In retrospect, was the NES really a good system?

It wasn't merely a good system. It was a superb system.

NES games were mind blowing when new. I had a $2000+ Apple computer that couldn't handle action games as well as an NES.
 
In retrospect, was the [insert console of your choice] really a good system?

Yes, depending on your experience with each one. NES, master system 1 & 2, genesis, snes... All of them were freakin' awesome.

Stereophile said:
I had a $2000+ Apple computer that couldn't handle action games as well as an NES.
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Things haven't changed much, have they? :p
 
cyclone3d said:
You must have never played on a TurboGrafx/TurboDuo if you think that.

The NES was a great system, but the TurboGrafx (which came out between the NES and SNES), blew the NES away in sheer number of great games.

They also made games for it up until 1995 or 1996 although the newer games were only released in Japan as far as i know.

I still have one, with about 100 games. Only about 3-5 of those games would I not consider to be good games, with the majority of them being quite excellent.
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Both the TurboGrafx and Sega Master System were hurt by Nintendos policy of not allowing devs to make games for other consoles, a policy that wasn't revoked until 1992-1993 (when the Genesis suddenly got a major influx of titles from Capcom/Konomi).

The TurboGrafx was hobbled by its 8-bit CPU though (16-bit GPU) and the fact localization wasn't handled well at all by NEC. The SMS could have been a decent console if Nintendo hadn't made it DOA though...
 
mr_zen256 said:
Things haven't changed much, have they? :p
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To be fair, the Apple II (the last time Apple systems were known for games) came out more than half a decade earlier than the NES, which is one console generation. Afterwards, they wanted to go in a direction to avoid gamers on their system, and that pretty much lasted up until the iPhone.

I never understood why they didn't embrace gamers. It just makes no financial sense. But I guess the stigma of video gamers was significantly different back then, especially if you were trying to market a machine to the "IBM crowd".
 
The NES was amazing. To think you could go from a game like Mario 3, to Battletoads, to TMNT2/3, to Dragon Warrior, to Contra, etc. and all of the games were good, fun, didn't crash, and didn't need developer+community patches is a foreign concept today.
 
The games back then seemed to had more replay value then they do now. I find myself finishing a game and never playing the single player again. With the NES, I can recall so many times playing Zelda, Kung-Fu, TMNT, Punch-Out, SMB, Double Dragon, more, over and over again til my thumbs developed blisters.

Their concepts where simple but game play was challenging.
 
I already replied before but wanted to add, if you have to ask this question then you were not a child of the 80's and in that missed the best time to be a kid. I was at the perfect age then and see now all most companies do now is rehash the stuff we had new back then.
 
I have to disagree. I was born in '75 and I never saw the appeal of the Atari, 8-bit Nes or 8-bit Sega Master system.

The C-64 ( which a friend owned ) / Amstrad ( which i owned ) / Amiga ( my cousin owned ) was where it was at. My uncle was a programmer so in 1984, I was playing "Elite" on his BBC model B microcomputer ( with built in 5 and a 1/4" floppy drive ). The joystick was awesome.

I later would own the original monochrome ( 5 shade ) Gameboy, 16-bit Sega Megadrive ( Genesis ) and the 16-bit SNES.

I have standards people and I'm a perfectionist! While the kiddies were jerking off to their NES ies, I was in the arcades, playing arcade games with the big boys.

I always thought that the controller for the NES was a cheap peace of crap. The NES looked like it came out of the gaming ghetto.

You guys can hold my drinks while I play Golden Axe.
 
MrAgmoore said:
I have to disagree. I was born in '75 and I never saw the appeal of the Atari, 8-bit Nes or 8-bit Sega Master system.

The C-64 ( which a friend owned ) / Amstrad ( which i owned ) / Amiga ( my cousin owned ) was where it was at. My uncle was a programmer so in 1984, I was playing "Elite" on his BBC model B microcomputer ( with built in 5 and a 1/4" floppy drive ). The joystick was awesome.

