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Games Entertainment

NESs 15th Anniversary 213

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-kinda-sorta dept.
LinuxBand sent in linkage to a nice story talking about the NES as it now is celebrating its 15th year. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had a nintendo, I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA.
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NESs 15th Birthday More

NESs 15th Birthday

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  • I woulda had a full half point better on my high school GPA

    full half point huh? 100% of 50%? why not "almost all of half of the portion equaling approximately 90% of the whole of the whatever it is we're talking about?" time for some caffeine


    My Home: Apartment6 [apartment6.org]
  • In the context of this headline, it's "NES's", not "NESs".

    --
    "Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
  • The subject says it all. Does anyone know if the U-Force bears any electronic similarity to a Theremin? If you've never heard of a Theremin, then does anyone know where I might be able to get some technical docs on the U-Force? I'm suddenly extemely curious about this.
  • Wow. Thanks for the link, it's been quite a while since I've used REND386. It also appears that Bernie released the 'final version' of AVRIL under the GPL.

  • I remember the day I got my nintendo, my life was changed, I think my parents are still upset they ever got me into gaming, if it wasn't for that easter morning I would probobly b a whole different person. The only system I think that has the possibility to match its number of great games is the dreamcast and it has a ways to go. you may think I am crazy for saying that but DC has some good games, Sonic Adventure, Chu Chu rocket, Crazy Taxi, NFL2k1, Quake 3 Arena, Samba De Amiga(play it and you will never stop especially if you have the maraca controllers), Soul Caliber, marvel Vs Capcom 1+2, and many more to come, this is only for being around 1 year I think it has a chance at matchin the greatness of nintendo, any1 else agree??
  • Yes, the Genesis had a similar setup. I forget the exact details, but it was Acclaim who was sued for eventually releasing a non-official game that included Sega's trademarked text (which needed to be in the ROM's header for the Genesis to run the ROM).

    Acclaim won the suit, but eventually became a registered Sega developer anyway.

  • Actually the ability to float like that was pretty important to me. Even though I am a big somewhat macho guy, I always used the princess as my character in SMB2 because it was just so damn easy to fly past all the obstacles in my way. Luigi was probably the worst character in SMB2 but I'll leave that game alone as it was just generally bad.

    I have read the above posts about Metroid. Now, that may or may not count because you didn't know it was a woman until the end. She did kick butt though.

    There is another thing to take into consideration. The NES was meant for a younger audience than a lot of the games that are out now. Most boys that are 5 years old or so don't really like girls, and the NES was mostly meant for pre-pubescent boys I think. The Super Nintendo eventually came out, with games for older audiences, like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter 2. These games featured women characters that kicked ass. This has continued today, even in the computer gaming arena. Even though Lara Croft looks like a ho, guys love to play her game, and you can't say that a woman running around playing Indiana Jones and shooting everything in sight is not a woman kicking butt.

    As far as physical strength in real life, generally men are stronger than woman in how much we can pick up or lift. Women seem to have greater endurance though, and we are just made differently.

    In any case, it is true that there were a lot more games with guys running around being macho, but I don't think it was necessarily because of a problem of the adults making this game, but that the audience was for little kids, who at that age the majority don't associate with the opposite sex all that much.

  • Whoa.. I wonder if I can get all my old NES stuff back from the little kid I gave it to. I had all of the Dragon Warrior series for the NES. Even the original.. That was one of my favorite series.
    Fear my low SlashID! (bidding starts at $500)
  • You know, I've seen a lot of "How come there aren't any girl games for whatever". So my question is, is why don't women get out and write games for other women? I mean, it can't be that difficult in this day and age with all the tools available to women to write games that they themselves would enjoy. So am I totally missing something here? What's the problem with writing games for women by women?

    Or have I just totally missed the point cuz I'm a guy and all?
  • ignoring the emulator dev going on all over, does anyone know of how to get or use an orginal nintendo development system.. this would be a valuable history read..
  • We all know the catchy themes were what kept us coming back for more...

    Who wouldnt love remakes of the old songs?

    The minibosses [minibosses.com]



    -isnt it strange to be anything at all.... -jeff mangum
  • The original (1985) Super Mario Bros is on the GBC, with pixel perfect reproduction and color. You get all 32 levels, the star levels, and 'Super Mario for Super players' (Hella tough), challange mode, and a 2 player race game. All for 30 bucks.

    I just cant stop playing this, I haven't even been playing Tetris since I got it. Agreed. The game is awesome. If your a fan of Super Mario Brothers and you have a Game Boy Color, you owe it to yourself to buy it. Heck, even if you don't have a Game Boy, buy one, then buy SMB DX.

    But nothing beats Tetris. I've been playing that game for years, and I don't think I'll EVER get sick of it. Sure, there will be spans of a month or so where I won't. But I always come back.

  • The Wizard? If that's the name of that movie with fred savage and the little retarded kid who could play video games really good all the while just wanting to go to California. Which it turned out all he wanted was to leave some pictures is soem giant dinosoar....if you don't know what i'm taking about don't ask...
  • Was that from The Wizard? hehe


    "It's Brazilian"
  • I always liked the music in Lemmings. (Yeah, most of it was a classical music knock-off but they synthesized it well) Especially the music the gameboy Lemmings game played when it's paused.

    Heck, maybe it's worth making an archive of pause music?

