Condensed History of Video Games: Nintendo Seal of Quality (1984-1989)

This is part of a series. Please also see:
Condensed History of Video Games: From Tic-Tac-Toe to Pong (1952-1975)
Condensed History of Video Games: The Rise and Fall of Atari (1975-1984)

1984: The Nadir

No joke- Atari buried tons of E.T. games

When we left the story of the video game saga in 1984, the market was in shambles and there were serious doubts that it  would ever return to its prior glory. The fear was that video games would pass away like the hula hoop and the Cabbage Patch Doll. No indications suggested that the best was yet to come, but as was the case in 1971 when Computer Space flopped, and 1977 when Pong got boring, 1984 was to be the darkness before the dawn of something better.

Atari 800

We haven't even discussed one of the biggest aspects of the video game crash. Video games earned their first foothold in homes at a time in which there were no personal computers. The 1981 introduction of the IBM PC did not have an immediate effect on this market, since it was too expensive for most households and it was basically a business tool. Graphics were a minimal priority from the start. But as cheaper offerings from Commodore, an improved Apple lineup including the new Mac for 1984, and cheaper PC clones from Compaq and others hit the market towards mid-decade, video games were a harder sell because they only offered entertainment and couldn't do business or education. These drawbacks often formed the topic of negative advertising. Why buy a game system that will ruin your children's minds, when you can nurture them with a home computer that can help them research, study, and learn how to use a computer? Ironically, nearly all of the video game makers, particularly Atari and Coleco, had cheap PC offerings as well, in the interest of diversification. The Atari 8-bit series (400 and 800 models) were also capable of playing some games, but they were full-fledged (although basic) computers. In the UK, Sinclair's dirt-cheap and feature-less ZX-80 and ZX-81 were prompting a British computer education boom that would inspire a new generation of British programmers.

Commodore VIC-20: A steal at $199 in 1982

The trend everywhere was for greater home computer ownership. That doesn't seem to conflict with video game ownership by modern standards, but in the early 80s, all of these were rather expensive propositions, and so it was a fairly well-off family that could afford both a home computer and a video game library in the slumping economy of the early 1980s. Moreover, the value of computer and video games in the home was still not yet proven; the idea was still novel. When faced with the option of getting a modern video game system or a modern computer, the question was easy for most families. They chose the home computer because it was capable of some tasks besides gaming. However, the machines of  the day were unable to do some of the most simple tasks that we take for granted today. Home office technology was largely unavailable unless you had an expensive high-end PC. Needless to say, the World Wide Web  did not exist yet, although there were rudimentary internet services like Prodigy.

If the home computer makers really knew their market, they could (and did) emphasize the game-playing ability of their machines to the same kids who would then pull the sensible side out when trying to get their mommies and daddies to fork over the cash for a new PC. All this was more fodder for the folks who insisted that the video game fad had run its course and it would never be so large again, at least not from the standpoint of dedicated consoles.

Atari 2600 "Jr": yours for $49.99

One might be forgiven for assuming that Atari faded into oblivion after the Crash of '83, and that all we have are memories. Far from the truth! Atari had strong sales of its 8-bit computers after the crash and actually went into the black by the end of 1984. Throughout the 80s they eked out small profits on their lower market share, no longer driving the industry. If the 7800 (1986) and Jaguar (1993) were earnest attempts to regain their former control, nobody seemed to notice. The 7800 was simply nothing special, and the Jaguar was downright terrible. The bright spot in Atari's gaming portfolio continued to come from the old 2600, which was repackaged in 1985, when it was technically obsolete, and sold at a correspondingly low price of $50 since all the design and tooling was long paid for. Atari didn't stop making the 2600 until 1992, making it to this date the longest-lived home video game console. (However, Sony has pledged to build the PlayStation 2 for as long as demand exists, which means the PS2 will beat the 2600 if it survives beyond 2014.)

Atari 7800: Ready in 1984, delayed until 1986

The makers of video games are different from other companies. It is hard to think of a company in as enviable a position as Atari in 1982, when it was the fastest-growing company in American history. It's quite impossible to rationalize that level of growth with the level of contraction that would be experienced even two years later, when video game sales took a nose-dive into mid-70s levels. This level of boom and bust is intolerable to modern corporations. But it's the way the video game market was.