I later would own the original monochrome ( 5 shade ) Gameboy, 16-bit Sega Megadrive ( Genesis ) and the 16-bit SNES.

I have standards people and I'm a perfectionist! While the kiddies were jerking off to their NES ies, I was in the arcades, playing arcade games with the big boys.

I always thought that the controller for the NES was a cheap peace of crap. The NES looked like it came out of the gaming ghetto.

You guys can hold my drinks while I play Golden Axe.
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I'm same age as you I think you have early Alzheimer's. While all the things you mention are fun including the arcade, let's get real at 10 years old there was more game time at home than hanging in an arcade. And back then in our age group every person I new was addicted to the NES. It was the focus of every late night weekend sleepover. To this day many of its games have a higher replay value than any game even today.
 
Needs some Solstice love in this thread. Insanely ahead of it's time with isometric 3D, phenomenal level design and an incredible challenge.
NESPart1.jpg

NESPart2.jpg

There were plenty of games to like for the system. Smash TV was some of the best multiplayer fun ever.
 
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Nytegard said:
To be fair, the Apple II (the last time Apple systems were known for games) came out more than half a decade earlier than the NES, which is one console generation. Afterwards, they wanted to go in a direction to avoid gamers on their system, and that pretty much lasted up until the iPhone.

I never understood why they didn't embrace gamers. It just makes no financial sense. But I guess the stigma of video gamers was significantly different back then, especially if you were trying to market a machine to the "IBM crowd".
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gamers are constantly demanding better hardware, customization of hardware to fit their needs, better cooling for overclocking, more power to fuel graphics cards and cooling, etc.

apple has built their model on easy accessibility and fewer options with their hardware. i think apple knew what gamers wanted and knew that it wouldn't fit their business model.
 
Dome said:
gamers are constantly demanding better hardware, customization of hardware to fit their needs, better cooling for overclocking, more power to fuel graphics cards and cooling, etc.

apple has built their model on easy accessibility and fewer options with their hardware. i think apple knew what gamers wanted and knew that it wouldn't fit their business model.
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We're talking about a completely different era here. The Apple II was THE machine to have. It was upgradable (tons of accessories), it was the gaming behemoth of that time.

The Apple III was backwards compatible with the Apple II, but they put in chips to actually prevent certain compatibilities which disallowed many games from running.
 
MrAgmoore said:
The C-64 ( which a friend owned ) / Amstrad ( which i owned ) / Amiga ( my cousin owned ) was where it was at. My uncle was a programmer so in 1984, I was playing "Elite" on his BBC model B microcomputer ( with built in 5 and a 1/4" floppy drive ). The joystick was awesome.
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Nice to have moneyed friends who can afford a C64 (released at $600, probably $300 by mid-80s). Add-in the disk drive (over $500), and you're ready to wait several minutes for your game to load!

For the rest of us, there was the NES, which cost $100 and loaded almost instantly!
 
Yes. Hell yes.
Anyone who thinks the NES was not a good system needs to leave their gamer card at the door and pick up another hobby, like crocheting.
 
Nice to have moneyed friends who can afford a C64 (released at $600, probably $300 by mid-80s). Add-in the disk drive (over $500), and you're ready to wait several minutes for your game to load!
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I snagged a used C64, a 300Baud Modem, and a 1581 drive for ~$100 in the mid 80's. I loved my Commodore, and eventually had a 128D that took me right into the PC world.

With that said -- the NES was much better to me when it came to gaming. I had more games than I knew what to do with on the commodore, but still turned to my NES when it game to serious game time.
 
I had both, (well my older brother had both) and he too was born in 1975.

We played both systems just as hard as the other...But I'd have to say that most of my early gaming memories are from the C64, followed by the 486, and then the NES.
 
