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 So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from...

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NightStarX
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NightStarX


Posts : 1979
Join date : 2010-10-08
Age : 44

So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from... Empty
PostSubject: So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from...   So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from... Icon_minitimeMon Dec 13, 2010 5:13 am

In the UK, apparently i've learned the NES was mismanaged, mis-marketed, you could barely find it anywhere, it was overpriced, and almost nearly bombed. Or at the very least, wasn't regarded as very important for it's day.

I find that VERY interesting.

Now i've known this for a while when Shand pointed out to me before that the NES wasn't big in Britan, but getting a full picture of the story from UK gamer video maker Guru Larry and his video about Contra, here...

http://www.blisteredthumbs.net/2010/12/gycw-nes-ports-1-contra/

...it astounds me how different this era of video game history is from ours. You guys were still mainly playing computer games and other systems that still went strong, and your NES was assembled and sub-licensed by Mattel and no one cared for it, because they didn't need an industry savior, and because they sold it for too much, didn't release enough games, and only sold it in specialty stores.

Whereas for us, we faced a major deluge of market saturation and no innovation from Atari 2600, and Intellivision, forcing Video Games to become a dead fad, video games went bankrupt and crashed straight into the ground, like a mini "great depression" of games, and no place would carry them, or they'd give Atari 2600 games away for 99 cent.

Until Nintendo arrived on the scene, and became the overwhelming overnight success, because they reinvented the market to us. I mean it was so big that here in the US, "Nintendo" for the entire decade to follow became the slang word for "Video Game".

So, for the United States, it surprises me how unbelievably different it played out, and thus how our attitude over here is that "we owe everything to it." Huh. While to you guys I'm guessing it was probably an over-expensive, unnecessary toy. Razz


Anyway, it's just kind of surprising to me to get the full idea of the contrast of game history in Britan versus that of America. What are some of your recollections about these times?
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Mjolnir

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Join date : 2010-10-09
Location : London, England

So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from... Empty
PostSubject: Re: So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from...   So I hear the Nintendo Entertainment System isn't the savior of the industry where most of you guys come from... Icon_minitimeMon Dec 13, 2010 6:12 am

I've told you about this before. The NES console never really took off massively in the UK. It was around, and some people had them, but it was nowhere near as popular here as the "computers" of the day were.

We'd played video games before of course, and still did. The Atari 2600 was massive here, as were the various Pong-like machines which went before them. We knew a good game when we saw it.

However, here in the UK, parents were buying into the whole concept of the digital age, and the idea that if you didn't get your child into computers from an early age, they'd be left behind as the 1980s raced on. Therefore they were much more attracted to the notion of the home computer, rather than the pure games console. That's why here in England the ZX Spectrum 48k and the Commodore 64 absolutely dominated. Both were hideously expensive (especially the C64) but in the eyes of our parents, they were educational. We could programme our own games on them (and we did, though it took a stupid amount of time) and we were learning to use computers, which would come in handy for work. Our parents could even write letters and keep rudimentary accounts on them. We all knew we needed to learn this stuff, as by 1990 we'd all have 100 robot butlers each, and our entire homes would be controlled HAL like by one central computer.

Of course, as kids we didn't mind. We had some fantastic game producers here in the UK, as well as the American and Japanese ones, and they were producing great games, so we were happy.

The dominance of the home computer continued to the next generation with the Atari ST and Commodore Amiga wars. Both predominantly games machines in computer clothing, our parents again were happy to buy them as they were, after all, computers and we could learn something from them. We didn't. We just played games on them if truth be known.

Of course during this time games consoles were still being sold. Whether it was the NES, Vectrex, Coleco Vision, Sega Master System, or whatever, they were around. But computers ruled.

The first machines that changed that were the Sega Mega Drive (Genesis) and the SNES. They happened to come along in the UK at roughly the same time first IBM PC machines running MSDOS started to become industry standard computers. It became obvious that the two industries were starting to split. Computers became more about being seerious standardised business tools, and as we grew older, we made more demands of our games.

The Mega Drive and the SNES seemed to offer what kids dreamed of - the arcade in their bedroom. That was the point we reconverged with the USA really, and went on from there down the console route, although we were perhaps more open to both brands than you Americans, who still had your allegiances to Nintendo. I believe we were also quicker to embrace the original Playstation than you were.
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