This is part of the magic of the video game industry. It is making a product that is imaginative in every single way. A developer attempts to make a world in which you interact, in which the controls make sense and the things you do onscreen are both pleasurable and meaningful. The appeal of video games is incredibly strong, and it doesn't require physical strength or massive intelligence to play most of the fun games available. The fact that such imagination is required to make games that click with the public, means that no company can hope to ride on past successes and cease to produce challenging, exciting, innovative new games. Even if the market has collapsed, even if the very name of video games has been tainted by poor quality releases, the video game developers still remain interested in their craft, and they will recombine into new companies or new organizations for the development of new and better games. We have learned that video games are not a fad and will never die.

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Aside: My favorite company

It may be gray now, but the original was red, and I prefer it!

I feel confident saying that I know the most magical company of them all, the developers of which have produced more smiles, laughter, and hours of entertainment in the last 27 years than Disney and 20th Century Fox combined. A company whose mascots have remained globally popular for decades and are known in nearly every country on Earth. A company that fought tremendous adversity to achieve every milestone of its journey, and has clawed its way back to the forefront of its field even after falling into a prolonged, depressing second-place for years. The famous names at this company have consistently produced masterful games, which have been critically hailed by adults and gobbled up by children alike, for the past 30 years. Part of me still feels like there must be some kind of holy collaboration that makes 90% of their games shine eternally.

...and Mario movies too.

Mario TV shows...

Of course I am talking about Nintendo. Of all the companies in the entire world, not just confined to video games, I can think of none have had such a steady stream of high-quality creative output. I could wax lyrical about the effects that Nintendo had on my youth until my face turned blue. If I wanted to chronicle all the Nintendo games that have touched my life in some way, I would need to write a novel. You might say that this is just fanspeak. That I am a video game geek who is susceptible to this level of adoration. But the rest of the public might agree. As of May 2012, Nintendo has sold over 676 million video game systems worldwide, and over 3.6 billion video games. This is only to include those developed in-house and not the billions of others that were made for Nintendo systems by other developers. What other video game company has successfully turned its mascots into the stars of television shows (admittedly lackluster ones in the late 80s and early 90s) and even a Hollywood movie (Super Mario Brothers: admittedly terrible)? I can think of none. Mario doesn't have quite the star power now that he did at his earlier peak, but he's probably nearly as globally recognizable as Ronald McDonald. Even 10 years ago I would have said that Pac-Man was more iconic, but he is fading from the minds of today's younger gamers. Mario has faded very little. Each new release of a flagship Mario game is met with high praise and commercial success; even rehashes of old Mario games for a new system somehow retain their luster.

The Legend of Zelda (1986) for NES.

For critical appeal, The Legend of Zelda might do somewhat better. I dare say that when it comes to making an impact through video games on those who couldn't care less to play them, Zelda has all the others beaten with its ridiculously catchy Hyrule overworld theme. Countless dads and grandmas and babysitters have caught an earful of their child's video game while doing something in the next room, and even my dad (who doesn't like Nintendo games) will say that Zelda has a pretty darn good tune.

Where did Nintendo begin? It stretches back decades before electronics were invented, and is a story for another article. The topic of this post is the legendary Nintendo effort in 1985 to launch its Famicom (Family Computer) in the United States. It chose to use its own company name proudly on the front and attach a generic "Entertainment System" to the back, resulting in the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System if you're an alien).

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Looking back from 1980, you'd never believe Japan lost WWII.