Born in 81 so I was still young when the NES was out. I never liked the Atari stuff nor did I like stuff like Donkey kong, pacman, space invaders, frogger, or pong.. all boring and simplistic and in the case of donkey kong, just needlessly clumsy controls. I also don't like sitting and playing solitare or black jack on the computer either though, just don't like those 'type' of games.

The NES was a big step up and provided 'adventure' games which were more appealing to me... zelda and zelda 2, final fantasy... but the SNES was in my opinion a far bigger jump up and arguably the best system of that era, the jump in graphical ability, hardware quality and reliability (no freezing, blinking, saves vanishing) .... even besting the nintendo 64 and playstation which themselves had some great games, but like others mentioned, blocky 3d graphics vs beautiful 2d graphics, and C button camera controls which I forgot how annoying they were in games like Super Mario 64, which is an excellent game nonetheless but with needlessly awkward camera that wouldn't go where you wanted it. The loading times on the original playstation drove me nuts even back then.

Some of the greats... Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy 2 and 3, Chrono Trigger, Earthbound, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario All Stars (the first 3 nintendo games and the lost levels with improved graphics)

I do remember how that 'game genie' device seemed to ruin the systems...
 
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stockwiz said:
I do remember how that 'game genie' device seemed to ruin the systems...
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really??? how so?

I loved the game genie, specially for the NES because cheating or not, it made the fucking games work without all the blowing, wiggling, etc.
 
MrAgmoore said:
I have to disagree. I was born in '75 and I never saw the appeal of the Atari, 8-bit Nes or 8-bit Sega Master system.

The C-64 ( which a friend owned ) / Amstrad ( which i owned ) / Amiga ( my cousin owned ) was where it was at. My uncle was a programmer so in 1984, I was playing "Elite" on his BBC model B microcomputer ( with built in 5 and a 1/4" floppy drive ). The joystick was awesome.

I later would own the original monochrome ( 5 shade ) Gameboy, 16-bit Sega Megadrive ( Genesis ) and the 16-bit SNES.

I have standards people and I'm a perfectionist! While the kiddies were jerking off to their NES ies, I was in the arcades, playing arcade games with the big boys.

I always thought that the controller for the NES was a cheap peace of crap. The NES looked like it came out of the gaming ghetto.

You guys can hold my drinks while I play Golden Axe.
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I have to agree with this guy here. Arcades were soooooooo much better than NES. Some of them even had ashtrays :D
 
Bigbacon said:
really??? how so?

I loved the game genie, specially for the NES because cheating or not, it made the fucking games work without all the blowing, wiggling, etc.
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Or, you could just cut the pins to the lockout chip. Solves 99.9% of the consoles problems that way.
 
I can say i didnt focus on it much until the SNES came out. Mario Bros, Excitebike, RC Pro Am, and others i cant remember didnt keep me interested as a kid.
 
HisSvt76 said:
thats horrible. my dad was a electronics repair guy and from day one tought us never to do that shit and our stuff always worked we used proper cleaning technics.
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What are you talking about? That WAS the proper cleaning technique!:D

Its a good thing I found this thread, as I was going to post one that may be considered similar. Why do we keep going back to older games?

Sure, its for nostalgia. But is there something there we arent getting from todays games with intricate story lines and boat-loads of movie quality entertainment? In some ways, I feel that a lot of newer games have become predictable. Granted, I havent played all of the Resident Evil games. But when I first tore into a RE game, without having played before, I could predict which zombies appeared to be dead but were going to suddenly spring to life as soon as I went around the corner or walked past them. Thats just one example.