  • Nintendo used to have a patent on the cross design on the D-pad so all of Nintendo's competitors had to make different versions of the D-pad as not to be sued. IIRC, their patent has expired on it and you now free to make your own cross-looking D-pads. Yippie!
  • I LOVED the super mario bro's super show! I watched that like EVERY day. I still remember the themesong.

    "Swing your arms, from side to side! Come on it's time to go DO THE MARIO!"

  • This makes me wonder if it's possible to use the Duck Hunt gun with an emulator. Since I have read about hacks that allow you to use the NES controllers, and monitors still emit light, this should work. I can't think of too many NES things with more hack value than playing Duck Hunt in an X11 window and shooting at the ducks in the office.
  • Don't forget about the NES advantage, which was a big joystick-like input controller. also supported the autofires and slow-motion.

    Then there was another smaller input controller I forget what it was called, but they claimed it supported 360-degree motion. Ie, instead of the normal NES paddle that had up/down/left/right, this one had a circle that you would slide around to the different positions, so that I guess it would dither the four cardinal directions to make all sorts of inbetweens.

    I never used it, but wasn't there that track&field thing, where you'd run on a pad to get the guy to run?

    I think the game Robbie was used for was Gyromite, or something like that. It was really weird, they made such a big deal out of those spinning gyros and stuff, it was pretty cool, but all for one lame-ass game.

  • Yeah - it's funny turning the framerate "meter" o in REND386 on any moderately powerful machine (like, on my P200) - framerates go over the top (>100+). I would love to see how well it works on anything recent (1 GHz Athalon, etc).

    Still, it probably can't beat out a good 3D card, since it is only software. I would love to see a hibrid of REND386 or AVRIL on the front end, with OpenGL or GLIDE on the back end for rendering. Then maybe the spinning bananna could be textured, and we could see the amusement park rides the way they should look.

    Pity not many care about homebrew VR anymore (my site rarely gets any hits, though that could be because of my lack of attention to it - I am thinking about replacing it with something else)...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • Yeah, Metroid's in the works, Retro Studio's (a new Nintendo 2nd party based in the US) are currently making it.

    IGNCube has a decent story about the new Metroid game here [ign.com], and a short mpeg demo clip of game here. Oh, I can't wait for the Gamecube.... [ign.com]

  • Seanbaby's NES Page (Score:5)

    by Mooset ( 9986 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:34AM (#684800)
    Every NES fan should take a look at Seanbaby's NES Page.

    http://seanbaby.com/nes.htm [seanbaby.com]

    It has features like the 20 worst NES games of all time and the 10 worst things to base a game on. Lots of other funny stuff on there for any child of the 80s.
  • I'm quite sure. My certainty comes from having been there to see them when they were new. I've owned both a Commodore 64 and an Atari 65XE and they were not the same system. I personally liked the Atari systems better, especially the original 800 model. It had the best keyboard of any of them. The 800 and its descendents were based off the 6502 processor. This cpu was used in many different systems back then including the Commodore Pet, Vic20, Apple II+/IIe/IIc, BBC Acorn, OSI Challenger I/II/III, etc. etc. The Commodore 64 used the 6510 which was a derivative of the 6502. I don't really know what exactly the difference were architecture wise. I don't know of any other system which used the 6510.

    Lee
  • ...even more if CmdrTaco is involved in the game development field. One very important question is if it is worthwhile lose some points at college or university in order to develop (computer) games. As should be expected of course it is. First of all, the market is extremely huge and under growth. The US$6,1 billion figures in 1999 is higher than the cinema. In addition, developing games has a great academic importance. Its involves a lot of subjects such as computing, arts (graphical design, audio and video), modelling (psychology, tactics and sociology) and entertainment (game desing and level design). Its also not little challenging from the computing view (complex algorithms and need for realism). Even better, there are many courses out there in universities all around the world. Lastly, why not just have fun and exercise your imagination? :) That way, CmdrTaco, if necessary lose even more points...
  • 6502 the same as the Development machine which was the Apple II (I believe?).

    Don't ask me how I knew that...

  • Re:FLASHING ON AND OFF-- (Score:4)

    by dark_panda ( 177006 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @07:19PM (#684804)
    I, like every single NES owner in the world, also had this problem. Even this past summer, I could barely get one of those 42-in-one Asian carts. You know, the ones with 4 versions of Super Mario Bros., 2 versions of Tennis and at least 3 Galaxians on them. The screen would always flash green and black until I applied The Method.

    1. Insert cart.
    2. Press down on poorly conceived "VCR like" cartridge bay.
    3. Turn on NES.
    4. Watch green and black screens alternate.
    5. Wiggle cartridge around a bit while NES is still on.
    6. Watch as green and black screens become blue and white screens.
    7. Remove cartridge.
    8. Throw caution to the wind and disregard warning on back of cartridge by blowing on the connectors.
    9. Re-insert cartridge and turn on power again.
    10. Watch as scrambled sprites and backgrounds flash on the screen.
    11. Wiggle cartridge some more.
    12. Remove cartridge and blow on the connectors even harder. Wave cartridge around a bit just to be sure.
    13. Insert, power on, pray, play.
    14. Repeat procedure as necessary.
    Many a times have I applied The Method to great results.

