The Console Wars: Third Generation, The Empire of Nintendo

As we approach the release of the PS4 and the Xbox One, we prepare to truly enter next era of console gaming. But the history of console gaming goes back decades, 40 years of history. Wars, alliances, betrayals, and the rise and fall of many companies. Exeposé  Games sets out on a journey of great historical importance, charting each generation of…The Console Wars.

As the console market imploded in the US in 1983, across the Pacific, Nintendo were preparing to release their latest console, the Famicom. Having been successful with the dedicated consoles in the late 70s, and arcade games series in the early 80s, Nintendo decided to create its own console. The company Sega also decided to release a console, the SG-1000, at the same time, with both releasing on 15^th July 1983.

For the first year, neither sold particularly well. The SG-1000 was too much like the older consoles to differentiate it. The Famicom, on the other hand, had a technical issue with the motherboard.

Nintendo issued a product recall, replaced the motherboard, and started shipping again. The popularity of the console then exploded, becoming Japan’s best selling console by the end of 1984.

Two years later, in September 1986, Nintendo released the Famicom to American and European markets; but they gave the Famicom a rebrand, it was now called the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES. Because of the gaming crash of 1983, Nintendo had trouble convincing retailers to stock the console, taking several measures to have them agree to it, such as the rebranding to make it sound less like a gaming console.

The US still believed console gaming had been a fad. The NES destroyed all belief of that. By 1988, it had sold 11 million NES units in the US and Japan alone.

Nintendo market success wasn’t by luck. It was by a series of reforms to hardware, software, and business practice that became the standard for the gaming market. All done first with the NES. Besides form, and the basic improvements to increase its capabilities compared the last generation, the NES also had a completely different controller setup. Instead of a joystick, it had two buttons on the right, a start and select button in the middle, and a d-pad on the left.

It short, it was the beginning of the modern controller. Another simple feature, were the character sprites now found in the games.  Though taken for granted now, multi-coloured sprites were a massive leap forward for the industry in terms of graphics design.

Beyond improvement, it innovated the gaming industry. However, even if the market couldn’t trust the game quality, it wouldn’t matter.

That was where locking came in. Using specifically coded chips, Nintendo locked the NES for programmers, and locked it regionally. First-party games were unaffected, but third-party developers would have to pay Nintendo royalties for the licence, and if a game didn’t get Nintendo’s seal of approval, it didn’t release.

The result were games that earned Nintendo’s seal of quality, coming to improve gaming quality and helping restore buyer confidence, all of which Nintendo profited from. Atari had seen third-party developers as an enemy to their market; Nintendo used them as an untapped goldmine.

The NES did eventually get competition, in two very different forms. Sega returned in October 1985 with the Sega Master System, a console that outperformed the NES in terms of hardware, with a bigger memory, colour palette and stronger capabilities of producing early forms of 3D graphics.

Conversely, Atari’s attempt to get back the market, the Atari 7800, released had been delayed to release since 1984, releasing properly in January 1986, its near complete backwards compatibility its only major feature among its relatively out-dated hardware.

Instead of fighting Nintendo, though, it ended a fight for second place, and Atari always was on the back foot. Nintendo’s licencing policy meant the companies licenced could only work on NES games for two years, effectively cutting off Sega and Atari from most big games.

The Empire of Nintendo reigned supreme.

By the end of 1988, Nintendo dominated the industry. It controlled 78% of the gaming market. If the first console war had been exploration, and the second a scramble, the third console war was a conquest and revival of the failing gaming industry-by the Nintendo Empire.

It also marked the end of US dominance over the market, shifting instead to Japan, where it remained effectively unchallenged for over 20 years. Atari was  out, but Sega was still prepared to fight Nintendo on even ground. The pitched battle of the fourth console war was about to begin.

 

Check in tomorrow for the full history of The Fourth Console War…

 

Luke Pilchowski

 

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Former Nintendo President Hiroshi Yamauchi dies aged 85

Nintendo released an official statement yesterday that the company “is in the mourning… from the sad loss of the former Nintendo president Mr Hiroshi Yamauchi, who sadly passed away this morning.”

The company then revealed that he passed away at a hospital in central Japan, due to pneumonia. His funeral will take place on Sunday.

Yamauchi first joined Nintendo in 1949, and served as president until he stepped down in 2002. He is widely credited with transforming the company’s business from small-time trading cards to  global electronic empire.

Under his leadership Nintendo produced global hits such as the NES, GameBoy, and Nintendo 64, as well as legendary franchises like Mario, Pokémon, and Zelda.

His work with Shigeru Miyamoto in the 1980s paved the way for the arcade game market in the US, and the infamous Donkey Kong remains one of the most successful arcade titles of all time.

 

Becky Mullen, Games Editor

My Life in Gaming: A NES Out of Nowhere

2^nd of January 1993 – Peter Seaman purchases a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) from a Boots retail store in Wellingborough.

3^rd of January 1993 – Thomas Seaman is born in Kettering General Hospital weighing in at around 8¹/₂ lbs.

Nintendo Entertainment System. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons

It was an “interesting” choice from my father to decide to purchase his first games console two weeks after my heavily pregnant mother’s due date. A choice that most might see as irresponsible, immature, or perhaps just plain ridiculous. However, in a twisted logic kind of way, I owe that decision to my now love and fascination of video games.

My description of my father makes him sound like an avid gamer, a fanatic and die hard enthusiast. He is none of these things. I can only assume that on that faithful day he somehow misplaced himself whilst shopping and was bamboozled by some retail wizard, perhaps convincing my father that he was buying the latest in toaster technology. With no use for the grey block he’d purchased, he banished the system to serve a sentence of solitary confinement with my grandparents some 200 miles away.

For years it was left lonesome, yearning some attention, some appreciation of the gifts it was willing to offer. It wasn’t until 1996, a full ten years since it’s original European release, that myself and my sister uncovered this cream and grey gem from the back of a wardrobe, in a Narnia-esque fashion.

The main thing to note about the NES and many early gaming consoles, is that it had no save function, and thus no persistence. Every time you turn it on you’re back to square one. Game developers therefore had to design to make their games both extremely re-playable, and challenging enough so that players didn’t beat it on the day of purchase. In most modern games, as you progress you become stronger: whether it’s dropping points into strength or unlocking a kick ass new ability/item. However back then, you couldn’t rely on your character getting better, you had to get better! You had to develop better reflexes for Super Mario Bros., timing was key for Paperboy, and my god you had to jam your little finger at just under the speed of sound in order to qualify in Track and Field II. Games back then were hard…”Nintendo Hard”.

Image credit: tokyotimes.com

Despite this, as soon as I could excuse myself from my grandmother’s dinner table, I would rush to the TV to start another game of Super Mario Bros. 3. I had never completed it, never even gotten close. I was repeating the same few worlds for hours, over days, over years. But the controls were so tight, the visuals so striking and vibrant, and the difficulty was in that sweet spot creating a tough challenge without frustration.

This era of gaming has been the inspiration for many modern games, whether it’s the tight controls and difficulty of Super Meat Boy or perhaps the repeatability of many rogue-likes such as The Binding of Isaac. Either way, myself and modern gaming owes a lot to the pioneers of gameplay that helped make the NES something more than a multi-grey toned box.

 

Tom Seaman