In america sure, the NES and Mario saved you from the games crash before Sonic and the Mega Drive showed the world that you didn't need to be Nintendo to be successful. But the games crash didn't hit the rest of us, so the third generation was about as impactful as the third man to land on the moon. The one that really recreated the market was the SEGA CD, sounds ludicrous, but THAT is what inspired Nintendo to make the SNES CD addon which gave us PlayStation, and this went on to bring gaming out of its small niche and into a much bigger market worldwide. From a US standpoint, you're right, but from the rest of the worlds viewpoint, not so much.
No, if anything Mario and Nintendo show the world that you don't need atari to be successful and second only showed the world that success can only get you so far and that too much success will need to ridiculous ideas and overconfidence like how Sega did.
when i was a kid back in the 1980's. i spent countless hours playing the Atari 2600. until the nes came out. the 80's era was the best time for video games
No, many people playing ocarina of time, FF7, and resident evil et cetera did go to and went that they could wish that they could rewind time by a decade
@@stevenrosscarpenter People don't realize that the console market crashed in North America, because of the home computer boom. People were buying TRS-80's, Apple II and C-64 computers, instead of console, because they had offered so much more. I didn't buy the NES until 1989, because a good portion of the games on the NES, were ports of 8-bit computer games.
@@Gamevet Good point. You could use them for games or for work - like PCs today. My point is that younger retro gamers don't really know anything about the C64. They know about Zelda, Metroid and Mario on NES, but nothing else from the 80s.
To understand the third generation of gaming, you have to understand Nintendo and the Great Video Game Crash of 1983. The crash of '83 was caused by a variety of factors such as market oversaturation, inferior technology, Atari's refusal to credit developers for their work, competition with home computers, shovelware, and other stuff. All that killed the North American video game industry for two years. Nintendo had seen success in arcades with Donkey Kong and Mario Bros., and was even in talks with Atari to sell them the rights to sell the Famicom in North America. But Atari didn't have the money to buy the rights and simply strung Nintendo along. So Nintendo said, "Fuck it, we'll release the Famicom in America ourselves!" Nintendo studied what led to the 1983 game crash and learned how to avoid the mistakes of Atari, Coleco, Mattel, etc. They made the NES look more like a VCR than a video game console. Nintendo knew that the top-loading Japanese Famicom wouldn't sell as it originally was. Remember, this was a time when people thought of video games as a passing fad that went out with a whimper. Hence the front-loading design. They added the 10NES lockout chip to deter the glut of shovelware and porn games that plagued the Atari 2600 and other second-gen consoles.* Ditto creating a cartridge design that nobody but Nintendo could make. The Nintendo Seal of Quality was also used to show that the game was properly tested and worked. During the second generation, nobody tested the games to make sure they were playable and the companies thought that people would buy video games no matter the quality. Not so much during the third generation. The Nintendo Seal of Quality didn't mean that the game worked right 100& of the time, just that it was tested, playable, and would actually read once you turned on the console. Anything else was assumed pirated and "play at your own risk". These moves didn't stop shovelware altogether, though; the NES still has plenty of shovelware and bad games (i.e., anything LJN ever made) even when you factor out the unlicensed games and Taiwanese bootlegs. The worst move Nintendo did? Their exclusivity policy. If a company wanted to make games for Nintendo, they could only make games for them and no one else. It was so monopolistic and crowded out both Sega and Atari. In North America, Nintendo had the market cornered while only a little portion was split between the Master System (which was technologically SUPERIOR to the NES) and 7800. But the release of the NES in North America worked. It breathed new life into America's console market. They had the right game for the task, too: A game about a fat Italian plumber running around a land full of walking mushrooms and anthropomorphic turtles on his quest to rescue a princess from a fire-breathing dragon-turtle. *The 10NES chip has even locked out legit games, giving us that blinking screen. The original Famicom didn't have the chip, making importing Japanese games difficult. Retro gamers who play NES games on original hardware simply cut one of the pins on the 10NES chip to defeat the lockout.
Plus, I'm not sure if this is true or not, but I had heard that Nintendo also had advertised the NES in the States as an electronic toy to effectively sneak it into American markets.
