Advertisement
62 million NES devices sold make Nintendo a global market leader and renew the video games that were said to be dead at the time. The company still draws on the characters and game series created four decades ago, such as “Zelda” and “Super Mario”. Nintendo has been producing playing cards for eight decades. It was not until the 1960s that the founder’s great-grandson, Hiroshi Yamauchi, started a second line of business: toys. First mechanical, like table football. Then also electrical. A masterpiece is the “Wild Gunman” slot machine, in which you use a light gun to shoot enemies who are rear-projected onto a screen.
A dinner with an old school friend, now at a large electronics company, gives Yamauchi inspiration in 1975: microchips are now so cheap that they not only make quartz watches and pocket calculators possible for everyone, but are also finding their way into toys. He licenses the first game console, the Magnavox Odyssey, and works with Mitsubishi to develop his own “Pong”-style devices, which sell well. The hitherto electro-mechanical machines are also given chips. A big success are small LCD games; from the Game&Watch series, Nintendo can sell more than 40 million. That whets the appetite for more.
The Birth of the Famicom
Yamauchi plans to attack the market leader Atari 2600. A game console with interchangeable modules, only better and, above all, cheaper. This inevitably leads to the MOS 6502 processor found in many early devices from Apple, Atari and Commodore. The aged chip is very cheap. Especially in the large quantities Nintendo has in mind. And it’s easy to customize. With Ricoh, Nintendo finds a partner for a custom-made product that primarily supplements the CPU with a sound unit.
The Famicom has 2Kbytes of RAM, which is used by the CPU for temporary storage and by the game for variables, and which can be increased with the plug-in modules. A second chip takes care of the graphics; There is 2 Kbytes of video RAM for the two alternately displayed screen pages. The games are divided into program ROM and character ROM; the latter stores the 8×8 pixel graphics squares, the tiles that make up every game. In “Super Mario Bros.” it’s about 32 KB of code + 8 KB of graphics. Gradually, the cartridges are getting bigger, can save games with the help of a battery and have additional circuits to improve the possibilities of graphics and sound. So “Super Mario Bros. 3” consists of 256 KB program, 128 KB graphics and 8 KB extra RAM. A mapper switches between individual memory banks: the 16-bit address bus can only address 64 Kbytes.
also read
The Famicom gets two controllers that are permanently connected to the device. They take over the control pad from the Game&Watch handhelds, which has been standard on consoles ever since. Four directional buttons, two action buttons. It doesn’t need more to play. The left controller is also equipped with buttons for Start and Select; while the one on the right has a microphone (with volume control) that in some games frightens or fights opponents, for example by blowing or shouting. The console’s striking red is said to be a wish of Yamauchi himself; for his favorite scarf.
Advertisement
The floppy drive
Plug-in modules are convenient to use and provide quick access, but are expensive to manufacture. In addition, Nintendo has to struggle again and again with a lack of chips. A solution is found with a floppy disk drive as an accessory. The 3″ disks are cheaper, offer 64 Kbytes of memory per side and allow saves to be saved. In addition, new games can be copied inexpensively at special stations in shops. Above all, however, the disk system opens up large, open worlds for the consoles that previously are reserved for home computers. First and foremost is “The Legend of Zelda”. The Disk Station appears only in Japan and is quite successful there: there is a drive on every fourth console. Games such as “Zelda” are used for international distribution Module upgraded; the growing storage space and a battery for saved games (or a password system instead of saving) make it possible.
The games
In addition to “Zelda”, the Famicom is the birthplace of many other series. Konami’s “Castlevania” is also initially a disk game. Just like the platformer “Metroid”, with the famous ending where the brave warrior takes off his helmet – and a long-haired warrior appears: Samus Aran, one of the first heroines in the history of video games. The not dissimilar “Mega Man” from Capcom with a cute fighting robot. And of course “Super Mario Bros.”, which has sold 40 million copies. The character of Mario was conceived by the young designer Shigeru Miyamoto as an initially nameless hero for the slot machine game “Donkey Kong”, but his breakthrough only came on television at home.