    As a side note, does it seem strange to any of you just how indestructable those NES controllers were? I mean, they were built like brick shit houses. I've beaten those things silly and they just don't give in. Many a times have I taken one of the controllers by the cord and reamed it against the wall after constantly losing at the Adventures of Lolo, Ninja Gaiden and the nefarious last levels of Megaman. In my entire NES career, which includes up to this day, I've only replaced one controller. Meanwhile, I've gone through 2 MS Sidewinders in 2 years.

    They don't make 'em like they used to I guess.

    J
  • ok people... think about it.

    the contacts are copper. they get wet, touch oxygen, and turn brown. the contacts are no longer any good..

    you blow on them (breathing on them works better, adds more moisture to the game) this causes the contacts to temperarily work better.

    the permanet fix: take a bottle of rubbing alcohol and a q-tip. dip the q-tip into the bottle. rub the q-tip on the contacts of the video game cartrige. you can also clean the NES consol with the same method, but there are easier ways for it (buy one of those NES cleaners. that is what they really do, they clean the contacts. it doesnt hurt the fuggin consol like all the nerds say)

    anyhow, once you rub alcohol on the cartrige, you will notice green and brown shit all over yoru q-tip. that is all the shit that was up on there...

    now your game is fixed. it should work perfect untill it gets moisture to it again. i seem to have to clean my games once every few months to keep them from locking up.

    the reason sega genesis and newer games do not lock up and need blowing is because the manufacturers used higher quality contacts such as gold plated, etc.. the same principle here is like pc100 memory, the contacts get corroded, if you use a pencil eraser to clean them, then they work better.

  • Re:Does it run Linux? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The NES is based off of MOS Technology's (which was later bought up by Commodore Business Machines) 6502 series microprocessor for it's main CPU. (The graphics engine used a different microprocessor, though I do not know it's specs off the top of my head.) The very same processor used in early Apple computers, Commodore 64 and 128 (the latter of which actually used a variant of the 6502, the 6810 (correct me if I'm wrong...it's been a while and i don't feel like cracking open my C128 right now to check) which was not actually 100% compatible, but was compatible enough to run 99.7% of C64 software out there, as well as having a Z80 under the hood so the C128 was able to run CP/M. My spies tell me that someone even wrote a mini-Unix for the C128 using the Z80 as an MMU), as WELL as in most of Commodore's disk drives! And, of course, numerous other systems and embedded applications that I can't even list. Very popular CPU, the 6502. Check out 6502.org [6502.org] sometime. It's still in use among hobbyists to this very day.

    I seriously doubt the NES could run Linux as you would very likely need an MMU for memory management which the 6502 is fairly incapable of. However, I see no reason why someone couldn't kludge up a primitive DOS for it now that you're fairly unlikely to find a Famicom disk drive. Anyone for porting over Microsoft's BASIC 2.0 kernel? :)

  • All I know is I want one when I go to college. With it I want Bubble Bobble (I wasted too much of my life on that game and was dissapointed to not eve see it get mentioned on the gamers.com article) excite bike, FFI, MMII and say like zelda and a bunch more. I bet I'd get a lot of people in my dorm and we could play team nintendo, just like the old days...you know...

    Player: *jumps* I keep missing that jump! You said there was a 1up up there?

    Observer1: no, no no, you are doing it wrong, you have to jump *points* there to get up

    P: OH!, I get it

    O2: You missed again, thats thre ups you lost, my turn

    P:Na ah...we get four lives, not three, and anyways see, I just got up

    O1 and O2 pout and slouch back waiting for the next chance to try to get the controller

    Anyway, what about games like Contra and all, for hardest game, you can't get past the 4th level in contra.

    That clicker hasn't changed since then, they still use the same design on the gameboy today, I wish all games had clickers like that...

  • The Power Glove was basically just a cheapo VR device for the NES. It has little resistive sensors for detecting finger position, and a sort of 3D sonar to detect the position of the hand relative to the TV. AFAIK they only released one game for it on the NES (Glove ball?) and it was pretty much a flop. But interestingly enough they started sort of a cult following among the 1337 DOS programmers of the day.

    I remember ordering my Power Glove used for something like $8. (like I said, a flop) I built the quite simple paralell port adaptor, and stuck the little sonar doodads on my monitor. 386s were new back then, so the graphics weren't great, but it was still pretty darn cool. I remember this demo with a "western" town (saloons and things) and being able to pick up tables and even open the safe with my pixelated and jittery virtual hand.

    It was neat, especially for that time period. I wonder if there's any linux software for that thing...

  • Computer: $2000 Nintendo: $150 Besides, I already had an old 8086 that I played King's Quest and 4x4 Offroad Racing on. It couldn't, however, play Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior IV.
  • He doesn't seem to have liked Wall Street Kid [seanbaby.com]. I actually liked that game, and won it once.

    Remember the funny stock names, like boing [boeing.com]?

    --

  • oh get over it English boy. This is the Internet, not a 10 page research paper.
  • BlockOut (don't know if that was *ever* available on any console system)

    I've had BlockOut on the Atari Lynx since it first came out in the early 90s -- I still play that occasionally, and it's one of the best three or so of the 30-odd games I have :)

    Tetris *is* a great game though... WRT the Lynx, I'm hoping that the GBA brings Lynx-like games to the masses, as obviously Atari couldn't market or improve the machine like they should have - second generation Lynxen were cool, but the battery life sucked. :(
  • I loved that game. I remember playing it in the arcade, and then bieng so excited when it came out on the NES. Remember when the guy says "Bad Dudes" or something at the end of the level and it sounded like someone ripped out his larynx, put it through a blender, then put it back in. I am pretty sure it was an attempt at actual digitized speach, but the NES kinda choked on it.
  • You would jump up and down on it or run or whatever. It kind of sucked, though, because it didn't accurately reflect what you were doing--he recorded somebody playing the game on a videotape, and then I ran and jumped, etc. for about a half-hour before I realized that the vcr was going, and that the vcr wasn't.

