When Fusajiro Yamauchi started the company it had humble beginnings. It wasn’t called Nintendo back then and it was known best for its various types of playing cards. If Yamauchi were alive today, I am sure he would stare in wonderment at what his company has become. It was his grandson Hiroshi who invented the company’s new name of Nintendo and it was through his visit to the United States in 1956 that allowed him to begin to see a greater future for the company. He was introduced to the concept of video games and felt that they would help to define the company from that point forward. He recruited university students who shared his vision and they worked tirelessly to bring a console to the market. They would introduce the world to their very first system via the handheld Game & Watch in 1980 and from there they would go on to make some of the most successful video game consoles of all time.
Their impact on the industry as a whole is evident and they were able to thrive during a time when many companies within the industry failed to stay in business. While they have had failures along the way, their research and development in the field have played a part in altering it in ways we could never have envisioned. While the Game and Watch was their first, the NES would be the cornerstone of their brand and of their identity and it would launch them into the stratosphere. It would make them a household name in America and around the world and would begin some of the greatest video game franchises of all time.
25 Backing Their Brand
One of the things that helps any company excel is having excellent customer service. It puts you on the map and it allows for a lot of positive interaction and involvement from your consumer base. From the very start, Nintendo has been known to provide world-class service and the introduction of its first major console proved that once again.
After the video game crash, there was fear the NES would flop.
Understandably, after this event, many businesses were leery about providing shelf space to any consoles. In order to combat this problem, the company ensured any business willing to give them wall space that if the system didn’t sell they would buy it back. This helped the company to flood the US market and they never looked back, selling well and above their projected target.
24 Some Serious Changes
A lot of time and effort goes into designing a gaming console. It not only has to appeal to consumers, but it also has to convey to them the capabilities of the system. When designing the NES, Nintendo knew they had to make some changes to its appearance apart from the Famicom in order to appeal to the US consumer base.
While many of the changes were made to allow Nintendo to distance itself from its competition, there was one change that was done for a very different reason altogether. As it turns out, originally the zapper for the NES was going to be a revolver replica, but fears in the United States prompted the company to change it to the famous peripheral that we know today.
23 Farewell To A Giant
It may not seem like it today, but when Nintendo ventured into the console space they had a very real chance of failing. After all, they had been known for creating card games and not video games and the Game and Watch was taking over the market at the time. Many felt that whatever the company was coming up with, it wouldn’t be enough to overcome the competition.
At first, the company had trouble selling it in Japan.
Ironically, it was their own doing thanks in large part to the success of their very first handheld, the Game and Watch. They had a hard time convincing consumers that the NES/Famicom was something entirely different. Their patience and confidence in their consumer base would pay off and though they would stop production in 1995 in America, the console itself would continue to be produced and sold inside Japan until 2003. This made it the longest running console of all time.
22 The Source Of Its Origin
One thing that you will notice about technology nowadays is that companies are quick to mention how another has borrowed ideas from them. Even consumers get in on the foray and they argue back and forth about who came up with which idea first. While there have been many times that ideas have been taken from others, it might surprise you to learn that this was standard practice during the NES’s development.
At the time of its development the laws related to video games and video game consoles were in their infancy and so it was rather common for companies to borrow ideas from one another. In designing the Famicom, the company decided to lean toward the design structure of the successful ColecoVision. Many of the elements were removed during the NES’s development, but you can spot a few of them within the controllers and the various inputs.
21 Weird Additions
Today we certainly wouldn’t find it strange to see many different and odd peripherals from Nintendo. After all, the Wii is chalk full of them and it would take you forever to collect all the third party controllers that are out there. While you no doubt know about add-ons such as the PowerGlove, there are a few that you might not be aware of.
Many within the company felt that peripherals were the key to the console’s success.
While you might know about the various joysticks and the Zapper, there are a few that you might not have ever come in contact with. For starters, the NES had something called the Konami LaserScope which was a voice-activated add-on for the Zapper that would fire the unit anytime that you said fire. Additionally, they had a concept design for a sewing machine and even a cassette player for the NES. It also had a motion board and gaming chair with built-in buttons.
20 Changing The Gaming Industry Forever
Today we don’t give it a second thought when we see a company logo indicating licensing, but not too long ago it wasn’t standard practice. Before the introduction of the NES, game designers could develop their own games for a console without facing legal implications. While this was great for consumers everywhere because it expanded the library of games, it did pose some problems.
