Nintendo Entertainment System Turns 25

harrymcc writes "On October 18th 1985, Nintendo launched its NES console in the US, reviving a near-dead video game industry and establishing Nintendo as a leader in home consoles. We've celebrated with a roundup of some of the stranger spinoffs that the NES has inspired over the last quarter century, from odd controllers to a lock parents could use to disable the console to do-it-yourself projects like an NES built into a Super Mario cartridge."

The mark of good games...

[Darkness404]

The mark of good games is when you can still pick up and play them 5, 10, 15 or even 25 years from now and they are just as good as the first time you picked them up.

I can't say that many Xbox or PS1 games can say that. On the other hand, almost the entire NES library seems to be filled with examples that are just as fun today as they were back in the day without having to put on rose-tinted glasses of saying that this game was fun for its time.

Re:Sure makes you feel old

[Darkness404]

The thing is, games for the NES and that era were -made- to be abstract, when we got to the N64/PS1 era, developers started releasing "realistic" games which end up looking like crap when the next generation of games come out.

Graphics were secondary to making an entertaining game, the game was developed with the concept first then the graphics followed and the graphics were what made sense. For example, the look of Mario wasn't developed to look like a specific person, but rather to compensate for the lack of advanced hardware. Today, developers take graphics first, take a storyline first, then let the game fill in the cracks.

Re:Obituary != Birthday Card

[Darkness404]

...Except for the fact the NES isn't dead or abandoned.

Nintendo sells NES Roms for $5 a piece on the Wii, the NES still has a thriving homebrew scene, new versions of the NES/Famicom hardware shows up nearly daily from replicas of other systems made to con unwary buyers (PolyStation anyone?)to portable consoles.

Just about every one of Nintendo's NES titles have gone on to spawn successful franchises the majority of which continue to this day (Mario Bros, Zelda, Punch-Out, Metroid, etc.)

I don't think there has been an older system with as healthy of a community and such surrounding it. Just because Nintendo isn't churning out any more NES consoles doesn't mean the NES is dead.

Re:Mine still works...

[Applekid]

Hey, it's already pretty good. The lockout inside the console is easily neutered (cut pin 4 on the DIP IC with "CIC" on the silkscreen), the cartridge connector -- while flawed -- is straightforward to repair and you can buy replacements for about $5, and the console can be opened up with regular old Phillips screwdriver.

If it were made today, it would use security screws under rubber feet and labels, have a sticker about voiding the warranty, and disabling any kind of protection device would either brick it, make it impossible to play with more than one player at a time, or get you in trouble under DMCA.

Re:The mark of good games...

[CronoCloud]

That's nostalgia talking, there was plenty of crap on the NES, and plenty of great games on the PSone.

Re:The mark of good games...

[syphyre]

I sense exaggeration. There are what, perhaps 20-25 games that could still be considered just as good today (if that many)? There were what, just under 800 games published in the US for the NES? Small sample selection. Same thing goes for the Xbox, PS2, SNES, etc. Huge libraries, few games that will last and last and last.

Re:The mark of good games...

[grumbel]

The problem with the PSone, as well as most other 3D consoles, is that their graphics age extremely badly. NES still look quite ok, SNES games can even look pretty good, PSone games on the other side just look really ugly. Same goes for the controls, there is only so much you can do wrong in 2D with a Dpad, but in 3D things have improved a lot over the years and many PSone titles are borderline unplayable by todays standard, even the good ones.

Re:Sure makes you feel old

[Captain Spam]

This claim seems strange to me. What games back then do you think had soul? And what new games have you played that you felt lacked soul? It's a sort of nebulous concept, so I could benefit from some examples. Maybe some explanation of what gave those examples soul.

I can explain it in two words: "Nostalgia filter".

To add more words, there's really the same proportion of good games to bad games nowadays. That didn't change. But when you look at the past through the rose-tinted glasses of your own nostalgia, back to your memories of the carefree days of your youth with NES games right alongside them, it looks a lot better than your more recent memories of the cynical, stressed-out days of your adulthood with more modern games right alongside them.

So, give it about ten or so years until we get the people who grew up on video game generation n (where n is some generation after the NES). We'll hear them wax soulful and philosophical about THOSE games, too, while deriding the current generation of the time. And then the cycle of life continues! Ah...