    Yeah, I'm dumb.

  • For the record, yes, it was "The Wizard." Talk about your insidious marketing campaigns.

    Dan

  • 26 pages?? (Score:4)

    by Wog ( 58146 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @10:57AM (#684816)
    It's amazing what some sites will do to increase banner hits.

    What would a mint-condition NES with ROB and games be worth these days?
  • heh, I've gone through 3 monitors...and 8 broken fingers..
  • I believe that around 3500 games were made. (English only?)

    I heard this while I was looking for someone with (at least nearly) every English NES rom. If anyone can send me this, please email me. :-)

    paulN0SPAM@simer.net
  • The NES was cool, I still play Super Mario Bros on an Emulator, it was one of the most addictive games ever made, wasn't it? (or was it just me?)

  • 15 years already? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Man, it's hard to believe how time flies. I still remember first getting my hands on games like the original Super Mario Brothers and Legend of Zelda. They seem so laughable now (especially the plots), but it's easy to forget that at the time, these games were state of the art! When you talked about Sniffits and Digdoggers, every knew exactly what you meant. Mario Brothers 3 is still the most anticipated game in history... remember its infamous debut in the movie The Wizard? Every kid on the block couldn't wait to get his hands on the new Raccoon Mario and map screen!

    Those NES games always seemed to have something today's big-budget ... I guess it was just the innocence of a fresh new industry, so eager to try out new ideas (some of those NES were pretty damned weird). There was a true creative spirit then, and what the consoles couldn't do, the programmers made up for. I still love to leave my NES on and walk around my office with the Zelda overworld theme playing...

  • Thats not the CPU, thats the slot the cartridge plugs into. It's either worn or dirty. There was a very specific trick I would do that would make a good connection almost every time. Instead of pushing the cart all the way into the slot then pushing the slow down I would push the cart in sort of diagnally in such a way that it clipped the edge of the NES as it went in. This worked most every time.
  • Man, if you never had a NES, well, your unlucky. They were so fun.

    Then mine broke. :-)

    Moral of story: The first Nintendo games were totally superb, and really, all console games now are incredibly boring and, just plain not very fun. But Duck hunt, and all the Marios were so original (maybe because they were the only ones) and so fun!

    Unfotunately, emulating them on my Linux box just isn't the same... (*fond memories of playing Duck Hunt*)

    But I am still happy, because KSpaceDuel is one of the first games that is pretty creative and well thought out, and very fun. So I have hope... but not if all the games I ever see are the same thing. This is why I haven't bought any consoles since my Genesis and NES.

  • Oh christ, not again. Am I EVER going to read a slashdot gaming article without somebody perpetuating this tired and completely false cliche?

    Games are the same as they always have been. There are some bad ones, tons of decent ones, and a few really good ones. That was true then, it's true of todays games as well. That aspect of gaming hasn't changed, you have.

  • Diablo and Half-life have killed 1 or 2 points on my GPA

    ________

  • One of the orangey colored mini bosses towards the end of Megaman 1 was TOO hard to beat. It had some eye thing and broke up and shifted itself to other side. I know you needed the electricity to kill him, but I never got past that! :(
  • Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.

    When my friend got an NES for Christmas his cat promptly peed all over the robot.

    Herbie J.

  • Likewise, I find it funny that anyone would purchase a personal computer such as the A1000 when Cray has had vastly more powerful machines available for years. So much for the progress of technology.
  • I'm sure Mattel brought out the Power Glove.
  • I learned that success in life is not based on your ability to play video games, but is based on what other things that you do to help improve your life.

    Depends on your line of work! For example, I am a black-clad nano-augmented super-agent and I've gotten a lot of practical work experience through video games.

    Herbie J.

  • I remember playing this game as a kid; hours and hours and hours upon end. I think I stayed up all night playing it the first time at a friend's house.

    I have to agree, I wonder how much better I would have done in school if I had never come across gaming systems :)

  • I totally remember how awesome Nintendo was (is). The realization hit me when my friend invited me over to play Super Mario Brothers. I thought it was JustAnotherAtari-LikeConsole with maybe a slight variation on the original Mario Brothers game (remember that one? POW.)

    But it wasn't just one screen of action. I was totally floored when I saw the screen actually scrolling by, with all the colors and backgrounds and many sprites on the screen. Damn, I was hooked from then onwards.

    That seemed like the big, hate to say it, but Paradigm Shift. Since then, IMHO, games have gotten far more gee-whiz with graphics/sound effects, but this one step of going from simple atari-like games to super-mario-like stuff was totally HUGE for me.

    Just my reminisces back towards junior high/high days. Most others will probably disagree...

  • I think it would be cool if nintendo would take all of their games and license as many of the third party ones as possible and create a cartridge for N64 or a CD for the gamecube to pack tons of old nintendo games into one game for a newer system. They could make some money off of it I am sure, especially if they put some antialiasing in the games and some more color depth, and jazzed up the sound a little. That would be great. I would buy it, and they sure aren't making any money selling those games anymore (not the companies themselves anyway).