Many gaming historians actually point to the lack of licensing within the gaming industry as the true cause of the video game crash of 1983. The market became saturated with games and there was no real quality control which helped to hurt many different company brands. Nintendo decided to buck this trend and made it a requirement that every game on its console have a licensing agreement with the company. They only allowed a few games to be produced by each company a year and soon after the entire industry adopted the policy.
19 A Peculiar Blinking Light
One thing that I will tell anyone who asks is that if you pick up an old Nintendo system, chances are it will work just fine. I have rarely run into a used system that didn’t work the way it did when it was brand new and I can’t tell you how many times I have dropped my SP and seen no signs of damage.
It is this quality and durability that has made the company a household name.
While this is certainly the case, there are times that you have to make some much-needed repairs. Recently, I attempted to play my NES only to find that it had the dreaded blinking red light. While many attribute this to a bad 72 pin connector it isn’t actually the case most of the time and is instead caused by a security chip on the motherboard. You simply have to bend the fourth pin on said chip and presto, your NES is good as new.
18 Putting On Airs
Once companies realized that consumers were interested in video games they began to flood the market with systems. You had businesses like Sears who had never produced gaming systems before trying their hand at it. While this might seem good for consumers it created way too much competition and there weren’t enough customers to ensure that every company had success.
Before long, there were many left over games that were never purchased and soon afterward you had the video game crash of 1983 that claimed giants like Atari as its victims. The crash itself caused businesses to not want to sell gaming consoles within their stores. In an effort to combat this problem Nintendo marketed the NES as an entertainment system rather than a gaming console. With that, they also fashioned the design of the NES after the household VCR, giving it a door to hide the cartridge and a lift similar to the VCR mechanism.
17 A Meshing Of Two Systems
I really wish that the United States was able to enjoy the brilliance that was the Famicom. Though it was effectively the NES system that we would get some three years later, it looked nothing like its predecessor when it was all said and done. Given the drive by collectors around the world to acquire one, it’s safe to say that it would have done well in the US despite its appearance.
Creating an inexpensive console was a top priority for the company.
To be fair, it’s easy to say this now given how things panned out, but I think that the NES sold because of the games and fun it provided and not for its looks. Since the two systems were essentially the same, early carts that were released for the NES contained Famicom chips that had an NES adapter attached to them.
16 Hitting Some Roadblocks
Something that is rather perplexing to me is the fact that companies are so against creating upgradeability for their consoles. It’s almost as if they don’t want to associate themselves with desktop computers even though they are essentially the same thing nowadays. There are even desktop computers that are just as powerful in smaller form factors that you can buy.
While this trend is likely to change in the future once things become cheaper, it is something that has plagued systems since the NES. In just three years after its initial release, game developers ran into issues with its hardware limitations. In an effort to overcome these hardware roadblocks, game companies began placing their own ram onto the circuit boards inside their game carts. This allowed them to increase the system’s capabilities without requiring the consumer to buy a whole new system.
15 An Iconic Magazine
In this day and age, it is rather easy to expand your consumer base through the internet without spending too much money to do so. Being a small country, it was rather easy for word of mouth to spread about the Famicom in Japan, but company executives worried that this wouldn’t be the case inside the United States.
Given its large size and low population density, the US was a difficult market to crack.
The company knew that they had to come up with a solution and they looked to trends within the United States for the answer. They found that magazines were a great way to get the word out and decided to create the Nintendo Power magazines that we know of today. It not only gave consumers an insight into company plans, but it also gave them interesting tips and tricks for the games they loved.
14 Longing For Materials
Having a shortage is nothing new in the gaming industry, but we don’t often feel the full effects of it because a company will quickly rectify the situation. They spend a lot of time and money figuring out just how many customers they will have at launch and streamline production ensures that extra consoles can be created with no problem at all.
While games are simply burnt onto disc today in a similar streamline process, it was vastly different during the time of the NES. You had to build each cart from the ground up and they required their own motherboard and video chips to function. The high demand for carts and the abundance of titles would ultimately cause massive delays in key titles for the system due to a lack of materials. One such game, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, was delayed within the United States for a full year as a result.
13 Putting Things Into Perspective
When you look at the relative size of cartridges for the system it is a wonder that such long games were placed within such a small form factor. In truth, most motherboards don’t even take up half of the cart itself, which speaks volumes about the great ability of game coders to compact everything in the way that they did.
Mario was supposed to end with the system, but thankfully that wasn’t the case.
