The NES and the UK - What really happened?

[SnakeEyes]

I hate the way the NES is portrayed as a savior of gaming, especially as we were blissfully unaware of a "crash" because we were all to busy enjoying out 8bit computers.


But do you know what pisses me off just as much, people who use this skewed viewpoint to constantly call the NES shite or rubbish. The Fanboys claiming it saved gaming is not the machines fault and hating on a machine because ot that is just as pathetic as the view that it saved gaming. Its a great machine and has great games.

there are some of those people on here who will not allow a good word to be said about the NES simply because they hate this biased viewpoint.

[TrekMD]

In the US, given that we did have a crash of the video game industry, Nintendo with its NES has always been perceived as the savior of the video game industry.  The NES managed to successful where every other system failed in the US, so it is not hard to see people have this perception.  As far as I am concerned, Nintendo revived the video game industry in the US.  Clearly Nintendo did something right in that market.  I was not aware of how different things were in Europe until I became more involved in forums, so I can see how people not from the US would see the notion of the NES as a savior of the video game industry as some sort of joke.  After all, the system was not successful in every market (certainly not in Europe, where the SMS became "it").  I think that had Sega been the successful company in the US, instead of Nintendo, the SMS might have been perceived in the way the NES is perceived.

[TL]

The thing is the NES hardware isn't particularly impressive, it suffers from muddy colours and terrible sprite flicker for a start. It was let competent than it's rivals from a technical perspective but was certainly better supported from a software perspective. There is no doubting the NES has some amazing games, it bloody well should do given how many there are, but is it a good console from a technical/hardware perspective - no, not really.

[TrekMD]

Yep, it may not have the best hardware but it did have great marketing in the US.  We've discussed this before.  Though the SMS has better hardware, its marketing was lacking in the US market.  It, therefore, did not do so well.  Goes to show that having good marketing is sometimes more important than having good hardware.  Sega obviously realized this (good marketing) when they launched the Genesis. 

[TL]

Yep, it may not have the best hardware but it did have great marketing in the US.  We've discussed this before.  Though the SMS has better hardware, its marketing was lacking in the US market.  It, therefore, did not do so well.  Goes to show that having good marketing is sometimes more important than having good hardware.  Sega obviously realized this (good marketing) when they launched the Genesis.

Yep, very true. It's actually quite rare that the best system has won a console or computer generation - it's nearly always the best marketed one.

[Katzkatz]

My general impression is that the NES wasn't a big sales success in the UK.  In comparison, the Master System seemed to sell like hot cakes.  I didn't know anyone who owned one, but I knew quite a few Master System owners.  I can't seem to remember a lot of advertising for it - again, compared to the Master System.  I don't know if that affected it? 

In contrast, the SNES seemed very successful.  I do remember lots of advertising for that.  There was the whole Mario Kart and SF: II stuff.  I knew quite a few SNES owners - although funnily they had never owned a NES beforehand. 

[stonemonkeylives]

To be honest I was still fairly young when I got a NES, maybe 11/12yo, but I loved it. It was my first games console, we had a ZX Spectrum 2 before that, but when I got my NES I was in awe.  Now granted it had its flaws and I was the first kid on my street to get one (think within 3 to 6 months there were 3 of us who had one), so I didn't play many of the games at first but the ones I did have, I played to death.

As I say I'm not delusional enough to believe it was the best system of the day but for me personnally, I thought it had the best games of the day. And that is why I hold the NES in such high regard, don't get me wrong though I have spent many an hour arguing this with my friends who are Sega fans. But for me SMB3 is the best platformer ever on an 8bit machice, Zelda is the best RPG/adventure game and Mega Man 3 is second only to Zelda: A Link to the Past.

Now as to the high demand for the games and console these days, I think is mainly due to two types of "collectors" (I use the term collectors loosely for a reason), partially because of people who never played or owned the games and console the first time round. A lot of my friends for example want a NES because they had a SMS or an Atari or an 8bit computer the first time round and want to play the classic games they didn't get to play originally, which is great and to be encouraged. The rest is due the to people reading stupid articles online or in the newspapers on how much your old stuff is worth, not once mentioning in said articles that to fetch those nose bleed prices they need ro be mint and even then it is over inflated, who think if they buy a NES and some of the well known games it's an investment for their retirement or some crap. This then pushes the prices up and then other stupid people see how much these things go on eBay and start to snap things up too in the hopes of making a profit. Now I know this isn't just an issue on the NES but I think it's most prominent on that console and this then causes a domino affect that makes life for people like us, who collect or people who genuinely want try the games out and play them, really difficult.

