Remembering "Dandy" (actually NES)

Like normal Russian children, in the nineties, my friends and I played on the Dandy, the Chinese Famicom clone, exchanged 500-in-1 cartridges, which the rest of the world had never seen, read frayed books with codes and secrets ... It still seems that there was nothing better than those games (although the Sega later also delivered a lot). Yesterday I saw an article on the NES creator devoted to the 30th anniversary of the console on the GamesIndustry, I could not resist and ... translated. Original - by reference after the article. The article is titled something like this: "Nintendo has always been like this, we, as an indie studio - Masayuki Uemura, the developer of NES, speaks about the role of this console and the current state of video games." Enjoy reading!

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Shigeru Miyamoto, Satoru Iwata, Eiji Aonuma - almost all gamers know these legendary Nintendo names. But have any of you heard of Masayuki Uemura? As the leading developer of the Japanese console, Famicom, which we know in the West as NES, Uemura had a huge impact on the market for home consoles and, probably, it was thanks to him that video games became relevant again after the 1983 disaster. Where would we be today without the NES? The “father of video games” is often called Ralph Baer, ​​the creator of Magnavox Odyssey, but it is Uemura who is the father of the modern console industry. (Licensing of games from third-party companies appeared on the NES and became a common practice.) I recently interviewed him. We sat in the Rochester Video Game Museum, where an exhibition entitled “Playing with Power”, dedicated to the 30th anniversary of NES, was held. For the one who played such an important role in the history of Nintendo, he turned out to be a very modest person. In the early 80s, Hiroshi Yamauchi, the then president of Nintendo, instructed him to think about the new prefix. Uemura was horrified: who would even look at a new iron, if the market is already overwhelmed with all kinds of junk!

"Yes, what is the salvation of video games! I was just scared and wanted to avoid failure in America, he admits. “It is now, 30 years later, in this museum I understand that we really saved the market, but then I couldn’t imagine such a thing.”

Uemura has been telling me about Nintendo for a long time: how the company made slot machines (including the acclaimed VS System), how she gave ColecoVision a license for Donkey Kong, how she handled Game & Watch and TV-Game consoles, etc. I will not retell it 20 -minute enthusiastic monologue. Let me just say that the company made an important conclusion from all that happened: seeing how well slot machines in America were accepted, Nintendo realized that Americans like its games. This was the first step towards the NES. Nintendo knew that the new console should not be the same as everything that came before it. Uemura says that this is why the American NES was so different in appearance from the Japanese Famicom: it looked more like the then popular VCRs, because cartridges were inserted from the front - just like video tapes.

Front cartridge loading in US NES. The mechanism was complicated and often broke. We were more fortunate in Russia: in the Dandy cartridges were inserted from above, as in Famicom.
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“When we started advertising on TV, it was immediately clear to potential buyers that our console was different from Atari,” says Uemura. “We also had a ROB robot, a new toy that reacted to what was happening on the screen ... And a light gun. On other consoles this was not. Launching NES in America, we assigned a very important role to the robot and the pistol. We also advertised the console in shopping centers: people could play and make sure that we have good games. ”

Uemura has led the Nintendo development department for many years. He was also the leading developer of SNES - almost 50 million of these consoles were sold worldwide (although this is less than that of NES - 62 million). Even not counting sales, Famicom remains the main pride of Uemura. Mainly due to the test through which he and Nintendo had to pass: “It was the most difficult ... While developing Famicom, I was constantly falling into the old rut. Even after the console was released, we had to solve many problems, ”he recalls.

So, Nintendo breathed new life into video games, so no one was surprised by the new participant in the console race: everyone who played consoles in the early 90s remembers the console wars with warmth. Yes, Sega Genesis gave way to SNES in sales, but was very popular, especially in America. Uemura says he liked what Sega did, but it was then, in the 16-bit era, that he noticed the first signs of a “graphic arms race.” This race intensified when Sony and its PlayStation appeared on the scene.

“You probably know that at some stage we collaborated with Sony. We knew what they were doing and what they wanted to achieve. When Sony and other companies began to release their consoles, everyone realized how difficult it was to create a game with good mechanics. Nintendo since Game & Watch has tried to make game mechanics within limited computing resources. And then began to appear graphically advanced games that emphasized the power of iron. The developers were forced to spend more and more effort not on the mechanics of the game, but on the graphics and sound. And today the market is filled with just such games, ”says Uemura.

The fruit of cooperation between Nintendo and Sony, the prototype of their joint set-top box, which then turned PlayStation.

“We at Nintendo have always tried to go beyond the standard types of gameplay, which distinguished our games from others. The game industry was growing up, and it was time to think again about the importance of mechanics and gameplay. For twenty years, publishers and iron makers have only thought about graphics, sound, etc., without worrying too much about game design and new mechanics. ”

It's funny, but right now, when the consoles have become so powerful, igrodels again pay attention to the gameplay, mainly because the adult audience has less time for games: “People have little time, and the developers took up mechanics and game design,” notes my interlocutor Since Uemura officially quit in 2004 (sometimes, however, returning as a consultant), he reluctantly talks about the company's current strategy and the problems of the Wii U. Despite this, the veteran Nintendo firmly believes that the company will return to its old heights - only one bright star. Perhaps the next “miyamoto” is already standing backstage, getting ready to go on stage and lead everyone on an exciting new journey.

“We have a lot of employees. Perhaps there is a new Iwata or Miyamoto among them. Maybe he himself does not know about it. When a new idea appears, our task is to implement it. I know they can handle it. The power of Nintendo in people. Those with whom I happened to work, now occupy important positions, manage everything, etc. I believe in them, ”he adds.

He stresses that the company has always been moved forward by individuals. Yes, the concept of “indie” we put a slightly different meaning and is unlikely to call this a huge gaming corporation, but it is “the personality factor” that makes Nintendo, in fact, an indie studio, according to Uemura. “It seems to me that the direction of video games has always been asked by indie developers. When creating a good game, the role of personality is enormous. If you want to use iron to its fullest, squeeze out the best graphics and sound from it and include support for various technologies in the game, you increase the staff. But you could increase the role of individuals. Nintendo has always done so, and in this the company looks like an indie studio, ”he notes.

That same Miyamoto - creator of Mario, Star Fox, Zelda, picmin, etc.

“Coming up with something new, we always try to turn everything upside down, change the rules of the game, shake the foundations. A vivid example of this is the Wii. The popularity of this console exceeded all our expectations. For us it became a sign, we felt indie. ”

Time will tell how Nintendo will change. Now the company is preparing to present the world with a new platform - NX. Regardless of what happens to the NX, the game industry owes a great deal to Nintendo and Uemure. People who grew up on the NES are now 30–40 years old, and video games have become an integral part of society. This is surprised even by Uemura himself, who studies games at Kyoto university Ritsumeikan. Despite the fact that in Japan, one can still encounter a "slightly negative" attitude towards video games, Uemura "is impressed by how willingly Americans have adopted video games in their culture."