even more ground breaking than the snes shoulder buttons. Learning to use the NES pads as a kid did take practice, but they're still probably the most simplified controllers that you can do so many things with until the wii stick showed up where you can just wave it in the air.

A lot of game series that started on the famicom are still being made today, which shows just how a lot of brilliant game ideas started back then were.

[Saturn Fan]

http://www.arstechnica.com/gaming/20...30th-birthday/

Everyone's favorite tagline is how the Famicom saved the video game industry.

Discuss everyone.

^^ I wouldn't say they "saved it" so much as they were the first big name to capitalize on the "crash". However, i will give Nintendo credit for also being a smart company, both great at the business side of things, as well as gaming. Unlike Sega which was just great at gaming.

Ahhh back when Nintendo was still awesome. Nowadays since the apocalypse that was the N64 launch, Nintendo has sucked a hard one though.

Old-school Nintendo/NES & SNES= Awesome

Modern Nintendo/N64 to current= Garbage.

[mrbigreddog]

Trying to find a link where I read this. But I think it was on a TV show a while back. Nintendo didn't "TRY" to save the gaming industry. But they did for sure. They were working on the Famicom, and when the 1983 video game crash happened. They knew they couldn't bring a new video game system to the market. So that's why they had ROB the ROBOT. Easier to sell a toy / video game combo than just a video game system. Which is why it's also called "Nintendo Entertainment System" in USA. Instead of "video game system or anything like that. Market it as an advanced TOY, because that was an easier sell at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_A..._crash_of_1983

[retrospiel]

Well the crash never happened in Japan.

[NeoZeedeater]

Yay, another bullshit article perpetuating Nintendo industry saviour revisionist history.

What I often see is people complaining about the shortcomings of the famicom. People really seem to forget how fresh a lot of the ideas used in the famicom were back in 1983. I think the d-pad is even more ground breaking than the snes shoulder buttons.

The Intellivision had a d-pad years before the Famicom. It's not cross-shaped but it's the same concept.

A lot of game series that started on the famicom are still being made today, which shows just how a lot of brilliant game ideas started back then were.

To be fair, a lot of amazing, innovative games back then didn't continue on to be long running franchises. Sales and popularity drive that more than quality.

[Melf]

My problem with the whole "Nintendo savior" perspective is that people forget that Nintendo was doing everything in its power to keep the NES from being perceived as a video game system. After the American crash, video games as a whole were considered toxic, and Nintendo didn't want the NES to be viewed as a video game console. That's evident in the redesign for the west, the name change, the inclusion of R.O.B. and using Worlds of Wonder for distribution.

Making Nintendo out to be savior of the industry when it went out of its way to distance itself from being associated with video games is ridiculous. It would be far more honest to say that Nintendo filled a void, and the situation in America gave it a huge advantage. It's success is as much the result of a lack of competition and monopolistic licensing practices as the games themselves.

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Yeah, I'd say Nintendo didn't save the industry, it just gave an infusion of new blood. And that new blood wasn't the NES, it was the wave of Japanese developed games that came with it. If the NES released with games similar to what the Atari 5200/7800 had I bet you it wouldn't have done as well.

And that wave of Japanese Developed games wasn't really Nintendo's conscious decision, it was just a side effect of releasing a Japanese system in the US. Had they waited and Sega beat them with the Master System the two systems popularity would probably have been reversed.

[NeoZeedeater]

Also, nobody considered computer gaming back then to be dead but many people had the strange notion that computer games didn't count as video games. That hasn't helped crash myths at all. You could go to the mall and see tons of new releases that weren't in the discount bins like the Atari stuff. Not to mention that while arcades had declined from their fad popularity with the masses, there was no sign of them dying out in the mid '80s. There was never a point in the entire decade where there weren't plenty of great new games available yet people have been lead to believe that gamers were living in some empty market in 1985 with nothing to play.

[Zz Badnusty]

Right, my friends and I were still riding our bikes to the arcade all summer long '83, '84, '85 were fantastic years to be going to the arcade.
Older friends were programming and playing games on their computers, and the rest of us in the neighborhood still played our Intellivisions, 2600s, and 5200s regularly.