In retrospect, was the NES really a good system?

Azureth

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Now most of us here are of the age where we grew up with it and as kids truly enjoyed most of what it had to offer. However, nostalgia aside, was the NES really that good?

Sure we have the staples such as Mario games, zelda, metroid, etc. but honestly weren't the good majority of games pretty bad? Ball-bustingly hard for no other reason then to extend the game length and some common bad game design decisions that made absolutely no sense, take Castlevania IIs "select a red orb then kneel down for 10 seconds in some arbitrary spoit".
 
There's always a lot of "games are shit today" comments. But compared to the games of old - our modern games are far more fun for plenty of reasons other than eye candy and whatnot. So, in that regard - the NES sucked.

However, it's not really fair to compare the two. The NES was so amazing because it delivered the real arcade experience to your home. Not atari 2600 experience - where it was like Donkey Kong, but it's really not. The NES brought the arcade into your house - and that alone was cool as hell. And video games were different then - they weren't designed for the experience. They were designed to be a challenge, something that you were supposed to eventually fail at, and then put in another quarter.

I would argue the consoles of the NES era are what provided the fundamental shift in games. Away from the quarter plunking titles toward the games of today where they are intended to be entertainment mediums.

I wouldn't want that experience today - but I'm glad I had it 20+ years ago.
 
Yes, it was awesome.

It was fun and it was frustratingly annoying at times.

Can't tell you how many times me and my brother threw those controllers across the room in sheer rage.

Overall though it was a very fun experience. Part of that was the newness of gaming, the fact that we were young, and of course the overall awesomeness of the 80s.
 
BATTLETOADS!!!

But honestly most of those games were hard because they were only like 30mins long and most didn’t have saves or even passwords. I got so good at Bionic Commando I use to beat it almost every day after school.
 
I think Kongar hit the nail on the head. I certainly never played the majority of NES games, but there were a number of games out there that I found to be very enjoyable beyond what you listed. River City Ransom, Crystalis, Desert Commander, Shingen the Ruler, and Super Dodgeball all come to mind.
 
BATTLETOADS!!!

But honestly most of those games were hard because they were only like 30mins long and most didn’t have saves or even passwords. I got so good at Bionic Commando I use to beat it almost every day after school.

I used to finish Contra with around 35 or 39 lives. So i was basically finishing the game nine times without dying :p I still did the konami code each time tho:D
 
It was no C64, but then, that's like comparing a modern console to a modern PC. (though I guess the NES had a bigger color palette.)

Anyway, I think it was a great console for the time. I didn't actually own one. I had the C64, and a Sega Master System. The Master System seemed to do many things better than the NES, but the sound chip on the US version was horrible. (really annoying PSG music) Played the NES at friends' houses though quite a bit.

The games back then were different. They were games in a more basic sense, that took a lot of practice to master. Infuriating at times, but some were really worth the effort. Megaman springs to mind, Wizards and Warriors, Mario, Zelda, etc. etc. It was a pretty decent jump ahead for the time. Games just didn't have the intensive stories they do now, the years of tweaking and refinement in determining what an acceptable level of difficulty is, or the ability to customize it to the player's ability. It was still pretty early in the scheme of things.
 
I don't know if it was a "good" system.

I don't really know much about the history and the hardware and stuff, but it made me and my friends happy and we played the crap out of it so it was a good system as far as we were concerned.

The funny thing is, I still have it sitting under the TV at my mom's house. I think it has Super Dodgeball still inside it, but I don't know where any of the other games are. I'll bet they got sold or donated somewhere along the way.
 
Excite bike and that one game where you turned into a tank (?) and had to save your pet frog? Cannot remember the name for the life of me. It was sci-fi.
 
There were a TON of games. Many were junk, many were good, some were fantastic.
It was a very good system in its time.
I liked the hard games, personally.
 
Of all the consoles that I have, it's the one that I come back to over and over again.

