I can't stand localizers. The famicom didn't need to be completely redesigned in order for it to succeed. There was clear market success in Japan already, so they knew the software would be capable to sell systems. I feel like there are other strategies to get stores to stock the product that don't involve redesigning everything. For example they could give guarantees to purchase back unsold stock, and if the famicon failed in America they could ship the units back to Japan to sell them there.
Also, revealing they were doing illegal price fixing with Sega is not surprising.
I'm glad they never released the Famicom Disk System in North America and instead retrofited those games in cartdrige format for our market. I was a kid and while my parents bought me a NES they would never have agreed to buy the FDS. They are probably not alone. Also, to a north-american eye, the Famicom was ugly as sin, looks like a Fisher Price piece of crap. Can't put that under the living room's tv set and most of the homes in the '80s had exactly one tv. A redesign was mandatory. The loading mechanism was an error but we know that only in hindsight.
Having played the Famicom Disk System, I will also say that the load times are abysmal. I think it is Castlevania II that has an autosave function for the Japanese release which was for the FDS and it is so darn slow that I would recommend against playing it even if you can read Japanese.
After the video game crash, retailers (particularly department stores, where most major purchases were made in the 80s, usually on payment plans) were extremely resistant to stocking another console (and consumers were resistant to buying one -- they had been buying home computers like the Commodore 64 since the video game crash to better justify the expense.)
The redesign was intended to position the NES more as a home video accessory and remove it from the tainted video game category, hence the front-loading (like a VCR) so that it could fit into an entertainment system / TV table. It may seem silly from a modern standpoint but it was all about perception, and it was what was needed to successfully 'reboot' the video game market in North America.
What’s always been missing from it for me is whether it actually mattered.
The NES wasn’t cheap. It didn’t do anything but play video games. Did its looking kinda (but not really) like some other piece of AV equipment (but having no other actual capabilities) contribute meaningfully to its success? Were a lot of its buyers, who weren’t exactly making an impulse purchase, swayed by the appearance?
I kinda doubt it. Meanwhile, the redesign did make it less-reliable than its Japanese counterpart.
I don't think the attached controllers with cord lengths appropriate for Japan would have done well in the US. Our Intellivision had attatched controllers and that wasn't great.
The only thing anyone needed to aid their perception and reboot the video game market in north America was 15-20 minutes with super mario bros. I knew a lot of people with an NES and not one of them could care less about how front-loading or VCR-like it was. Everyone, including the adults, knew a fun time when they saw it.
Nintendo already had an answer to the problem of people being afraid of the low quality games that gave Atari a bad name, and that was their "Seal of Quality" which ultimately didn't end up meaning much since shovelware has always been an issue with Nintendo (especially when it came to their handhelds). Still, their first party games were good enough that Nintendo could keep selling consoles even when there were few other games worth buying for them.
Stores weren't stocking video game consoles in Japan either. I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same. Technology was moving fast at this time, and when a kid gets a taste of a game like Super Mario Bros, they will want the console since there is software they want to play with. There was practically a guarantee of market demand, and the software demoed well with American kids. I don't believe the perception was that much of an actual roadblock to shipping the famicom. I feel like if you were to ask kids if they wanted a NES because it looked like a VCR they would look at you funny. They would want it for the games.
> I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same.
I mean, they kind of do. Before the NES rose to dominance, people who didn't care that much called everything an Atari. During and after the NES, people called everything a Nintendo. Now, people are likely to call everything a PlayStation.
If you're a toy store and you've just been clearancing all the systems for whatever they went for and have a barrel of games for $1 at the checkout that isn't selling and a couple more barrels in the back, you might be more interested in something that looks different than the others.
Sony of America essentially tried to do the same with the PlayStation.
SCE in Japan fought back and eventually positioned themselves within the company to be able to fire nearly all of the upper management in the US in order to promote their vision of the console.
It turned out no consumer in the US cared enough about the name, the size of the controller, or the color and look of the console to not buy it.
