Did any developers anticipate the rise of games like Super Mario Bros.? I believe some of them did. Perhaps they had owned an Atari 2600 and recalled the fondness of playing Adventure & deciphering its strange mazes. Or maybe they experienced Haunted House in 1982, practicing speed runs through different difficulty levels to record their times. These games of course, were American made, and popular to boot. Why hadn't American developers continued to pioneer the action-adventure genre then? Why didn't America make Mario?
Some might blame it on the video game crash of the early 80's in America, but I personally think that these genres were extremely difficult to make with the limited hardware of the time (even the Colecovision). Aside from the ROM cartridge limitations (46kb?) there were limitations in graphics and memory that severely handicapped the amount of objects one could display on screen. This was a time when even many arcade games had yet to incorporate scrolling screens, and even the ones that used multiple fixed screens (such as Space Dungeon and Intrepid) were massively limited by the graphical capabilities of the time in spite of their expensive arcade hardware. American developers during the early 80's then were probably limited by hardware more than they were ambition, and a game like Haunted House was as good as it got for many players wishing to experience action-adventure titles. Then the Famicom came along, the console which this post is all about.
Some might blame it on the video game crash of the early 80's in America, but I personally think that these genres were extremely difficult to make with the limited hardware of the time (even the Colecovision). Aside from the ROM cartridge limitations (46kb?) there were limitations in graphics and memory that severely handicapped the amount of objects one could display on screen. This was a time when even many arcade games had yet to incorporate scrolling screens, and even the ones that used multiple fixed screens (such as Space Dungeon and Intrepid) were massively limited by the graphical capabilities of the time in spite of their expensive arcade hardware. American developers during the early 80's then were probably limited by hardware more than they were ambition, and a game like Haunted House was as good as it got for many players wishing to experience action-adventure titles. Then the Famicom came along, the console which this post is all about.
I wish less people would underestimate just how revolutionary the Famicom hardware was when it launched in Japan at the price it did. I'm not talking about the NES either, but the original, 1983 slim form Famicom. Nintendo basically launched their console for $60 in Japan ($150 in Todays money) and it still outperformed most $600 home computers with regards to game and sound performance. Theres a Youtube video chronicling the console and computer prices around the time here. Even Sega's SG1000 (and large library of arcade ports) was unable to rival the quality of the Famicoms arcade ports, in spite of its more user friendly programming environment and widely known Z80 processor.
How was Nintendo able to leapfrog the competition so much while keeping their prices so low? Considering that just one year prior the clearly inferior Colecovision was selling for $200 ($480 in Todays money) how in the heck did Nintendo manage to sell a clearly superior console for so much less? I haven't been able to find manufacturing costs for the original Famicom, but if they were taking a loss on their consoles then they have Super Mario Bros. to thank for putting them out of the red. More importantly, the game also charted a new direction for game worlds and development cycles. In a recent interview it was made known that the reason Super Mario Bros. was able to offer such a dense world is because of its development time, and what was usually a 3 month development cycle (for games like Roc n Rope in the arcades) turned into over 6 months. This makes sense, given the asking price of cartridges at the time, which was . Nintendo wanted to be sure that the games they offered would compliment and exceed even the best game worlds arcades had to offer.
Mario did not help the console become the main gaming platform though, and I believe that Zelda and Metroid in particular helped Nintendo gain legitimacy across a wider variety of themes and demographics. The worlds in these games were more serious, not only in thematic content, but also through giving players more choice in the game world and also more difficult choices to make. Zelda's currency system and Metroids unmapped non-linear environments were unheard of in the points heavy action games of the time, and cemented both Nintendo and the Famicoms legacy as a console for the best and only action adventure games.
Unfortunately, the side effect of the popularity of consoles has led to a decline and almost death in the arcade market. This was an unfortunate, but avoidable situation, and I wish more people in the industry had taken the threat of consoles seriously, after all they were given many years to prepare for the worst.