Karnov, Rygar, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Excite Bike, Marios, Zeldas, Punch Out, Battle Toads...

the list goes on.

So many good games. And like all other systems, there was a ton of CRAP on it, to. But it was an amazing system.
 
Now most of us here are of the age where we grew up with it and as kids truly enjoyed most of what it had to offer. However, nostalgia aside, was the NES really that good?

Sure we have the staples such as Mario games, zelda, metroid, etc. but honestly weren't the good majority of games pretty bad? Ball-bustingly hard for no other reason then to extend the game length and some common bad game design decisions that made absolutely no sense, take Castlevania IIs "select a red orb then kneel down for 10 seconds in some arbitrary spoit".

Every system, including the PC, has had lots of shit games. That's why people like the Angry Video Game Nerd exist. What differentiates good systems from bad are those that have titles that breaks records, or break the mold...whether it's Mario, Zelda, Sonic, Wolfenstein 3d, Goldeneye, Grand Theft Auto 3, etc.
 
Yes, it was probably the greatest gaming system of all time.

There were probably more truly excellent games for the NES than every other system combined.

And for the record, I fucking LOVED Castlevania 2.
 
Excite bike and that one game where you turned into a tank (?) and had to save your pet frog? Cannot remember the name for the life of me. It was sci-fi.

Blaster Master.

I played the shit out of that game.

Story from my childhood: We were getting ready for a camping trip and my mom decides to bring a tiny TV and the NES along "in case the kids get bored." Being a camping trip, I spent all day either riding, swimming, hiking, or any of the other things you do while camping. All the adults (there were 3 or 4 familes that we would get together with to do a massive campout) however couldn't be pulled away from Wheel of Fortune. :D
 
Today if you select a game at random from the shelf at your local store and put it in your xbox there's a good chance you'll be able to understand, play and finish the game. It may not be considered great by today's standards but at least most of the games are on some level functional (BROTTR notwithstanding.)

That wasn't so with the NES. There were a lot of games like the aforementioned Castlevania 2 which were not possible to complete without some sort of guide. I also remember renting games as a child and simply having no clue what I was supposed to do. Bart Vs. The Space Mutants, Godzilla, Dick Tracey and several other titles all come to mind.

Today we review games based on how good they are. In the days of the NES they reviewed games simply on how functional they were. Fun was just an added bonus a lot of times.
 
Little Nemo The Dreammaster! Yes, the NES was good, although having to give a blowjob to the cartridge a half dozen times to get any game to work was annoying as shit.
 
NES was good, but I agree it gets knocked a few points back due to cartridge issues. Having spent most of the time on NES it's hard to put nostalgia aside though. The games were simply amazing to me back then, but graphics and gameplay were advancing so rapidly, unlike today where we see something truly new and fun less and less.

I must say, the challenge in the games back then was much more welcome, due to the fact that they were clearly design choices rather then games nowadays being challenging because of the obvious lack of elegance and abundance of bugs and other seemingly unintended annoyances the developers tend to get away with. Of course, I'm probably just miss grumpy pants now that I'm older, so that may be the main contributing factor.

I'd probably vote SNES to be better with more bang-for-the-buck. The sound was so beefy and it really was the end of the 2d golden era. I remember going to n64 and PS1 and being disappointed in graphics taking an ugly backwards turn. Yeah, it's 3D, but it's block and blurry as shit. Also, controls were like $!@% especially all that camera bull#$@% even games nowadays can't seem to get it right.
 
Anyone who says the NES wasn't awesome wasn't gaming the day before it came out.
 
It mind blowingly freaking awesome and I had 40 games! 40! THE LEGEND OF ZELDA? SUPER MARIO BROTHERS? METROID? CONTRA? Why don't we debate whether orgasms are fun while we're at it.
 
