I think now I understand why the NES beat the 7800

philipj, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:45 PM, said:

kool kitty89, on Tue May 24, 2011 2:29 PM, said:

philipj, on Sat May 21, 2011 8:49 AM, said:

Well that'll do it... Ninja Turtles will getcha everytime. lol

There actually was an EGA PC version too:

(with -somewhat mediocre- adlib support rather like castlevania . . . mediocre in the sense that it's not really a good remix of the NES tunes, the ST, Amiga, and C64 versions were better in that respect -it's not the worst example of Adlib use though, unfortunately)

I get a kick out hearing TMNT 1 music from something other than an NES... Didn't really consider other version of TMNT on other system considering I was an NES junky back in the day.

I've been dabbling with TFmaker the past couple of weeks now so I becoming a big OPL fan these days.

I had no idea about any of those back in the early 90s (TMNT was definitely still very popular then with tons of re-runs in syndication), not until the early 2000s when a friend had it did I find out.

Now, today, it's a lot easier to find out by just looking online . . . TMNT (or TMHT rather) is considered one of the best looking Spectrum games ever made.

Though we did have a PC with good gaming (and multimedia) capabilities by 1993/94 (multiple PCs if you count my dad's office workstation), though that early set-up for the family computer actually used a grayscale monitor (and a bunch of old/used parts) yet was capable of full speed multimedia/streamign video on games of the era and X-wing in pretty high detail/speed. (by 1995 we had a color monitor and we got the CD version of x-wing around that time)

philipj, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 3:34 PM, said:

Austin, on Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:12 PM, said:

high voltage, on Sat Jun 11, 2011 2:04 AM, said:

I still don't understand why the USAers gobbled up the NES like they did.

1. Fun games.

2. Super Mario Bros.

3. Computers weren't as prevalent in the average household as they were in the UK.

4. The platformer craze of the late '80s.

5. Fun games.

Personally in regards to #3, I didn't even know what a C64, Amiga, or ST was until I started collecting in the mid '90s, nor did I know anyone else that did either. I could just be generalizing, but back then it seemed everyone knew what a NES was. Not so much for home computers though..

I agree with number 3... I wish to God I'd had some kind of computer back in those days even if it was an 8bit. Computer just wasn't that popular where I came from. My friends had an NES so I got me an NES... I played the hell out of it.

Yes, mostly number 3 which also includes both marketing . . . the main problem with the Master System in spite of good games and a strong budget. (though the C64 was very well marketed in 1982-84, I'm not sure what happened around the time of the NES . . . plus there's the issue of the terrible load times that even PC gamers would scoff at, hell even speccy and coco users with tape drives would balk at C64 disk speeds

-one huge advantage of the Atari 8-bits right there with the very nice disk drives . . . too bad Warner/Atari Inc didn't push strong advertising including that tidbit in a tactful manner)

And yes, aside from the burst in the mid 80s around the C64, computer gaming was niche in most parts of North America. Apple II, PC, C64, Atari 8-bit, ST, Amiga, all were niche for games compared to the overall console market, though some more popular than others within that niche. (had the Amiga 500 been released earlier and/or marketed as aggressively as the C64, it very well may have maintained a strong computer game market longer in the US -Atari Corp simply lacked the resources to market the ST that way and PCs ended up becoming most popular for US game developers, a rather fitting successor to the Apple II supported by many of those devs or similar ones

-Amiga and ST got tons of support through Europe and ports of many PC games as well, some better than others)
And then you had PC gaming really starting to get big in the early 90s and leading into the mainstream games market in the mid/late 90s. (it was also that time when you started seeing PC games pushing beyond the capabilities of the Amiga or current game consoles of the time as well as evolutions of those staple PC genres like graphic adventures and flight sims -with 256 color highly detailed drawn or CGI graphics, speech/multimedia, and rapidly improving 3D/pseudo 3D as well as multimedia support -from the campy and sometimes charming live action FMV games, to highly detailed drawn/pixel art graphic adventures with ever advanced sound and speech -and story/plot, to truly modern incarnations of cinematic cutscenes in non-adventure games like Wing Commander, X-Wing, and the amazing production quality of Wing Commander III and IV -which predate Sony's major push for high-end multimedia games in the 5th generation and most definitely are not style over substance, but style complementing substance

)

Home computers (largely thanks to the European market) sported all of the other categories of good, fun games in the right genres, but simply lacked interest on a large scale in the US. (rather like the Master System . . . though I think the PC/computer game market may have beaten the SMS by a wide margin, perhaps even PC games alone)

Rex Dart, on Mon Jun 13, 2011 4:09 PM, said:

Pretty much what he said. I don't know what the marketing/advertising situation was with home computers in the mid 80's, I just know that I saw Nintendo everywhere. Nintendo marketed the hell out of their system and I don't recall, like Austin here, ever seeing or hearing of a Commodore, Amiga, or Atari computer until the 90's. The funny thing is, it was my cousins' Atari XE that got me wanting a game system. Didn't know it was a computer until the past couple of years when I saw one again in a museum.