There is a long history of famous Japanese debut efforts in the United States, perhaps because starting prices have usually been so low that even a half-decent effort will sell. Expectations were also low, as stereotypes that were inflamed by WWII took decades to subside. But when Honda first started selling motorcycles stateside in the 1950s, they were soon competitive. When AT&T started licensing its Bell Labs-developed transistor in 1952 for outside use, with a transistor radio following from Texas Instruments in 1954, the Japanese firms Sanyo and Sony were less than a year behind the Americans. They had a major market presence within a decade. Starting with Hitachi and Sanyo in the 1950s, and later bolstered by Sony, JVC, and Mitsubishi, the Japanese captured the bulk of the American television market by the 1970s. GE gave up on the market in 1986 (Magnavox and RCA about the same time) and Zenith, the last American maker of televisions (formerly the last American maker of transistor radios as well) went bankrupt in 1999. The market for personal radios was ultimately cornered by Sony with the Walkman, and that company also was at the vanguard of a successful Japanese assault on American stereo, speaker, and amplifier companies. Canon and other camera makers sold high-quality cameras stateside as early as the 1960s, and just recently (2012) put the legendary US firm Eastman Kodak out of business as well. Basically every appliance that can be named in the American kitchen or living room from microwave ovens to alarm clocks was pioneered by American companies, but US production was overwhelmingly usurped by Japanese makers of the same products. It usually took a long time, and often the first efforts were laughed at, but eventually the Japanese learned how to make the right product.

Japan's original post-WWII strength was its cheap labor, a condition which let it undercut the rest of the world in the cost of certain manufacturing (like transistor radios) until about 1965, when it too outsourced, this time to Hong Kong and ultimately Taiwan and mainland China. At about this time, a remarkable thing started to happen: Japan rapidly increased the sophistication of its engineering and it learned every lesson that America had to teach about business and organization, then started to usurp the former master. And yet Japan stopped producing anything at the lowest-cost. It would seem as though the companies and the nation were engaged in a continuous, harmonious push to make the badge "Made in Japan" itself a considerable asset.

Some manufactured goods, like automobiles, are still Japanese-produced, but for cheap products most of the labor done on the Japanese-branded products (as with most American-branded products as well) has been outsourced to China or Taiwan. In some cases Korea has taken over for Japan as the new up-and-coming manufacturing power, although it too outsources much of the labor to China. China has regulations that are basically unenforced, and they pay wages that undercut the entire world, with volume much more important than quality.

Unless you do a lot of research, you can't quite be sure how good the Chinese factory that makes the product is. The badge "Made in China" appears on everything from test equipment from manufacturers like Tektronix, to countless OE-grade automotive parts, to utter crap at flea markets and 90% of everything on the shelves at Dollar Tree. I can't say that Chinese stuff is all bad, because clearly they can make good stuff, but with the nature of production over there so secretive, it's hard to verify that an outsourcing manufacturer will actually give the Chinese factory of choice what it needs to compete, or if they will simply place an order and wait for the bidders to start fighting for the order to the tune of a few cents saved. That means, to a grumpy fart like me, that at least when you see "Made in Japan" or "Made in the USA", you can be reasonably guaranteed that it's good, since if it wasn't good the company surely wouldn't still be in business with the Chinese competition around.

Occasionally the Japanese tried too soon. Den Fujita, of Fujita, Inc., one of the first companies manufacturing transistor radios in Japan, soon had to learn that the American way of business meant that a contract was binding and that consistent quality was necessary if Japanese wares were ever to be more than gas station giveaways. His account is the subject of an interesting article in the Rutherford Journal.

As the earliest postwar Japanese entrepreneurs will note, Japan must concede that its pre-war methods of assembly and quality control were slightly updated versions of medieval production lines. The degree to which America outpaced Japan in production during WWII is damning evidence that they were many years behind in almost every category. American servicemen learned this firsthand from collecting Japanese small arms of WWII, with production quality varying from acceptable to absolute junk depending on who made it. German manufactured goods of WWII were different in that the production quality could be poor, but German designs were often cutting-edge, even in the final days of the war. Japan produced few modern designs as the war dragged on, and most of these were with support from the Germans.

