by Alexx » Mon Feb 04, 2013 11:41 am
I'm playing...
A Nintendo! FINALLY got one of these NES 2 systems; I've wanted one for so long. Saw one at a shop way back at the beginning of college for 80, but I didn't have the cash for it and it was long gone by the time I got back to that shop (and now that shop is long gone, but that's beside the point). I had done an idle search for "NES model 101" on amazon, but not much came up and I kinda gave up 'cause I figured the prices would have gone way up since when I original found it anyway. Well, I changed my search recently to just "NES 2" and came up with a bunch of sellers! Guess I was being too formal with the name. Anyway, I found this little guy for 82, so i'm happy I didn't have to go much over what I original saw it for.
And when I say little guy, I mean it. Lookitthelittlething! LOOKITIT!
There it is sitting on it's giant dinosaur of a predecessor. I had complained about how stupid the original box design was and why the heck anyone would change a simple top loader into a sideways-push-in-then-push-down loader. I mean, you take NO mechanism (just push the game in) to a complex mechanism for more possibilities of breakages. Any time a machine gets more complicated there are more opportunites for things to break, so why would you make something more complicated when you didn't need to?
WELL...I looked that up and found a very good answer. At the time the NES came out, the US was in the middle of the big 'ol Video Game Crash you may have heard about. Bascially the Atari was going out of style, and it took everyone with it. Well the NES did fine in Japan, but bringing it over to the dead gaming waters of America provided a challenge: How do they make this thing NOT look like another game system that was going out of style?
The answer: Make it look like the high-end electronics of the time and sell it as a Family Entertainment System! The whole reason they messed with the simple top-loader design of the Japanese system was to make it look more like the accepted VCR everyone was sporting. You could set it right next to or on top of your VCR for a clean 80's-gray/silver look of high-end electronics and it most certainly was NOT one of those game systems that you bought your kid awhile ago (and they're not touching) - NO SIR, this is a Family Entertainment System! 'Course you older folks are familiar with the advertisements of the whole family sitting around the Nintendo 'n all that.
So that ugly, unwieldy design finally makes sense! It was a different look for a different time, to appeal to a nation that was sick of game systems (and still piling dirt on unsold E.T. game carts). Funny thing is that you honestly didn't see many advertisements after the NES that sold game systems as family entertainment. Think of all the Sega and SNES commercials with all the EXTREME and cool and radical 'n all that jazz to catch the attention of a kid. When's the next time you saw a family enjoying the system?
...the Wii. Kinda seems like Nintendo went back to basics!
BUT, to keep this somewhat relevant to the thread: I've been enjoying my NES games again without having to fight with them first. Pop it in the top and play! If not that, then a press of the reset button usually gets it to work. Heck, some of the games I thought were broken are working again! I love this thing!
"Since you got here by not thinking, it seems reasonable to expect that, in order to get out, you must start thinking." ~ Tock, the Watchdog