I personally agree with what someone else said earlier, the challenge was welcome. Im not saying that games today dont have challenge. They do, but its different somehow. Perhaps for some of us that are older, we look back on these times in our childhood and they are more appealing and bring back other memories. I dont feel the way I do about my Xbox/360, PSX, or many of the other consoles I have owned over the years. I dont look back at them, with the exception of the Dreamcast(thats more of a question of what could have been, provided Sega made better decisions with that system, but this is a different story/topic/thread altogether). They provided me good times and great titles, but I dont yearn for the feel of their controller in my hand, mostly because the PS controller hasnt changed over the years. But (S)NES, Genesis, TurboGrafx16, hell, even the Amiga(kinda doesnt really count, but Lemmings never really felt at home anywhere else...) all hold a place still on my shelf. For chrissakes I even still have a brick gameboy just for Tetris.

Mega Man 2 will always be one of my favorite games. Always. Even though Ive beaten it countless times. It doesnt matter though. Its still fun to play, and I keep and NES and copy of the game handy for this purpose.

Ive gotten away from the topic. In retrospect, was the NES a good system? Yes. Another poster said earlier that it brought arcade games into the front room for the first time. This is true. It caused the collapse of the arcade. But also brought new content as well. New experiences, new memories. It changed the way we played, and the way we looked at games. It spawned franchises that are still around today(Castlevania, Final Fantasy, Mario), and franchises that have come and gone(Double Dragon, Contra, and Mega Man to an extent), as well as some very lame titles that escape me because they were utter crap(terrible, I know).
 
Born in 1980 here. The NES was the first gaming system we owned in the house. Its well known the NES saved console gaming. And the rivalry between Sega and Nintendo was epic back in the day, which spawned a console boom and lots of competition. We didnt even have a PC in the house till 1997. Many franchises got their birth on the NES, so without it who knows what would have happened. I have many more great gaming memories on the earlier systems than as of late. Cheers to Nintendo. :D
 
HisSvt76 said:
To this day many of its games have a higher replay value than any game even today.
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This is pure nostalgia speaking..the same nonsense I see with older people referring to old movies. :confused:

There are awesome games now and there were awesome games then just as there were pieces of crap as well.
Same with movies.
I love my C64..it was the system I played the most and I played lots of Genesis, Dreamcast and so on but I am not going to say the C64 games beat everything I have now..come one...really?
Nostalgia wise, yes, those games seem like something else but a reality check is needed before commenting.
 
For its time yes it was. Nothing really compared to it when it came out. Plus a lot of classic games for it went on to be made for consoles even used today.
 
shaolin95 said:
This is pure nostalgia speaking..the same nonsense I see with older people referring to old movies. :confused:
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While I agree with you, it's only to a certain extent. There might be other reasons other than nostalgia, especially if you're a genre snob. What I mean is, I'm an adventure game fan. AAA title speaking, there are absolutely no titles coming out sans Telltale, and then it can be hit or miss. This is especially true because when you have one choice, it may or may not fall into your category of preferences. 20 years ago there were tons of developers with many different styles.

Think of it similar to movies with the Western genre. Or maybe you like slasher horror flicks.

It's certainly true that there are plenty of indie games of almost every category, but the problem with this is that there are too many to choose from. This in itself is a bad thing, which is partially why the crash of '83 happened. With a billion choices, trying to find the few good games becomes particularly difficult, and almost not worth attempting. And unlike AAA titles, being indie puts it in more of a niche audience, which means having someone give suggestions may not be possible. And not everyone knows how to find indie games.

There were a ton of platform games back in the NES era. But if you're not a fan of Mario, there really is a good chance that games today are worse than games of yesteryear. It comes down to the individual.
 
I do know one thing. Emulator or not, I would shell out for a massive Nintendo collection if it were available on Steam. Crazy I know.
 
defaultluser said:
Nice to have moneyed friends who can afford a C64 (released at $600, probably $300 by mid-80s). Add-in the disk drive (over $500), and you're ready to wait several minutes for your game to load!

For the rest of us, there was the NES, which cost $100 and loaded almost instantly!
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I had the Amstrad 6128 ( with the built-in 3.5 inch floppy drive ). At the time, the cost of floppy games were about 10 pounds sterling ( expensive for me ) but cassettes were about 2.99 - 5 sterling so I would have happily traded out the disk drive, in order to afford more games.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstrad_cpc

Practically every machine had a tape drive, so I was used to waiting up to 10 minutes for a game to load. Crashes on loading were common too.