Jeremy

[MadCommodore]

I can honestly say there is at least one good game on almost every single machine from the ZX81 to tha Acorn Archimedes A3010/Falcon/Amiga AGA era as far as UK gaming scene was concerned. I lived through all those machines. Also, let's be honest here the most innovative games came out of Europe (many from the UK) at the dawn of the home computer era.

If you go from a ZX Spectrum to the NES technically you will be wowed, but from a Commodore 64? The NES may have more colours on screen but the sprites are less sophisticated to those on the Commodore 64 and sound on the Commodore 64, and the talent that pushed the SID chip to its limits in EU/UK is nowhere to be found on the simplist type sounds and musical arrangements of NES. The soundtrack to Rambo on a Commodore 64 is almost identical to the musical score of the movie!

The trouble with the NES, as far as the EU and UK goes, was that it cost too much for the games and they certainly were not up to the absolute best systems like the Amiga/Atari ST or even ubiquitous C64 in either ultimate sophistication or even game design originality. You have to consider diversity of the catalogue where you have stunning adventure games like The Pawn with an almost artificial inteligence style of parser inside the game (based on ELIZA) to things like SWIV on a C64 (as good as an NES vertical shooter).

It is very disturbing when BBC, Challenge TV and Channel 4 seem to think the NES was the big seller and also the hot bed of innovation because to be quite frank the USA and Japan were well behind the UK game designers. These progams are made by people who have no clue, probably were not even alive when the Amstrad CPC came out let alone understand why more copies of Harrier Attack (awful game) by Durell Software were sold than Mario 3 on the NES in the UK. Like carpentry retro gaming experience is a dying art and most programs on the subject do relate to outside the EU.

Zelda the best RPG on an 8 bit platform game? Erm no that would arguably be Times of Lore on the Commodore 64, more sophisticated game and presentation and 75% cheaper.  It is very ignorant to make blanket statements like that when clearly you are not qualified to comment on the subject matter and shows ignorant attitude to say as such.

Also true innovation and originality, like Little Computer People on C64 for example, was the sole preserve of cassette and disk based home computer software (NOT IBM or Apple) with no lockout chips or restrictive contracts and expensive preorders for cartridge production affecting the bravery of a developer to initiate such unusual game projects. This shows in the diversity of the EU/UK 8 bit and 16 bit game catalogue for home computers compared to the boring been there done that carbon copy games of NES. Almost all of the games were platform games, got a movie licence? Let's make a platform game out of it!

Let's not forget very few arcade games came out for the NES because the best ones were from SEGA in the mid 80s.  Buggy Boy was an awesome game and whether you had an Amiga, ST, C64, Spectrum or CPC you could have bought it. If you had an NES then you're screwed. Rad Racer is the only NES driving game worth playing. See what I mean about diversity?

£40 for a cartridge was a lot in the 80s and the deluxe set was £150. Even CVG admitted that a used Commodore 64 with stacks of awesome games was a far better proposition even in 1990 for people who couldn't afford either an Amiga or Sega Megadrive than the underwhelming NES. See the review in CVGs complete guide to consoles (red one).

You can like Excitebike on NES as much as you want but is it 20x better than the £2 classic BMX kidz on Commodore 64? No it is not. So there is your answer why it didn't sell here. Games were just better and people making them better were here on this side of the Atlantic. In the USA the home computer games were dominated by terrible CGA/EGA PC games and all the best games were from EU/UK and shipped back there by the mid 80s. Very few decent 8 bit games were being produced in the USA at the launch of NES and almost zero Amiga/ST games worth mentioning.
 
It certainly didn't have the best games of the day.  To say Zelda is the best 8 bit RPG shows ignorance in the extreme, ToL plays better, looks better, sounds better and cost four times less. Let me guess you never even heard of it though.

There are 100s of RPG and platform games on all the popular 8 and 16 bit computers we used in the UK but I can tell you right now there is not a single game like Rescue on Fractalus on any Nintendo console. On the Atari home computers in the mid 80s this was a stunning achievement, realtime fractal landscape 3D shoot em up. Yeah not many NES fans even knew this was possible,
 
Even Donkey Kong on the C64 is better than NES, it has ALL levels too and you can use any controller with D9 connector but on the NES you HAVE to use bespoke plasticky joypads from Nintendo.