C64 had a brief time as the dominant game platform in the US (1984-1986) before console stole the scene again and PCs gradually expanded their game market. Though it probably varied by region, and the Atari 8-bits were probably the second most likely to see in that time span. (it seems like computer interest/awareness disappeared rather quickly as marketing dimmed down -and viral marketing is nothing in the US, at least most regions)

I wonder if Commodore could have kept the C64 going against the NES if they'd marketed it really well in the late 80s. (though the disk loads would be a major pain in the ass, maybe they could start pushing cartridges more again)
There definitely seemed to be a huge market catering to existing install bases into the late 80s at least, but less so for any efforts to maintain mass market interest in the US. (in Europe there were no such problems . . . I think it lasted far, far longer than CBM management ever planned for -which is why they failed to fully capitalize on that in some areas)

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Oh, and I spent 1985-1990 in gradeschool with 6-color Apple II computers. Boy were those crap. What kid would want a computer if that's all they knew of them?

Yeah, though for 1977 it wasn't bad at all.

(with double highres it's actually 16 colors, and normally most games used 4 and not 6 colors in the "6 color" mode due to attribute cell limits -orange+blue+white+black was most common)

It was also on the technically humble (but well respected) Apple II that several major game developers started off with. (including Origin Systems with their Ultima games and Sierra's adventure games)
Origin actually supported some rather elaborate enhancements like high-end midi modules as well as the more common mockingboard sound card, like so:

By the time I was in grade school in the early 90s, PCs seemed to be the standard. Lots of edutainment stuff on there . . . we had to play through Oregon Trail at one point too. There was also Jazz Jackrabbit and some other stuff installed, and later on a really cool computer lab teacher who set-up networked gaming and had Jazz 2, Descent, and some other stuff installed in the late 90s.

(and my middle school with half life LAN play in the "computer club")
But I was already set on loving computer games due to what my dad had at home. (X-Wing probably number 1, but I loved some of those quirky FMV adventure games like Return to Zork -actually like that a LOT more than the far more popular Myst of the same time)

My dad didn't really get into PC gaming either until the early 90s. He'd played a bunch of ST and Amiga stuff on loaned/work computers in the late 80s (had a few TRS-80 games prior to that), then got an NES in 1990 as a gift from some friends, then PCs, then SNES alongside PCs, N64+PC, etc. (having PC games complemented the increasingly genre-specific Nintendo offerings more and more too

-though constantly buying new consoles very late gen made those options pretty broad anyway)

Actually, I think Tandy was getting pretty big in schools with their 1000 line in the mid/late 80s too, so a fair amount of kids probably had experience with those. (and the older TRS-80 model 1 and 3 rather popular in schools in the early/mid 80s, or PETs for that matter, all significantly worse than the Apple II for games

-not the Tandy 1000 though, that was better for games than any PCs prior to VGA+Adlib, though still worse than the ST -it was also one of the best priced PCs of the time, though also still worse than the ST

)

Edited by kool kitty89, Mon Jun 13, 2011 10:28 PM.

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(and my middle school with half life LAN play in the "computer club")
But I was already set on loving computer games due to what my dad had at home. (X-Wing probably number 1, but I loved some of those quirky FMV adventure games like Return to Zork -actually like that a LOT more than the far more popular Myst of the same time)

my dad didn't really get into PC gaming either until the early 90s. He'd played a bunch of ST and Amiga stuff on loaned/work computers in the late 80s (had a few TRS-80 games prior to that), then got an NES in 1990 as a gift from some friends, then PCs, then SNES alongside PCs, N64+PC, etc. (having PC games complemented the increasingly genre-specific Nintendo offerings more and more too

)

Well my dad bought us a Tandy 1000 sl/2 it was $1300.00 with a printer$650.00(that was lots of money in 1989) "computer packages have always been that 2k mark for a good one with printer"...even today) to do school reports, with the new 3.5" disc drive and it would hold about 2x what a 5.25" would. I remember playing all the sierra quest games had every one untill they needed a "hard drive" to play, also had a trs-80 and a atari 2600, never ever saw a 7800 or ST untill I was looking on Atari age a couple of years ago, The nintendo and consoles were out in my region in the late 80's as everyone wanted to play the computer games that were way more interesting. Two of my friends with NES's threw theirs in the closet and never looked back, not untill the the ps/1 was when I heard of a console being used.(but I was over 20 by then) They were all just kids toys. Now I brought a 7800 and collected a bunch of games for it + the XM because I have a hard time playing the 2600 games as they are a little too basic for me to get into(well some of them) but the 7800 reminds me of the coleco one of my friends had that I thought was way way better than the 2600, as to most people the 5200, 7800 were just an imaginary thing on the game cartridge catalogs from the 2600 games I would buy but no one ever seen one, great marketing you lose.. I think atari lost cause they did not try/gave up..