The company didn’t think that the Mario franchise would do as well as it did and its large success ensured that it would be a launch title for nearly every system the company made from then on. While I like each Mario game on the system, Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of my all-time favorites. Interestingly, the amount of memory used in the game is less than a single texture image found in modern games today.
12 A Cart By Any Other Shade
There is a lot of history behind the seal of approval that we know of today. While it was indicative of the company’s licensing agreement with a game company, there were instances where games were created that didn’t get approved for licensing. These same games were allowed onto the platform if they agreed to produce their carts in either black, blue, or gold, instead of the traditional gray color.
The company wanted to limit the number of releases for the console.
Not only were third-party developers required to change their cartridge color, but they were also required to change the size and shape of their carts as well. These same requirements were not applied to the Famicom version though as many licensed games for the system were in a wide range of colors.
11 Dark Business Practices
It’s hard to argue with the company’s business model at this point. Each and every time that people think they are going to fail, they somehow turn things around and come out on top. While they certainly have done a lot of things the right way, the types of practices they employed during the production of games for the system were anything but. After hearing complaints from third-party developers the Federal Trade Commission decided to launch an investigation into company practices.
What followed was a twenty-five million dollar anti-trust lawsuit that required the company to give out rebates to every consumer. So, what did the company do exactly? Well, the US government found that they not only barred licensed developers from producing games for any other console but that they also prevented businesses from lowering game prices. If a business lowered the price the company would limit their supply of games or slow down their shipments.
10 A Familiar Look
There are a lot of things that we take for granted nowadays, but if it wasn’t for Nintendo we might not have them at all. After all, the types of controllers that we know of today are all fashioned after the original NES controller. Sure, their appearance may differ, but the concept was created during the production of the NES.
One regret for the company was not patenting their controller design.
Masayuki Uemura, the designer of the NES, deviated from the traditional joystick controllers. He took inspiration from the Game and Watch to create the controller and the first versions of it contained a square button and not a circular one. They were later changed to circle buttons due to the fact that the square buttons tended to stick or fall off after extensive use. Today, every controller utilizes the same button design that he created.
9 Breaking New Ground
While I’ve already covered some facts about the original controller design within this list I wanted to focus more on the various controllers that Nintendo created for the system itself. Not only did they create a control pad with a joystick that had features which allowed you to slow down and speed up gameplay (among other things), they also came up with a new controller design that is very similar to controllers we know of today.
Its name was the NES Max and it was as close to the modern controller as you are probably going to get. Not only did it ditch the brick feel of the original controller altogether, but it had the concave grips and rounded edges that we are familiar with today. Not only that, but it had its own standalone joystick on the left side as a replacement for the d-pad.
8 A Banned Title From An Icon
Banning games is certainly nothing new. It has been going on for some time and there is a multitude of reasons why we never see a particular game hit the US market. It could be due to censorship constraints or it could be due to particular fears, but usually, these same games are later released once enough time has passed.
Shigeru Miyamoto has created some of the greatest games of all time.
He is perhaps best known for the creation of Mario and Zelda, but he has had a hand in many other great titles to be sure. Not only did he create these iconic franchises, but he also developed the very first game for the NES called Devil World. Due to its demonic imagery, it was banned in the United States and even when it was released for the Wii virtual console many years later it remained banned within the US.
7 Permission Not Granted
If you ask many people about one of the more difficult games for the system out there they would probably mention Punch-Out!!. It wasn’t an easy game by any means and it required you to memorize fighter patterns in order to claim victory. As it turns out, a lot of the more difficult games on the systems were designed that way because game developers felt that they were too easy.
The problem with this is that they understood how the game was made and therefore understood how to easily beat it. As a result, you had games that were rather frustrating to play. While you will see many iconic individuals within the game, one iconic character didn’t have prior approval from the company before its inclusion. Creator Genyo Takeda placed Mario as the referee within the game without getting prior approval from the company.
6 State Of The Art Copyright Protection
The Japanese version of the console looks nothing like its close cousin in the NES, but the hardware is almost identical. For the NES, the copyright protection was internally controlled thanks to a security chip which not only locked your console into a particular region, but also read the chip inside of the cart and prevented it from playing if it was a bootleg.
For the Famicom, it was something entirely different. While the cart versions used a similar process to the NES, the diskette versions had an indented Nintendo logo with varying letter depths. When the diskette was inserted it would trigger components within the system and launch the game. If the diskette was a bootleg version it would not have the proper depth and would therefore not play.