Barring nostalgia NES hasn't aged as well because gaming was in its infancy and held back technically. NES was a excellent console for the time (contra was freaking awesome!) but gaming has become progressively better throughout the years except for the current generation of consoles.

Personally my favorite games are pretty much all come from the Ps2 era as it offers the best games for just about every genre out there with a endless selection of games. I still play ps2 through emulation more than any other console.
 
There's always a lot of "games are shit today" comments. But compared to the games of old - our modern games are far more fun for plenty of reasons other than eye candy and whatnot. So, in that regard - the NES sucked.

However, it's not really fair to compare the two. The NES was so amazing because it delivered the real arcade experience to your home. Not atari 2600 experience - where it was like Donkey Kong, but it's really not. The NES brought the arcade into your house - and that alone was cool as hell. And video games were different then - they weren't designed for the experience. They were designed to be a challenge, something that you were supposed to eventually fail at, and then put in another quarter.

I would argue the consoles of the NES era are what provided the fundamental shift in games. Away from the quarter plunking titles toward the games of today where they are intended to be entertainment mediums.

I wouldn't want that experience today - but I'm glad I had it 20+ years ago.

what a great post. i agree with everything, particularly your thoughts on modern day gaming.
 
The NES had a lot of awesome games and a lot of crappy games. It's one of the best systems of all time because of those awesome games.

The SNES is the best system of all time pound for pound IMHO.
 
Barring nostalgia NES hasn't aged as well because gaming was in its infancy and held back technically.

I disagree.

Pick up Final Fantasy 7, one of the most loved games of all time. Now tell me that it's aged well! I looks soooooo bad.

Now pick up Super Mario, Zelda, Contra, Metroid... very playable, even to todays standards. Might not have the save points you're used to (because the battery is dead, or you don't need a notepad next to your console to game anymore so you can't write down the code), but they have aged very well. I think they've aged better than the N64/PSX era.
 
Ha, I never really missed my NES. It seemed I'd get used/new games without manuals/guides.

Try playing Top Gun or Knight Rider or alot of others without a manual. I never knew how to play those games, even today.

Of course it had some good games. TMNT, Spyhunter... Best if played through emulation these days.

I didn't really appreciate games till PSX/N64, just being able to save with any game was a godsend.
 
Yes, it was probably the greatest gaming system of all time.

There were probably more truly excellent games for the NES than every other system combined.

And for the record, I fucking LOVED Castlevania 2.

I read that in Napoleon Dynamites voice... :)

Castlevania 2 was awesome. The NES was a great system for a few reasons. It brought gaming back from near death. The games were awesome (a lot of the were great, some of them sucked - Platoon, for example). The whole experience. But, arcades were big back in those days, too, so you wanted to play those arcade ports on your little NES (or SMS, like me).
 
I disagree.

Pick up Final Fantasy 7, one of the most loved games of all time. Now tell me that it's aged well! I looks soooooo bad.

Now pick up Super Mario, Zelda, Contra, Metroid... very playable, even to todays standards. Might not have the save points you're used to (because the battery is dead, or you don't need a notepad next to your console to game anymore so you can't write down the code), but they have aged very well. I think they've aged better than the N64/PSX era.
If you're talking about about the snes era of those game I would agree with you however not the nes versions.

I still find the ps1/n64 era great because it introduced a lot more depth and full lengthed proper games instead of the arcade styled games that dominated the market for so long.
 
neat post. One o f my favorite quote goes something like this in summary " We live life forwards, but view life backwards." Its easy looking back and forgetting the "whole" situation of the gaming industry of that era. It was a very popular system, that offered decent power that allowed the game developers to develop new stuff, they couldnt before. looking back at it, you can see rough gems of games that were great for their time. They went on to spawn some of the greatest games of all time, and eventually lead to a new era of games when 3d became possible. Sure it had a lot of trash games, and i believe part of that because it was cheaper to make games and didnt require a squad of developers to make them back then.
It may not have been the greatest system of all time, but i think its somewhere around the top 3. heres roughly what i think is top 3: ) 1) snes 2) pc platform 3) nes or n64/ps1.
 