When Toyota originally began selling cars in the US in 1957, their offering (the first-gen Crown) was far too small, underpowered, and flimsy to cope with American highways, and the thing quickly became laughingstock. Such was the negative response to this attempt, that it was to set the Japanese car export business back years. The car market was a tough nut to crack, but by the mid-70s, the Japanese had a largely competitive set of offerings, anchored by the sensible Honda Civic and later Accord. Although Japan became a semiconductor player by the 1970s, the Japanese did not experience the flourishing of independent PC builders in that decade like the United States did, and when there was a popular offering in the early 80s (the MSX) it was a Microsoft design with an American Zilog processor. With the sole exception of the odd Sony laptop, no Japanese brand has made itself strongly felt in the American market for PCs. Japan also had a tough time exporting its taste in television shows and film to the United States; it would take massive hits like Pokemon in the 1990s to bring anime out of the fringes and into the American mainstream. Starting in the immediate aftermath of WWII, the American soft power (cultural influence) has had a profound effect on Japan that continues to this day, while conversely the Japanese have usually not attempted mainstream cultural exports to the United States. Some manufactured goods markets have seen almost no Japanese penetrations whatsoever, like firearms, full-size pickup trucks, medical equipment, and mainframe computers. The first two (guns and trucks) have become the haven for a certain type of American patriot; it absolutely makes sense that in this market the Japanese wouldn't be highly welcome (Tundra and Titan sales are never class-leading). Still, I always found it strange that the United States was able to stay ahead of Japan in terms of semiconductor technology, processor development, and concentration of computer science talent. Japan never had a full-scale competitor to Wintel for the home market or IBM for the professional or mainframe market. As for medical technology, perhaps this is due to some kind of import regulation; I am unqualified to guess. Maybe in the year 2012 they've done all the conquering they ever plan to.

One horizon remained uncharted in 1985: the American video game market.

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1985: Dawn of a New Era

Following in the grand tradition of Japan entering with an unknown name into a market that had formerly been invented by Americans and consumed mostly by Americans, Nintendo decided to start selling its Famicom (Family Computer) in the USA. The dinky original name would have to go. In its place they gave it the rather generic moniker of Nintendo Entertainment System, using the same nomenclature as their predecessors Fairchild and Atari had done. But the NES was something truly special, definitely moreso than any systems that came before it. And amazingly, the traditional virtues of Japanese manufactured goods were NOT what made it special. It didn't sell well because it was the most technically advanced product, or because it was the cheapest, or because it was the most reliable. Come to think of it, the NES is a fairly unreliable system that requires special tricks to keep going, and because it was an 8-bit machine with another MOS 6502 that had powered video game systems for years already, it didn't seem really advanced. At $149 launch price (with a game and two controllers) it was actually slightly more expensive than the Atari 7800, and a whopping $100 more than the stale Atari 2600. So what are the virtues of this machine?

NES in original 1985 trim.

The paradigm shift here is that finally a Japanese firm had conquered the market without emulating its competitors for a lower price or better quality. They did not cut costs to the bone to make the greatest value. They did not simply focus on better construction. They didn't copy existing work and improve it. They were genuinely innovating, and they were selling a system on its desirability, not on its sensibility. They were poised to develop the best video games ever made. This machine was not to fill a gap in the market. It was to revitalize the market, and expand it to new heights it had never known before.

The key strengths of the Nintendo Entertainment System are so well-known that it seems almost silly to rehash them. But for the benefit of younger readers, I have summarized them from my outlook.

1. Exclusive high-quality titles. Nintendo knocked it out of the park immediately with Super Mario Brothers in 1985. They followed it with Metroid, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Brothers 2, Super Mario Brothers 3, and a slew of popular sports games. Their subidiary HAL Laboratories also introduced the character Kirby on this system. Most of the content for the NES was exclusive, because Nintendo knew it had a winner and it demanded that all developers develop solely for Nintendo, or not at all. The degree of exclusivity ended all ambiguity about which video game system was worth buying. The classics for the NES are why it was popular and why it remains famous today. It was the launchpad for Mega Man, Castlevania, Contra, Metal Gear, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and countless other series.

2.   Restoring confidence in the market. Perhaps the biggest change that the customer noticed was that Nintendo gave you a basic guarantee on each licensed game you bought. This came in the form of the "Seal of Quality", which meant it had been tested by Nintendo and it was guaranteed to work and play somewhat well. It wasn't a guarantee that you'd love the game, but at least it always played and you'd get a few minutes of enjoyment. In truth, the Seal just meant that that game was the product of developers who wanted to play ball on Nintendo's terms and designed a video game that would work around the NES's lockout chip (called 10NES). But this tactic was amazingly effective at getting buyers to trust video games again after the bad taste in their mouths from the flurry of third-party titles for the 2600. Since no such "guarantee" had ever been offered before, the Nintendo Seal would become famous in its own right as a symbol of how the new generation of games was superior to the old.