  • The Atari 800 predates the Commodore 64. The 65 and 130 XE computers were simply the last in the series.

    Lee

  • Re:GPA (Score:2)

    by gtx ( 204552 )
    it was originally .5

    then he got his NES

    just kidding, dammit!

  • These days, when you buy a console, you get the system and a controller. That's it. Back when I got the Nintendo, it came with:

    The system

    Two controllers

    A light-gun

    Robbie the Robot (or whatever his name was)

    Super Mario Brothers

    Duck Hunt

    Maybe Gyromite, I can't remember...

    Now those were the good old days. Happy birthday NES!

  • Video game manufacturers have always had quite evil marketing and legal practices. All of the console systems I've programmed for or investigated have proprietary APIs, but that's not the real problem- at least on the simpler 2D systems these are quickly reverse engineered. The game companies made it illegal to write games without their special licence. I don't know the technical details of most systems, but I'll use the Gameboy as an example:

    The Gameboy itself has a tiny (512 bytes IIRC) boot ROM. It doesn't perform any initialization, its only purpose is to scroll the little "Nintendo" logo down the screen. The logo itself is stored in the game cartridge, but if it doesn't compare exactly to another copy in the ROM, the game never loads. This forces developers to put a copy of the Nintendo logo in their games, and buy the special license so it isn't "illegal".

    I forget whether this was ever challenged in court. (Never stopped the hobbiests, of course :) I think there was a legal case involving something similar with the Sega, but I don't remember the details.

    Though I've never programmed for the NES, I have modified mine to play unlicenced cartridges. (Shhh... experimental purposes only ;-) The NES and the cartridge both have an identical proprietary chip. They exchange data of some sort, and if the chip in the NES doesn't like the other chip, you get the flashing screen. This is easily remedied on the customer's part by clipping a wire in the NES, but I think Tengen built their own chip to release Pac Man (and maybe some other games) without a Nintendo license, and they got sued.

  • IMHO, I think that "Crystalis" is one of the best NES games I've ever played. Maybe it doesn't belong in the top three ever list, but I think it should be in the best Action/RPG list. I found it far more fun and original than Castlevania 2, and it actually had a decent story to go along with gameplay!

  • The blinking is in fact not the processor, what happens is after repeated use the pins that the game comes in contact with with bend or rust to the point that no contact is made. Where did the rust come from? Well remember the days when you used to blow into the game or machine to "get the dust out"? Well you were also depositing your spit, which caused rust. The top loading released NES's dont have the bending problem but dont blow in those either (If you can find them, pretty rare and they dont work with all NES accesories IE game action replan and game genie). So what can you do? There are 2 ways to fix this and I have done them both many times. First is to open up the NES, pull off the cart reader, and using a paper-clip bend the pins that contact the game up a bit, but not too much. There are web sites out there describing the "paper-clip method" in more detail. Or you can go to http://www.matelectronics.com and get a catalog or call them and get a replacement cart reader. I bought some last year and assume they still sell them. They werent very expensive and they will illimiante your blinking woes. Good luck. The NES will live forever :)
  • Metroid doesn't refute anything, because you didn't learn Samus Aran's gender until the very end (or entered the cheat code). They deliberately hid it, which proves either of two reprehensible facts: 1) they knew that her gender would negatively impact sales, so they didn't reveal it at first or 2) it was a mere afterthought, not worthy of our attention.

    And like I said, I'm not entirely convinced the stereotyping has stopped. Lara Croft, for example, might be liberated in the sense of freely committing violence normally reserved for men, but she's still chained to an image of large breasts and a sexually inviting pelvis.
  • Well, I've seen quite a few ROBs in thrift store junk piles, so I suppose it depends on the condition and all the parts being there. (I'm more into pre-crash stuff myself.)

    For those that might not remember when the NES was introduced, ROB was the big sell -- Every NES advert prominently featured it. (As the article pointed out, the NES was originally pushed as some sort of educational/entertainment system, not as a pure video game box. The early games were very cartoony -- not at all the outer space shootemup Atari-style games.)
  • While not trying to start a flamewar, why exactly did so many of you ask your parents for an NES? A home computer, while being somewhat more expensive, would have been so much more useful, as well as being able to play more sophisticated games...
  • I remember the music it would play when you put it on pause...
    bu-chck-bu-chck-bu-chckchckchck-bamph-bamph-bamph- chckchckchck

    You know, all the playstation games and such still can have never had such a cool beat as the pause music on battletoads. I remember when I figured out how to connect my NES to the stereo (I used the RCA cables to connect everything to a Commodore monitor I had with my C=64) and played that up really loud. I also had a dad that was a big music fan, so he always got me fairly expensive stereo equipment for xmas and birthdays...man did my mom get mad about the bass...

    Thanks battletoads!

  • Nintendo Marketing Practices (Score:5)

    by ruck ( 156392 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @01:25PM (#684885)
    Ah the Nintendo... I still play mine every once in a while. It's important to remember, however, that the NES was not "revolutionary for its time." The Sega Master System, for instance, was a much better system with better sound and graphics hardware (64 colors!). The reason all us American kids can talk about the NES with such nostalgia is because it was all we had, and it was all we had because of marketing practices that rivaled the worst of Microsoft's.