It was not the worst move that Nintendo did, and they needed to do this move because there were so many games there were poor quality and it had people not wanting to buy these games so of course quality control has to be in order. But they didn't stop any of these bad games from coming in coma also there were not a lot of shovelware and bad games on Nintendo there were mostly good games on Nintendo
NES dominated the US but Europe was much more interested in micros in the eighties. That's probably the major difference in the 3rd generation. As an older gamer, I could not afford a NES in the eighties but was perfectly happy with my Commodore 64 and loads of games on tape and diskette. Another wild thing about this generation is the randomness of system popularity in certain regions. Ever heard of the MSX computers? Well Konami certainly liked this system. It was popular in Spain, the Netherlands, Japan.... not in the US or the UK though.
Europe was not more interested in micros in the 80s. And that is not the major difference in the 3rd generation. Also system popularity is not a wild thing.
I for one loved the Sega master system. I had both. I think NES was more well known with more popular series like Legend of Zelda and Castlevania, but I still think the master system was overall just as good, but it didn't have quite the library of NES.
Tbh I really think that... There were neat games on it but the SNES knocked it out of the park... I genuinely think 90% of new titles were meh... And I grew up with a Commodore 128... Which I still think has more to offer 😊
the nes a plethora of good games and a plethora of horribly bad games too. i think the snes, even a with a more limited catalog, is where nintendo exercised the best quality control. so many amazingly good games for the snes. also the snes controller is by far the best. the only modern controller i have which comes close is the wii classic controller, which seems to be based on the snes controller. there is one nes game that i think has the highest replayability rating i could give any game of any console. it's called river city ransom.
@@firestriker3580 the snes controller was better. 4 additional buttons added a ton functionality. and a rounded design made it much more ergonomic. in fact the controller i use with my emulators is the wii classic controller, which is modeled after the snes controller(but with the additional analog sticks modern controllers have).
It would haven been nice if you had had an actual Sega Master System game playing for the visuals for the Master System and not Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, which was a Mega Drive/Genesis game. Some actual Master System games like Wonder Boy III or any of the 8-bit Mickey Mouse Castle of Illusion series games look better than the "next gen" Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle.
@@Bithe7011 I didn't mean that you should buy Master System hardware or games considering that Master System games are so easy to emulate that they can easily be played in a modern web browser without any plugins.
@SteveBrandon The OG Phantasy Star would also be a recommendation. Since that game was basically Sega's answer to Final Fantasy and was one of the first if not THE first JRPGs to feature a female protagonist, as well as featuring a sci-fi setting.
@@KitsuneYojimbo I know, it's great, I've played Phantasy Star many times, I was just limiting my visual recommendations to side-scrolling platformers.
@@Bithe7011 Sega was enormously popular in the UK. The overwhelmimg dominance of Nintendo was a very American phenomenon. If you were born in the 80s in the UK there's no way you could have missed that, unless you existed in a strange Nintendo bubble. Don't get me wrong, I'm a big Nintendo fan, but I was always conscious of being a bit of an outlier, and, of course, I had Sega too.
Sega was not enormously popular in the UK as much as Nintendo was. Also the dominance of Nintendo was not an American phenomenon, it was a worldwide phenomenon. If you were born in the 80s in the UK, you wouldn't miss Nintendo. Also there was no strange Nintendo. Also also you being conscious it doesn't make any sense and it was never an outlier in either way
@@firestriker3580 in the UK the SNES sold 1,050,000 units by 1994, Sega Megadrive released in 1990 too, had sold 3 million units by 1996. I am well aware of Nintendo's global dominance, largely thanks to the American Market, but that was not the case everywhere and Sega gave them a run for their money in the UK for a good long while. The Master system also narrowly out sold the NES. I had both Sega and Nintendo machines as a child but my claim was not solely based on personal anecdote.
Games had a purpose, back when people were afraid of computers and didn't understand them. Games offered a safe way to explore these strange new digital devices. And now, everyone grows up surrounded by electronic gear. Games have partially depleted their utility in a world, where nobody fears computers anymore. It's still a way to blow off steam and challenge others, but that gets boring eventually. As you age, the value of your time grows and at some point you realize that what you get out of games is never worth the time wasted playing them. All you do is piss your life away with no payoff whatsoever. If you're buying games, you're paying to make yourself stupid.
