Generation Nintendo

http://www.filfre.net/2016/04/generation-nintendo/

by danso • 10 years ago

183 55 10 years ago

This is amazing. It's one of those moments where actions of a single person change the course of history in a better way. I mean, I'm sure American companies might disagree. ;) Yet, I'm glad they showed up knocking down our industries' garbage with higher quality or effectiveness. It was a nice, reality check whose individual cases could've been endured and/or countered earlier if American executives weren't so arrogant. For auto's and such, that is, as Nintendo's offering was pretty forward-thinking.

More amazing is the founder also invented the Raman concept and motels dedicated to pimping in a small span of time. Plus, really cool toys. Innovative guy and company. Very unique.

EDIT: Forgot to add a piece about absolutely hating Nintendo for their contribution to DRM and lock-in. Sometimes I want innovators to think less. Bunch of A-holes. ;)

teknologist• 10 years ago

With no/weak DRM you get the fate of the Dreamcast!

nickpsecurity8• 10 years ago

I thought it died because it was weak technically and in terms of publishers vs next gen stuff right around the corner. Nobody I knew wanted a Dreamcast with PS2 and Nintendos about to come out plus hardly any good games. May just be anecdotal though.

0x0• 10 years ago

The lockout chip mentioned is detailed in wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIC_(Nintendo)#10NES

Some highlights include unlicensed cartridges using a "voltage spike" to knock out the chip, and the patent expiring in 2006.

nzonbi• 10 years ago

I remember the first time that I played Super Mario bros on the NES. I was so absolutely blown away, that words don't make justice. I had previous experience with many consoles and computer games. But this thing -Mario Bros- was so incredibly well designed, that it was beyond unbelievable. This little box, packing this strange, exotic world, full of inexplicable, surprising creatures and devices. With many different areas full of mysteries. Reinforced by the perplexing, hypnotizing music. I still can clearly hear it. The amazing sound effects. I can still clearly hear the sound of entering a pipe, and descending into the underground. The amount of engaging and continually fresh motion, required to overcome the always changing obstacles, was absolutely unequaled at the time.

There were moments that I would be idle, pondering how it was possible to pack so much brilliant design on a thing. I would then be also tremendously impressed by other games of the time, notably Zelda and Super Mario Bros 3. That I would become a big fan of Japanese game design for life. Investigating and following the individual game creators. Since then, I slowly noticed that the Japanese, and some Asians, have a unique sensibility that gives their games a peculiar flavor. Many people -mainly westerns- don't resonate with this peculiar uniqueness, that rarely exist in western games. And that is ok, just interesting. It is like they can achieve a laser focus on a particular set of simple, essential human emotions. It can be found on how they draw things, the stories that write, etc. That particularly inspires some people.

For many people, Nintendo games of the time were so dramatically better designed, compared to the standards of the time, that they were like gold compared to the others dirt. That was an important factor, possibly the biggest, in the creation of the generation Nintendo. It is very interesting to know what were the conditions and events, that allowed Nintendo the company, to come up with these absolutely brilliant products at the time. That allowed it to achieve legendary status among so many people.

talles• 10 years ago

I once saw in a museum a samurai armour. When I came close I was astonished to see that, not only the armour itself is very detailed, but the cloth that goes under all protection had a lot of handcrafted needlework imagery. Art and military in a suit.

Danieru• 10 years ago

There is a risk of oriential mysticism when talking about japan's game design sense. Yet it is a real thing. Japan has a different game design culture which grew during the 80's and 90's. Japan's game designers almost never speak or read english. Entire companies are isolated. So you have isolated game designers working in an isolated country. This has led to several unique understandings of how games should be developed.

Some of the ideas just seem wrong to my foreign experience. A designer might say "this is easier for the player to understand", as he suggests something which seems to me 100% opaque and blackbox. There are fundamental differences to how a japanese mega-corp develops a video game.

wingerlang4• 10 years ago

Yet it is a real thing.

Doesn't seem like a "game design sense" anymore than the fact that they have an isolated culture and their games simply resonate within this culture.

We all know the 'asian websites' thing which is spoken about a lot. Their websites look like shit to use, but to them it is simply the better way.

Nothing "mystic" about it, it is simply how they do stuff.

At least this is what I think.

pvg• 10 years ago

Entire companies are isolated. So you have isolated game designers working in an isolated country. This has led to several unique understandings of how games should be developed.

Google up the influence of Wizardry on JRPGs as just one well-documented counter-example. Japanese game designers in the 80s and 90s were designing in the 80s and 90s, not during the Tokugawa shogunate.

studentrob2• 10 years ago

It is like they can achieve a laser focus on a particular set of simple, essential human emotions

Yeah. I like the stickers used in messaging in Asia. Asians, in my experience, were using this years before the US, and their messaging apps had it before Facebook.

I can type "sad" in Line and it'll show me a bunch of different characters with sad expressions [1] [2]. The stickers can make conversation more succinct.

Line is popular in Japan, Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia. I have no affiliation. This came to mind when I read what you wrote =)

[1] http://thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2014/08/l...

[2] http://www.taipeitimes.com/images/2014/12/13/thumbs/P10-1412... (says hahaha)

digi_owl4• 10 years ago

Heh, i still recall hitting 1-2 and the music spooked the crap out of me.

chipsy• 10 years ago

W/R to "What If's", I think the big one is "What If Atari Were Stronger/More Focused". They tried to grow into a "manufacturing conglomerate" rather than a "consumer design" company. It misused their original branding and culture. For this the Warner acquisition deserves a large share of the blame, even as it seemed necessary for financing the VCS launch. Either way, by the time the company was at its most profitable, it was already rotten from mismanagement.

Had they found a path towards a more contemporary-Apple-like management style, and some foresight for the third-party situation and the console lifecycle, they would have broken away from the scattershot focus, released a good, DRM-protected, backwards-compatible update to the VCS in the early 80's instead of the half-baked 5200/7800 efforts, insulated themselves from the arcade crash with original console software, and starved Nintendo's air supply at retail.

They might have even still released computers, just of a different sort - perhaps they would have kept Jay Miner's team and had an Atari-branded Amiga, with a console version released soon after(c. 1985-86) instead of 8 years later(CD32 - 1993).

studentrob2• 10 years ago

Wow cool, so Nintendo survived because the US didn't bomb Kyoto.

I hope we never see that kind of destruction again.

BTW, I bicycled around Kyoto once and could not find any trash, even a straw wrapper. The Kyoto protocol is aptly named. I highly recommend visiting there if you have a chance.

ekianjo• 10 years ago

Its not just kyoto that does not have trash. Most of places in Japan are very clean (if you dont look too much)

joshschreuder• 10 years ago

I'm visiting at the moment and agree. For a place with so few trash cans it's remarkably free of trash.

tboyd47• 10 years ago

One thing I've appreciated more about Nintendo as I've grown older is the culture war that was going on over Mario.

For example, no Mario game ever features Brooklyn, even once. Yet the American movie and cartoon show are all about Mario being from Brooklyn. Then when Mario 3 came out, not only is he not from Brooklyn, but he wears a cat suit and turns into a Buddhist statue. That's a big f*-you message to America from Japan if I ever saw one. Pretty hilarious.

silveira• 10 years ago

Kyoto was spared from the atomic bomb because there was the place where the secretary of war, Henry Stimson, stayed during his honeymoon.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33755182

Generation Nintendo

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