    Remember that little gold "Nintendo Seal of Quality"? Well, that seal cost a pretty penny, and a game developer had to sell his soul to get it. Developing for the NES meant that you were not permitted to make games for other systems (i.e. Sega), and since Nintendo cornered the market in the U.S., no one could afford not to make games for the Nintendo (the situation was different in Europe, by the way).

    Nintendo also had policies that extended to retailers, and they even threatened to pull their systems from the shelves of Toys 'R Us when the company wouldn't play by their rules. Over the years, Nintendo was involved in countless lawsuits, most of which they lost. The industry was just so profitable, however, that it never really mattered.

    I admit that the games were great, but Nintendo was (and probably still is) an evil, evil company.
  • At great risk of sounding like a complete idiot--

    On the one hand I want to agree with you, but my brain says otherwise. If the target market for video games are overwhelmingly teenage boys, you're not only going to see an overwhelmingly large number of games targeted to teenage boys, but an overwhelmingly large number of good game developers are going to develop for teenage boys. Athena didn't suck because the industry has it out for women; it sucked because all of the good game developers were writing the latest Legend of Zelda sequel.

    It's not sexist, just the naked pursuit of profit. Not that the one is any better than the other, though.

    One question I'd rather see answered, rather than "why/how is it the gaming industry has these stereotypes, and how can they be changed?" is... "why is it the gaming industry has so critically few women engineers, and how can this be changed?"

    The only engineer I can think of offhand who's seriously involved in game design is Bungie's Quin Denki (I may be misspelling her name). I'm excluding Stevie Case here, because I don't think an engineer needs to be famous for spanking someone in an FPS and posing nude for Playboy... I think an engineer needs to be respected for technical ability, which Denki definitely gets. Roberta Williams would make the list, but she's been Management for some time now and not Engineering.

    There was a really good interview with Denki on the Bungie website a while ago; it may still be there for all I know. Had a lot of technical detail in it, but some very interesting opinions on the role of women in engineering and as women as gamers.

    Insofar as Metroid goes, I prefer option 3--like a Stanley Kubrick film, they wanted to save the biggest head-twist for the last scene. :) I mean, I sat up and took notice when I discovered Samus Aran was a woman. I wasn't expecting that at all.

    Considering that you don't discover the secret of The Crying Game until close to the end, does that prove either 1) that transvestism would negatively affect the movie sales, 2) it was a mere afterthought, or 3) they thought it would get people talking?
  • Are you sure about that? I am almost certain that the machine's even had the same BIOS! I'll have to find an XE, crack it open, and get the model #'s off of the chips (then I'll repost here :).
  • The Atari 600XL was also my first computer. I remember my dad helping my upgrade it to 64K....
    ---

  • Gender bias was rampant on the NES (Score:3)

    by Anne Marie ( 239347 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @12:25PM (#684902)
    I too spent many hours playing on my NES in my formative years. But it was true then and it is even more apparent in hindsight: the NES perpetuated negative stereotypes of women (and minorities too --dear lord, look at Superdodgeball and Double Dragon and we'll chat -- but that's a different rant).

    And I'm not just talking about mere passive bias of exclusion. The videogame market was directed at boys, and naturally, it was the boys who purchased the lion's share of games produced. Naturally, we'd expect to find a disproportionate number of shoot'em-up games and sidescrollers where the sole objective is to kill everything in one's path and save the planet. I understand the economic pressures driving such a situation, and I can cope (though I'll be critical of whatever games I'll be buying my own kids, when I have them some day).

    What I'm complaining about is the actual stereotypes perpetuated by games by girls' and women's inclusion in games, not their mere exclusion. Often, they are comoditized and positioned as a prize to be won, the princess to save from the dragon, and other things consistent with anglo-american literary heritage going back to Camelot. But it got no better once they stepped off their pedestals and entered the actual gameplay itself. Remember Super Mario 2? Remember who the weakest character was? It wasn't the mushroom -- it was the girl. Remember Gunsmoke? The hostages were disproportionately 'helpless women'. Oh save me! Please. And don't even get me started on the whole Barbie videogame franchise.

    For a time, there was an attempt to cater to the grrrl's market theretofore ignored by gaming companies. And do you know what the results were? Do you remember the pinnacle of girl-targeted gaming was? Athena [seanbaby.com], that's what. Finally, a game where girls could play a true female lead-role and save the world, but alas, the game was complete crap. Did they give her a menacing weapon? No, girls can't be trusted with real weapons, so we'll give her a stupid blue mallet thing. Does she engage in fast-paced adrenalin-rushing heart-pounding combat with fierce and fearsome enemies? No, she just wanders around the screen until you get bored and turn the stupid thing off.

    I wouldn't be so bitter if I saw any real change in the industry in the years since. But no, the industry is still caught up in some sexist notion that women are different, that girls think differently from boys, and while it may all be true, it's irrelevent here. Girls were robbed of their freedom and denied their equal share and place in the childhood of boys. And now that we're grown up, we're pissed.
  • but this weekend I was re-hooking up my old NES...

    after opening the original box and styraphone, i noticed that I still had the original register receipt from when I bought the machine. 1988... $98.06 from CompUSA... oh, those were the days.

    of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.

    oh, the memories...
  • Normally yes, but since NES is an abbreviation for Nintendo Enterainment System, perhaps NES's is better?

    --
    "Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
  • Wow I've gotten old. I can't believe fifteen years has gone by since the days of treating calloused thumbs and being constantly out of breath from blowing on those cool little gray cartriges.