3.   Nothing but the best from the start. From the beginning, each NES had a pack-in game, which was a novel feature at the time. It was also a fine choice that it was Super Mario Brothers, a superbly fun and approachable game for the entire market. This feature let new console owners immediately gloat over how fun their game system was. It took the guesswork out of choosing games. Everybody knew that if you bought the system, you got a fun game right off the bat. It was a fantastic idea. Launching a game system with at least one "killer app" from the start was increasingly viewed as essential to the success of a new system, since buyers would wait until an anticipated game was available to buy the system in the first place. 

4.   The best marketing ever. Nintendo marketed its mascots ruthlessly, taking advantage of television commercials, radio, cereal boxes, magazines, billboards, TV shows, and an endless onslaught of merchandise. It was impossible to avoid hearing about Nintendo in the late 80s.

5.   A carefully cultivated image. Nintendo pulled an old Atari trick in positioning the NES as a family game system. The advantage of this over a PC was that it involved the whole family in good, clean fun, which is more than could be said for solitary PC gameplay. Compared to the NES, there was no PC which had anything like the amount of exclusive, high-quality video game titles. Moreover, unlike Atari, Nintendo could actually back up its image with fact, since the lock-out feature meant that it was very hard to design bootleg games, and consequently the fly-by-night adult game makers and blatant product placement games were barred from the system, and never even made it onto shelves to sully the system's reputation. 

6.   Better graphics and sound. It might have had a fairly old processor, but the NES was more advanced than anything that had previously used it and it blew the Atari 7800 out of the water. There were more colors, significantly better textures, more memory on the machine and more ROM on the cartridges for longer and more involving games. It would be easily eclipsed by its 16-bit successors, but for the first time reasonably accurate sound and pictures were possible. We were not quite to the point of the spoken voice, but background music became genuinely likable, not just a series of burps and beeps like it was on the 2600. Some basic tunes from the NES days still live with us today, like the Zelda and Mario theme songs.

7.   A perfect game controller. It has never really been bettered and it set the template for the future. A d-pad on the left, start and select buttons in the middle, and action buttons on the right. All controllers since then have followed a somewhat similar layout, at least to the extent of directional control on the left and action on the right. The d-pad was a great advance over earlier joysticks.

8.   A respectable appearance. The only positive aspect of the NES that came with the front-loading slot is that it looked like a VCR, which at the time was a cool piece of technology. Compared to the top-loading Atari systems, the front-loading NES seemed more modern at the time. With its boxy exterior and muted colors, it looked more like a serious addition to the living room than a full-on kid's toy. This was an improvement over the Famicom, since the Famicom was sold in Japan with exactly the kind of Fisher-Price hues that would have ruined its appeal to adults in America.

9.   Battery-backed save. It was possible starting with Legend of Zelda in 1986 to save a file and load it again for future play, greatly enhancing the appeal of longer, more ambitious games. The password save system was in use on many NES titles as well, but it eventually faded out because of how cumbersome it was. Saving a file should be easy. The advent of saved files in this way was an absolute revolution in gaming. Of course it was possible to save games on PCs earlier than this, especially for long "questing" games, using hard drives. But the fact that Nintendo games offered this feature meant that an entirely new type of home video game could be developed: the kind that took multiple days of gameplay to complete.

10.   Sheer good luck? Nintendo took advantage of a lot of recently-formed development firms that  were hurting from the Crash and needed to get games published and so would accept any terms available, including exclusive deals. Nintendo got Tetris as an exclusive even though it was not their own creation, and this was typical. Very many still-popular series were started on the NES over 20 years ago. It's just an incredible outpouring of creativity.