I can sort of understand the redesign of the Famicom/NES. What I can't understand is why they redesigned the Super Famicom. That just outright looked better than what the US ended up with.
Nintendo Power did an article about the Super Nintendo's design when it was new. It mentions that one of the most common service problems for the NES was spills, so a major design constraint for the Super Nintendo was that there couldn't be a flat spot on it big enough for someone to place a glass of soda or a bowl of cereal. I guess the original Super Famicom design was too flat for their liking.
As a retro/analog guy I was expecting to be in agreement with you, but after an image search I think I actually prefer the SNES. The SF looks like a tractor feed printer while the SNES probably looked fun and futuristic for its time.
Unfortunately, the legacy of David Sheff's Game Over is tarnished. He took shortcuts and got some important details wrong. An historian should find additional sources for the statements made in the book.
Nope. I'd go with anything from MIT. Racing The Beam and I Am Error were transcendental for me. Some stuff from Boss Fight books is absurdly good. Final Fantasy V immediately comes to mind.
The article's mission was to summarize the most important and most interesting information in the video so I don't have to spend an hour and 45 minutes watching it. Since it failed to do so, it has no purpose.
Hardly. Its actual mission seems to be: ”A no-noise email roundup of all the
must-read Nintendo news”. I’m sure it did exactly that for its reader. It might not the best article to submit to HN though.
Video on which this very small article is based on: https://youtu.be/f2WDfsiLiRA
The article itself is just explaining what the video contains, and then embeds the video.
This should have [video] in the title
I can't stand localizers. The famicom didn't need to be completely redesigned in order for it to succeed. There was clear market success in Japan already, so they knew the software would be capable to sell systems. I feel like there are other strategies to get stores to stock the product that don't involve redesigning everything. For example they could give guarantees to purchase back unsold stock, and if the famicon failed in America they could ship the units back to Japan to sell them there.
Also, revealing they were doing illegal price fixing with Sega is not surprising.
I'm glad they never released the Famicom Disk System in North America and instead retrofited those games in cartdrige format for our market. I was a kid and while my parents bought me a NES they would never have agreed to buy the FDS. They are probably not alone. Also, to a north-american eye, the Famicom was ugly as sin, looks like a Fisher Price piece of crap. Can't put that under the living room's tv set and most of the homes in the '80s had exactly one tv. A redesign was mandatory. The loading mechanism was an error but we know that only in hindsight.
Having played the Famicom Disk System, I will also say that the load times are abysmal. I think it is Castlevania II that has an autosave function for the Japanese release which was for the FDS and it is so darn slow that I would recommend against playing it even if you can read Japanese.
After the video game crash, retailers (particularly department stores, where most major purchases were made in the 80s, usually on payment plans) were extremely resistant to stocking another console (and consumers were resistant to buying one -- they had been buying home computers like the Commodore 64 since the video game crash to better justify the expense.)
The redesign was intended to position the NES more as a home video accessory and remove it from the tainted video game category, hence the front-loading (like a VCR) so that it could fit into an entertainment system / TV table. It may seem silly from a modern standpoint but it was all about perception, and it was what was needed to successfully 'reboot' the video game market in North America.
That’s the standard story, yes.
What’s always been missing from it for me is whether it actually mattered.
The NES wasn’t cheap. It didn’t do anything but play video games. Did its looking kinda (but not really) like some other piece of AV equipment (but having no other actual capabilities) contribute meaningfully to its success? Were a lot of its buyers, who weren’t exactly making an impulse purchase, swayed by the appearance?
I kinda doubt it. Meanwhile, the redesign did make it less-reliable than its Japanese counterpart.
I don't think the attached controllers with cord lengths appropriate for Japan would have done well in the US. Our Intellivision had attatched controllers and that wasn't great.
The only thing anyone needed to aid their perception and reboot the video game market in north America was 15-20 minutes with super mario bros. I knew a lot of people with an NES and not one of them could care less about how front-loading or VCR-like it was. Everyone, including the adults, knew a fun time when they saw it.
