{"id":17,"date":"2016-02-29T15:09:47","date_gmt":"2016-02-29T15:09:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/?p=17"},"modified":"2021-03-02T13:14:16","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T17:14:16","slug":"a-brief-history-of-the-nintendo-entertainment-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"A Brief History of the Nintendo Entertainment System"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a little known fact\u2026the Nintendo Company is actually much older than the NES\/FAMICOM that brought the world\u2019s attention to Japan. It actually started in 1889 as a playing card company. Before Nintendo went into the video game industry in the mid-1970s, they had also been in the taxi industry, and has run \u201clove hotels\u201d (which are exactly what they sound like and make the family friendly Wii pretty damn ironic). In the 1960s, they turned themselves into a toy company, (after visiting the States they cut a deal to exclusively license Disney characters on playing cards for Japan) and they eventually saw the future of video games on the horizon. They started into video games making light gun games (arcade style shooters) and grabbed exclusive distribution rights for Magnavox\u2019s response to the Atari.<\/p>\n

Around this time, they hired a dude named Shigeru Miyomoto\u2014a student who was interested in video games. We\u2019ll talk about him a bunch later (he designed pretty much every good Nintendo game. Ever\u2014he\u2019s earned his own entry) but his first major success was 1981\u2019s Donkey Kong. Originally an arcade cabinet, Nintendo brought in HUGE profits by porting the game to all of the systems that were on the market at the time. It was the best selling game on multiple platforms. In a day where there were actually multiple platforms\u2026not the 4 or so that exist today.<\/p>\n

This money allowed Nintendo the opportunity to branch out into producing physical consoles, not just the games themselves. They started with a series of single-game micro-consoles in a series called Game and Watch. Some of the games were ports, some were created for the system. While not exactly noteworthy as a concept (having to buy a new handset for every game didn\u2019t work out well, their console for Donkey Kong gave us the 2 Axis D-pad that is a standard for ALL video game controllers today.<\/p>\n

After realizing that single-game consoles limited the market because of the high cost of constantly repurchasing the hardware, Nintendo spent 1981-82 on their own exclusive system. The end result was the FAMICOM.<\/p>\n

\"Famicom-Console-Set-640x330\"<\/a>

Check out that sweet color scheme!<\/p><\/div>\n

While it looks sorta-similar to the grey toaster we are all familiar with, there are some pretty nifty differences. First, check out that paint job\u2026there\u2019s some serious character in there. Additionally, the controllers were hard-wired to the system\u2026which probably kept you from losing them. Finally, unlike the NES, the games were top loaded, like the Atari before it.<\/p>\n

It sold well in Japan, but after the disaster that was glut of shitty Atari games (see E.T. as the classic, horrendous example) Nintendo worried about ANYTHING that looked like a 2600. So before they moved into the US market, Nintendo made some changes. Like a grey box that is an \u201cEntertainment System\u201d using \u201cGame Paks\u201d inserted into a \u201ccontrol deck.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"If<\/a>

Ah, the view of my childhood<\/p><\/div>\n

Basically, it\u2019s a video game system that doesn\u2019t look like a video game system. It \u2018s a computer\u2014it\u2019s not a toy. There\u2019s even a robot<\/p>\n

\"8<\/a>

Robotic Operating Buddy, R.O.B., or a huge waste of cash.<\/p><\/div>\n

I honestly have no idea what the point of the robot was. Maybe I\u2019ll figure it out some day. Nobody I knew who had it (all 3 of them) could ever get it to work. You didn\u2019t really need it. But hey! It\u2019s a Robot!<\/p>\n

Anyway. We\u2019re not here to talk about robots. Nintendo launched the NES in October 1985. And it was a heck of a launch. Nintendo had a solid 17 game roster\u2026sports games like 10 Yard Fight (first decent US Football game) Soccer (football to the rest of the world) Tennis, Golf, Baseball, platformers in Ice Climbers, Wrecking Crew, Donkey Kong Jr. Math (seriously), a fighting game in Kung-Fu, 2 racing games in Excitebike and Mach Rider, a Lightgun Game in Wild Gunman, 2 robot games in Gyromite and Stackup, classic Pinball, whatever the hell you would call Clu Clu Land, and the 2 games that came with the NES itself, Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt (depending on which package you bought).<\/p>\n

All of this, plus the peripherals in the robot (R.O.B. or Robotic Operating Buddy) and the lightgun, which still is an amazing chunk of Tech that I\u2019ll write about and regularly bitch about the fact it won\u2019t work on new hi-def TVs (it\u2019s a refresh rate issue).<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>

And now the gang’s all together<\/p><\/div>\n

If you look at the list of cool stuff above, you\u2019ll see it wasn\u2019t actually much of a launch. Nintendo didn\u2019t hit their stride until 1987 or so\u2026with the exception of SMB and Excitebike, none of the original games make any of the top 100 games. The only 2 ROB games ever released came out on launch day (and ROB would disappear quickly when it because obvious that there wouldn\u2019t be any more games to use with him. At a cost of around 75 bucks in 1985 money.) and<\/p>\n

But 1987 is in the future. My next post will be a quick review of the original 18 games, minus Stackup, which you can\u2019t play without a ROB\u2026and between the game and the robot, that\u2019d be about 250 bucks on ebay. (I\u2019m not that dedicated to the blog to spend that kind of cash on a 30 minute project).<\/p>\n

Until next time, thanks for reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a little known fact\u2026the Nintendo Company is actually much older than the NES\/FAMICOM that brought the world\u2019s attention to Japan. It actually started in 1889 as a playing card company. Before Nintendo went into the video game industry in the mid-1970s, they had also been in the taxi industry, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nes","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjj4.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}