11.  Winning a few key cases. One of the few legal thorns in Nintendo's side was Tengen (an Atari subsidiary), which succeeded in cracking the 10NES lockout chip without making licensed games. If this was done purely by reverse-engineering, it would have been fully legal under the Activision precedent (you can't stifle third-party developers). However, since Tengen had requested and viewed code for the 10NES chip from the US Patent Office, they had no way to prove that it was honest reverse-engineering. The courts ruled that their workaround was copyright infringement and prohibited. Nintendo also won the case against Tengen over Tengen's version of Tetris. Even though it was not at all based on the source code for Nintendo's version, and was built from scratch, it was disallowed because Nintendo had exclusive rights to a game by that name and with that type of gameplay. All of this is rather sad, because Tengen's titles for the NES, particularly their highly polished Tetris, are considered classics.

12.   Better retention of its best people. Nintendo was not a labor camp like Atari under Kassar, but even if it was, the Japanese are seemingly not as inclined to shop around for a new job as Americans. Hiroshi Yamauchi, Nintendo's president from 1949 to 2002, pushed his engineers and developers to their limits but rewarded them appropriately. He spent almost his whole adult life from age 22 running the company after the death of his grandfather (then the current president). He also displayed a remarkable amount of intuition as to what approach was best in game design, despite having no background in it. Whatever he picked was usually a winner. In part because of this nurturing management, Nintendo has retained its heroically prolific developer Shigeru Miyamoto to this day. The Miyamoto-Yamauchi relationship was crucial to the success of Nintendo.

13.   Some good peripherals. I'm looking at you, Light Gun. How many joyful hours I did spend playing Duck Hunt as a youth and being AMAZED at how it worked when it was made before I was even born.

14.   All of the expected technology. It did everything relatively well, as you'd expect from a 1980s Japanese product. It had a pause feature, which had been introduced three years earlier on the Atari 5200. Apart from the quirks of the cartridge loading system, it had no quirks that would put off a neutral observer. It could play on color or B/W televisions. It had ordinary power and reset buttons. It had RF connectivity as well as composite A/V connectivity (later removed for the SNES and not brought back until years later on the N64). The power supply was a simple one-piece AC adapter. It was easy to open the case to make repairs if one so wished. Many historical video game systems we already saw have been plagued by some silly oversight that turned into a glaring fault. But though there were drawbacks, Nintendo didn't tend to drive anyone away to its competitors; by and large, the people who bought other systems either couldn't afford an NES or were dead-set in their buying habits already.

When the NES hit the market in 1985, a frosty reception was expected by most experts. In spring 1985, despite the fact that Famicom had sold 2.5 million units in Japan, Electronics Games magazine noted that the "video game market in North America has virtually disappeared" and suggested that Nintendo was erring in introducing the NES to the US market at that time. The first limited release of the system was October 18th, 1985. Complete nationwide sales would not start until February 1986.

It's staggering to think how far off the mark they were! By the time NES production ceased in 1995, nearly 62 million systems had been made. Nintendo's record of 62 million games sold would be the world's best for years until overtaken by the PlayStation in 1999. By comparison, the Atari 2600 had sold less than one-fourth of that during its period of dominance up to 1984, and actually sold more units when re-released in the mid-80s. The total of Atari 2600s was about 30 million sold in 15 years, roughly half the number of NES systems sold in 10 years stateside (12 years in Japan). The fact that the old Atari 2600 was doing better business after Nintendo than before it, suggests that Nintendo legitimized the video game once again. After the NES, there would be no crashes. Video games would continue to sell well indefinitely. 

NES-101, the updated version

The system was still selling well enough after eight years that Nintendo pulled an old Atari trick and re-released it in October 1993, two years after they had already started selling its replacement, the Super Nintendo. To keep the old system viable, the price was dropped to $49.99, exactly the same as the re-released 2600 of six years earlier. They gave it an updated controller (referred to as the "dog bone" by fans) which embraced the rounded style of the SNES controller. The system itself had a more reliable top-loading layout, also similar to the replacement SNES. Because the NES was quite old and there was little desire for pirated games, Nintendo omitted the lockout chip, so illegal games that had been sold earlier could be played on this version. Happy days- now any Tengen game is playable. More critically, this new system wasn't as likely to freeze or fail to load the game due to poor pin connections failing to verify the game's authenticity. However, these systems are not really in high demand. The internal code for this system is NES-101. For those who are interested, the original NES was coded NES-001.