The NES was pretty amazing. It was one of the first systems to feature smooth scrolling, and had enough simultaneous colors with high enough resolution to make good use of the color graphics. The sound chip was also one of the most versatile available in the US at the time (only surpassed by the Commodore 64). The controller direction pad was also an incredible innovation - so good nothing since has come close. And all this available under $100 made it very accessible (I saved my allowance for one).

The game carts really made the system. Unlike affordable computer systems of the day (C64), the games all came in one standard media format that was VERY reliable, and the load times were very fast.

And there were enough addicting games to keep you sated, especially later in the system's life. Here are some of my favorites:

(just my list of Third-party games)

Battletoads
Bionic Commando
Blaster Master
Castlevania 1,2,3
Contra
Double Dragon
Dragon warrior 1-3 (4 was shit with the AI controls)
Goonies2
Ikari Warriors
Jackal
The Guardian Legend
Little Nemo: The Dreammaster
Mega Man 1-3
Metal Gear
Ninja Gaiden 3 (much less difficult and more engrossing than the first two)
Rad Racer
3D World Runner
Rambo
Rygar
Skate or Die
Super Dodgeball
TNMT2
Tecmo Bowl
Wizards and Warriors (yeah, it's "hard," but unlimited continues just like Castlevania)
Xexyz

Only about 1/4 of these games were arcade ports, so that's a ton of original content only available on the NES. And the ports were all pretty damn accurate.

And of course there's the vast quantity of first-part titles.
 
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Most NES games were hard because you'd spend 30 minutes blowing into your nes to get them to work...
 
Most NES games were hard because you'd spend 30 minutes blowing into your nes to get them to work...

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.

and you bet the nes was awsome still play mine all the time.
posted from the Wii U
 
TI also remember renting games as a child and simply having no clue what I was supposed to do. Bart Vs. The Space Mutants

When that game came out my friend just had a B&W TV so it made the first level of that game nearly impossible to play. I think he eventually memorized all the purple objects though.

Oh and speaking of games and having no fucking clue what to do... A Boy And His Blob.
 
NES was hands down awesome.

So what if you had to blow into the cartridge every now and then -- my friend still has his original NES and it works just like the day he bought it. 25 year old piece of hardware that works flawlessly.

The games were hard? Yup - and we liked it that way too. When you saved for weeks and months for a game by doing chores you didn't want some easy ass game that was over in 2 days.

And even though it will make me sound like one of those grizzled old coots -- games today are too easy. You can see this is the fucked "Achievement system" that's popular. Wow - I just got 25 gamer points because I made my character walk through his first door. Fail.

I doubt most kids these days would have the patience or intelligence to play the games we played. God forbid using your imagination and figuring stuff out on your own every now and then.

I remember Super Mario Kart -- even though I hated my sister with a passion, we would play mario cart together all the time. (and I always whooped her ass)
 
Comparing it, and the games todays is just silly. Yes it was a good system, a fantastic system. And I too hate these stupid achievements in all the games now days. I got one for loading up BF3, 1 second after I joined, the match ended. I still got an achievement though! Idiotic.
 
And even though it will make me sound like one of those grizzled old coots -- games today are too easy. You can see this is the fucked "Achievement system" that's popular. Wow - I just got 25 gamer points because I made my character walk through his first door. Fail.

I doubt most kids these days would have the patience or intelligence to play the games we played. God forbid using your imagination and figuring stuff out on your own every now and then.

I sadly feel that's how this generation is :(
 
I laugh when I see people complain about hard games these days.

There were some titles on the NES that were just weep and gnashing of teeth inducing, painful, Hall of Fame level difficulty.
 
contra, punch out, tecmo bowl, jackle, track and field... just to name some of the few off the top of my head of course it was a great system.
 
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