  • A GPA is a "grade point average". In the US, this generally is a number between 1 and 4, with 4 being perfect. A half point is what it sounds like: 0.5

  • FLASHING ON AND OFF-- (Score:4)

    by Aerolith_alpha ( 85503 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:01AM (#684917) Homepage
    yeah... I really miss mine--now all it does is flash black and white on the screen... sometimes if i clean the hell out of it, it will actually play a game, but i think its processor has seen better days, because the screen gets all corrupted--its kind of amusing sometimes.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h

  • And next year will be Sonic's 10th birthday... (Score:5)

    by ChaosEmerald ( 178369 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:07AM (#684922)
    (1991 - Sonic the Hedgehog was released in the US)

    When you think of all the video games that just go right by its amazing. Sure, the NES was great, but there were some pieces of crap too. I honestly can't say that I've played more than 500 games in the past ten years. And how many were released, 10000?

    Think of all the consoles, NES, SMS, TurboGraphix16 (awwwwwwwwwww yeah!), Genesis (+ SegaCD + 32X), SNES, NeoGeo (Metal Slug!), Saturn, PSX, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, and soon to come out PS2. There have been many series, from Mega Man to Mario to Sonic to Zelda to Phantasy Star to Street Fighter to Double Dragon to Battle Toads to ... But when was the last time you saw a Double Dragon game or a Battle Toads game? I'm just amazed at the amount of games I've never played, and the amount that will keep on coming.

  • NES is still cool! (Score:3)

    by levik ( 52444 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:07AM (#684924) Homepage
    My roommate and I have got an NES a few months back... Didn't really play much til he got Super Mario Bros off of eBay... Well, that cartridge had some difect or something, so it took a whole lot of blowing on the contacts to get it working.

    I have to say we didn't turn the machine off ever since for the fear that the cart would go dead. It's pretty much been on for the past two months. (How's that for an uptime?)

    I wish they still made 2-D games like that. I mean there's nothing wrong with today's crop of 3-D stuff, but one does yearn for a bit of hand-drawn cartoonish animation from time to time...

  • The Nintendo Entertainment System helped make me the geek I am today. Without it, I probably would never have gained such a strong interest in technology. (Well, that and my Atari XE, a Comedore 64 clone. :-)

    It's good to see that people still appreciate this very important piece of legacy hardware! Long live the NES! :-)

  • Mine still works... (Score:3)

    by flieghund ( 31725 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:09AM (#684932) Homepage

    I never throw away anything, and a couple of years ago I dug my old NES out of the storage bin, dusted it off, and plugged it in. Not only did it still work, but my Legend of Zelda game still had my original games saved. (ISTR that the Zelda booklet warned that the internal battery would only function for 3-5 years... mine has made it ~14 years and counting!)

    I've moved twice since then, and the NES has come with me. I suppose I could pluck down the couple-hundred needed for one of the much newer and better console systems, but why? Most of the games I would be interested in playing on a new system are also available for my computer -- and I already have the hardware. No, I enjoy playing my old Nintendo half for nostalgia and half for the "mind-numbingly simple" plot lines that most follow. (Which is a good thing, 'cause with few exceptions -- like Zelda -- you can't save your session.)

    And even after all these years, I can still navigate the first level of Contra without looking at the screen -- with the help of up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A-select-s tart. 8^)

  • The game was called "Bad Dudes". Here's the plot (actual text from the game, not paraphrased):

    The president has been kidnapped by ninjas! Are you a bad enough dude to get the president back?


    ------
  • Actually, I did like text adventures, and in addition I was a fan of strategy games like "King's Bounty" and "Reach for the Stars" -- the forerunners of games like "Heroes of Might and Magic" and "Master of Orion" -- all of which weren't available for the NES.

    In addition, programming (even on 8-bit machines with pitiful amounts of memory and bad implementations of BASIC) was a blast.
  • One word refutation: Metroid (if you look past the fact that you can't tell for most of the game)

    For the most part, you're right. I think the system couldn't support many of the things that appeal to women today in video games, such as deep character development and graphics. The stereotyping and such is bad, but for the most part it's stopped.

    Also, remember that many of the games were made by japanese developers, whose only experience with minorities is in foreign movies and TV (Japan being 98% racially pure and all). So what you're seeing is the way the rest of the world represents minorities in the media through the eyes of japanese game developers.

    BBK
  • I think you're thinking of the Atari 2600, not the Nintendo. The C64 was a much more limited gaming platform than the Nintendo (the lack of tiled backgrounds, scrollable buffers, per scanline interrupts, and multi-window modes made the C64 much more limited than a Nintendo). Of course it has been so long since I fired up a C64 that I may be talking out of my ass.

  • Best Music (Score:3)

    by talonyx ( 125221 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @02:09PM (#684944)
    I think they missed one game for the Best Music category:

    Journey to Silius.

    Hold on while I find some links...
    Stage 1 [vgmusic.com]
    Stage 2 [vgmusic.com]
    Stage 3 [vgmusic.com]

    That music sounds almost exactly like the original unless you have a wavetabele soundcard like me :D

    Try the NSF version at this link here [emu2k.com] and get a player from zophar's domain [zophar.net]. You can also find a lot more NES music there: this [zophar.net] is one of the most comprehensive archives of NSF's i've found.