The thing to remember is here in the UK gaming started for most of us on something like the ZX81 or VIC20, possibly an Atari 800 if you were rich. Then came the epic battle on a scale of SNES vs Megadrive of ZX Spectrum 48k vs Commodore 64. Even during that battle the big buzz in the UK and Germany was the soon to be released Amiga (which they took 11 months to release in the UK after the US launch of Amiga 1000), and in France the Atari ST (absolutely huge scene there with the best magazines being in French).

The Atari ST really does not get any press at all in retro gaming terms despite selling 10 times more than the NES in the UK, sad because to be honest it was capable of arcade perfect ports of Ghosts n Goblins or Commando and only cost £299 which is dirt cheap for something more powerful than a $4000 PC EGA computer Americans bought to go with their NES in the mid 80s.

I don't care how many damned NES platformers you shove in my face because real innovation came from games like Defender of the Crown and Rocket Ranger on the Atari ST and Amiga first. The first 100% 16bit arcade machine quality games that even a SNES would have trouble replicating with it's slow 65C816 8/16bit 3.5mhz chip like Lotus Turbo Challenge 2 and Super Stardust kept Europeans entertained. Mortal Kombat had no green blood tampering and well games like Battle Squadron and Sword of Sodan are just better on Amiga than Megadrive.  Amiga's Mega Typhoon is NOT possible on a SNES and yet we are talking 1985 machine here, which is when the low brow NES came out. It was too weak 

The future was Amiga, and a 1986 arcade perfect port of Marble Madness proved to me I had made the right choice getting a used Amiga 1000 in early 1987 from my Doctor (who was selling it to get an Amiga 2000!!)

So you see the NES was technically underwhelming, highly restricted catalogue of games, terrible controllers (the Sega 6 button Megadrive joypad has far superior D-pad for diagonals and less plasticky shiny buttons than either the SNES or NES) and it was just never going to live up to the epic soundtracks of C64 or Amiga games. For this reason in the UK actual retro gaming is as follows.

Atari VCS vs Colecovision OR ZX81 vs VIC20 vs a hundred other early 8 bit computers like Oric 1 etc
ZX Spectrum vs C64 vs Amstrad CPC
Amiga vs Atari ST
SNES vs Megadrive

And then Playstation proceeded to destroy Sega and almost bankrupt Nintendo (who only survived from profits of all those horrible childish pokemon games for Gameboy/GBC while N64 died a slow agonizing death in the EU)

I would like to say a big thank you to all the members who trawled through magazines to find the truth, the UK was one of the most innovative places for game design or even the advancements like the mood set by sound (who can forget the sinister atmosphere of Forbidden Forest on the Commodore 64?) From the time of the VIC20/ZX81 to Amiga vs ST. Games like Shadow of the Beast from 1989 which ran on a stock 1985 Commodore Amiga 1000 can not be replicated at all on either a Megadrive or SNES in the 90s so the NES just fell short of being worth buying into due to the cost of cartridges and low end technology inside the machine.

If you haven't played £10 Times of Lore on a £99 Commodore 64 in 1989 how can anyone say Zelda on NES is the best 8 bit RPG? You can't and it proves that people who champion these machines have no idea of the best games of the time.  £20 Gauntlet, Commando, Ghosts n Goblin on the £299 Atari ST from 1985 are all excellent arcade quality games. The NES is of no importance, it's the Hannah Montanna of games consoles, only good if you need something to keep your door open until you can be bothered to re-hang it 

Had UK software companies exercised quality control and not released badly coded conversions like Out Run/Turbo Out Run/Power Drift for the Amiga the Megadrive would have had a harder time but the reality was by this point we were all working and were fed up of badly coded technically bad arcade conversions for £25 and were happy to pay £50 to play the best possible version that could be implemented on a Megadrive. If you don't believe me go and count the number of colours on a screenshot of Gauntlet 2 on the Amiga...yes only 16 not 32 or 64, and yet with proper quality control it should have looked identical to Gauntlet IV on the Megadrive. This is why the NES failed but the Megadrive got a foothold. Blame US Gold and Activision's terrible quality control.

[Greyfox]

Wow, that was a great read fella 

[onthinice]

Agree, a great read.

I agree the C64 version of games had the better ports but load times and overheating power bricks caused plenty of lost game time. Had a friend who played Pirates so much on his C64 that he finally had to buy a small house fan to cool the Commodore 64 power brick to keep it from overheating, always called the power supply a brick for its size and weight.