Nintendo already had an answer to the problem of people being afraid of the low quality games that gave Atari a bad name, and that was their "Seal of Quality" which ultimately didn't end up meaning much since shovelware has always been an issue with Nintendo (especially when it came to their handhelds). Still, their first party games were good enough that Nintendo could keep selling consoles even when there were few other games worth buying for them.
Stores weren't stocking video game consoles in Japan either. I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same. Technology was moving fast at this time, and when a kid gets a taste of a game like Super Mario Bros, they will want the console since there is software they want to play with. There was practically a guarantee of market demand, and the software demoed well with American kids. I don't believe the perception was that much of an actual roadblock to shipping the famicom. I feel like if you were to ask kids if they wanted a NES because it looked like a VCR they would look at you funny. They would want it for the games.
> I really don't think people would equate all video game consoles as being the same.
I mean, they kind of do. Before the NES rose to dominance, people who didn't care that much called everything an Atari. During and after the NES, people called everything a Nintendo. Now, people are likely to call everything a PlayStation.
If you're a toy store and you've just been clearancing all the systems for whatever they went for and have a barrel of games for $1 at the checkout that isn't selling and a couple more barrels in the back, you might be more interested in something that looks different than the others.
But the redesign was targeted at stores, not end consumers
Do you really thinks stores would not be smart enough to realize that it was a game console? I don't think it would trick stores.
Sony of America essentially tried to do the same with the PlayStation.
SCE in Japan fought back and eventually positioned themselves within the company to be able to fire nearly all of the upper management in the US in order to promote their vision of the console.
It turned out no consumer in the US cared enough about the name, the size of the controller, or the color and look of the console to not buy it.
original famicom was admittedly cheap-looking and tiny, im glad we got a redesign on that. super famicom shouldve been left alone though
I can sort of understand the redesign of the Famicom/NES. What I can't understand is why they redesigned the Super Famicom. That just outright looked better than what the US ended up with.
Nintendo Power did an article about the Super Nintendo's design when it was new. It mentions that one of the most common service problems for the NES was spills, so a major design constraint for the Super Nintendo was that there couldn't be a flat spot on it big enough for someone to place a glass of soda or a bowl of cereal. I guess the original Super Famicom design was too flat for their liking.
That doesn't make sense, the Super Famicom / European SNES has a curved surface, whereas the American SNES is the one with a flat surface.
As a retro/analog guy I was expecting to be in agreement with you, but after an image search I think I actually prefer the SNES. The SF looks like a tractor feed printer while the SNES probably looked fun and futuristic for its time.
Yeah, why the purple buttons?
If this is interesting to you, I recommend the book Game Over by David Sheff.
Unfortunately, the legacy of David Sheff's Game Over is tarnished. He took shortcuts and got some important details wrong. An historian should find additional sources for the statements made in the book.
Still much more accurate than some other books like Console Wars.
Would you say _Game Over_ is the best example of a book in this space/topic, despite the flaws?
Nope. I'd go with anything from MIT. Racing The Beam and I Am Error were transcendental for me. Some stuff from Boss Fight books is absurdly good. Final Fantasy V immediately comes to mind.
The article's mission was to summarize the most important and most interesting information in the video so I don't have to spend an hour and 45 minutes watching it. Since it failed to do so, it has no purpose.
Hardly. Its actual mission seems to be: ”A no-noise email roundup of all the must-read Nintendo news”. I’m sure it did exactly that for its reader. It might not the best article to submit to HN though.
I hate to be that guy, but is there a transcript or even ai summary of the video?
I copy/pasted an AI summary (using Recall) of the video here:
https://sharetext.io/42b482da
And the full transcript here:
https://sharetext.io/d675f945
Youtube has a built-in transcript feature. You can find it in the video description
Also a built in AI summary feature, if you subscribe to Gemini I guess