    Listen, and remember! :D
  • Just realized that offsite linking to the vgmusic.com archives doesn't work, so click here [vgmusic.com] and naviagte to NES music section. Journey to Silius is in the list.

  • Comment removed (Score:4)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:09AM (#684951)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Not so indestructable I fear. I have 3 NES controllers (2 standard and the good old NES Max) and only one is still working properly :o(

    Now the main problem is that it's hard to find one to buy these days. But you are right... they were indeed much more resilient than everything currently on the market. The closest would be IMHO the gravis gamepads.

    No matter how old that thing is, I still get the kicks from going through the 2 first Megaman. The megaman are among the best games ever.


    "When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...
  • Actually, this is Slashdot. The Internet is just over there; exit the alley and turn left.

    --
    "Where, where is the town? Now, it's nothing but flowers!"
  • Hey, does anyone know what kind of proc the NES used? I know it was around 1.7-something megahertz, but what type?
  • Ahh, the subtlties of the English langague. In this case, "full" isn't used to denote a fraction, but as an emphasis to mean an entire fractional point. For example, you can have a whole half-pie, or you can have a fraction of a half-pie. It's still correct.
  • of course, getting that first game to play I was frustrated by having the keep on trying to blow in the game, in the machine, hit it a few times on the top... all the same frustrations that remember doing over 10 yrs ago to get the system working.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.
    A) Can anyone verify exactly WHY the blowing thing worked? I think it's a universal part of the NES experience. Strangely, my Sega machines never needed blowing. (Okay, I know I'm asking for a bunch of blowjob jokes)
    B) If only blowing on Linux would make it work!
  • (sits down at NES, inserts cartridge)

    TV: (flash)
    TV: (flash)
    TV: (flash)

    me: (turns off NES, pulls cartridge out)
    me: (sharp intake of breath)
    me: "FFFFFFFFFFTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTFFFFFTTTTTTTTTHHHHH"
    me: (another sharp intake of breath)
    me: "FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF F F F FF FFFFFFFF FFFF"
    me: (puts cartridge back in NES, turns on power)

    TV: (flash)
    TV: (flash)

    GODDAMMIT.

    :\
  • If you haven't seen it, you should take a loot at seanbaby's NES page [seanbaby.com]. I'd recommend the this page [seanbaby.com] to, be sure to watch the video. Pretty hilarious.
  • A) Like the other poster said, women (in general) ARE weaker.

    The point you miss is that women may be just as good or better than men, but it does not mean that they are the SAME as men. The Princess thing is a perfect example. She wasn't a strong character. However, she was probably one of the best because of her other talents. PC (political correctness) throws me for a loop once in awhile. I just realized: It's wrong to say that women can use their particular talents to be successful, but its encouraged that teachers push their right-brained students to use their special talents to be sucessful. Weird.

    Maybe, in the end, people might realize that a generalization is just that: A generalization. People do it all the time, that's how people are designed. When you treat a specific person according to a generalization, that wrong, that's prejudice. When you make a generalization that you can support with fact, and use that generalization when talking about the group in general, that's fine.
  • And I think 90% of them were SMB clones to some extent(run n jump)
  • You can find a prototype ROM image of GNOME vs. KDE [8m.com] along with the rest of the NES development effort [parodius.com].

  • Distributed Computing Power and NES (Score:4)

    by 1nt3lx ( 124618 ) on Sunday October 22, 2000 @11:20AM (#684979) Homepage Journal
    Yes! It has a processor and a way to accept user input. Someone should port LINUX to it! Once someone found a way to network them the possibilities would be endless...

    Imagine a pile of NES's running linux in some sort of a cluster. Wow, I can just hear the tech's now.
    "Quick! Number 342-32 is down! Get over there and exhale into the cartridge!"

    Most of the time breathing on the contacts would work, too. I can't say anything ever beat a good swift punch, though.
  • ...by Bernie Roehl and Dave Stampe - go to my site for more PG/homebrew VR action.

    It really was something the first time I hooked my glove up to my 486. I was worried the timing wouldn't be right (the parallel port polling used hard coded timing loops), but it worked OK. I even toyed around with hooking the thing to my Amiga 2000.

    Someone should try to make a hybrid of Quake and Rend386 (or Avril), with the glove for a controller. With a strong hand (those gloves sucked for flexability), one could form a "gun" with the hand, then motion to fire in some manner - could be interesting...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?
  • Anyone remember the various input devices Nintendo tried to market with the NES? I think ROB was the first- that robot that only worked with one game where you had to stack discs...or something like that. My friend had one and we could never get it to work.

    I Did get suckered in to buying a U-Force, which had a clamshell design with motion sensors. The idea seemed cool- controlling Mike Tyson's Punchout by moving your hands, or driving Rad Racer by pretending you're holding a steering wheel. The motion detection was crap though...(and trying to play 'normal' games like Zelda was a riotous exercise in futility)...I fortunately managed to get my parents to return it.

    Now the Power Glove may not have been very popular, but I have to give props to Nintendo for putting it out. It was clunky, but you could get it to work with some effort...and it did look cool in its own late 80s geekish way. Check out http://www.acm.uiuc.edu/sigarch/pgsi/ [uiuc.edu] for a nice little hack that lets you hook one up to your PC.

    Ah...such fond memories...
    ---

  • the contacts on the cartridge AND the nintendo are probably dirty. Either get a nintendo cleaning kit, or take the whole thing anpart and use rubbing alcohol.

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