For me in the States, the NES was a must because my C1541 was wearing out. My thought was the 1541 II was good but not worth the investment over the original. The 1571 was out of stock when I had extra money and in stock when cash stripped. I was tired of load times from a noisy disk drive and the NES had all the same ports. Maybe watered down but games were easier to jump in to and play. Another reason for choosing the NES was my age, growing up brought other issues which meant less time for gaming so consoles were the better choice.

I am a Sega fan but even ports for its 16-bit were watered down. Buck Rodgers was still better on the Commodore 64. Pirates had better graphics over the NES and C64 but lacked something compared to the Commodore version. One plus with 16-bit as well was load times were minimal and usually just at the title screen.

Not trying to knock the C64 and not much knowledge of the later computers mentioned but did load times ever become a complaint in the UK?

[stonemonkeylives]

It certainly didn't have the best games of the day.  To say Zelda is the best 8 bit RPG shows ignorance in the extreme, ToL plays better, looks better, sounds better and cost four times less. Let me guess you never even heard of it though.

What I gather from your comment and username is that you are quite bias towards consoles.

Had you actually read my post properly, you would have seen it wasn't ignorance that made me write that sentence but personal opinion; I know the insanity of one's own opinion!

Just to clarify, I have heard of Times of Lore, I have even played it. Though that was a long time ago and not very in depth, to say it is the best RPG is as you call it "ignorance", what about the Ultima series or Wizardry or the early SSI games  like The Wizard's Crown?

I don't claim to be suitably qualified on this topic or on others within our hobby but this post is about the NES, in a thread about Nintendo hardware and my comment reflected my experience and personal opinion on such.

Jeremy.

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[zapiy]

Great thread so far, be nice though chaps... Opinions are just that, we are all allowed them..

Never played Times of Lore, never been a huge RPG fan and I guess I always assumes Zelda to be the finest example of one of those types of games.

[stonemonkeylives]

I was discussing this topic with a friend at work, who also collects retro video games.

He is by no means a Nintendo fan, especially the NES and SNES but he did make some interesting points. Firstly, even though the NES came late to the UK compared to the Japanese and US markets, it still had a huge impact on UK gaming. It helped cement competition between formats for a lot of youngsters, yes there was the Spectrum vs. Commodore arguments but it paled in comparison to the school playground arguments of Nintendo vs Sega. Whether you were in the Sonic camp or Mario camp had quite the impact on playground politics.

Secondly the UK home computer scene, though brilliant and innovative, was going through its own crisis, over saturation of licensed games and bad ports meant that sales were beginning to suffer. Yes there were still good games coming out for the Commodore 64 and Spectrum but they were few and far between at this stage. Not to mention a lot of the great UK developers were getting poached by US and Japanese developers and publishers which certainly wasn't helping the UK home computer scene.

Thirdly, the NES and also the SMS were dedicated gaming machines. No longer did you have long waits while your favourite Dizzy game was loading, you simply slotted the game cartridge in and BAM! You were transported away to wonderfully new gaming world to explore. Even for the most dedicated computer fan this was something to behold and for me personally, who went from a ZX Spectrum +2 to a NES it was miraculous.

Finally, not specifically just in the UK but it is undeniable that without the NES or more importantly the Famicom (the NES was essentially a repacked Famicom), we wouldn't be playing games the way we do today. Console gaming would not have progressed the way it without the innovations the NES showcased. The D-Pad? Start and Select buttons? Not to mention others, yes other companies developed these further and in some cases improved on them but without Nintendo we could still have to deal with horrible pads like the Atari 5400 controller.

Some people have compared the NES to the Sega Mega Drive or the Amiga or Atari ST but personally I feel this is unfair, yes the NES came out in the UK near the end of the 8-Bit era but to compare it to these 16-Bit machines is similar to comparing the PS1 to the XBox. They were different generations of machines and would obviously be better in graphics, sound, etc.

Now these are just personal opinions and experiences of myself and my work colleague but after re-reading a lot of the comments on this thread I feel someone needs to make a counter argument to the mostly negative, though excellently made points thus far.

Jeremy


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[Garou]

The way I remember it was the C64 Spectrum and Amstrad CPC464 etc had the majority of the gaming market in the UK. I already owned an Amiga before one of my mates got a NES. And Sega's master system was better known in the UK.

[zapiy]

Yeah that’s more or less the reality of what happened. There will always be slightly different versions of events but those computers ruled back then.


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