The NES-101 is a more practical system, but it lacks the bulk, presence, and retro-chic appeal of the original NES-001. It looks a bit bland to behold. But for the lower-middle class that had never considered buying video game systems before, the $50 NES in 1993 was doubtless a gateway for millions of video game players.

Why isn't the redesign considered "cool"? It comes from a time when the NES was fading from memory. The 16-bit generation, anchored by the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, would make the old NES seem boring and uncomplicated; the "retro" appeal didn't gain motion until years later, and the original 001 design was inevitably preferred because it was truer to the heart of the 80s. The 101 did the same thing better, but was from the wrong decade. For those who shun emulators and just want a reliable way to play old NES games without getting into the hype of the original classic design, the re-released 101 version remains appealing, and it's definitely cheaper than the original VCR-style model. Likewise for the dog-bone controllers: they are more ergonomic than the sharp-edged original, and have better buttons, but they too are low on style and retro appeal. I'd like to say that style doesn't matter, but the original NES is the real deal, and it's hard to argue with the aesthetic appeal of it. For me I'd prefer to have both, but since I don't, I'm glad that I have the original.

Of course, there are some drawbacks to the NES, but over time everyone's memories of the negativity has faded, and we now view them as charming personality quirks.

1. Stupid way of inserting cartridges. The push in and push down method puts undue stress on the pins connecting the game to the system. Over time they can stop developing a flush fit, resulting in data loss, which is when your game crashes or won't even start in the first place. We have reclaimed this as a "cool thing" because of the art of getting it to work correctly. Always make sure you blow on the cartridge frequently! Even if the dust is invisible, we still pretend it's there. There is a better workaround because you can buy a new connector that will replace these pins, and it's easily replaceable with just one screwdriver. The part is widely available and inexpensive. The rest of the system is pretty reliable.
2. Stupidly big cartridges. When you pull one of these out today compared to a DS or Game Boy Advance game, or Wii disc, you might be forgiven for thinking you've accidentally stolen one of the tablets of the Ten Commandments. It's huge, gray, and heavy. Even for the day, these were monsters. The chunkiness doesn't make it particularly tough; you still need to be careful about temperature and moisture with cartridge-based games.
3. The Flashing Blue (or Gray or White or Green) Screen of Death. Nintendo's effective solution to exclude unlicensed developers was to include the 10NES lock-out chip on the console, which would not play a game unless it had constant contact with all the pins of the game so that it could communicate with the internal chip, which contained memory that let the system know that it was legitimate. If any pins were bent or broken, and contact was lost, it might assume the game was unlicensed, and the screen would flash once per second, because that was the refresh rate of the 10NES chip. The blue screen was by far the most common, but other colors were possible. (Usually solid, not flashing. If you see a flashing green screen, take a video, because it's rare.)
4. In Japan, the Famicom's controllers were hardwired to the machine. Ouch! Didn't they learn anything from Fairchild? But happily, for the US release, we got removable controllers.
5. Silly peripherals. Some have credited the R.O.B. (Roboting Operating Buddy) as being a "Trojan Horse" by showing an entirely new facet to video games that made it appealing despite the fact that Nintendeo never intended this robotic peripheral to replace conventional controls. I have never used one, never seen one, and honestly I don't know why anyone was interested. It sounds and looks stupid. The Power Glove looks cooler, but holding your arm out at a 90 degree angle for hours sounds like an even worse idea. This is just my opinion...

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The others

Nintendo did not operate in a vacuum, but very nearly. Of course Atari was still present in the video game market, and in the early days of the NES it was hoped by that company that it could leapfrog Nintendo with its 7800 and get back in the game. That proved to be hopelessly optimistic. The Atari name held little appeal for modern gamers in the late 1980s. By 1991, when Atari was wrapping up the 7800 project, they held perhaps 12% of the North American game market, their home territory, while Nintendo held 80%. In Japan,  the Atari 7800 was almost unknown, and Nintendo's margin of victory was even greater.

Atari "Flashback" from 2004.

