Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What made the NES so interesting?

nicole.express

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 127 posts

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#41

Post by Agentlien »

wk_end wrote: post #32
derefr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the palette chosen by Nintendo for use in first-party emulators going for a "nostalgic" feel (e.g. the NES Classic's https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Kachikachi ) be in some sense the "canonical" palette? At least in the same way that an author's statements about their own previously-published works are "canonical" to those works. My thinking is that there was certainly an RGB palette that the de…

To throw a few wrenches into that: * As evidenced by the fact that the (RGB-based) Nintendo VS. System has a different palette than later emulation releases, even at the time Nintendo wasn't sure of the "correct" RGB palette (or has since come around and changed their mind about what that should be). * There wasn't really any sort of standard devkit. Different developers, different games, different artists used diffe…

To the last point I just wanted to point out that they've recently patched a lot of the graphical issues on the N64 emulator (including texture coordinate issues and fog in OoT).

While I still feel the original quality was shameful, I recently upgraded my subscription and I have been enjoying it with no issues.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#42

Post by 29athrowaway »

If you wanted to publish a game for the NES, you had to go through Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo. He had the final veto power at the moment of publishing a game.

If he didn't like the game, the game would not get published no matter what.

This process ensured that the NES had only quality games.

Yamauchi was 7th dan in Go, and at one point was the richest man in Japan.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#43

Post by phire »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

There 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 am…

> 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.

Most likely a computer programmer. It's just all the combinations of six shades of Red, Green and Blue that are equally spaced out. 00, 33, 66, 99, cc and ff.

The NES colors are actually equally simplistic internally:

12 equally spaced color hues with 4 levels of luma (plus 4 grays, 2 whites and 10 blacks wasting space in the pallet). But it works so much better because it's done in the YUV color space, rather than the RGB color space. Then the analog hardware doesn't manage to replicate it's target YUV colors accurately (or consistently across models, regions and even individual machines/tvs), which adds character.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#44

Post by nsxwolf »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

There 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 am…

The TI-99/4A could address the entire screen with its tiled “bitmap” mode - its predecessor the TI-99/4 could not.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#45

Post by johnwalkr »

KerrAvon wrote: post #25
furyofantares wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I found Rampage more fun as a concept than SMB, but it doesn’t have the replay value or progression that you really want in a home video game, where SMB does. I could never get into Excitebike. Controls always felt so awkward.

Rampage is a great game but it’s slow no matter how good you are. With most 2D mario games they nailed the level design such that you can play faster with practice and it’s fun in the same way skiing a familier run faster than last time is fun. The warp zones help replayability too.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#46

Post by lxrbst »

29athrowaway wrote: post #42

If you wanted to publish a game for the NES, you had to go through Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo. He had the final veto power at the moment of publishing a game. If he didn't like the game, the game would not get published no matter what. This process ensured that the NES had only quality games. Yamauchi was 7th dan in Go, and at one point was the richest man in Japan.

>This process ensured that the NES had only quality games.

Probably some rubberstamp thing then. NES had _plenty_ of bad games though, actually the majority of games published were bad.

See LJN.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#47

Post by johnwalkr »

freedomben wrote: post #24

If you have any interest in NES or video game history, and you haven't read "Super Mario" by Jeff Ryan, get it. I first read it about 10 years ago, but it was one of the most interesting books I'd read and should be evergreen. I also bought the audiobook, which is phenomenal. Read by the great Ray Porter, and DRM free on Downpour: https://www.downpour.com/super-mario You'd be amazed at how many times Nintendo almost…

I don’t have a book recommendation because they all seem to be flawed in some way, but the history of Sega is fascinating. The following is really rough: Originally an American company, it imported slot machines to American bases around the world. Those were eventually banned on bases and success was found importing automatic photobooths and coin-op games to Japan, and eventually Sega became a Japanese company. I glossed over hundreds of pages of details.

It’s also interesting seeing what influence the American offices of Sega and Nintendo had in the 90s.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#48

Post by 29athrowaway »

lxrbst wrote: post #46
29athrowaway wrote: post #42

If you wanted to publish a game for the NES, you had to go through Hiroshi Yamauchi, the president of Nintendo. He had the final veto power at the moment of publishing a game. If he didn't like the game, the game would not get published no matter what. This process ensured that the NES had only quality games. Yamauchi was 7th dan in Go, and at one point was the richest man in Japan.

>This process ensured that the NES had only quality games. Probably some rubberstamp thing then. NES had _plenty_ of bad games though, actually the majority of games published were bad. See LJN.

I was so incredibly disappointed with some of those games. Like the BTTF game.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#49

Post by GlitchMr »

derefr wrote: post #19
stormbrew wrote: post #16

> The NES is in some sense a composite-only system. While there is an RGB mod, it's quite invasive[...] This is something that a lot of even very plugged into retrogaming people don't really get about the NES and RGB mods. I think it's very counterintuitive for people now that there is no part of the system that operates in actual 'color' information. The NES' video output is composite from start to finish[1], with p…

Wouldn't the palette chosen by Nintendo for use in first-party emulators going for a "nostalgic" feel (e.g. the NES Classic's https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Kachikachi ) be in some sense the "canonical" palette? At least in the same way that an author's statements about their own previously-published works are "canonical" to those works. My thinking is that there was certainly an RGB palette that the de…

The problem is that Nintendo is not consistent about NES palettes either. Their different emulators all have different palettes, https://emulation.gametechwiki.com/index.php/Famicom_color_p... goes as far as to suggest their latest emulator (the one that is part of Nintendo Switch Online service) has as many as 12 different palettes where the palette picked depends on a game. Nintendo did have NES-based arcade systems that used RGB, however the problem is that their color choices were really ugly.

Re: What made the NES so interesting?

#50

Post by syradar »

genewitch wrote: post #40

I am not sure why this webpage is so hard to screenshot, but my main screenshot service can't do it (i get a 404 after it returns the URL), and in firefox directly telling it to screenshot loses a significant amount of text. I cannot complain enough, this is a simple web page. there is absolutely no reason i cannot capture a static image of it. beyond that, i sort of enjoyed a deeper dive, but the subject matter was…

You can do that with the Capture Screenshot command in DevTools https://swimburger.net/blog/web/hidden-gem-take-screenshots-...
Post reply on HN