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

[Saturn Fan]

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.

^^ Lets just gloss over the fact that Nintendo always had big ambitions in gaming, and were only trying to give NES a "non-gaming" image stateside, so it could get its foot in the door on the market first with least resistance. Then flex its gaming muscle later.

Lets also pretend that nintendo wasn't a very good company, neither excelling at gaming nor the business side of things. And that its only success came from being on the scene first.

Yeesh.

[MrSega]

Seems like every gaming forum had one of those thread, was wondering when it would appear here


And... Did it really save an industry? Or did it rather use the fact that the industry had crashed to fill the void?

The Latter.

Market only collapsed in America during 1983-1984.

Industry was already doing well in Japan. No mention of the SG-1000 huh?

[TrekkiesUnite118]

The Latter.

Market only collapsed in America during 1983-1984.

Industry was already doing well in Japan. No mention of the SG-1000 huh?

The SG-1000 was an abysmal failure if I remember correctly. The Famicom came out the same year and was leaps and bounds the better machine. Now if Sega released the Mark III in 1983 then things might have been different.

[MrSega]

The SG-1000 was an abysmal failure if I remember correctly. The Famicom came out the same year and was leaps and bounds the better machine. Now if Sega released the Mark III in 1983 then things might have been different.

No it was not that is wrong. Games were released for it until 1987. The SG-1000 was a modest success and was only released in smaller regions.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SG-1000

[TrekkiesUnite118]

Modest success is a soft way of saying it did better than other worse consoles, but still failed in the grand scheme of things.

It's last game was released in 1987, only 4 years after it released. It's entire library is maybe 65 games. That's really not that much. It's about as much of a modest success as the Atari Jaguar. The Famicom crushed it.

[MrSega]

^^ Lets just gloss over the fact that Nintendo always had big ambitions in gaming, and were only trying to give NES a "non-gaming" image stateside, so it could get its foot in the door on the market first with least resistance. Then flex its gaming muscle later.

Lets also pretend that nintendo wasn't a very good company, neither excelling at gaming nor the business side of things. And that its only success came from being on the scene first.

Yeesh.

Why can't I rep you? Because you've spoken the truth.

[Drakon]

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


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

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.

Fair enough.