I have never played a 7800, and not much is written about its unique content. It wasn't heavily mourned; the best birthday present it ever got was a re-released "Atari Flashback" in 2004 which had only five 7800 games and controllers that were identical to the 7800's. Since this system didn't actually use the same internal CPU or graphics, it was said to not "feel" the same as the original 7800, which consequently dimmed its appeal. We've already been over the 2600 hits, and most of the 7800 main titles were just rehashes, so there's little more to talk about here. Atari managed a surprising degree of success with the 7800 considering how uninspired it was. They sold almost 4 million, and that was purely on the American market. I don't know if they even bothered to sell it anywhere else.

Master System: hefty and unique, but poor selection of games.

If we consider the heretofore unmentioned European market, a more serious contender to Nintendo in the mid-80s came from Sega. I've never been  a fan of Sega systems or games, so it's hard for me to understand their appeal, particularly of the Sega Master System. Interestingly, Sega sold a sizable majority of the Master Systems in Europe. While in the early days America's gaming culture influenced Japan and in the latter days Japan's gaming culture influenced America, Europe's gaming culture is much harder to follow. They seemed to pick the Master for some reason I don't understand, and domestic European studios started development for it with much more eagerness than they showed for Nintendo. Master sold over 10 million units, of which nearly 7 million were sold in Europe. In the US they sold under 2 million, and in Japan they sold slightly over 1 million units. Not such great numbers for a system that was sold from 1985 to 1996, during a prodigious video game boom. It's important to note that Sega abandoned the home Japanese market in 1989 and the American market in 1992. The final four years of production were solely for Western Europe and Canada.

Master System II: So generic I'm falling aslee....zzzzz

I personally think the design of the original series Master System was quite cool, with an interesting shape, and geeky overly complicated graphic on the red front panel. It also looked and felt fairly high quality, like an old Zenith VCR. However, the 1989 successor Master System II, which was designed to be a cheaper, cut-down version, looked like a hideous Soviet knock-off made from melted down Knex, and it stands out in my mind as the ugliest, most barren game console of all time. If McDonald's decided to design their own game system and hand it out free with the purchase of 5 Happy Meals, I can only imagine it would look like this. It makes the NES-101 look inspired in comparison.

Sega was definitely looking over the shoulder of Nintendo's Famicom when they selected a D-pad (well, more like a tiny joystick that was almost like a D-pad) and two-button layout for the Master System gamepad. Unfortunately, they didn't copy it thoroughly enough. Amusingly, the controller cord comes out of the right side of the controller, which is exactly where your right hand would be. I have to just stand back in amazement that some Sega executive would be idiotic enough to pass this design on to final production. If anyone played it even for a short period of time, they would see that this design was complete garbage. Sega pulled the same dimwitted failure years later with the Dreamcast, which had controllers with the cord coming out of the back, meaning you had much less cord length. How can you make such a huge mistake twice? What were they smoking at Sega?

However, this system is fondly remembered by some. We should point out that it is technically superior to the NES, with its Zilog Z80 beating out the older MOS 6502 used in the NES. Still, potentially superior graphics was no substitute for third-party support, and Sega was entering a market where Nintendo had an overwhelming supply of hits from its own manufacturers, and exclusive rights to many third-party games too. Sega had an uphill battle, and with a development team much smaller than Nintendo's, they could only churn out a couple of high-quality first-party titles, which wasn't enough to carry the system to success.

I have never personally owned the SMS and haven't logged much gameplay, so I can't comment in too much detail. The best-selling game (and, by consensus, the highest quality game) was Alex Kidd in Miracle World. In the pre-Sonic days, this was Sega's best platforming effort and nearly a competitor to Super Mario Bros. There is something to be said for variety, and if you ever just wished that folks would shut up about Mario and Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, here was your choice if you wanted something a bit less antediluvian than Atari.

But although I will bash Sega, I have no doubt that they were utterly committed to taking on Nintendo on equal terms, which was a courageous objective. Their first effort was nowhere near good enough. But when 1989 rolled around, just halfway through the life of the NES and Master System, they would strike back with the wildly successful Genesis, their biggest-seller of all time. The "16-bit generation" was going to witness Nintendo remain the industry leader (helped by the 1989 release of the legendary Game Boy) but never with the degree of total control that it enjoyed from 1985-1989. Stay tuned to see it unfold.