One genre in particular benefits from the possibilities of the Nintendo console: role-playing games. From its origins on mainframes, it was initially only played on home computers until it found its way to consoles thanks to series like “Dragon Quest” and “Final Fantasy”.
Nintendo is initially the only developer and maintains several departments. The first licensees are Namco (“Pac-Man”) and Hudson (“Bomberman”). With increasing success, more and more studios are added. You have to approve and even produce all games from Nintendo. To ensure high quality, Nintendo later caps the number of games each studio produces each year (causing resentment).
The console also demonstrates its versatility through its accessories. The light gun, the zapper, is particularly popular. He turns the “Moorhuhn” precursor “Duck Hunt” into one of the best-selling video games of all time. The Power Pad combines a fitness and dance mat. The well-known Power Glove data glove from Mattel, which featured prominently in the feature film “Joy Stick Heroes”, remains a flop: only two games are released.
The conquest of the USA
Nintendo has had a US subsidiary since 1980, headed by Yamauchi’s son-in-law, Minoru Arakawa. She initially takes care of selling the coin-operated machines. But while the Famicom is a big hit in Japan, retailers in the US are reluctant. The game console business collapsed; on the one hand by the flood of bad video games; on the other hand by home computers, which can do much more. Game consoles are considered dead, you’ve never heard of Nintendo. So Arakawa does not want the game console to act as a game console. He turns the colorful Famicom into a serious home computer with a keyboard and calls it AVS – Advanced Video System. That doesn’t help: At the CES in January and June 1984, the dealers refused. So the Famicom is rebuilt again, gets its familiar VCR look and feel and a new name: Nintendo Entertainment System. But despite the cute toy robot ROB, accessory and mascot at the same time, the trade at the next trade fair is not convinced. Arakawa is discouraged and wants to give up, but his father-in-law thinks: What works in Japan should also work in the USA. Only the players would have the opportunity to get to know the console once.
One last, expensive try. Nintendo focuses on one city: New York. Christmas. Instead of talking to a few wholesalers, you approach every single store. They’re being made an offer they can’t refuse. Nintendo designs the shop windows, takes care of the advertising and promises to take back all unsold consoles and games three months later. Thus trading has no risk. Well-known sports stars are booked as promoters and TV spots are broadcast in the greater New York area. The auction sells 50,000 consoles. Next city is Los Angeles, more cities are added, and after a year one million NES are sold. And three million in the second year. In 1986 the console came to Europe. The rest is history.
The successor
Nintendo is so successful with the NES that they are reluctant to release a sequel. Sega took advantage of this and pushed ahead in 1988 with the 16-bit Mega Drive system. With the fast Motorola 68000 (which is also in the Amiga 500), with sports and film licenses, with Michael Jackson and a more grown-up, cooler image. Companies like Electronic Arts, which have previously relied on home computers, can also be lured with lower license fees. The Super Famicom aka Super Nintendo followed two years later. It can catch up and overtake Sega; but not surpass the success of the NES: 49 million SNES compared to 30 million Mega Drive.
NO today
And the popularity of the NES continues unabated. Probably no other console has more clones. The imitations mostly come from China, of course, but also from South America, for example. In terms of their design, they tend to resemble the Famicom, later the Mega Drive and the Playstation. They already supply many games, built-in or on a multi-module. They are usually pirated, some steal graphics and sounds; some are proprietary developments.
Unlicensed NES games are still appearing today; sometimes even as a pretty package on a module with a box, such as the German developments “Micro Mages” and “Sam’s Journey”. The latter is an implementation of the successful C64 game. You can pre-order them recently: as a module for the Famicom or NES, with selectable extras such as a soundtrack on CD or cassette and even as a collector’s edition with a figure.
Nintendo has never abandoned the platform either, from the NES Classics series for the Game Boy Advance to the Nintendo Classic Mini with 30 built-in games, which has sold 3.6 million units worldwide.
(then)