Everybody had that one teacher that they didn’t want to get because they were too harsh. I had one in my high school. Sadly I don’t remember his name, but I’m so far removed from high school I hardly remember the names of my classmates. One thing I do remember is that anytime a graduate came back to visit they would always say that his class prepared them for college more than any other class had. Of course none of us believed them, but as soon as we went on to college, we were the ones telling our former underclassmen that indeed his stricter form of teaching did just that.
I had one of those moments recently with our friends at Nintendo. I can be pretty harsh on them. I mean I live in North American and I’m a fan of the Mother series, so I’m generally bitter. However while reading up on the history of the NES, I realized that most of their policies, even the ones that seem ridiculous, probably saved gaming.
Almost every decision Nintendo made for the NES was either about money or out of fear of another collapse of the video game industry. As an example, look at their design of the console. Today when we look back at the original NES and the Famicom, we wonder “why didn’t Nintendo just make the NES like the Famicom? It had a better design!” Well, except for the hardwired controllers. That part was silly. But it does seem ridiculous that the NES would have the annoying front loading cartridge slot when its Japanese brother was a top loader. Not surprisingly, the design choice was also thanks to the video game crash.
Nintendo was so insecure about having any comparisons to Atari and other older consoles that they didn’t want their machine to look anything like them. Instead of making it appear like a “toy,” they decided to model it after a successful consumer electronic, the VCR. This may be one example of Nintendo’s “cautiousness” that has no real proof to show that it worked, but it certainly was a unique design, and for the time it came out, appealing. Once Nintendo had control of the market and confidence that the bottom wasn’t going to drop out on them, they released a new design of the NES, with a top loading slot. Also missing from the new model was another element that was a necessary evil in the original design, the 10NES chip.
After the NES lifecycle was over and the Super Nintendo was brought to market, I would say the average number of NES carts that my friends and I had was around 20. However anytime I hear stories about an uncle or somebody dropping off an old Atari, it usually came with a garbage bag filled with ridiculous amounts of games, from around 30 up to 50 carts. This is probably because overall the Atari had a ridiculous amount of games since anybody could make them. Nintendo feared oversaturation of games, particularly bad ones, as in bad quality and bad for children, so they implemented a few policies for this. One was that games had to be approved by Nintendo for quality and content. Games like “Custer’s Revenge” were embarrassing for the industry, and Nintendo never wanted that kind of game to appear on their console and tarnish their name, so the final call was with them.
There was no way around the approval process because only Nintendo had the key to the 10NES chip, which was a lockout device in the NES that would (supposedly) prevent third party publishers from releasing a game without the authorization of Nintendo. If Nintendo approved your game, they would be the ones to decide how many carts would be made, and all would contain the “key,” which was another 10NES chip, to get past the lock. While this policy is archaic now (I’m looking at you, Apple) it was the right move at the right time.
Games were considered a child’s toy in the 80s and parents were the ones buying them, so Nintendo’s “policing” helped curb some of the backlash against this new form of media. Despite Nintendo’s lock and key method, it didn’t take long for some publishers like Tengen and Wisdom Tree to make their own cartridges that would override the lockout. The 10NES proved troublesome for the hardware, being the chief culprit of the blinking red light and flashing screen, so it was removed when the top loading NES was released.
Aside from hardware, Nintendo also had regulations which maintained their “quality over quantity” mantra which lasted through the GameCube era. Now they accept anything that fits in the Wii’s disc slot. Sorry, had to say it! As most older game players know, Nintendo only allowed third parties to publish five games per year on the NES. This was done because Nintendo saw the crazy amounts of Atari games and didn’t want the market saturated with poor quality titles, and didn’t want subpar games on their console. Of course as we all know there were loopholes and publishers like Konami and Acclaim would publish under names like Ultra and LJN so they could double their yearly releases. However because of this policy, there was generally a larger amount of quality games. Instead of being able to pad their lineups with generic baseball games or other quickly thrown together titles, publishers had to make sure that the five games they chose to release were of the highest quality.
Probably the most controversial move Nintendo made is that they forbade third party publishers to release their games on other consoles by making them sign an agreement. Some could argue that Nintendo was trying to create a monopoly, and they’re probably right. This was obviously a move made for money, but this move also helped contribute to the resurgence of video games. As normal as it is now to have multiple consoles, it was a foreign idea back then, one that proved costly during the “false start” pre-Nintendo years of gaming. Multiple formats for any type of media were unable to succeed in this era, as proven by the VHS and Beta situation, and to consumers, games were just a new form of media. To have more than one type of this “media” that played only on certain machines was confusing back then.
I think we can all recall a puzzled relative or two who, back in the day, referred to games as “Intendo tapes.” Nintendo was gaming in the mid to late 80s, and even though Sega held it’s own with the Master System, it was only during the time period when the Genesis came around that people started accepting games in their lives, and learning that they were more than just Nintendo. Of course Nintendo was eventually found in violation of anti-trust laws, so third parties were able to develop games for the Genesis as well. It’s difficult to defend Nintendo’s decision to make third parties sign exclusivity contracts, but honestly it probably saved a lot of confusion during these early days, especially with grandparents buying gifts. Again, the idea is archaic now, and who knows how far behind we would be in technology and overall game quality had Nintendo not been found guilty of anti-trust activities.
Some may agree that Nintendo did all this to make sure the industry survived, some may still think that they’re pure evil, but we can all agree that Nintendo did save gaming. Although they have done, and still do, many silly things, they have a pretty good track record, and even though some of us may still complain about their decisions (I know I will), maybe we should just trust that they know what they’re doing.
