I think without the NES and Super Mario home consoles would have continued to push the same type of arcade gaming that was dominant before it came out. Including joysticks instead of dpads and controllers. A lot of games where you tried to clear a static screen.Personally I think it would have to be either the brown box or Magnavox Odyssey. Bringing games out of the "amusements" world and into the home is probably the one I'd pick. It allowed for more than just diversions. Or maybe save games, making it possible to move toward more immersive game worlds.
As an aside I don't understand the reverence for the NES on this board It reads as the poster of being a certain age and of a certain region.
It's definitely not as historically important as Atari which was the first major home console. Then the crash happened, but even during the apparent dark period between 83 and 85 (or 87 if you prefer) videogames were doing fine on computers and in places not named North America. The C64 alone was selling two to three million units a year during this period. To think it would just go away is absurd and was never a real possibility.
I honestly wonder what you think would have happened if the NES didn't release? The arcade had bounced back by 86 and computers had continued to go strong the whole time. You think people wouldn't have seen the possibilities in the Megadrive in 89 or 90? Or do you think the USA becomes some backwater where games don't get played?
Rather than give Sony most of the credit, I think this mostly had to do with kids born in the 80's simply becoming teenagers. Kids born in the 80's were the most significant gaming generation. They grew up with games and games grew up with them. Third parties would have made those games regardless of whether Sony, Nintendo, or Sega was the market leader.
Another way of putting it, is Sony didn't bring teenagers into gaming. Those kids were already hooked from the NES, SNES, and Genesis, and Sony was just market leader when they became teenagers.
Should have been first post.
The NES seen strictly as a console (read hardware) is mostly irrelevant. It's mostly a by-the-book design of its time.As an aside I don't understand the reverence for the NES on this board It reads as the poster of being a certain age and of a certain region.
this guy knows what's up.
I agree with you.The NES seen strictly as a console (read hardware) is mostly irrelevant. It's mostly a by-the-book design of its time.
NES software, on the other hand, is a revolution.
NES games especially Miyamoto ones were among the first games which understood they weren't played in amusements parks anymore but in the living room. All of their game designs stem from that.
Credits where its due, those are not my words originally (though I thoroughly agree with them, obviously):I agree with you.
Especially Super Mario Bros. Gaming was so much smaller back then and it was so long ago that most people don't realize what a tsunami like impact that game had on us at the time.
I was already really into gaming before the NES playing on computer, at the arcade and of course on my trusty Atari but playing Mario for the first time blew us all away. I don't think anyone had ever seen anything quite like it. You could probably say the same of later games like Zelda or maybe some other NES games, but Mario was the one that for me kind of opened my eyes.
I mean the truth is that Sony popularized console gaming and was about to bring the same experiences to gamers throughout the world. The NES and even the 16bit consoles in comparison were almost niche in their popularity.Credits where its due, those are not my words originally (though I thoroughly agree with them, obviously):
I'm sorry, there are no english pages, so I point to french wikipedia pages:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathieu_Triclot
IIRC, those concepts were mostly developed in this book:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophie_des_jeux_vidéo
Truly fascinating book IMO (I don't know if there is an english translation).
As you mentioned, the big thing people tend to forget is that "back in the day" games were built with arcade cabinets in mind.
Those Miyamoto games, especially the Mario/Zelda duo, were among the first games built taking into account the fact that they would be played in a living room, either on a couch or directly sitting on the floor (as many kids of this time surely fondly remember), with all that implies in terms of playtime and overall "posture".
NES games especially Miyamoto ones were among the first games which understood they weren't played in amusements parks anymore but in the living room. All of their game designs stem from that.
I played on PC and I played Ultima before the NES (though I was too young and it was too complex for me as a kid to really finish them) but that was an RPG (though weirdly I didn't think I knew the term until I read it in a magazine years later).This isn't true. Like. At. All.
NES games like Mario came out in 1985.
In the same year, Ultima IV and The Bards Tale II were released on the Apple II.
Note the II and IV in the title. Those were sequels to massive titles that long understood they weren't played in "amusement parks".
"Back in the day" games weren't built with "arcade cabinets" in mind, many were created for home audiences.
As you mentioned, the big thing people tend to forget is that "back in the day" games were built with arcade cabinets in mind.
Those Miyamoto games, especially the Mario/Zelda duo, were among the first games built taking into account the fact that they would be played in a living room, either on a couch or directly sitting on the floor (as many kids of this time surely fondly remember), with all that implies in terms of playtime and overall "posture".
I don't remember anything remotely like it before Super Mario Bros. And I remember a ton of games similar to that on every platform after it.
Most of those games were complex ones made with "computers" in mind. Those games were undoable on consoles for a host of reasons, but those can be summarized as "consoles are not home computers" (even though they obviously are computers at home, heh).Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was a proto-rpg with difficulty levels, randomly generated dungeons, a boss, and an ending...in 1982.
It wasn't unique either. That system had a ton of games exclusive to it designed for the console. Microsurgeon, B-17 Bomber, Dracula, Night Stalker, Utopia etc were light years past what was being done with arcades, and were designed with the home console in mind.
No one is disputing that. Or at least I don't think so.That is not to disparage Zelda or Mario Bros. Again: I REALLY love the original Zelda, it formed my gaming taste to this day (and is why I love La Mulana 2 so much, while finding a lot of other recent games boring). I am just saying that it's not something that formed out of thin air there, and that if Nintendo had never existed, if Miyamoto had become a painter, we'd still have had plenty of non-arcade games. They were already strong at the time.
Most of those games were complex ones made with "computers" in mind. Those games were undoable on consoles for a host of reasons, but those can be summarized as "consoles are not home computers" (even though they obviously are computers at home, heh).
What NES brought was games that were neither built for arcade cabinets, nor desks. They were made for the living room. It's not so much a matter of kids playing than a matter of overall accessibility. You don't need to read a manual to play The Legend of Zelda. I don't remember all those games you quoted, but most of them definitely were hardly playable "right off the bat".
Also some of those games (namely Ultima) while seen today as "ahead of their time" can also be summarized as a computerization of pen and paper RPGs. Not to dismiss their achievement, but there are games like Ultima before it. They're just not video games. There nothing in the game world that resembles Mario or Zelda.
I'm sorry I also need to comment on that because I really take issue with how this story is often presented.
That's not the matter. Those games were mostly either arcade games at heart, or console versions of computer games.
Sony and Nintendo's partnership not lasting/breaking = The birth of the PlayStation.