What made the NES so interesting?
nicole.express
What made the NES so interesting?
1–10 of 127 posts
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#2There were so many things the NES did right.
For instance the color palette was designed with aesthetics in mind: it had 56 colors that you'd want to use, compared to the 216 colors of the web safe palette that must have been chosen by a physicist because 60% of them make me want to puke.
The Atari 400 and 800 had an elaborate system for game-friendly video that couldn't touch what the NES did with tiles. They did amazing things with the TI-99/4A (like simulate framebuffer graphics with tiles so long as you didn't need to cover the whole screen... a trick you couldn't do with the character ROM talked about in this article) but it didn't have the brilliant end-to-end engineering of the NES...
... And of course the ability to extend the hardware with the cartridge took advantage of the falling cost of electronics AND fit with the business model that the cheap console is subsidized by expensive games.
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#3Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history, business, and sociology. It's really excellent.
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#4Principally the thing it did right, having lived through the era, is bring a real video game home with Super Mario Bros.
At the time I had a C64 and an Atari 2600, but would spend every quarter I could dig up at the arcade at the bowling alley next door playing pretty much anything, but especially Super Mario Bros.
The Nintendo was the first console to bring the arcade home and it was absolutely revolutionary.
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#5Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history, business, and sociology. It's really excellent.
thanks for the rec, I'll check it out the article was a fun read
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#6Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history, business, and sociology. It's really excellent.
“I am Error” is a book from the Platform Studies series, to which the extremely famous and well-regarded “Racing the Beam” also belongs - an awesome analysis of the technical features and restrictions of the Atari 2600/VCS and how they influenced the games that defined the console.
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#7Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history, business, and sociology. It's really excellent.
“I am Error” is a book from the Platform Studies series, to which the extremely famous and well-regarded “Racing the Beam” also belongs - an awesome analysis of the technical features and restrictions of the Atari 2600/VCS and how they influenced the games that defined the console.
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Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#8Folks who found this article interesting will also appreciate Nathan Altice's book "I AM ERROR" which looks at how the NES's various technical decisions and limitations influenced the NES's lasting cultural legacy. The book contains a surprising amount of technical depth combined with history, business, and sociology. It's really excellent.
Another vote for that being an excellent book!
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#9Principally the thing it did right, having lived through the era, is bring a real video game home with Super Mario Bros. At the time I had a C64 and an Atari 2600, but would spend every quarter I could dig up at the arcade at the bowling alley next door playing pretty much anything, but especially Super Mario Bros. The Nintendo was the first console to bring the arcade home and it was absolutely revolutionary.
Yep, this is what did it for me. I was playing vs. super mario at the arcade and was amazed it was available at home. yes, it was a bowling alley arcade
Re: What made the NES so interesting?
#10Principally the thing it did right, having lived through the era, is bring a real video game home with Super Mario Bros. At the time I had a C64 and an Atari 2600, but would spend every quarter I could dig up at the arcade at the bowling alley next door playing pretty much anything, but especially Super Mario Bros. The Nintendo was the first console to bring the arcade home and it was absolutely revolutionary.
Interesting, it never felt like an arcade game to me. When I'd go to the arcade I avoided Super Mario Bros. It didn't feel like an arcade game like Rampage.
I played it on the NES first (and it was released there before arcades, though I don't think I played until 1989 personally). But I didn't own an NES at the time, so it wasn't that I could play it for free at home.
SMB is a much better game than Rampage. I would also play Excitebike at the arcade, also not nearly as good as SMB.
I guess in an arcade I was looking for simple high score games, I wanted to dream of putting my initials on, but I also wanted to be able to walk away when I died (where in SMB if I got to 8-2 then died I'd wanna go again/continue).