[HN Gopher] The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits (2014)
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The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits (2014)
Author : blkjam
Score : 67 points
Date : 2021-10-31 08:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (grantland.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (grantland.com)
| brandnewlow wrote:
| Fun book. I've said this before on here but it purports to
| lionize the Sega of America folks but can't help but present them
| as non-technical marketers without much depth to them. Meanwhile
| the Nintendo crew, ostensibly the bad guys in the story's
| narrative, seem passionate, principled and serious about shipping
| great games people love.
| munk-a wrote:
| Am I the only person slightly disappointed that when I opened the
| article I didn't just see a single letter staring back at me?
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Here's your article: M
| [deleted]
| mttjj wrote:
| (2014)
|
| > The following is an excerpt from Blake J. Harris's new book,
| "Console Wars".
|
| From Amazon: Publication date May 13, 2014
| zerocrates wrote:
| Or more directly refer to the article's own publication date:
| "ON MAY 14, 2014"
|
| Grantland, the site as a whole, has been dead since 2015.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _The Rise of Nintendo: A Story in 8 Bits_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7747082 - May 2014 (20
| comments)
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| > 1. The Nintendo Seal of Quality: Ron Judy had the novel idea of
| mandating that all games pass a stringent series of tests to be
| deemed Nintendo-worthy, ensuring high-caliber product and making
| software developers beholden to Nintendo's approval.
|
| See this is what apple should be doing in an open app store.
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| It's worth noting that the quality of games currently released
| on the Nintendo Switch is currently pretty abysmal[1], with as
| many Unity asset flips and low-effort 'games' as on Steam.
|
| Perhaps it's not as bad as the situation on mobile, but a quick
| look through the recently released list on the eShop shows how
| bad things have gotten.
|
| [1] https://kotaku.com/fans-are-pissed-about-the-switch-
| eshop-s-...
| mikestew wrote:
| Yeah, and then Apple's review throughput drops through the
| floor, leaving only "big names" at the top of the priority list
| and indie developers can pound sand.
| ghostbrainalpha wrote:
| Don't only "big names" make it though to pop on the app store
| anyway.
|
| They essentially have the best of both worlds. Anyone can
| publish their niche app, to a niche audience.
|
| But only Apple decides what hundreds of millions of people
| will be exposed to.
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is a kids game to publish something on Apple's store versus
| on Nintendo.
| bitwize wrote:
| It's what Apple is already doing. The Nintendo situation was:
| either your game gets the Nintendo Seal of Quality, or it
| doesn't get published at all. The Seal of Quality was much more
| an exclusive gateway of access to the platform and a censorship
| device (to prevent repeats of the Custer's Revenge situation)
| than it was an assurance of quality: if you watched AVGN videos
| you'd know there were plenty of shitty NES games. Nintendo also
| capped the number of published games per third party and
| insisted on manufacturing all the carts. Some underground
| publishers found ways around the NES lockout, but to do so
| would be to invite lawsuits from Nintendo (and would be a
| felony under today's DMCA).
| LocalH wrote:
| >Nintendo also capped the number of published games per third
| party
|
| They also allowed said third parties to get around this via
| shell companies, if they were popular enough. See: Konami and
| Ultra Games
| NetHaven wrote:
| This is absolutely true. If anyone remembers Tengen back in
| the day putting stuff out without the Nintendo seal of
| approval; Nintendo completely freaked out about it despite
| the fact that Tengen's stuff was much higher quality than
| many "approved" Nintendo games.
| LocalH wrote:
| Tengen started out as a licensee. They released three games
| as licensees (Pac-Man, RBI Baseball, and Gauntlet). They
| were also simultaneously cracking 10NES. Worried about
| damage to consoles, they went to the Copyright Office and
| falsely represented themselves as potentially entering into
| litigation with Nintendo, and obtained the 10NES program
| (which is honestly probably where they screwed up). They
| started releasing the famous black unlicensed carts, and
| proceeded to get sued.
| padobson wrote:
| From the interviews and histories that I've read/watched, the
| EAD[0] dev team was doing some of the highest level UI design in
| the world in the 80s and 90s.
|
| They started each game from the interactive experience and then
| fleshed out the details from there. Think running and jumping in
| Mario - they spent months getting the gravity and speed right,
| the button presses, all before the first thoughts to art, level
| design or story.
|
| It was very iterative. They'd start with a concept and then tweak
| and tweak and tweak until it was as fun as they could get it.
|
| Another good example is the development story of Super Mario
| Kart[1], which was supposed to be the sequel to F-Zero[2], but
| they invented/discovered new gameplay elements that fit better
| with the Mario brand and they took the game in that direction.
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_Analysi..
| . [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Mario_Kart
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-Zero_(video_game)
| salamandersauce wrote:
| It was also technical limitations that led to it being Mario
| Kart and not F-Zero. To do two players simultaneously they had
| to greatly reduce the track size and cut the framerate in half.
| This led to something that really didn't feel like F-zero so
| they eventually shifted it to go-karts and then from there they
| got the idea to use Mario characters and add items.
|
| Wrestling with gaming has a fantastic video on the making of
| Super Mario Kart.
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=MspqDuq5OZY
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(page generated 2021-11-01 23:01 UTC)