Wikipedia says that only 3 million CPC Amstrads were sold, which seems tiny.

Home 8-bit computers were marketed as being able to potentially turn your child into Gordon Gecko, which is something that parents bought into.


The problem with consoles ( for SNES / Genesis ) is that the console was relatively cheap 100 - 150 but the games were expensive 40-60.

How much were the NES cartridges? People get raped on the cost of cartridges.


One of my favourite games on the Amstrad was Ikari warriors, let's see how they compare:

Amstrad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuFgdWU2rp4

NES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDi_7swlKo

Arcade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBUZtcUPb1k


Yeah... I'm not going to touch the NES version with a barge pole, especially when I played the original arcade version. I feel like I need to disinfect my eyes after watching that Youtube video * grabs bleach *.
 
HisSvt76 said:
I'm same age as you I think you have early Alzheimer's. While all the things you mention are fun including the arcade, let's get real at 10 years old there was more game time at home than hanging in an arcade. And back then in our age group every person I new was addicted to the NES. It was the focus of every late night weekend sleepover. To this day many of its games have a higher replay value than any game even today.
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I was being flippant with the Arcade thing. At age 10, there definitely was more game time at home or at friends ( especially the friend with the C64 ). My mom's a ( still ) over protective nurse and my dad's ex-military - they both were control freaks.

A lot of distant relatives and cousins ( in the USA or Trinidad ) had NES' and Atari so yeah, NES was ubiquitous in the States. I always saw NES as something for kids, a couple of years younger because it was plug 'n play, whereas microcomputers were command-line driven.

I mean... in 1984 I was playing a space-trading sim with cutting edge vector graphics & a real joystick, on my uncle's BBC microcomputer. I was trading in drugs, slaves, firearms and constantly crashing into the docking station. NES is not even in the same league.

Elite

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuvbZpH1QuE


I'm British-Canadian so there was more of a Sinclair Spectrum / Amstrad / Comodore 64 thing going on in the UK.

My father made it a point to go on international vacations so I would get to play the arcades in those countries, at hotel resorts or airports.

Malta ( hotel resort ): "Tiger Heli"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fL4X-sbLvr8


Italy ( Italian restaurant ): "Pengo"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Mw-XkalHUg


Airport: "Rolling Thunder"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v559cYVKp34


Toronto ( up the CN tower ): "Mario Bros."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8PI5VxN444


Wales ( hotel resort ): "Golden Axe, Chase HQ, Outrun"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gOKT5KHsuI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5p4cswI3tdI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZmnMgjEgeQ


In the early 80's, my father put sattelites into the sky and would dissapear for two weeks and come back talking about "submarines". Also, with the alcoholism & domestic abuse, my childhood was pretty atypical. Arcades were a refuge, for kids from dysfunctional families.
 
There was a social element to NES gaming since computers and internet weren't widespread. As a kid you heard about which games were cool from your friends or in school. You also heard about how to beat stuff like that Castlevania red orb thing mentioned in the first post. I certainly couldn't just go look at a walkthrough.

So uh, what is the proper electrical engineering cleaning technique for an NES cartridge?
 
the one thing I can only add looking at it today. Since I've been getting back into trying to collect 8bit/16bit games is now that I am much older, I find the games ridiculously hard and get frustrated very quickly and stop playing.

As kid, I know that was never an issue, it was play until I accomplished something or got yelled at to stop and go outside.

MrAgmoore:

you've made me want to make a Mame machine now :(
 
You also heard about how to beat stuff like that Castlevania red orb thing mentioned in the first post
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Like everything else in the 80's... there was a 900 number for that. 1-900-885-7529? Thats from memory, so it might be off....
 
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